Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys (Will Self)

by Will Self

  Brion and Travis arrived about twenty minutes early. The emoto ducked down to enter, and then gratefully stretched when they entered the airier purlieus of the bar. ‘D'you want to join me, Brion?’ Travis asked him as the emoto set him gently down, Church's brogues meeting deep pile with the merest of kisses.

  Brion seemed to think for a moment, and a shadow of near-reasoning crossed his ample, freckled brow. ‘No, that's all right, Travis, I'll set myself down here.’ He gestured to the emotos’ portion of the bar. ‘You get yourself a dry martini – you deserve it for getting this close to the fruit.’

  Was there a trace of irony in Brion's remark? Travis wondered as he walked to the other end of the bar, where he waited to be seated. That was impossible; emotos might have highly developed emotional intelligences – that's what made them so good at caring, at sharing; but irony demanded an ability to realise dramatically situations that was far beyond their mental age, hovering as it did at around seven. Some grown-ups – Travis knew one or two – had emotos with higher mental ages, but they were regarded askance by the majority, almost as if they were engaging in a peculiar form of abuse.

  All this weighed heavily on Travis while he waited to be seated. He didn't want to be thinking about emotos in this way, at this time, he had to concentrate on the fruit. However, once he'd been deposited by the graceful waiter in the elegant chair, and had a dry vodkatini the size of a vase deposited with him, Travis began to unwind. He was amused to see a new piece of status style-slavery at the Royalton. The bar seats for grown-ups had always been colour coded, so as to reflect the relative importance of their tenants. High rollers were placed in the purple thronelets, less important ones in the red, and so on, all the way down to the gawking hicks in from the boonies, who were stacked unceremoniously in a distant gulag of far smaller, white-covered chairs. Now the management had taken it upon themselves to do the same with the chairs in the emoto portion of the bar. However, as there were fewer of these, and they were much larger, it was impossible to create proper sections. Instead, the waiters in this area had to wait and see where the emoto's respective grown-up was sitting, then seat them accordingly – if possible.

  Travis was pleased that Brion had got the purple, and he was just thinking how he might frame this latest bit of Manhattan lunacy as an anecdote for Karin, when she was there in front of him. Travis leapt up, seated her, and without preliminary small talk, launched straight into his Royalton riffs. Karin, far from being discomfited, roared

  with laughter as he deconstructed the trappings of the luxury hotel. Travis was getting ready to vouchsafe a genuine indiscretion, concerning a certain film star and her football team-sized posse of emotos, when he caught himself. ‘But I'm rambling on, I haven't let you get a word in edgeways, and worst of all I haven't told you how radiantly beautiful you're both looking tonight.’

  The effect was as instantaneous as it was desired. Karin blushed and tilted her head in a disarming, almost girlish way, turning in the process so that she was angled in the direction of Jane. Although the female emoto was over fifty feet away, and deep in chatter with Brion, she looked up and smiled as well. Clearly, Travis thought, they have a high level of tele-empathy, a good sign. Of course, Travis's compliment hadn't been paid out of any other account but that of The Truth. He wasn't a shameless flatterer, and anyway, Karin just was looking fantastic. She was wearing a black silk sheath dress, cut in an interesting, asymmetrical way across the bodice; her thick blonde hair was up, and her sole accessory was the heavy silver necklace, which Travis remembered from the wine tasting in SoHo. Turning to Jane, he observed how well the same dress hung on her far larger frame. He turned to Karin once more. ‘Tell me, was this pattern originally cut for Jane or you?’ and was rewarded with another peal of joyful laughter.

  If things went well at the Royalton, once they got in the taxivan and headed downtown, they began to go – as Travis himself might have said – swimmingly. There was something about these situations that was almost instinctively memorable, something that both grownups and emotos intuitively understood: the two grownups, intelligent, rational, foresighted; and their two emoto charges, who might be physically larger, warmer and more responsive, more caring; but who wouldn't last for five minutes alone on the scabrous city streets.

  The four discovered such ease in each other's company, that within minutes they were developing the syntax and grammar of a cliquey argot. Brion, staring as he always did, out of the back window as the darkened streets and lit blocks strobed past, had spotted a rollerblader coursing through the cars on the far side of the avenue. ‘Wow!’ he exclaimed – as he always did. ‘Those high heels sure let that man go zippy!’ Both Karen and Jane laughed, and the emotos high-fived, which is all the physical contact they ever seemed to have with one another. From then on in ‘Go zippy!’ was one of their gathering number of catch phrases, to be rolled around and then expelled with gusto, as if it were an assayed sip of one of Travis's ‘fine wines’.

  The restaurant Travis had initially chosen for the evening, Chez-Chez, with its heavy Lyonnaise cuisine, didn't really suit the fruit he was engaged on; so after laboriously rethinking the whole nature of the event, running over his slender stock of Karin intelligence, and even going so far as to ring up Ariadne and ask some circumspect questions, he opted instead for the twin pillars of idiocy: the Royalton and the Bowery Brasserie. He wouldn't be able to smoke there – which might make him a bit nervous, but that there would be plenty to joke about and lots of noise and colour would compensate.

  They quit the taxivan. The night was clear, stars wheeling over the jagged cityscape, its stanchions and aerials, fire stairs and emoto-housing converted water tanks. The Bowery Brasserie, like many of the more fashionable Manhattan eateries, had its own sub-restaurant specifically catering to emotos. This was simply called ‘The Emoto Hole’. Brion grinned hugely when he realised where they were – like most emotos he had hardly any capacity for effective orientation – and turning to his rangy companion said laughingly, ‘You'll love this place, Jane, they've even got root beer on tap!’ Once again the grown-ups joined in the effervescent, conspiratorial merriment that the mature traditionally share with the immature.

  When they had got their emotos settled next door, Travis and Karin entered the Brasserie and were shown to their table. Travis ordered a bottle of Montrachet and asked Karin, ‘D’ you mind being apart from your emoto? Because personally I'd rather eat with Brion all the time.’

  He was delighted when she replied, ‘I feel pretty much the same way,’ and then amazed as she told him why.

  Karin had made the commitment to tell Travis about what had happened with Emil, when she made the final decision not to stand him up at the Royalton. What was the point, she reasoned, in even going on a date if she wasn't – at least in principle – prepared to consider the possibility of a sleepover? And if Travis couldn't handle it? Well, Jane made the point that he couldn't be worth a great deal.

  Travis sat rapt while she told the awful story, nodding and muttering the occasional ‘Omigod’ in the right places. When she had finished he said very simply, ‘Karin, that is hellish, you're a very brave woman,’ then went on to amaze her still more than she had amazed him, by fully identifying. Moreover, it wasn't only that the same thing had happened to Travis, but that it had been far far worse. The woman who invited him home for an innocuous sleepover actually touched Travis, and intimately, before Brion had managed to come to his rescue. Travis played it down, but Karin could tell that he was massively relieved to get the whole thing off his chest, for he had, naturally, told no one about it.

  Which explained his diffidence, and also the very close relationship with his emoto. It also helped to explain his dilettantism; for Travis revealed, en passant, that at that time he was assaulted he had been a vastly successful antique dealer, and the abuser one of his clients. Karin understood perfectly that after such an experience he had had to retire.

  But while the confessions had bee
n risky on both sides, and the chasms of intimacy they had opened up would've appeared impossible to traverse with the slender bridge of conversation alone, Travis and Karin were after all grown-ups, and so they passed on to other subjects. By the time the entrée had been and gone, the date had swum its way into becoming a veritable whale of a time.

  There was no awareness on either side as to who had suggested the idea of coffee and brandy at Travis's house, but both understood what would happen when Karin agreed. Travis said, ‘To be frank I'm really gasping for a Havana; and things being still as they are . . .’ He shrugged. ‘But anyway,’ he continued, paradoxically in a breezier fashion, ‘if we need either Jane or Brion we can always page them!’ and with a flourish he showed her his miniature emotopager, which was concealed beneath the boss of his signet. In return Karin mutely displayed her purpose-built necklace emotopager. They both understood that this was a profound event.

  It was a pleasant night, on the cusp of being balmy, so the foursome walked uptown from the Bowery. The grown-ups took the lead, while the emotos followed on behind in their shambling fashion. Glancing back at them Karin remarked, ‘It's funny, isn't it, Travis, how when it comes to giving a grown-up a cuddle, or carrying us, or kissing us, emotos are so graceful and deft, but any activity outside of that seems to give them such difficulty.’

  ‘That's why they're emotos,’ he replied with finality.

  Karin knew plenty of wealthy people, but had never had a friend who actually owned an entire brownstone; let alone one in Gramercy Park. The house was beautiful from the outside, the delicate wrought-iron balconies just beginning to froth with the wisteria that would enmesh them as the summer progressed. Inside the house was furnished in such a way as to suggest both opulence and austerity. Travis hadn't cluttered the rooms, but in each there were a couple of extremely good pieces culled from his antique-dealing days. He showed Karin around the place from top to bottom. ‘It's amazing how big these houses are . . . Oh! Gee! Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘Hepplewhite, yeah; and that's a Frank Lloyd Wright chair, Chicago 1907.’

  He showed her the master bedroom, which had its own emoto room en suite. ’That's neat,’ said Karin, who was now so relaxed she was content to mouth banalities.

  Travis smiled gently. ‘I'll show you what's neater.’ They continued on up the switchback staircase. On the next floor there was another grown-up-emoto suite, and there was the same on the storey above. ‘I guess it's something I thought of after the . . . y'know . . . I thought really I'd rather Brion were on hand during the night, should I need a bit of reassurance, a cuddle, whatever. I know a lot of people prefer to have their emotos closeted up on the roof for the night, but well . . .’

  ‘I understand,’ Karin said – and she really did. They drank a brandy that had been distilled in the year of the Wall Street crash. Travis puffed a Patargas Perfecto. On an antique Victrola Chaliapin creaked and groaned his way through ‘The Song of the Volga Boatmen’. They sat facing one another in matching art-deco armchairs, which had semicircular backs inlaid with tortoiseshell. In the shadowy periphery of the room the emotos slouched on a scaled-up divan, drinking Slush Puppies and exchanging the shy glances of overgrown youngsters.

  Karin wished the evening could go on for ever. As it was she drank three brandies – and that on top of the two bottles of wine they had shared at the restaurant, and the paddling pool of vodkatini she'd supped at the Royalton. Yet she didn't feel drunk – if anything the reverse. It was as if, having cracked the whole hideous problem of dating again, she was liberated, set free into a new kind of intimacy. Karin thought that, as long as she always had Jane with her, always there to care for her, she could cope even with the intimacy of a sleepover.

  ‘You look tired,’ said Travis after Chaliapin had creaked and groaned up and down the Volga several times, and Ma Rainey had ululated ‘Titantic Man Blues’ at least three. ‘Would you like Brion to show you and Jane up?’

  Karin gathered herself together, Jane came over louring – after all she couldn't help it. Their combined bags were dangling from the emoto's – proportionately – slim wrist. ‘No, it's OK, I think we can find our own way.’ Karin stood and looked down levelly at Travis, noticing for the first time what a very sky shade of blue his twinkling eyes were. ‘Travis.’ Her voice dipped into sincerity. ‘I just want to thank you for everything, the drinks, the meal, your lovely house . . . It really has been . . . peachy!’ They all laughed at this – the fruit gag was well on its way to being iconic.

  For a long time after Karin and Jane had left the room Travis sat, silently sipping his brandy and drawing on his Perfecto. Eventually he cleared his throat to summon Brion, and when the big Celtic emoto was beside him, he reached up his arms and uttered the command that ended all of their days: ‘Carry!’

  Brion gently lifted Travis up, one massive arm behind his back and the other tucked neatly under the grown-up's legs; and porting him thus like some giant baby, he smoothly exited the room, climbed the angled stair and entered the master suite. Setting Travis down, upright, next to the Second Empire bed, with its curved footboard, and extravagant, overarching pediment, Brion started to undress him, efficiently stripping off the lineaments of Travis's anachronism to reveal first Calvin Klein underwear, and then latterly the robust, healthy body of a fit man in his middle thirties. ‘Pjs?’ the emoto queried, and his grown-up nodded acquiescence.

  At last Brion had Travis settled in bed. The grown-up lay, arms outside the covers, pyjama top neatly buttoned, looking like some old-fashioned illustration; to complete the engraving the pocket Gargantua sat by him, one atlas hand ever so softly smoothing Travis's sand-blond hair. Travis sighed, ‘Night-night, Brion.’

  ‘Night-night, Travis,’ the emoto sighed back at him. And in due course the grown-up was asleep.

  As was Karin in the suite of rooms upstairs. Jane looked down into her already flickering eyelids with an expression that changed, as she realised her grown-up was definitively unconscious, from cloying compassion to decided relief. She rose from the bedside and shook herself down, as some great mastiff or indeed any other fine, healthy, unneurotic creature might shake itself down after a dousing.

  Jane strode to the window, her six feet-long legs divinely scissoring apart the hip-length slash in her dully scintillating silk dress, and picked up her bag. She drew out a five-litre catering bottle of Stolichnaya vodka, sheathed in a coolant sleeve, and holding it to the light from the window, sighed appreciatively to see that the bottle was still frosted. The emoto reached into the bag again and drew out a pack of twenty regular Marlboro and a disposable plastic lighter. These items might have appeared queer in such large hands had they been actual size – but they weren't; they too were scaled up for the use of the emoto, the Marlboro pack the size of a paperback, the lighter as long as a pencil. Holding the long lighter aloft, like a cheap beacon, Jane made her way with ginger grace to the door, opened it, ducked down and withdrew her mighty trunk and endless limbs from the room.

  Jane encountered Brion on the half-landing a floor below. The male emoto was backing out of his grownup's bedroom in much the same way as Jane had: retracting his body in a series of phased movements as he squeezed under the dwarfish lintel. He straightened up to his full, magnificent height. Even in the wan light of the stairwell – provided by two unusual baroque electroliers Travis had snapped up in Venice – Jane could see the shadows of intelligence and amusement pass across Brion's handsome countenance. Jane held the long lighter to one side of her face and the frozen Stoli to the other. ‘Party?’ she mouthed. Brion grinned hugely and indicated with a series of significant head jerks that they should go downstairs.

  Back in the main sitting room of the house, the antique Victrola was curled on the floor, casting its analogous, auricular shadow. The light – orange street stuff – cast itself in splashes on the rich patterning of the Persian rug, working up a beautiful palette. Jane went to the window, while Brion carefully shut the double do
ors leading to the stairs. She undid the cap of the bottle of vodka and took a long, shuddering pull on it. The great female's throat pulsed and in four large gulps she had managed to decimate the contents. She set the bottle down on the windowsill, and taking out one of the mutant Marlboros, lit it with a flourish of the long lighter. Jane expelled the smoke in a series of hisses and pops: the Morse code of satiation.

  Brion had finished securing the door. He hit the lights and the golden oldie tones of the room sprang back up. ‘So,’ Brion said, ‘despite her terrible experiences, and her terrible nerves, she managed to fall asleep in someone else's house for the first time in years?’ His voice wasn't just freighted with irony – it was sinking under the weight of it.

  ‘Yup, that's about it – of course that Tylenol/Nytol/ Valium combo helps no end.’ The babyish lilt was excised from Jane's voice; and in its place were the definite tones of a woman of the world.

  ‘Poor old Travis.’ Brion shook his big, Roman senatorial head. ‘He adds Prozac to that downbeat cocktail, sad fucker. I don't think he knows whether he can sleep naturally or not any more, he's been necking them for such a long time.’

  ‘So there's no chance of him waking?’

  ‘None at all – and Karin?’

  ‘Nix. The only thing that could wake the beauty up would be what? A kiss? She'd die!’

  ‘Which leaves us.’

  ‘Indeed. Us. Drink?’

  Brion accepted the vodka tank and drained a further tenth of it. He then took a pituitary-case Marlboro from the proffered pack and lit it by pressing its dead end against her live tip. For a few moments the two emotos experienced ignition, then he broke. ‘My God!’ he guffawed. ‘What a nerd – “I do hope you wouldn't mind joining me . . . If it's not too much . . . That would be lovely. “ Never saying what he fucking means – never meaning what he fucking said.’ The male emoto's voice was below basso; it had ultrasonic undertones which caused the glass of the window they were standing by to vibrate. But now there was no irony in that voice, nor sarcasm, but a genuine – if hideously patronising – concern.