Will Self - The Butt

Tom smirked, and pulled the SUV into the hotel parking lot.

At reception they checked in, and Tom handed over the two Galil rifles for the hotel armoury. Prentice came struggling through the doors, his shoulder holster slung round his thin neck, a single box of ribaviarin in his scrawny arms. His psoriasis was definitely back; the receptionist noticed it and a wrinkle of disgust bent her lipstick bow.

‘I–I say, Tom — Brodzinski, I’m awfully fagged out.’ Prentice slumped, wheezing, against the desk. ‘You couldn’t help me out with the rest of my clobber, could you?’

For hundreds of kilometres Tom had been longing for this: a cool, private space with no flies in it, and a bathroom that didn’t stink of shit. But there was no repose to be found in Room 1617. It was a repeat of his experience at the Hilton in the Tontines: the silent valet crushed Tom, the blinds sliced him, the ventilation grilles diced him. He ranged the $39 cage appalled by these things — what were they for ?

He got his cellphone out and switched it on. There were voice messages; the first was from Adams. ‘Ah. . Brodzinski,’ he began hesitantly, and, for the second time, Tom had the impression that he was listening to someone else even as he spoke. ‘I think I ought to — not exactly warn — but certainly inform you, that your, ah. . companion may — and I stress may , I don’t know for certain — have become, ah. . aware of Mr Lincoln’s deteriorating condition. I have no idea if he is in contact with the defen — with. . well, suffice to say: watch out, Tom. Mind your, ah. . back.’

The second message was from Martha and the kids, who had put the home phone on conference. Tom could picture them, standing in the living room. The kids were apple-cheeked, snow was falling outside, a too-tall Christmas tree bowed over the mantelpiece and logs crackled in the grate below.

‘Hi, Dad!’ the kids chorused, while Martha’s voice simply stated: ‘Tom.’ The kids all cried, ‘Merry Christmas!’ Then Dixie added, ‘We’re gonna sing you a carol.’ They launched into ‘Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer’. The twins’ voices were reedy and off-key, Tommy Junior grunted the words, and Dixie led them by example on to the next line. Martha wasn’t singing at all.

Tom unstuck the cellphone from his ear and deleted the message. It would be time to wrap himself in the cosy swag of familial love later on, when the job was done. He picked up his digital camera, then set it down again. The images were consorting in their aluminium cell. Clad in a glittery mail of pixels, Prentice was sidling up on Tom’s twins, wheedling them for their little company. While Tommy Junior — who ought to protect them — remained idiotically oblivious: a bulgy teddy bear, the size of a full-grown — yet sexless — man.

Tom could scarcely believe that once upon a time he had cuddled that body; held that hydrocephalic head to his chest and breathed in the warm hay of boy hair, while tenderly exploring the raised scar and wondering what misery had inflicted it. To cuddle Tommy Junior now — what would that be like? He would feel as alien as. . a Tugganarong cop. . Football head. . Flat face. . Bronze skin. . Gollyfollyfolly. .

Tom cupped his genitals through the denim. He thought of masturbating — he hadn’t done so in weeks. He thought of Atalaya’s breasts pressed against Lincoln’s comatose face. He wondered what Gloria was doing in the adjoining room. Could she be toying with herself? Gloria’s strange fingers pinching Martha’s familiar nipples — pulling the reddening teats up from the pale aureoles. Gloria’s unfamiliar hands caressing the curves of the belly he knew so well — travelling down over wrinkles and creases he had watched being scored and stretched by the years. Gloria’s interloping thumbs hooking into Martha’s panties as the doppelgänger’s hips rose. .

This was as it should be: the two of them separated by concrete, plaster and wallpaper. Exactly the same as any other married couple, unconsciously seeking estrangement to enhance their waning interest.

Suddenly, Tom was no longer interested at all. He got up, picked up his sweat-stained shorts and went into the bathroom. Here he washed them in the avocado-shaped, avocado-coloured sink. Squeezing the froth through the damp cloth, he reached conclusions. Obviously Adams was referring to Prentice, and, just as obviously, he wasn’t so much warning Tom as telling him to get on with it.

The idea that Prentice would make a pact with the hated bing-bongs to kill Tom was unthinkable. The Righter of Wrongs, the Swift One — no, that wasn’t Prentice at all.

Tom unbuttoned his shirt pocket; the converted tontine was still there. He began to rinse out the shorts, twisting and coiling them into a garrotte. If Prentice were to die, he’d be able to pay off the Intwennyfortee mob, sort out Swai-Phillips’s bill and even have some cash left over to give to Gloria’s charity. It all made perfectly murderous sense; all he needed now was the opportunity. Tom smiled wryly at the wryly smiling man in the mirror: an average-looking man, an ordinary sort. He’d got into this mess because of an accident that everyone viewed as an intentional act; now he was deliberately intending to do something far worse, then try to make it look like an accident.

There were miniatures of Seagram’s and little cans of 7 Up in the minibar. Tom fixed himself a drink — and then a second. He called room service and ordered a club sandwich. He ate this while scanning the contents page of Songs of the Tayswengo . He assumed the section on ‘Recent Cultural and Social Developments’ would cover the charismatic Intwennyfortee leader whom Gloria had spoken of, but this was part of the chunk of pages Tom had cut out in order to hide the $10,000.

Never the less, he continued reading the book, spread out on the bed cover, naked, and investigating his teeth with the toothpick that had pinioned his sandwich. It was dark outside, and Tom had turned the aircon’ up to max. So he floated in a lightbox of no-place, while outside the oasis city dissolved into the mirage of night.

‘The Tayswengo’, Von Sassers were impressing upon Tom, with their usual stolid prose, ‘are intensely fearful of public opinion, even deep in the arid wastes of their desert fastness. As we have seen in earlier chapters, this anxiety enforces certain rigid conventions. Lying behind all of them is the Tayswengo fear of getankka , or ritual humiliation. To be humiliated — even in ways that might seem trivial to an Anglo — can be a mortal blow to a Tayswengo’s fierce sense of dignity.

‘Understanding this, even in respect of his own foes, a Tayswengo cannot leave another whom he has so used, and will prefer to watch him die rather than suffer the so-called “shame of the earth”. .’

It was always the same when he read the Von Sassers: Tom heard the harsh tones of the younger anthropologist’s brother — the Chief Prosecutor back in Vance. Each new fact was an accusation, each insight was put forward by the authors purely to show up their readers’ ignorance.

Yet it lulled Tom. The heavy tome teetered, then tipped forward on to his bare chest. He slept, then dreamed.

Milford, long since. The streetcar tracks still ran along Main Street, and steam clouds billowed from the foundry at Mason’s Avenue and Third Street. This was his sugary childhood: popping Bazooka Joe, slurping Dr Pepper — yet also the early days of his young marriage: keg beer, slap-and-tickle, bashing the books by night for his certification.

‘I’m spotting, Tom, I’m spotting. .’ She was sitting on a wicker chair by the open window, a towel rammed between her bare legs, a malevolent Gloria mask clamped on her face. Then she was gone. Gone for weeks. A European tour. He couldn’t begrudge her — it was a dreadful experience. He went on studying for his exams and working the day job. Where had she gone?