Phone

by Will Self

on the phone – having tried prostitute and been directed to a Jay-store

  research paper on aitcheyevee transmission rates amongst

  preoperative transsexual sex workers in Manila – had his grandson

  been looking through his eyes as he hungrily examined the

  caramelised flesh I’d no real appetite for? And was this why Ben had

  been ringing so obsessively this morning – not taking REJECT CALL

  for the unambiguity it so clearly was? Being held by them … the door

  to Five-Twenty whooshes shut and Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager

  cups Busner’s elbow in his obliging hand, then they stump

  along the corridor. Last night, when Nikki left, did she still feel …

  held by me? Did she still feel the pressure of his fingers deep inside

  her … my breath on her belly? Some newly shined shyster must’ve

  only this moment taken the lift, for in the lobby the brushes still

  whirr … buffing nothing. How many minutes and hours had they

  spent together in Ben’s bedroom, watching the little circlets whirl

  into and out of being? An ouroboros that fed on its own inanition as

  it ate its own … inexistent tail. Buffing and buffing and buffering,

  until: This much I can download. – Nikki – who was café-au-lait, not

  caramelised –frothing in the bowl of blue easy chair by the off-white

  drapes, her legs tucked up and chuckling, Yeah, I got this job, right,

  and the agency, right, they’re none too sussed ‘bout security, right,

  send you wherever, whenever … meant to check out the client – check

  his landline’s registered, or his mobile – izzooeesezzeeizz …

  ‘course they don’t bother … Mostly don’t matter, but this old

  feller – must’ve been married or summat like that, right, gives a

  false whatsit, right, then ‘e only goes and dies on me, don’t ‘e – no,

  really – right on top of me, right on the bloody job! Nikki,

  who wore a tight black dress with a plunging neckline made of

  some stretchy material … a sling for her breasts to swing in … had

  seemed amused, but Zack – who’d been sitting on the bed, sipping

  from one of the glasses of wine he’d poured out, was suitably

  shocked: Oh, you poor girl – that must’ve been terribly upsetting –.

  – It bloody well were … She’d run on: ‘is place were right up on

  Saddleworth Moor, so off the beaten track, sat-nav couldn’t find it.

  It were winter, too. He were a sweet old feller, but he moost’ve adder

  art condition or summat like that, ’cause I saw him, right, take the

  little blue pill … Then we were gassin’ fer a bit – like uz, now – and

  joost gettin’ started on the main business, right, when ‘is face goes

  all blue an’ ‘e sorta flops right across me, right, stone-bloody-dead

  … Zack had petted and stroked the idea of Nikki before

  he encountered the gigglingly winsome reality. Once the correct

  euphemism had occurred to him … That’s what she did – escorted me

  from Romilly Street to her bedsitting room, a simple search yielded

  scores of escort agencies with names such as Red Orchid Girls and

  Chelsea Courtesans. He’d pressed a phone number on the screen

  and within seconds was talking to a woman who sounded the hardbitten

  part – he’d pictured coral lips, and a lacquered tongue which

  poked and prodded him through all the options. So he’d sat,

  employing capacitive touch to examine the photographs and vital

  statistics of young women he lacked the capacity to … truly touch.

  When he’d made his choice, hung up and was sitting there waiting,

  he’d wondered at his own weirdness and … audacity. Then he’d

  gone to the bathroom and checked the plastic bag in which he kept

  a few essentials – wallet, reading spectacles, change of underwear,

  medication, but … why did I bother? He’d voided his own little blue

  pills into some other toilet bowl ages ago – while the preposterous

  priapism he’d experienced during his affair with Athena had

  long since withered on the vine. Had he been testing or taunting

  himself? Perhaps it was his own deeply penetrating sadness that

  had persuaded him he might be able to brandish a puissant pork

  sword rather than a sad little cocktail sausage. None of this carry-on

  would be appropriate for a Sannyasin – unless, that is, he belonged

  to one of the Shaiva Tantra schools, which view sexual activity

  as part of … the liberation process. At least, Zack had said, he

  died in a state of happy anticipation. Whereupon Nikki chuckled,

  What about you, Zack, are you in a state of happy anticipation?

  When he’d swung open the door of Room Five-Twenty and seen

  her standing there in the corridor, with its sickly stink of air-freshener,

  he’d been nauseated – his pulse drumming in his ears

  dum-bumma-dum-dum, dum-bumma-dum-dum, dum-bumma-dum-dum!

  Love is in the air! Daaa-da-d’daaa-daaa! Love is in the

  air … But Nikki had immediately taken control of the situation:

  stretching up on tippy-toes, pecking him on the cheek – and then,

  when he stepped aside, swishing slinkily past him. Why had he

  done it? Why’d he ordered up a thinking, breathing, feeling human

  creature … as if she were a pizza? To settle the matter of his unreasonable

  and – following contemporary usage – unsustainable lust?

  Certainly, but the prompt had been utterly prosaic, namely … my

  pass-code for the stupid phone – this much I do remember: it was the year

  commercial television started up … A whiter-than-white year –

  skins, underclothes, women’s reputations unless they wanted to end

  up kicking on the end of a rope! The television cameras of the era

  softened the Great Evangeliser – his hair was suety, his complexion

  floury, his accents … rose and rose: The wa-arp and we-eft of this

  gre-at na-ation is fra-aying! For social action to wo-ork it must be

  a-cc-o-m-pan-ied by spi-ri-tu-al re-vi-val! Indeed. – Hunched over

  the phone’s tiny screen, Zack had marvelled … for the umpteenth

  time at its painful clarity: the digital cameras of today hardened

  everything, mineralised it all: hair, skin, inexpressibly affecting

  dimples alike. He’d scrolled down, read the fuck FAQs and so

  had the readies – ten new machine-ironed twenties – ready, and

  was prepared himself: showered, shaved and his remaining teeth

  brushed … the EssArr way. The procuress’s cellophane accents still

  crackled in Busner’s hot head. He’d asked if Nikki – Age twenty-seven,

  Five-foot-two, Size Six, Bust thirty-eight Dee natural,

  Nationality British Asian – was the chatty sort, and she’d crinkled,

  Ha, ha, ha! Nikki, love? It’s hind legs and donkeys with that

  one – you won’t get ‘er to shut ‘er mouth ‘less you put summat

  else innit. Not that she isn’t demure, Nikki – she’s ever so demure,

  ever so respectful of the older gentleman … and his needs … On

  she’d gone, perfectly illustrating the very characteristic she sought

  to describe – while the older gentleman took flight in a Vickers

  Viscount and jetted back to an era not so much innocent as

  grotesquely gauche. Maurice was no prude, and, toilet w
alls being

  available to all, Zack, aged eighteen, had been acquainted with the

  biological facts – but the etiquette, the form – this was hardly something

  you could … Ask Pickles about. It didn’t matter, though,

  because what’s-her-face with the what-not had been quite devoid

  of the social graces: I’m not your Locarno sweet ‘eart, love … Love!

  Love! Money may make the world go round, but love makes it

  go … back and forth, so driving the flywheel which goes round and

  round, again annagain, so generating the business, love? cycle.

  Months later, in one of his first anatomy classes at Heriot-Watt,

  Zack had had an odd revelation: she hadn’t put him inside of her at

  all, only gripped his membrum virile tightly in the runnel of her

  crotch – which was fair enough, given he’d shot off in seconds –

  Spunknik! Despairing, all lust instantaneously exchanged for shame

  and depression, his fingers had read the pimples in the dip of her

  spine … signifying nothing, while the bedstead went on creaking

  and his nostrils filled with the smell of … coal gas and TeeSeePee.

  Looking fondly upon little Nikki, coddled in the easy chair, hair

  glossy, lips and nails glossier, skin seemingly … flawless, it was

  that nameless – and now doubtless long dead – other’s dermis that’d

  returned to him … growing, spreading, a sickening and doughy

  tegument, sealing off Nikki’s mouth, her eyes and nostrils …

  semolina – rice pudding, which, if he felt it beneath his fingers – let

  alone his lips – would make him screamandscreamandscream until he

  was indeed sick. Skin, which is … the state we’re in. It covered Zack

  then – covers Busner now, as he and Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager

  board the lift, and, together with a freshly shaven trio

  of middle-level executives, go slippin’, tumblin’, fumblin’ and sinkin’

  down to the lobby. Busner peers at his shining brogues and has no

  memory of buffing them. In there – in the woolly sweaty darkness

  toenails are growing, which is something they do … when you’re

  dead. Not skin, though – skin only grows when you’re alive, grows

  and then dies, so that at any given point you’re walking around with

  life-and-death slippin’ and fumblin’ each other. Ach! Skin! It touches

  everything – and worse still touches itself! Hangnails hook into

  hickeys – pimples popper-into the pits of their predecessors, until

  the entire flexible territory self-surveys itself into existence: a map of

  the territory … made of the territory itself! Not that Busner has ever

  had any problem distinguishing the workaday tarpaulin from the

  silkily seductive stuff – a duffer at dissection he may’ve been, yet,

  during his time as a houseman, he’d needed no anatomical knowledge

  for lumbar punctures, blood-sampling, dilation-and-curettage

  and other fiendishly delicate procedures. Zack had had … the feel for

  it, and, despite a career hardly typified by the laying on of hands,

  after last night Busner realises … I still do! Because this much I do

  remember … Nikki prattling on about the dead punter as she’d

  sipped her Chardonnay: It were right heavy, right – no question, but

  better it ‘appen to uz than one of them uther numpties, right … on

  account of the training, right … Which had naturally solicited an

  enquiry as to what this training – which had so prepared her

  for having old men die on top of her during coitus – might be?

  Nikki had preened a little: I’m a social worker, right – qualified as a

  psychiatric one, right, but mostly I take agency jobs dealing wi’

  normal clients – not that they’re that bloody normal! Zack’s relief

  had been pathetic: no longer was this a sordid meeting between

  a damaged young woman and a much older and abusive man –

  instead they’d been engaged in a case conference, albeit a highly

  unorthodox one. It’d all vomited forth: how he’d been sick with

  anxiety – the concierge might’ve seen her entering the lift, or,

  when the Madame had called to verify that a Doctor Bisner was

  registered, the receptionist might’ve realised … what was going

  on. Since he was now retired, there was no reputational damage to

  consider – but there were his family’s feelings, and his own, admittedly

  ridiculous, spiritual pride: such antics hardly suggested the

  renunciation of all worldly pursuits required of a Sannyasin …

  While he’d been speaking, Zack had noticed Nikki’s face growing

  darker – far from his revelation summoning up an enthusiastic

  cross-cultural dialogue, she’d exploded: You’ve a fookin’ nerve,

  Doctor Boosner – y’think I want folk knowing I’m on t’bloody

  game? What about my career, my family – I’ve a fiancé, y’know! Yet

  as soon as these thunder-clouds had gathered, they dispersed:

  I don’t mean t’be skrikin’, but if you think you’re the only wun ‘ere

  wi’ a reputation to protect … well, give yer ‘ead a fookin’ wobble!

  He’d fallen from the bed to the maroon carpet, then set off knobbling

  towards her. This much he remembers: the bird’s wing of her slight

  shoulder in his hand – somehow they’d ended up kissing, but this

  had been no sensitive survey of tongues mutually undertaken. He

  remembers now – remembered then, too – the first French kisses

  of his life, tongue-feeling-tongue-feeling-tongue, such that … we

  became one – and such a one! Our flexible members ever shaping and

  reshaping their own mutual awareness – a good analogy, he thinks

  … for consciousness itself. But after a little dabbling they’d broken:

  Yer ‘eart’s not really innit, is it, love? She curled back into the chair’s

  concavity, smoothing her skirts, while he’d sat back on his heels,

  watching the old man, with wild white hair sprouting from his

  scalp, sitting back on his heels, his belly bulging as he’d squatted

  out there, five storeys up … in the glassy darkness. He’d heard then –

  hears again now – the farty rasp of a saxophone, the circus-top

  jiggy-jiggy of a hack band. He’d seen then – sees again now – the

  unfunny little man’s festination as he chases after the scantily clad

  dollybirds … King Leer! But with no kingdom any longer to rule

  over with his surreally melting sceptre. No, he’d conceded, I’m

  afraid neither my heart nor the rest of me is, ah, in it. So, he’d

  decanted another little bottle of Chardonnay into their glasses, sat

  back and listened to her tale. Nikki’s real name was Niraga: Which

  is a bit ironical, right, ’cause it means without passion … Then had

  come a lament for her parents: her father, laid off from the mills in

  the eighties, had picked up only odd jobs ever since – odd jobs and

  odder pills, as he’d passed all the required tests, and had eventually

  gained a full-time position as a clinical depressive. As for Niraga’s

  mother, a bartered bride from Uttar Pradesh – she’d never learnt

  English, too fearful of those … alien tongues – she lived out her

  days in a grim little house on a great big estate … out Wythenshawe

>   way. As for Niraga’s brothers, all four of them had fled – South to

  university, then on into the professions. When you hear their voices

  on the phone, she’d told him, you can’t even tell they’re Asian …

  Niraga had a loft apartment in the Northern Quarter, all paid

  for … cash on the bloody nail by her earnings from alternate shifts as

  sex- and social-worker. As she’d spoken, Zack had become aware

  of an insistent itchiness – not, for once, his own flaky old coat

  but her … fresh lick of it. Niraga wriggled prettily in her chair, her

  hands ceaselessly mobile as they’d fluttered up towards the labial

  folds of the fake O’Keefe, then down to her lap. Have you … ?

  he’d at last ventured … I mean, I don’t mean to … pry, but is there

  something troubling you? She’d guffawed – a wholesome, hearty

  laugh: I’ll say! Me fanny’s on fookin’ fire – might be a rash or mebbe

  cystitis coming on … Occupational hazard, right – did some

  creamin’ ‘fore I coom out, but it’s still fookin’ burning … s’pose I

  shouldn’t’ve, but she gets right bollocky, right, if you turn

  down a job … While she’d been speaking Zack had made gentle

  soothing noises, expressive, he’d felt, of paternal concern – then

  he’d stammered: It m-must b-be awful – having to do this …

  this – he’d gestured wildly with his phone – sort of thing. I mean,

  it must be bad enough coping with it psychologically, without

  physical problems as –. Fook you! she’d bellowed, I tellya, right,

  when I get fed up wi’ me own old folks – who’re on me bloody case

  night and day – and fed up with me normal-type clients, right …

  well, it’s you lot who keeps me fookin’ sane. You lot who actually gi’

  me a little tee-elsie … Tee-elsie, eh – a shocking abbreviation that

  Busner remembers only too well falling from the mean mouths of

  EssArrEnns on ward rounds – hatchet-faced women who wouldn’t

  know what tenderness was … if you beat it into them with a

  meat-tenderiser. He imagines that nowadays any reference to tee-elsee

  would soon enough be followed by its sinister conspecific,

  dee-ennarr … It could’ve been this chilly intimation that provoked

  his crazy proposal: Um, you wouldn’t like me to … um … take a

  look? I mean … he’d cantered on whinnying … I realise it’s pretty