by Martin Amis
A murder about a diaper.
Imagine: A murder about a safety-pin.
A murder about a molecule of rancid milk.
But people have already murdered for less than that. Downward disparity has already been plumbed—been sonared and scoured. People have already murdered for nothing. They take the trouble to cross the street to murder for nothing.
Then there’s copycat, where the guy’s copying the TV or some other guy, or copying some other guy who’s copying the TV. I believe that copycat is as old as Homer, older, older than the first story daubed in shit on the wall of the cave. It precedes the fireside yarn. It precedes fire.
You get copycat with suicide too. Fuck yes. They call it the Werther Effect. Named after a melancholy novel, later suppressed after it burned a trail of youth suicides through eighteenth-century Europe. I see the same thing here on the street: Some asshole of a bass guitarist chokes on his own ralph (or fries on his own amplifier)—and suddenly suicide is all over town.
There’s a recurring anxiety, with every generation, that a shook of suicides has come, to blow the young away. It seems like everybody’s doing it. And then it settles down again. Copycat is more precipitant than cause. It just gives shape to something that was going to happen anyway.
Suicide hasn’t changed. But what if it did change? Homicide has dispensed with the why. You have gratuitous homicide. But you don’t—
-+=*=+-
It’s 2:30 and the phone is ringing. I suppose that for a regular person this would mean drama, or even catastrophe. But I picked it up as if it was ringing in the p.m.
“What?”
“Mike. Are you still up? I got another one for you.”
“Yes, Trader, I’m still up. Are we going to do ‘distressed’ now?”
“Consider this a preamble to ‘distressed.’ I got one for you. Are you ready?”
His voice wasn’t slurred—it was slowed: Idling at around 33 rpm.
“Wait a second. I’m ready.”
There’s a widowed mailman who has worked all his life in a small town. A small town with extreme weather conditions. Retirement is nearing. One night he sits up late. Composing an emotional farewell to the community. Stuff like: “I have served you in ice and in rain, in the thunder and the sunshine, under lightning, under rainbows...” He has it printed up. And on his last but one day he drops a copy into every mailbox on his run.
The next morning is bleak and cold. But the response to his letter is warm enough. He has a cup of coffee here, a slice of hot pie there. He waves away the modest cash gifts he’s offered. He shakes hands, he moves on. A little disappointed, maybe, that no one seems to have been stirred by the—by the quality of his dedication. By its poetry, Mike.
Last stop on his round is the house of a retired Hollywood lawyer and his nineteen-year-old wife. She’s a retired hatcheck girl. Gorgeous. Full-figured. Wide-eyed. He rings the bell and she answers. “You’re the man who wrote the letter. About the thunder and the sunshine? Come in, sir, please.”
In the dining room there’s a table groaning with exotic food and wine. She says her husband has just left for Florida on a golfing trip. Would he care to stay for lunch? After coffee and liqueurs she leads him by the hand to the white fur rug in front of the glowing fire. They make love for three hours. In the amber light, Mike. He can’t believe the intensity of it. The strength of it. Was it that very poetry that had so moved the young woman? Was it the rainbows? He thinks that, at the very least, she’s his for life.
He gets dressed in a daze. Wearing a flimsy housecoat, she leads him to the front door. Then she reaches for her purse on the hall table. She offers him a five-dollar bill.
And he says, “What’s this for? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
And she says, “Yesterday morning, over breakfast, I read your letter out loud to my husband? About the ice and the rain and the lightning? I said, ‘What the hell am I supposed to do about this guy?’ He said, ‘Fuck him, give him five bucks.’ And lunch was my idea.”
I managed a kind of laugh.
“You don’t get it.”
“No, I get it. She did love you, Trader. I’m sure of that.”
“Yeah, but not enough to stick around. Okay. Let’s do ‘distressed.’ I apologize in advance. It’ll be no damn use to you.”
“Let’s do it anyway.”
“We spent Sunday nights apart. So it always seemed like a good idea to go to bed together late Sunday afternoon. That’s what we always did. And that’s what we did on March fourth. I’d like to say, I’d really like to say it felt different, that Sunday. Like during the act of love she ‘went away,’ or ‘disappeared.’ Or some such. We could cook something up, couldn’t we? Have her say something like, ‘Don’t make me pregnant.’ But no. It was exactly like it always was. I drank a beer. I said goodbye. So why was I ‘distressed’?”
By now his voice was sounding like my tape recorder when the battery’s about to fritz. I lit a cigarette and waited.
“Okay. On my way down the stairs, I tripped on my shoelace. I knelt to retie it, and it snapped. I also caught a hangnail in my sock. On my way out the side door I ripped my coat pocket on the handle. That’s it.
So when I hit the street I was naturally very ‘distressed.’ Mike, I was suicidal.”
I wanted to say: I’ll come over.
“ ‘Fuck him, give him five bucks.’ I thought that was pretty funny the first time around. Now it makes me scream with laughter.”
I wanted to say: I’m coming over.
“Oh, Christ. I just didn’t get it, Mike.”
That list headed Stressors and Precipitants—there’s not much left of it now. To keep myself quietly amused, I think about compiling another list, one that would go something like:
Astrophysics Asset Forfeiture
Trader Tobe
Colonel Tom Pop
Beautiful
But where’s the point in that? Zugts afen mir, right? We should all be so lucky. And even though we aren’t, we’re still here.
Stressors and Precipitants. What remains? We have: 7. Other Significant Other? And we have: 5. Mental Health? Nature of disorder: a) psychological? b) ideational’organic? c) metaphysical?
Now I cross out 7. I cross out Arn Debs.
Now I cross out 5 a). After some thought I cross out 5 c). And then my head gives a sudden nod and I cross out 5 b). That, too, I excise. Now there’s nothing.
It’s 3:25 before it hits me. Yesterday was Sunday. The night train must have been through hours ago. Hours ago, the night train came and went.
On the evening Jennifer Rockwell died, the sky was clear and the visibility excellent.
But the seeing—the seeing, the seeing—was no good at all.
Part Three. THE SEEING
This is where I felt it first: In the armpits. On March fourth Jennifer Rockwell fell burning out of a clear blue sky. And that’s where I first felt the flames. In my armpits.
I woke late. And alone—though not quite. Tobe was long gone. But somebody else was just leaving.
The morning after she died Jennifer was in my room. Standing at the foot of the bed till I opened my eyes. Then of course she disappeared. She returned the next day: Fainter. And again, and always fainter. But this morning she was back with all her original power. Is that why the parents of dead children spend half the rest of their lives in darkened rooms? Are they hoping the ghosts will return with all their original power?
She wasn’t just standing there, this time. She was pacing, for hours, pacing swiftly, bent, lurching. I felt that Jennifer’s ghost was trying to throw up.
Trader was right: Making Sense of Suicide doesn’t make sense of anything much, including suicide. But yet it told me what I needed to know. Its author didn’t tell me. Jennifer told me.
In the margins of her copy of the book, Jennifer had made certain marks—queries, exclamation points, and vertical lines, some straight, some squiggly. She had marked passages of genuine inte
rest, such as might have struck anyone who was new to the field: Like the bigger the city, the higher the rate. Other passages, I can only think, were just being heckled for their banality. Examples: “Many people sadly kill themselves around exam time.” “When encountering a depressed person, say something like, ‘You seem a bit low,’ or, ‘Things not going well?’” “In bereavement, make yourself better, not bitter.” Yeah, right. Do do that.
It was way after Trader called and I was still sitting up, brain-dead from reading stuff like that—about how unfortunate suicide is, for all concerned. Then I saw the following, marked with a double query by Jennifer’s hand. And I felt ignition, like somebody struck a match. I felt it in my armpits.
As part of the pattern, virtually all known studies reveal that the suicidal person will give warnings and clues as to his, or her, suicidal intentions.
Part of the pattern. Warnings. Clues. Jennifer left clues. She was the daughter of a police.
That did matter.
The other end of it came to me this morning as I was clattering through the kitchen cupboards, looking for a pack of Sweet’N’Low. I found myself dully staring at the bottles of jug liquor that Tobe seeps his way through. And in response I felt my liver shimmer, seeming to excrete something. And I thought: Wait. A body has an inside as well as an outside. Even Jennifer’s body. Especially Jennifers body. Which has consumed so much of our time. This is the body—this is the body that Miriam bore, that Colonel Tom protected, that Trader Faulkner caressed, that Hi Tulkinghorn tended, that Paulie No cut. Christ, don’t I know this about bodies? Don’t I know about alcohol—don’t I know about Sweet’N’Low?
You do something to the body, and the body does something back.
At noon I called the office of the Dean of Admissions at CSU. I gave the name and the year of graduation. I said,
“I’ll spell it: T-r-o-u-n-c-e. First name Phyllida. What address do you have?”
“One moment, sir.”
“Look, I’m not ‘sir, okay?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. One moment. We have an address in Seattle. And in Vancouver.”
“That’s it?”
“The Seattle address is more recent. You want that?”
“No. Phyllida’s back in town,” I said. “Her guardian’s surname. Spell it, please.”
This information I flipped over to Silvera.
Next I called state cutter Paulie No. I asked him to meet me for a drink this evening, at six. Where? What the hell. In the Decoy Room at the Mallard.
Next I called Colonel Tom. I said I’d be ready to talk. Tonight.
From now on, at least, I won’t be asking any more questions. Except those that expect a certain answer. I won’t be asking any more questions.
Phyllida Trounce was back in town. Or back in the burbs: Moon Park. She herself had no real weight in all this. And, as I drove across the river and out over Hillside, I could feel a great failure of tolerance in me. I thought: If she wasn’t so nuts we could do this on the fucking phone. A failure of tolerance, or just a terrible impatience, now, to get the thing down? The insane live in another country. Canada. But then they come home. And sane people hate crazy people. Jennifer hated crazy people, too. Because Jennifer was sane.
On the phone, Phyllida had tried to give me directions, and she’d gotten lost. But I did not get lost. Moon Park was where I was born. We lived in the crummier end of it—Crackertown. This. Wooden cartons with add-on A-frames or cinderblock shacks with cardboard windows. Now spruced up with pieces of contemporary detritus: The soaked plastic of yard furniture, climbing frames, kiddie pools, and squads of half-dismantled cars with covens of babies crawling around in their guts. I slowed as I passed the old place. We have all moved on, but my fear is still living there, in the crawlspace underneath...
It was over in the Crescent that Phyllida and her stepma now resided. The houses here are larger, older, spookier. One memory. As kids we had to dare each other to do the Crescent on Halloween. I would lead. With a rubber ghoul mask over my face I’d use the knocker, and then, minutes later, a gnarled hand would curl around the door and drop a ten-cent treat bag onto the mat.
There’d been rain, and the house was on a slow drip.
“You and Jennifer, you roomed together at CSU?”
... In a house. With two other girls. A third and fourth girl.
“Then you got sick, didn’t you, Phyllida. But you hung on till graduation.”
... I hung on.
“Then you guys lost touch.”
... We wrote for a time. I’m not one for going out.
“But Jennifer came here to see you, didn’t she, Phyllida. In the week before she died.”
I’m putting in these dots—but you’d want more than three of them to get the measure of Phyllida’s pauses. Like an international phone call ten or fifteen years back, minus the echo, with that lag that made you start repeating the question just as the answer was finally coming through... By now I’m giving myself the cop shrug and thinking: I know exactly why Jennifer killed herself. She set foot in this fucking joint: That’s why.
“Yes,” said Phyllida. “On the Thursday before she died.”
The room was muffled with dust, but cold. Phyllida was sitting in her chair like a lifesize photograph. Like the photograph in Jennifer’s apartment. Just the same, only more beat-looking. Straight, thin, weak brown hair, over a gaze that traveled not an inch into the world. Also present was a guy: About thirty, fair, with a balding mustache. He never said a word or even looked in my direction, but attended to the buzz of the earphones he wore. His face gave no indication of the kind of thing he was listening to. It could have been heavy metal. It could have been Teach Yourself French. There was a third person in the house. The stepmother. I never saw this woman, but I heard her. Blundering around in the back room, and groaning, with infinite fatigue, as each new obstacle materialized in her path.
“Jennifer stay long?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Phyllida, you’re a manic depressive, right?”
I think my eyes came off brutal when I said it. But she nodded and smiled.
“But you have that under control now, don’t you, Phyllida.”
She nodded and smiled.
Yeah: One pill too many and she slips into a coma. One pill too few and she goes out and buys an airplane. Jesus, the poor bitch, even her teeth are nuts. Her gums are nuts.
“You keep a pill chart, don’t you, Phyllida. And a roster. You probably have one of those little yellow boxes with the time compartments and the dosages.”
She nodded.
“Do something for me. Go count your pills and tell me how many are missing. The stabilizers. The tegretol or whatever.”
While she was gone I listened to the steady buzz of the guy’s earphones. The insect drone—the music of psychosis. I listened also to the woman in the other room. She stumbled and groaned, with that unforgettable weariness—that indelible weariness. And I said out loud, “She got it too? Jesus Christ, I’m surrounded.” I stood up and moved to the window. Drip, drop, said the rain. It was now that I made myself a promise—a promise that only the few would understand. The stepmother stumbled and groaned, stumbled and groaned.
Phyllida came floating down the passage like a nurse. I moved to the door. She herself had no real weight in this. She was just the connect.
“How many?” I called. “Five? Six?”
“I think six.”
And I was gone.
-+=*=+-
Hurry hurry. Because you see: This is where we came in. It’s five p.m. on April second. In an hour I meet with Paulie No. I will ask him two questions. He will give me two answers. Then it’s a wrap. It’s down. And again I wonder: Is it the case? Is it reality, or is it just me? Is it just Mike Hoolihan?
Trader says it’s like calling shots in a ballgame. It even fucks with your eyes. You call a good ball out because you wish it out. You wish it out so bad that you see it out. You have an agenda—to
win, to prevail. And it fucks with your eyes.
When I was working murders it sometimes felt like TV: But the wrong way around. As if some dope had watched a murder mystery (based on a true story?) and was bringing it back for you the wrong way around. As if TV was the master criminal, beaming out gameplans to the somnambulists of the street. You’re thinking: This is ketchup. Ketchup from a squeezer that’s getting crusty around the spout.
I am taking a good firm knot and reducing it to a mess of loose ends. And why would I see it like that if it wasn’t so? It’s the last thing I want. This way, I don’t win. This way, I don’t prevail.
But let’s ride with the ketchup—with the procedural ketchup of questions and numbers and expert testimony. Then we can do the noir. I may still be provably wrong.
This is where we came in.
-+=*=+-
On the phone I said that I would be buying, but when we’re standing at the bar in the Decoy Room and facing that palisade of booze Paulie No flattens out a twenty and asks me:
What’s your poison?
And I say seltzer.
There’s a lilt in his voice and his fold-lidded eyes are downward glancing. Since he’s apparently twigged that I’m off from CID just now, he seems to think that this is tantamount to a date. Unexpected, because I’d always fingered him for a fruit. Like every other pathologist you ever came across. As if anybody gives a fuck, one way or the other.
We talk about five-irons and RBIs and whether the Pushers have what it takes to beat the Rapists next Saturday, or whatever, and then I say,
Paulie. This conversation never happened, okay?
... What conversation?
Thanks, Paulie. Paulie. Remember when you cut the Rockwell girl?
Most definitely. Every day it should be like that.
It beats bursters, right, Paulie?
It beats floaters. Hey. We going to talk dead bodies? Or we going to talk living meat?
No speaks perfect American but he looks like Fu Manchu’s nephew. I’m staring at his mustache, which is shiny but also patchy, threadbare. Christ, he’s like the guy under the earphones in the Crescent. I mean it’s pretty basic, isn’t it: Why have a mustache when it just didn’t happen? His hands are clean, puffy, and gray. Like the hands of some dish-plunging stiff in a diner kitchen. I congratulate myself. I’m flesh and blood, not hide and ice: I can still get the creeps around Paul No, a state cutter who loves his job. But every ten minutes I’m shuddering at the thought of how hardbitten I’ve gotten.
