by Jonathan Dee
“As Good as it Gets, maybe?” Molly said.
“Oh, right, right.” The lights went up. “Hey, you know what?” he said, in a tone of playful conspiracy. “You’ve seen this movie before.”
Molly looked at him, alarmed.
“Yeah, I knew it,” he said. He had a kind of sallow, slack complexion, like someone who has lost a prodigious amount of weight. “I’ve seen you in here. In fact, I was thinking maybe you’ve seen me in here, too.”
Molly had lost a mitten, and looked around under her seat for it.
“I mean, come on,” the man said, laughing unconvincingly. “I mean, it’s not that good a movie.”
He followed her all the way to her bus stop, and by that time his banter had grown a little less ingratiating, a little more aggressive. But he didn’t get on to the bus. Molly next went back to the multiplex about two weeks later, and there was no sign of him.
Life alone, she understands, life without attachments, means that when she dies something will die along with her. But she doesn’t find any great cause there for regret – indeed on some nights, in some moods, there’s something grimly satisfying about it – and anyway, she still has a long, long expanse of time to get through, a life like a spy’s life, never disguised but essentially, retrospectively, unseen. At night sometimes she can hear, through the floorboards, the sound of Tucker and his sister Hannah crying in their beds. They are crying, Caroline has explained to her, for their lost father. Those moments only reinforce for Molly, actually, the wisdom of her own resolve not to become a mother herself. What comfort could she be to anyone.
* MESSAGE *
You are forgiven
A friend is someone you know about, someone you can trust. Abrand’s a bit like that. You met this friend through advertising … Without advertising, how would you recognize your friends?
You are forgiven
USEFULNESS OF TECHNOLOGY ALTERS ATTITUDES
You are forgiven
And if there is a gimmick in all of this, it is that there is no gimmick. For
You are forgiven
Let us, then, restore to the notion of commitment the only meaning it can have for us. Instead of being of a political nature, commitment is, for the writer, the full awareness of the present problems of his own language,
forgiven forgiven
forgiven forgiven
forgiven forgiven
forgiven forgiven
SKEPTICISM MAKES THE WORLD ACCOUNTABLE.
What’s On Your Mind?
THE REVOLUTION IS HERE.
YOU’RE ALL FORGIVEN!
Copyright
Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace
Road London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the US by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.,
2002
First published in the UK by Corsair, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd,
2011
Copyright © Jonathan Dee 2002
The right of Jonathan Dee to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Essex Music, Inc.: excerpt from ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’, words and music by Pete Townshend. TRO © 1967 (renewed) Essex Music, Inc., New York, New York. Reprinted by permission of the Richmond Group on behalf of Essex Music, Inc.
Oval Music Ltd.: excerpt from ‘Home’ by Lene Lovich and Les Chappell, recorded by Lene Lovich. Reproduced with kind permission from Oval Music Ltd. (PRS)
The Timberland Company: for the use of a Timberland boots ad. Copyright © 1998 by The Timberland Company. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of The Timberland Company
‘I Wanna Be Adored’ Words and Music by Ian Brown and John Squire © 1989 Imagem Music. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by permission of Music Sales Ltd.
Excerpts from On the Road by Jack Kerouac (Penguin Books, 1972). Copyright © Jack Kerouac, 1955, 1957. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN : 978–1–84901–739–8
