At about 2 a.m. I glued and went to bed, not realizing that I didn’t have to glue until the next evening. I didn’t wake up till ten, and by then I was totally unglued. The whole thing was a waste of a glue.
Can you wonder I was so grouchy first thing?
Victor asked me where I’d like to shop and I said I’d quite like to see the new Tesco store. The English kid said he’d been there and it was really neat. He said he preferred it to Sainsbury’s because they sold things like chinos and toys as well as food. I couldn’t believe that a company as big as Sainsbury’s would just sell food. Who would want to go to that kind of place?
In the car I told Victor how Larry Gagosian had called earlier. He said David Geffen was bored with Hockney and wanted to buy something more of mine. The last thing he bought was a Marilyn in 1973 ($240,000). I said I could probably find the sleeve of a Velvet Underground album I could sign for him, but Larry said no, David wanted me to make something new. Can you believe that? I told Larry I’d stopped doing new things and certainly wasn’t going to start again for a man who wears trainers and a baseball cap back to front.
We stopped at some lights and this Hell’s Angel started to clean our windscreen for us, without even being asked. He had huge muscles, and tattoos all over his face. The cute English boy said it was illegal, and I said what for someone to clean our windscreen, and he said no for someone to have tattoos over their face, and I said you mean you can’t even disfigure yourself, what sort of country is this?, and he just shrugged and held his hands palm upwards like someone trying to adopt Latino mannerisms. Anyway I paid the guy with the tattoos 80c and took a Polaroid of him, so at least that was all right.
The English kid said he’d heard that the Angels were the new Mafia, and Victor said, what happened to the old Mafia? It ain’t broke so don’t fix it. It was embarrassing, as if Victor hadn’t heard of the United Nations embargo on Family corpses. No one laughed.
I wanted to ask Victor about this new pop group who mutilate themselves on stage and whether I should do something for them, but I sensed this wasn’t the moment, and anyway I guessed I’d already decided. It’s hard to find anybody these days who deserves fifteen seconds, let alone fifteen minutes.
As we were driving into the car-park the English boy scraped the fender of a BMW and this woman jumped out and started bad-mouthing us, then she stopped, embarrassed. Apparently she knew me from somewhere. I couldn’t recall her. It turned out she had Italian connections, and a forefather who was an ancient Duke of Lombardy. Apart from that she wasn’t famous at all.
She’d been to the seafood counter. She’d flown over specially from Castille, because apparently seafood is now cheaper in England than in Spain, or anywhere else for that matter. It won’t last. It’s only a matter of time before the algae works its way up from the Mediterranean to the Cinqueport lagoons.
She’d bought up practically everything there was as if she had a shipping contract - squid, octopus, lobster, prawns, whelks, oysters and two whole congers. She was flying back home that evening for a weekend barbecue and invited me along, and I said I’d go, but I honestly don’t want to, and I shall probably not show. My surgeon told me how they use a gel derived from sturgeons’ swim-bladders to put a sheen on reconstructed cheeks. I can’t eat fish with a clear conscience these days.
They had these huge recycling hoppers in one corner of the car-park. We didn’t have any stuff of our own, but there was a woman with a whole trolley full of cans and bottles and we helped her sort them out. She recognized me and asked me to sign something for her so I signed an old can of cat food. Do you know what she did? She took it and dumped it straight in the hopper. It was wild. I wanted to stay around and sign more stuff for people to dump, but the English boy and Victor were keen to start shopping.
The new Tesco store was wonderful. I don’t know why they call it new, unless it’s because it’s just been built. That’s possible. It’s hard to tell with supermarkets and shopping malls. They all look new no matter how old they are. That’s the point. Who would want to go to a mall that looked old? Victor disagreed. He said one day they would be old and we’d all love and treasure them for that very reason. The Surrey Docks would be the new Versailles. Brent Cross would be the new Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
I don’t believe it. Whenever a building gets to look old these days, people just bleach it with chlorine and sand-blast it back to new again. And anyway, in a few years’ time I’m sure they’ll be able to resurrect buildings much the same way they do humans, from the hex in the crystal, the code in the stone.
New Angkor Wats will arise in the mangrove swamps of the European Shelf. Mayan temples will surface and overlook the paddy fields of the Fens. Ozy mandias will stride out of the tumbled rocks of the peaks, with reconstituted limbs and torso and proclaim himself, once again, king of kings. The monoliths of Stonehenge will thrust upwards through the soil of Salisbury Plain, as if seeded from some magical silicate spore, to form a newer, grander fairy circle. The Sphinx will be reborn in Birmingham’s Bull Ring, a minotaur with a ring of gold in its new nose. The perfect geometry of the pyramids will be scattered once more upon the spoil tips of South Wales, like die cast from the hands of gods.
Victor pouted, like he wanted to start an argument, but was afraid of where it might go.
One thing I liked about the store was the doors, which opened automatically before you even wanted them to open. I tried to fool them by stepping backwards when they started to open, but it didn’t work.
We went in and the first thing we saw was a tramp trying to sell on a bunch of Welfare Lottery tickets. What a great idea that is. Only the Brits could think of it. Instead of paying out social benefits from tax revenue, you fund it with a lottery, giving out a ration of free tickets to the registered underprivileged (which of course they immediately negotiate on the black-market, instant relief always being better than hope deferred). The rich buy the tickets at markdown prices and continue to get richer on their winnings, while the poor continue to subsist, but now they blame their condition on bad luck. Nothing ever changes in this Belle Isle.
These vouchers certainly looked genuine, with a watermark of Jeff Koons humping La Cicciolina. I bought a dozen and gave them to the first people I saw. None of them seemed particularly needy but I noticed none of them refused. The English are a strange, perplexing race.
There were lots of trolleys, and I liked that. The English kid grabbed one and he went straight to the houseplant section. He lives in Chelsea. He bought a yucca. He said it would look good in his patio-garden.
We had a lot of fun at the supermarket, but I didn’t buy anything. There was nothing new I needed.
Back in the parking lot the car phone rang. It was Sigmund Freud who was selling equity in a new company he’d formed to market dysfunctional psychotics. He already had Charlie Manson under contract and was waiting for him to die. I declined the option (although it was on very favourable terms) and reminded him that psychoanalysts like him used to be called ‘alienists’.
He didn’t like that one bit, and called me anal-retentive. I switched him off. Fuck him. The guy needs a shave.
The English kid started up the BMW. We stopped at the lights opposite McDonald’s and a woman wearing an anti-pollution-mask tapped on the window and asked for a contribution for the British Nazi Party. I did what I always do, and signed a blank cheque, from a cancelled chequebook. Victor told me off, saying she’d sell it as an original and get the money that way. I said, fine, then everybody would have participated in the artistic process, and wasn’t that what it was all about? Victor just snarled at me.
I think he is becoming jaded. He needs a holiday. I should take him somewhere different. Australia, perhaps. East Coast. They say the shopping marinas on the Barrier Reef are magnificent and the sharks are really friendly and will give you rides on their backs and let you be photographed with your head between their jaws. I’ll book the tickets tomorrow.
We drove up to Al
exandra Palace and sat in the car, drinking beers as dusk fell, looking out across the railway yards and the sewage farms. I love that view, it’s like the view across Laurel Canyon, back when it was safe to live there. Bob Dylan was busking in the car park, going from car to car like a gypsy violinist in a restaurant. I gave him $9.47.
We played that game of who would you like to be if you weren’t you, and Victor said Marilyn. It would really be something to have fucked a president. The English kid passed me a joint and said he’d just like to be famous in his own right one day, then he wouldn’t have to be anyone else.
Maybe it’ll happen, he said. Maybe tomorrow, who knows?
We all said, sure, but I don’t think so. Here in Harringay tomorrow never comes, and anyway, we all have to be someone else, sooner or later, don’t we?
<
~ * ~
And the Poor Get Children
Lisa Tuttle
Becky Valpariso was used to getting what she wanted. It came as an unpleasant shock to her to learn, at the age of one hundred and forty-seven, that there really were things money could not buy.
Like love. She could hire care - a nurse, a full-time nanny, and the most sophisticated interactive nursery on the market, but what had been good enough for her mother was, most emphatically, not good enough for her. Becky had grown up cared for by a series of hired nurses before being sent off to the best boarding school. Every luxury had been provided except the one she now considered more important than anything money could buy: the constant presence, devoted care and unselfish love of a full-time parent. Both her parents had been too busy earning money to take a few years off to raise their own child.
Not that she blamed them, not any more, not after nearly fifty years in analysis. Life had been so much shorter then, even for the very rich. Now it seemed perfectly possible to take a career-break for a decade or two, whether to raise a child or explore some other non-remunerative passion. She was convinced it would be worth doing. But could she convince her partner?
She waited until Steve was in a mellow mood, after a few rounds of VR sex-gaming, when they were lying on the living-room floor, back in real time, both of them with non-fattening, non-carcinogenic, mildly uplifting mood-enhancers on tap. In the background, providing a little subliminal encouragement, she hoped, were some dolls and other toys. She smiled at him and touched him on the arm and drew a deep breath to begin. But it was no good. Steve was already there. He had known her, after all, for nearly sixty years - he knew her better than anyone else alive. Maybe he couldn’t actually read her mind, but he had noticed the toys and he knew what the impulse binge in a toystore must mean. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘Don’t even ask.’
‘You could at least think about it.’
‘I already have. The answer is no.’
‘If you really—’
‘Of course I love you. I love you as you are. If you really loved me you wouldn’t ask. I love our life together and I don’t want anything to change. Our life is perfect as it is.’
‘Life is change. Perfection is death.’
‘What about, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I’ve been to just as many personal-life philosophy sessions as you have, my darling. I like our partnership just as it is; I’m not interested in being a parent.’
‘It would be an enriching experience.’
‘It would be hell.’
‘How do you know? There’d be rough times, but you might be surprised at how enjoyable raising a child could be. And it would bring us closer together.’
‘If we survived the first eighteen years.’
‘It doesn’t have to be eighteen; we could do it in nine. The clinic offers a special half-time option - birth to graduation in under nine years. So you see, it wouldn’t even be a decade out—’
‘Out of our real lives, were you going to say? Becky, this is crazy. You can’t argue me into this - there aren’t any sweeteners you can give me, the whole deal simply repulses me. If you’re so keen, get yourself a tailor-made VR programme, take a year off in the tank where they’ll look after you, and then come back to me.’
Tears of rage sprang to her eyes, fury at being balked and also at being so misunderstood by the person who mattered. ‘This is no game! I’ve been thinking about it a long time, and I want to do it, for real. Virtual isn’t going to get it out of my system. This isn’t like sex, this is something I need for the sake of my soul, like I need you. Steve, please, if you love me, let me do this!’ He rolled over and stood up, stretching his long, naked body, moving away from her. ‘Not with me. If it’s that important to you - more important than us - go ahead, find yourself another daddy.’
She read the hurt in his body language, the despair he didn’t want her to see, and knew with a thrill of certainty how much he loved her. He was frightened of losing her, fearful of the changes that were to come - but he loved her, that was the important thing. She felt guilty about going behind his back, without his permission, but she just knew that he wouldn’t let her down. She was sure, whatever he said, that he would be a wonderful father.
~ * ~
Renate heard the screaming as she came out of the market. It was a very old superstore surrounded by a huge and now largely unused parking lot, and among the few eccentric vehicles parked on the cracked and potholed paving was a big, old-fashioned black perambulator from which the screams were coming.
She didn’t realize just how big the pram actually was until she nearly ran into it. She had thought it still some distance away; its size warped normal perspective. It was necessarily large because it contained, not a baby, but a fully grown woman dressed in a long, white gown of Irish lace, smelling of pee and baby powder and sour milk, her face clenched and red with the effort of screaming.
‘Now, now,’ said Renate. ‘There, there, it’s all right.’ She bent over the side of the pram and searched until she found a bottle and plugged it into the screaming mouth. There was a startled little sound, the same noise her own daughter used to make, and then a greedy, contented sucking.
‘That’s better.’ Renate spotted a square of card pinned to one of the white blankets and read it aloud: ‘My name is Becky. I am only four days old. Please take care of me.’ Eyes closed, the woman in the pram was oblivious, sucking away as if all was well and nothing in the world existed except herself and the teat. ‘Oh, Becky, what a wicked world you’ve been born into. You didn’t choose your parents very wisely, did you? Well, I’ll find someone to help.’
There was a Crime Alert Post only steps away, and the button was working. A peacekeeper was with her in minutes, preceded by the blood-chilling sound of its siren. Renate gritted her teeth and fought all the instincts that urged her to run: everyone knew that the siren had been scientifically developed to arouse fear in the criminal brain while leaving the normal, law-abiding citizen completely unaffected. But although she did not believe she had criminal tendencies, both sound and sight of the approaching peacekeeper filled her with alarm, and she wished she’d turned elsewhere for help.
Unable to identify any known crime in progress, the peacekeeper issued Renate a caution against misuse and waste of public utilities.
‘But this baby has been abandoned - surely it was my duty to report that?’
‘There is no baby,’ droned the peacekeeper. ‘There is an adult woman, causing no offence. REM activity indicates she sleeps; no evidence of restricted drug or alcohol abuse.’
‘But she’s completely helpless! Surely you can see that? She can’t look after herself. She may be an adult physically, but she’s been reborn.’
‘She is a private citizen. What concern is she of yours?’
‘It’s a human concern. She’s helpless, she’s been abandoned - somebody has to help her or she’ll die. I just happened to find her. Look, take a cell sample, tell me who she is so I can contact her next-of-kin.’
‘This citizen is committing no crime. Sample cannot be taken without her permission.’
<
br /> ‘But she can’t give you her permission! That’s the point! We need to find out who she is—’
‘There is no need to uncover the identity of this private citizen. You are wasting the time of a valuable public utility. This is your second caution. If a third caution is issued, it will be entered on your record and you may be fined.’
‘I apologize. I didn’t mean to. It was a misunderstanding,’ Renate said as humbly as she could. She felt like screaming.
She decided to try the health centre. In the olden days foundlings had been left at hospital doors. No hospital in the city would allow Renate anywhere near their doors - her public health card permitted access only to one health centre. But at least there she could talk to a human being, and maybe one of the medics or carers would take pity on Becky.
It was a long walk to the health centre, but she had no choice. The pram was not collapsible, and would never be allowed on the peoplemover, and Becky was far too big for her to carry.
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