It’s zero minus something-or-other . . and. . the light from ten thousand suns flashes off the Meehans’ front windows. For several days they pause in the porch: Busner gets lost in the tiles fixed on either side: roving from boats with lateen sails to blue remembered hills, between tiny sheep and on to still tinier farmhouses. . the long trek ends here — in Delft. At last the key is in the lock, the latch spasms, and the Concept House wraps around my anamorphic head . . Kneeling to let the dog off its lead, Busner thinks: No one will recognise me unless they lie on the floor and look up at the right angle. . The dog disappears — and Roger Gourevitch appears at the end of the hall looking wan, furtive and resolute. Hi, Zack, he says. . hell is in hello. . I think it’d be a swell idea if you joined us in the kitchen — Kit’s guardian has shown up, and he wants to take Kit away with him. And. . well, for pretty obvious reasons, I don’t think it’s such a swell idea. . Busner is carried by the swells into the kitchen, where the Creep is saying, I was in Bellevue, for a fact — that’s how it is, feller, some snobs boast about their lousy vacations, I boast about my nut houses. — They are in, Zack realises, one of Claude’s rare patches of lucidity, smooth water he’ll skim across only to sink once more into the dark and oily swell. F’tungchung, f ’tung-chung, f ’tung-chung. . No, the trek ends here beside the railway line . . each f ’tung-chung thrusting into Zack’s famished eyes a blue-and-white-striped egg cup sitting on the draining board, the palindromic OMO, and the legend DROITWICH that stands out proud from the AA road map someone has pinned to the wall. Why is it. . he thrills to this inconsequence. . that the residents so favour maps as a form of wall decoration, rather than Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret? — Thinks this even as egg cup, OMO and DROITWICH simultaneously swell and outflank him, while the man rising from the table and holding out his hand remains resolutely. . the same size! Sharply delineated by his bright white shirt collar, by his red-and-maroon-striped tie, by the short back, longer sides and exacting parting of his greying blond hair, by the deep creases in his gaunt cheeks tending at precisely the same angles as the lapels of his conservatively dark suit jacket — by respectability itself, which is etched by every thread of the smoke slip-streaming from his pipe as he removes it from his haggard mouth and carefully places it on a dirty plate that has by common usage become an ashtray. He extends his hand further — and Zack is overcome by a sense of the man’s vulnerability. . he yearns to be bitten — and says, I’m Michael Lincoln, you must be Doctor for an ultrasound seems fucked up — fucked up. Last time there was only a techie woman who tucked the paper towel down the front of her jeans an’ sorta said, Eeeeuuu! but hiddit ’cause Cutty was there an’ you don’t try it on when Cutty’s around. Then — then! How Genie now wishes it was then . . When the techie woman spread the goo on Genie’s tummy, smeared it and said, You’re awfully thin — according to your notes you’ve a history of substance abuse. . But that was all she said — then she swiped the racket thingie over Genie’s tummy a couple of times. . a dykey-looking old Billie-Jean she was, handed her more paper towels, said, OK, clean yourself up now, and went out, leaving Genie to struggle up from the examination couch on her own, and sit there staring down past the fat white dumpling to where her crab stick toes wiggled from her torn socks, wondering how the fuck she was gonna get her trainers on, ’cause Cutty had gouched out with his head on the sharps bin. — It’d seemed pretty grim at the time, but this is. . much worse: there’s a doctor with brown mullet and weird sticky-out paper-thin ears, who’s going to work on Genie, his big square hand digging into her belly, making room for the probe that he pushes in hard here! and then there! So hard Genie thinks it’s gonna break the skin and poke through into her womb. From some neglected celluloid strip of her memory a Yank steps into the frame saying: Start in the alimentary canal — open the digestive tract . . The doctor’s fingernails scratch. . the blackboard, ’orrid racket — goes right through me . . and catch in me short an’ curlies. Genie so wishes Cutty were there. . ’cause Cutty by name . . he’d cut through this crap and make the mullet tell her what the fuck’s going on, instead of hunching silently over the glowing screen while ’e gives me the dig. The first time the techie lezzer had encouraged Genie to look as the probe swept over her undersea world and woo-wooed ultrasounds into this sight: two fishy things, curled up round each other. . turds inna khazi! My, my, she’d said, it’s twins, you’re going to be a very big girl indeed before you’re through. Genie would’ve spat in her face if she hadn’t just had a hit. The second time Cutty was there, and ’though he’d done his best to look. . presentable, the techie still shrank back when he came forward and the screen lit up the razor scars on his cheeks. . bright white. Can ye tell me what sex they are yet, hen? he’d asked — but the techie said she couldn’t ’cause of the way they were positioned. Cutty squeezed Genie’s hand and said, Spoonin’, and her heart overflowed wiv love for ’im, even though she knew he only wanted to find out if they were identical. Back at the flat, doing his home chemistry — freezing the wax out of a methadone suppository — Cutty’d cackled: If they’re idents we can perrforrm unnaturrral psycho-logi-cal experrriments on them, eh, girl? Then there was the last time, when Genie was already so huge, a fucking whale, she could scarcely haul herself up to the clinic. She’d been by the needle-exchange caravan on South Wharf Road before, and she’d a paper bag full of fresh works in one hand and a 500 mil’ bottle of linctus in the other. . I couldn’t be bovvered with ’iding. Right away the nurse started getting on her case about treatment plans that have been agreed with your team! and dogged her all the way into the ultrasound suite, and would’ve taken the works off a me . . if Genie hadn’t snarled and given ’er me dead eyes. — All this seemed bad enough at the time, especially when the lezzer said, Eeeuu! as if I was a common tart, but now it’s bathed in golden light . . and the lezzer techie ’as a fucking halo round her curly nut. It’d been back round March time, Genie thinks — ’cause Cutty’d gone up West the day before her appointment to serve one of ’is getters who was ’aving ’is’air layered at fucking Trumper’s. When Cutty came out of the tube at Tottenham Court Road it was all kicking off: a load of filth all bunched up under riot shields, and there were Class War types and bog-ordinary yobs chucking bottles and scaff olding poles at ’em. . or so ’e said. Cutty turned tail and went back down the rabbit hole — with his form, and holding too, ’e couldn’t be doing wivvit. Now it’s May, and the flowerpot men are due to pop out in a week or two, but the Mullet’s saying, May I call you. . He looks at the notes rattling in his hand to see