Great Jones Street

16

Watney's manservant Blessington was a portly boy with pink hands and the shuffling manner of someone who works in the subways. I watched him come up the stairs, four suitcases in his grasp and an airline bag around his neck. Watney followed, wearing blue suede shoes. He shook my hand, looked around the room and took the chair near the window, sniffing once through each nostril. Blessington sat on the floor amid luggage.

"We've got a limousine all right," Watney said. "It's parked right downstairs. Three rooms and a dining alcove. But at the same time fairly inconspicious. Black. Solid black. Black inside and out. See, I wanted something inconspicuous. That's the way I like to travel. No point in being ostentatious. Given the two choices, inconspicuous or ostentatious, I would never hesitate past the natural reaction time for making a pointblank decision. But you're wondering why I've had the luggage brought upstairs. We've got a limousine all right. But I didn't want the luggage getting nicked. That's it then. I didn't want some rampant New York junkie ripping off my accumulated luggage. You see, the car's all right. The car's got a driver inside. We didn't trust the driver with the luggage. But we trust him with the car. That's his job, innit? The luggage is mine. The car is his. We trust him to look after the car."

"What's the noise in England?" I said.

"Haven't been there for a while. I'm headed there next. I'm coming from the other way, you see. Sneaking up on the notorious Bucky Wunderlick from an unlikely direction. Your manager gave me the details of your whereabouts and every single digit of your phone number. So I says to myself I shall ring him from the airport this very second. He's a decent sort he is, your Globke. Shut up, twit."

"What, me?" Blessington said. "I'm ultra-silent all this while."

"I anticipate your digressions."

"I'm sitting here quiet-like minding the bags. I'm sitting here like I used to sit in me own mum's sitting room. We used to sit we did. Two of us. Her with her pint. Me flashing me privates at the telly. Two of us. Sitting in the sitting room."

"I could have gone back direct," Watney said. "But instead I flew down from Toronto for a visit with my brother musician. Not that I'm flogging the old Gretsch too often. I'm into sales, procurement and operations now. I represent a fairly large Anglo-European group. That's my predominant area of interest. That's where I get my leverage. I still do the odd concert, you know. Keep my hand in, all that. But not like the old days when they drove us city to city like bloody oxen. It was crazy then, wunnit?"

"Still is," I said.

"I remember America. Touring the states. That was something then. That was the pinnacle of insanity. Everybody was crazy. They were all crazy."

"It hasn't changed that much."

"We got stuck in new levels of madness every day. All over the country there was nothing but madness. America was the sheer peak. They were all crazy one way or another. It was guns, sex and politics. It was dope and color. It was motorcycles, garbage and hand-to-hand fighting. The one thing I couldn't take was polluting the environment. In England we've got a man who sees to that."

"Did you get to California this trip?"

"Did Canada this trip. It was an all-Canada operation. Laying some groundwork. Feeling things out. New territory more or less. No, missed California this trip. Good friends out there. Out there's different. I liked California. Not the same kind of edgy pace."

"They drink human blood," I said.

"But the weather," he said. "Fantastic streak of weather last time."

"They tear the entrails out of dogs and cats and offer them up as devotions to dead movie stars."

"The weather's the thing out there. I remember the weather."

"California weather," I said.

"That's it, California weather. That's just how I'd describe it myself. Good friends in L.A. Nordquist and that lot. Kept getting busted. He came to London, you know, Nordquist did. Got busted right off. They had him sewing mailbags. He went to Sweden after that. Bang, got put right into one of their experimental prisons. You can fuck on the grounds and all. Good friends in L.A."

"The sun shines right through the night."

"That's the feeling you get, innit? That's the mental picture the whole scene brings to mind."

"Warm and bright and never rains."

"That's it," he said.

"They eat their offspring. They have multimedia human sacrifices. Records, tapes, films, light shows, puppet shows, blinking neon drugstore signs, copulating farm animals. People devour their own babies."

In the days of his fame Watney had been able to work a mean streak into the nerve centers of entire cities. His band was called Schicklgruber and wherever they went the village elders consulted local ordinances trying to find a technicality they might use to keep the band from performing or at the very least to get the band out of town the moment the last note sounded. Watney played an icy guitar, enticing his sounds through merciless progressions. Bitch-picking, he called it. But Schicklgruber's true impact was extramusical. Watney ranged across the stage, primed to a tailored flash, his costume derived from leotards one night, pedal pushers the next, outrageous in the parodies he devised. This was his art, to take a tiny stitch and rip it wide, blinking while the blood flowed, society's uncoiled parts left without their package. The band didn't arouse the violent appetites of the young as much as it killed all appetite, causing a dazed indifference to just about everything. Watney wrote his lyrics in the back seats of limousines. "I'm a buyer. But sometimes I sell. I'm a buyer who sometimes sells. That's where I get my leverage. We've got footholds in a number of places. We're Anglo-European by and large. Fulfillment. See, that's the thing I'm after. I wasn't getting my fulfillment with music. It's like everybody's got a.fulfillment quota and mine wasn't being satisfied. I had no real power in the music structure. It was all just show. This thing about my power over kids. Watney the transatlantic villain. Schicklgruber the assassin of free will. It was just something to write, to fill up the newspapers with. I had no power, Bucky. I just dollied about on stage with my patent leather pumps and my evil leer. It was a good act all right. But it was all just an act, just a runaround, just a show. So now I'm doing sales and procurements and operations and I'm here to bid on the product you're holding."

"You're doing more than operations," I said. "You're running the thing, aren't you?"

"It's a question of territories, see. I hold up the British end. I run the British side of things."

"What things?"

"Right now the biggest item is the microdot. The mi-crodot is definitely number one at the moment. Our choicest item. It's going faster than we can replenish our supply. Of course you get the odd fatality with microdots. You get the odd jumper-off-a-bridge or runner-into-speeding-train. That's what gives microdots their bad name. The stuff makes you want to dash across the tracks into a speeding train. Fear and terror, terror and fear. These elements are at the very heart of the human drama. Eh, Blessington? Read your Kafka. Read your bloody Orwell. The state creates fear through force. The state uses force eight thousand miles away in order to create fear at home. Do you know what NTBR means?"

"No," I said.

"Blessy, do you know what NTBR means?"

"Me mum never taught me the alphabet."

"NTBR means not to be resuscitated. Certain patients in certain hospitals throughout England are marked NTBR. These patients include the elderly, the malignant and the chronic. In the event of heart stoppage, such patients are left un-re-suss-ee-tay-ted. What's your opinion of this practice? Speak into the microphone please."

"My opinion of this practice," Blessington said. "Is that the question?"

"Submoronic twit."

"I love England I do. I will never say a word against her."

"Does NTBR mark the true beginning of the killer state?"

"Tell me what to say and I'll say it."

"Slobber, don't you, when the piercing questions are asked. Cringe and snivel in the face of the heavy pressures. A dim thing, Blessy, that's what you be. Slow. All too bloody slow."

"Prenatal malnutrition," Blessington said.

"You've long since tipped the balance the other way, haven't you, piggeldy-wiggeldy?"

"Don't you go insulting me again."

"A right rosy piglet you are. Ready for the spit."

"Don't you go saying that now, I'll hold my breath I will. Then you'll be sorry. Then you'll see the error of your ways."

"Turning, turning, turning. Burning, burning, burning. Melting in the mouth like fresh farm butter."

"You'll go too far one day. The way mum went too far with poor old dad every time dad sat himself in the sitting room to read the adverts. You'll give me a stroke you will. How would you like it if I had a stroke that paralyzed one side of my body? Who would cook for you and see to your luggage and clean the house and offer unstinting companionship?"

"The other side of your body," Watney said.

"Poo on you, mate."

"Back to the question at hand. Given the choice, Blessy, would you rather be an elderly, a malignant or a chronic? Into the microphone if you would."

"My solicitor instructs me to say nothing at this time."

"Crafty little brute. He's a crafty little brute, this one is. We have our small entertainments, Bucky. You're all done with traveling but we're still inveterate travelers. We have to have our entertainments. We need something to while away the time, we inveterates of the travel game. Is the product in this room, Bucky? If not, why not?"

"Which product is that?"

"I'm here to make a serious bid," Watney said. "We Anglo-Europeans are serious businessmen. We cling to the old methods, the old ways, the old traditions. None of your slick trading here. We make a solid offer and we stick to it. We are solid business people. We have various interests and a vast number of operations. We aren't larky boys out for a bit of a punch-up. We're after money, not thrills. Our operations are solid operations. We don't use unorthodox methods and we don't employ maniacs, sadists and addicts. This is our way. The orthodox way. The Anglo-European way."

"Tell him about the Malta deal," Blessington said.