Peter Carey - Bliss

Harry was more alive than he knew, and his life was filled with more delights than he could ever remember, and all of this took place in a climate of fear and watchfulness, where every waiter was a spy, every wino an informer. His eyes improved. He learned to recognize the glittering poisons the city placed in his path. Gleaming fruit had DDT lying just beneath the surface of its tempting skin.

He gave up meat, coffee, salt and anything they cooked in the Hilton kitchen. They ate fruit with spots and bread with lumps in it. He gave up everything his guide suggested except wine and it was he who introduced her to it: at the end of weeks of tuition she could truly appreciate the crushed violet nose of a 1973 Cheval Blanc.

Honey Barbara submitted to the evils of alcohol with a guilty flush. Dropping her perky little nose into a glass of Mouton Rothschild, she murmured: 'It's probably organic' before she took the precious fluid into her mouth and closed her glistening eyes with pleasure.

It was three thirty in the morning when the phone rang.

'Hello.'

'Harry, it's Alex.'

'Hello, Alex.'

'Got to talk to you, Harry.'

'Where are you?'

'Reception. Downstairs.'

'O.K., it's 2121. The twenty-first floor.'

He hung up and dressed quickly.

He turned on the light in the sitting room and opened its door a little. Then he retired to the bedroom, locked the interconnecting door, turned off its light and opened the door just a fraction so he could see out of the lift. He had his shoes on, his wallet in his pocket.

But when the lift door opened it revealed only the-large soft stumbling figure of Alex Duval.

'In here, Alex.' He turned on the light in the bedroom and held open the door.

'Sorry, Harry.'

'Don't be sorry.'

Alex had a big, pale, sick face. 'Harry I've got to talk to you. I'm drunk. I'm sorry I'm drunk,' he said belligerently as he stumbled into the room and sat heavily on the bed. Harry went into the sitting room and brought back a bottle of Scotch, a glass, and a jug of water. Alex drank greedily from the big tumbler. Harry leant against the window, waiting silently.

'You don't talk much any more, Harry.'

'Not so much.'

'You were a good talker, Harry. That's what made you, you know that? Not what you said, no.' He paused and considered this. 'It was the damn way you said it.'

'I'm learning to listen,' Harry smiled, but he was cautious.

'I'm leaving the agency.'

'Ah.'

'That all you can say? Ah?' he mimicked nastily. 'Ah.' He poured another Scotch, half Scotch, half water; the tumbler filled to the brim. While he occupied himself with this, neither of them said anything.

Alex sipped and looked up, his white face sweating alcohol.

'You're a smart-arse, Harry.' He had Chinese food spilled down his shirt. 'You're a cold fish.'

Harry appeared to lean against the window without a tight muscle in his body. He was ready to run.

'You were never cold, Harry, you were warm. You were such a warm person. You were a fool,' he lifted his finger, careful that his argument should proceed honestly, 'you were a fool, but you were warm. Now you're cold. All you care about is yourself and you've left us in the lurch. What's in there?'

'That's the sitting room.'

'Fuck it, we go there. I didn't come here to sleep with you.'

Harry followed the big man into the sitting room and watched him lower his sizeable arse on to the little Thai silk chair.

'Didn't come to sleep,' he said, arranging his bottle and his jug on the floor, 'How much does all this cost?'

'Two hundred a day.'

'Fuck you, Harry. You've left us in the lurch. You fire Krappe Chemicals. Poor Joel, poor little schmuck, poor dumb ambitious little schmuck. It's not his fault. You don't even tell him, you just talk to the client and fire him. Two million dollars. Poof. Like that. What's in there?'

'That's the passage.'

'Ah.'

'Alex,' Harry said cautiously, 'don't you remember we had a talk one Saturday morning, I promised I'd fire them for you.'

'I didn't ask you to.' Alex sprang from his chair and then forgot why he'd done it. The Scotch in his hand swayed dan-gerously. 'You decided to do it. You stole my fucking key,' he said incredulously. 'You stole my key. You interfered in my life. So I'm crazy. So what? So I write funny conference reports and never send them to anyone. Was it doing any harm? Did it hurt you?' He started to sit down but stopped. 'You are so naive, do you know that? All your life you walk around and never see anything bad. Anybody who says any-thing is bad looks like a sour grape. That's what you do to people. I say, 'Oh, so-and-so's an old cunt' and you look at me, Harry, like I'm a cunt. You don't want to hear bad about anything. The papers are full of this cancer stuff and what do you say, 'Oh, it's nothing, just a scare,' because you think they're cunts for calling Krappe cunts. Now you bloody wake up. God knows why. Why?' he asked.

'Doesn't matter why,' he answered. 'You don't know why. I don't know why. But when you suddenly realize what the world is like, then you go around destroying all the people who've known all along. Why do you want to destroy me?'

It was five minutes to four, five minutes before Harry had to leave the room. Now Alex's hand was twisting his shirt just the way Hastings had done. Alex was a big man. He stood over Harry and twisted his shirt with more strength than anyone would have guessed him capable of.

'Why do you want to destroy me?'

A look of indescribable contempt passed over his soft fleshy face, turned in on itself, and collapsed into nothing. His hand unclenched and he left Harry with only pain.

Alex lowered himself into the chair, letting himself drop the last six inches. 'I drove round all night because I was frightened to tell you. Why should I be frightened of you? You're pathetic. You're not worth being frightened of. I'm going to work at Ogilvy's. They like me. They damn well like me. Adrian Clunes phoned me and asked me if I would handle his account. You see, it's amazing isn't it? It's bloody amazing. All these years I've handled the account and you've taken the profit. Well now they're making me a director. That's what I'm worth to them.'

'I fired them for you,' Harry said, and came and sat opposite him in just the way he had, a week before, sat opposite Adrian Clunes. 'I fired them to save you, damn it. Don't you remember? I fired them because you were a Captive and ...'

'Ah,' Alex waved a hand and spilt whisky down his shirt. 'Captives…'

'Were you trying to trick me? Did you trick me into firing them?'

'Harry...' He opened his big pink palms and held them out.

'Because if you did…'

'Harry.'

' ...I don't mind.'

'You're looking at your watch and I'm trying to tell you I'm sorry.'

'I've got to go soon.'

'Everything's shut. I'm fucking saying I'm sorry. Doesn't that mean anything? I've got to live, that's all. I've got to make money. You would have fired me in the end. You would have had to. Don't blame me.'

'I'm putting you to bed.'

'I'm not an Actor, Harry. I’m just Alex, fuck it,' he sniffed. 'Fuck it.'

He did not resist when Harry led him into the bedroom and he began, without any hesitation, to get undressed. 'I betray you, you betray me,' he said. 'Oh, fuck.' He fell over one leg in his trousers and Harry helped him out of his big grey socks and his surprisingly fine silk underpants. He registered, in a moment of shock, the enormous size of his flaccid penis and, as he tucked him into bed, he thought how unused it looked, fed on doughnuts and cream cake.

It was three minutes past four.

Doctors Hennessy and Cornelius travelled up in the lift bound for the twenty-first floor. They did not like each other. Cornelius's squashed little face was hidden behind a trimmed black beard and his shirt was open to reveal a hairy chest. He looked up at Hennessy and winked for no reason.