Martin Amis - Einstein's Monsters

"You screw much, Roy?"

"- Sir?"

"You screw much, Roy?"

"Some. I guess."

Roy was an earnest young earner of the stooped, mustachioed variety. He seemed to have burdensome responsibilities; he even wore his cartridge belt like some kind of hernia strap or spinal support. This was the B-credit look, the buffer-class look. Pretty soon, they project, society will be equally divided into three sections. Section B will devote itself entirely to defending section A from section C. I'm section A. I'm glad I have Roy and his boys on my side.

"Where you driving to today, sir?" he asked as he handed me my car card.

"Over the hills and far away, Roy. I'm going to see Happy Farraday. Any message?"

Roy looked troubled. "Sir," he said, "you got to tell her about Duncan. The new guy at the condo. He has an alcohol thing. Happy Farraday doesn't know about it yet. Duncan, he sets fire to stuff, with his problem there."

"His problem, Roy? That's harsh, Roy."

"Well, okay. I don't want to do any kind of value thing here. Maybe it was, like when he was a kid or something. But Duncan has an alcohol situation there. That's the truth of it, Mr. Goldfader. And Happy Farraday doesn't know about it yet. You got to warn her. You got to warn her, sir -right now, before it's too late."

I gazed into Roy's handsome, imploring, deeply stupid face. The hot eyes, the tremulous cheeks, the mustache. Jesus Christ, what difference do these guys think a mustache is going to make to anything? For the hundredth time I said to him, "Roy, it's all made up. It's just TV, Roy. She writes that stuff herself. It isn't real."

"Now I don't know about none of that," he said, his hand splayed in quiet propitiation. "But I'd feel better in my mind if you'd warn her about Duncan's factor there."

Roy paused. With some difficulty he bent to dab at an oil stain on his superwashable blue pants. He straightened up with a long wheeze. Being young, Roy was, of course, incredibly fat-for reasons of time. We both stood there and gazed at the sky, at the spillages, the running colors, at the great chemical betrayals…

"It's bad today," said Roy. "Sir? Mr. Goldfader? Is it true what they say, that Happy Farraday's coming down with time?"

Traffic was light and I was over at Happy's before I knew it. Traffic is a problem, as everybody keeps on saying. It's okay, though, if you use the more expensive lanes. We have a five-lane system here in our county: free, nickel, dime, quarter, and dollar (that's nothing, five, ten, twenty-five, or a hundred dollars a mile)-but of course the free lane is non-operational right now, a gridlock, a caravan, a linear breakers' yard of slumped and frazzled heaps, dead rolling stock that never rolls. They're going to have a situation there with the nickel lane too, pretty soon. The thing about driving anywhere is, it's so unbelievably boring. Here's another plus: since the ban on rearview mirrors, there's not much scope for any time-anxiety. They had to take the mirrors away, yes sir. They got my support on that. The concentration-loss was a real feature, you know, driving along and checking out your crow's feet and hair-line, all at the same time. There used to be a party atmosphere out on the throughway, in the cheap lanes where mobility is low or minimal. People would get out of their cars and horse around. Maybe it still goes on, for all I know. The dividing barriers are higher now, with the new Boredom Drive, and you can't really tell what gives. I did see something interesting though. I couldn't help it. During the long wait at the security intersect, where even the dollar lane gets loused up by all the towtrucks and ambulances-and by the great fleets of copbikes and squadcars-I saw three runners, three time punks, loping steadily across the disused freightlane, up on the East Viaduct. There they were, as plain as day: shorts, sweatshirts, running-shoes. The stacked cars all sounded their horns, a low furious bellow from the old beasts in their stalls. A few dozen cops appeared with bullhorns and tried to talk them down-but they just gestured and ran defiantly on. They're sick in the head, these punks, though I guess there's a kind of logic in it somewhere. They do vitamins, you know. Yeah. They work out and screw around; they have their nihilistic marathons. I saw one up close down at the studios last week. A security guard found her running along the old outer track. They asked her some questions and then let her go. She was about thirty, I guess. She looked in terrible shape.

And so I drove on, without incident. But even through the treated glass of the windshield I could see and sense the atrocious lancings and poppings in the ruined sky. It gets to you. Stare at the blazing noon of a high-watt bulb for ten or fifteen minutes then shut your eyes, real tight and sudden. That's what the sky looks like. You know, we pity it, or at least I do. I look at the sky and I just think… ow. Whew. Oh, the sky, the poor sky.

Happy Farraday had left a priority clearance for me at Realty HQ, so I didn't have to hang around that long. To tell you the truth, I was scandalized by how lax and perfunctory the security people were becoming. It's always like this, after a quiet few weeks. Then there's another shitstorm from Section C, and all the writs start flying around again. In the cubicle I put my clothes back on and dried my hair. While they okayed my urinalysis and x-ray congruence tests, I watched TV in the commissary. I sat down, delicately, gingerly (you know how it is, after a strip search), and took three clippings out of my wallet. These are for the file. What do you think?

Item 1, from the news page of Screen Week:

In a series of repeated experiments at the Valley Chemistry Workshop, Science Student Edwin Navasky has "proven" that hot water freezes faster than cold. Said Edwin, "We did the test four times." Added Student Adviser Joy Broadener: "It's a feature. We're real baffled."

Item 2, from the facts section of Armchair Guide:

Candidate Day McGwire took out a spot on Channel 29 last Monday. Her purpose: to deny persistent but unfounded rumors that she suffered from heart trouble. Sadly, she was unable to appear. The reason: her sudden hospitalization with a cardiac problem.

Item 3, from the update column of Television:

Meteorological Pilot Lars Christer reported another sighting of "The Thing Up There" during a routine low-level flight. The location: 10,000 feet above Lake Baltimore. His description: "It was kind of oval, with kind of a black circle in the center." The phenomenon is believed to be a cumulus or spore formation. Christer's reaction: "I don't know what to make of it. It's a thing."

"Goldfader," roared the tannoy, scattering my thoughts. The caddycart was ready at the gate. In the west now the heavens looked especially hellish and distraught, with a throbbing, peeled-eyeball effect on the low horizon- bloodshot, conjunctivitic. Pink eye. The Thing Up There, I sometimes suspect, it might look like an eye, flecked with painful tears, staring, incensed… Using my cane I walked cautiously around the back of Happy's bungalow. Her twenty-year-old daughter Sunny was lying naked on a lounger, soaking up the haze. She made no move to cover herself as I limped poolside. Little Sunny here wants me to represent her someday, and I guess she was showing me the goods. Well it's like they say: if you've got it, flaunt it.

"Hi, Lou," she said sleepily. "Take a drink. Go ahead. It's five o'clock."

I looked at Sunny critically as I edged past her to the bar. The kid was a real centerfold, no question. Now don't misunderstand me here. I say centerfold, but of course pornography hasn't really kept pace with time. At first they tried filling the magazines and mature cable channels with new-look women, like Sunny, but it didn't work out. Time has effectively killed pornography, except as an underground blood sport, or a punk thing. Time has killed much else. Here's an interesting topic sentence. Now that masturbation is the only form of sex that doesn't carry a government health warning, what do we think about when we're doing it there, what is left for us to think about? Me, I'm not saying. Christ, are you? What images slide, what specters flit… what happens to these thoughts as they hover and mass, up there in the blasted, the totaled, up there in the fucked sky?