"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.
17
In the night I passed people trooping home with their newspapers, bearers of a weight that went beyond simple pounds and ounces. They headed up a street still blistered with neon and other watery sores, men and women almost single file, leaning into the wind, mountain guides trained against complaint, hired to carry home this swollen load and undress it section by section until the only thing left was the blur of faint print on their fingers. Against the moral obligations of their Saturday night, only yards from the newsstand, they had to walk around a man burning wooden crates, standing almost in the fire, looking at no one, a man dressed in a black coat with pockets torn away, leaving streaks of white lining at his hips. I held my hands for a moment over the flames. The man's own hands were furled in each other, held high on his chest, fingernails of rust and chiseled silver, half-moon scar, shredded skin at the knuckles, luxuriant gash the length of one thumb. Easy to imagine a hundred miles of lines crosshatching his palms. Covering the man's head was a football helmet, Miami Dolphins, complete with face mask.
"Retractable ball points," he said. "Thirty-five cents."
Down Second Avenue, darker here in its plodding Ukrainian sleep, I saw a small woman about to cross the street. She pointed at the opposite corner, holding her right arm perfectly straight, index finger extended. Then she lowered the arm and walked swiftly across the street in the direction she'd indicated. Here she made a sharp left turn, raised her arm, pointed over the speckled concrete to the end of the block and walked in that direction. Turn, point, march. I watched her stop at the far corner, turn to the right and point again. A Good Humor truck, stripped and gutted, sat in a lot near the Bowery. I walked slowly west. For a second nothing moved. There were no people in sight and traffic was nonexistent. I stopped on the corner and looked all around me. The wind took papers and boxes. Then, finally, about two blocks south, I saw men with rags go out into the middle of the street to await the next cycle of traffic, men with rags to clean the windshields, going out slowly from doorways and side streets, clean the windshields for a fee, men limping into the street, about a dozen of them, and then the first car came into view, moving north from one of the bridges or from Chinatown or Little Italy or the bank buildings, the first car followed by others, their lights rising over humps in the street, scores of cars coming up the Bowery toward the wild men with rags.