— No. I came — how did we get on to all this? Oh yes, noise. What shall I do, father?
— You have a crazy notion of retiring, you have your charm, your lungs, and your miraculous hands, take matters into them.
— Well, a fine father you make, I must say.
— What do you want, money? A push, a start, an introduction to a drug-taking, long-haired jazz musician? I don’t know any.
— Jazz musicians don’t have long hair, you should know that by now.
— All right, you’ve made your point. You may keep your hair short.
— Thank you.
— Don’t mention it.
— Oh father, don’t let’s go on like this.
— You haven’t answered my question. What do you want?
— Only a little interest, encouragement. Affection perhaps. A father’s blessing they used to call it. But you never gave me that. If I showed any enthusiasm for anything, you’d nip it in the really? Surely not, how can you remember, mother told me, oh, did she, and what else, well, what do you expect, a Blue Giant, emitting a high luminosity from the outer spiral of your galaxy, in the top level of the spectrum, but you chose the transit drink, surely you know about the red shift which together with the degradation of intensity as speed increases means that less and less of the light actually emitted reaches us? The layers of atmosphere distort the waves travelling through it and upset the definition. Yes, well, you go too far. I mean you exaggerate. I draw the line as a rule, yes I know, but wait, after sunset the degree of ionization in the lower layer falls off and the higher layer then reflects, I assure you, with fewer collisions. Wait, wait a little, Martin, have patience, I’ll manage your school fees, of course I will, I don’t want you to grow into a half-baked man who gets around on charm alone, though you have plenty of that, I know. But you’d only regret it later. You can still do what you want, son, thank you for calling me son, but even charm works better with an informed interest. Yes I know, life provides all the information you’ll need. I admit, I even agree. But wait a year at least, things will come clear very soon in fact, when I’ve decided one way or the other, why, perhaps you could come with me, to wherever I go, if I go, for a while at least, See the Universe, time heals, but space heals faster. I’ll make it up to you. Have patience with me. Wait, wait for me, Martin.
The conversation thunders across the metropolis, hoots through dark tunnels, crashes into grand canyons leaving everyone maimed under a maze of twisted steel, driving below the headlines that girdle the world in black and in bright lights of letters to the citizens, good people, in flashed imperatives such as drink Inter-Air, fly The Daily Sphere, Say it with Brandy, eat infra-red and See the World without end, red, amber, green against the invisible ultra-violet and the magnified noise, why did you shoot the lights, son? I didn’t father, I shot the policeman in a vibrant hum of total immobility that crawls to my dear Larry, how good to see you. Come in. You know Elizabeth, don’t you. She knows you.
— Elizabeth?
She looks with glazed eyes out of an angular attitude in the depths of the sofa. Oh yes. Yes. Hello.
— I must apologise, Larry, for crashing in on your long-last reunion. I called on Telford by chance and he told me he expected you. So I said I’d go, but he insisted on my staying a little while, to help break the ice, he said, so let’s break it quick.
— Well, er –
— I believe you frightened him out of his wits last time you met.
— Come, come, Liz, you exaggerate.
— Oh please, don’t say come — come like that, Telford, you remind me of Stanley. Anyway I’ll go in a minute.
— No, er, please, don’t, feel you have to.
She bombards the room with the particles of a nervous energy that solidifies into zigzags of tremulous precision within her. I — er — came down to do some shopping. Oh, dear, Larry, those eyes of yours haven’t changed a bit, do switch them off or I can’t lie to you.
— Why should you want to? I didn’t ask anything.
— No. No. Quite right.
— Have a drink Larry, you look washed out. What would you like?
Drink — The Daily Sphere in colour. Say it with –
— What?
— Brandy, please.
— Good. Now, let me see where did I put — ah, here. That’ll perk you up.
— Thanks.
— Well.
— Yes. Well. Nice to see you, Telford. You — er — don’t really look much like your image.
— Oh, that. Who does?
— I must — er — apologise, I mean, for not recognising you, at the time of –
— Nonsense, Larry, why should you, in that state. Besides, let’s face it, we none of us get any younger. And I acquired that idiotic public name. But then, what do names matter?
She still bombards our conversation with those particles of anxiety that spiral at high velocity around the lightning zig-zag of her magnetic field, her eyes trying to intercept the pain behind the starless coalsacks which, however, radiate nothing back and remain obstinately fixed on Tell-Star, but then do I look like my image? I mean, the vague image you have of me, if any?
— I don’t, really, know you well enough. Elizabeth.
— No. Of course. Quite right.
— How, er, did, Stanley come down with you?
— No.
— No. I didn’t think he had.
— You asked me, Larry, why I’d want to lie to you. Quite right. Good question … I don’t. I came to town, not for shopping as I said but to see my lawyer about getting a divorce.
— Why?
— Why not? Anything you can do … Oh, I don’t mind the petty infidelities, in fact I prefer it that way, though his clumsy lies bore me. If anything he hurts the women, not me. He does it all with so little enthusiasm, interest, affection even.
— What do you mind?
— The personal destruction by petty verbal victories. If it hadn’t been for Telford I’d have ceased to exist.
— I see.
— No you don’t see. You don’t see anything.
— Cigarette, Liz. Let me fill your glass.
— Yes. Quite right, Telford. Thanks.
Tell-Star masturbates and picks his nose in his unscreened existence when he can’t make love to men or politely pick at the squirming worms in the framed head of his victims. He sits surrounding this inner image with a rectangle of straight horizontal lines like a harp recumbent plucked in a non-natural impulse, held, however, in the tremulous space of the rectilinear room by a confident control, acceptance or resolution out of his strange profession built on the weak performances of men. Her lines cross his in swift arpeggios saying anyway, Larry, you can’t talk. Like I said, anything you can do, in that field anyway –
— You seem to know a lot.
— Oh yes, I know a lot, one way and another. Besides, I’ve lived there, since you left. Things get around.
— Yes. Things do. Does she, I mean — does she, still –
— See him. Oh yes. He went through a banal stage of cutting her dead in corridors, but then, with your departure, the convenience of it, you see, compared with Sally, yes, convenience always tempts him more than anything. The predictability of his responses, bang on cue, freed me quite early on, so that the same sense of irrelevance fills the room around the business in hand if any as she bombards it with particles of nervous energy, her eyes trying to intercept the pain behind two starless coalsacks that radiate, however, no interest, and remain obstinately fixed on nothing, nothing at all except a long habit of merely professional listening to the failures of men which sighs why now, I mean?
— You don’t really remember Elizabeth, do you, Larry?
— But … of course.