Martin Amis - Dead Babies

"All the what?" said Andy.

"Foci."

"Fuck you too," he said, shrugging.

: "All the foci of human memory. Obliterate it all. Entirely. Then we could really start over."

Throughout the morning Giles's anesthetized ears had fastened on and absorbed only the odd word or phrase— "bridge. gumboot… I'd give my eyeteeth… to crown it all… cap in hand. that's the drill. wisdom. " At Roxeanne's last words, however, he decided he could no longer remain silent. He sat up straight and said, "But what would happen— But what would happen to modern—"

Before Giles could stutter out the word dentistry, Andy was saying, "What's going on here? Hey! What's going on— there's no more lush! Come on, what's going on around here."

At length, Giles held out his cupboard keys.

"Christ, Giles," Andy said earnestly, "what kind of stunt was that to try and pull."

"Gin for me, Andy, actually," said Giles.

As Andy dashed from the room, Roxeanne turned to Quentin. Her voice was drained and plaintive. "What's the time?" she asked achingly.

"How much more day is there," Lucy said.

Quentin looked at his watch, a guilty host. It had stopped. "Not long," he said. "Not long."

Alcoholic inebriation had well passed the stage at which it might responsibly be explained away as extreme drunkenness. Even the relatively teetotal Celia had consumed well over a liter of brandy-orientated champagne cocktail. And yet the Appleseeders still seemed quite opinionatedly game. Their blood pressures and body temperatures were dropping, finding the time for various drugs to catch up to their stretched metabolisms. Whitehead, for example, felt that his torso might be a shipment of jumping beans, Diana and Celia alike believed that they were on the brink of grave hormonal upsets, Marvell burped with unusual volume and candor, and Lucy was under the impression that she was a ghost or a dead body. All about them, cellular and glandular negotiations raged.

Marvell gazed at his watch. "Oh-kay," he said. "Everybody all right? We should be out the other side of this thing pretty soon. Just wander around a bit and do what feels best to do. Any more of that cocktail.?"

The air in the room rolled. People began to fall through doorways.

All morning there had been talk between Andy and Skip of a game of badminton. Noticing that Skip's mouth was white-crumbed with dehydration, Andy malevolently challenged him to an immediate match.

"Now it's not a fuckin' American game," Andy briefed Skip as they extracted net and posts from the hall trunk. "So don't try kicking it or heading it or running around with it or any crap like that. You just" — he motioned with his racket— "whap it over the net with this, is all. Okay? And watch it, cos I'm fucking good."

Diana went upstairs to view the game from her bedroom window. She did this partly because she felt too ill to tolerate company, and partly because the confusion of her feelings for Andy had not yet abated the pleasure of watching him move about when he thought her eyes weren't on him. She lit a cigarette, resting her elbows on the wooden windowsill. The game began.

Andy won a few quick points by variously fair and foul means, penalizing Skip for "technical" misdemeanors, mis-positioning him to receive serve, capriciously amending the rules; but Skip had caught on fast and was moreover proving stubborn about the more audacious contradictions in Andy's scoring system. At 6–6, Andy was no longer master of his good temper, and when little Keith staggered out to admire the contest, Andy suggested that he fuck off again, menacing the craven Whitehead with his raised racket.

To Diana, Andy and Skip seemed equally strong and skilless, equally powerful and uncoordinated. Stripped to the waist, Andy looked marginally the more impressive, with his thick hair flapping and the glisten of sweat on his tanned back and glossy shoulders. Further, he had a habit of shouting Yeah! whenever he made a good shot and hooting sarcastically whenever Skip coerced him into a bad one. For all his clamorous bulk, though, Andy looked about seventeen. Skip, bespectacled, in T-shirt and khaki shorts, was far more composed, his mouth set resolutely throughout. And his body was hard and metallic by comparison, as if operated on tight cords — a sharp and unfriendly body, a cruel body.

"Johnny," said Diana.

: After a long, noisy rally, in which several reverses appeared to take place, Andy snapped his racket over his knee and stalked back toward the house, watched by a blankfaced Skip. Diana peered down as Andy's head bobbed out of sight. She smiled unpleasantly, until her eyes returned to the center of the lawn, where they were met by the American's.

"I can't believe I'm hearing this babies," said Marvell. "What are you, a fuckin' flower child?"

Giles did not reply.

"Listen," said Andy. "Listen," he said, flexing his shoulders as if about to lift some formidably heavy object. "Man has always been violent. It's only for a few years that we ever thought he might not be-and he was still having fuckin' wars and shit, Vietnam and that. Violence is innate, so it's sort of felt selfhood, realized livingness, it's expressing life in its full creative force — it's sort of creative to do it."

Giles frowned. "But what if you just went up to some poor old lady in the street and knocked out her, got her right in the. "

"Christ, hippie," said Andy, "what a crappy example. That's more like torture or something."

Giles frowned. "But isn't what you want. anarchy? I mean, what would become of law and policemen and fire engines and denti—"

"Yeah, well, you need all that too," said Andy, folding his arms. "But if I took you outside now and smacked the shit out of you, don't tell me you'd go running to the village pig, now, would you?" Andy leaned forward warningly.

Giles swallowed. "No, I promise, Andy."

"Well, then."

Those conversations.

"Hey. uh, Trip or Flap or whatever the fuck your name is—"

"Skip," said Skip.

"Skip. Check. You like fighting and fucking up animals and smashing things up and stuff, don't you?"

"Sure. Makes you feel good.”

"Check. Marvell, am I wrong?"

"No, you're not wrong," said Marvell.

"Check. Fuckin' check." Andy sat back and turned haughtily to Giles. "Okay?"

Giles was a worried man. This sort of talk was all very much in accord with his occasional anxieties about the house, with the air of unreason and casual menace that struck him at odd moments of sobriety: he didn't know — unpredictable shadows on the stairs, pockets of sourceless, murmured conversation, the feeling you got that no one was really alive there, the sense it gave of being suspended. Giles remembered his terrified awe when he had overheard a speed-racked Andy soliloquize one night about how he was going to slay Mr. and Mrs. Tuckle. "Then I'm going to get this fuckin' great meat cleaver," Andy had droned to himself, "and stuff all these ants and stuff up her snatch. And pull out her teeth with pliers. And staple up her lips. 'Ain't no use you beefing about it Mr. Tuckle. Take a seat, sir, please, whilst I make with the meathooks.'" Shudder shudder shudder. Giles had crept back to his room and hadn't come out of it again for five days.

"Andy," he said. "If you do decide to hit me, don't hit me in the face, please. All right? Anywhere, but not in the face. I'll pay you not to. "

Andy leaned forward and tousled Giles's hair. "Don't worry, chickenshit," he said. "It's not your turn yet."

"Thank you, Andy," said Giles, getting up to leave.

"Hey. Andy."

"Yeah, what do you want, Rip?"