Like a musician who can jam all night the love-life with legs is constantly improvising on anything that comes its way. So the Tulls, Richard and Gina (those veterans of sexual make-do and catch-can), as they faced this new challenge, looked to their powers of extemporization. After each display, after each proof of his impotence, it was into his excuses that Richard poured his creative powers. Nor did Gina's talent for the humane go untested by all these let-outs and loopholes, because, after all, she had to lie there and listen to them, nudging him here, prompting him there (yes, there … Ouuu, yes there!).
In the early weeks-they were still all shy and green, finding their way-they explored the theme of tiredness; and then they reexplored it. As in "Just tired, I suppose" and "I suppose it's just tiredness" and "You're just tired" and "It must be tiredness" and "I suppose I'm very tired" and "You must be very tired" and "So tired." There they lay together, yawning and rubbing their eyes, night after night, working their way through the thesaurus of fatigue: bushed, whacked, shattered, knackered, zonked, zapped, pooped … As excuses went, tiredness was clearly a goer, amazingly versatile and athletic; but tiredness couldn't be expected to soldier on indefinitely. Before very long, tiredness made a natural transition to the sister theme of overwork, and then struck out for the light and space of pressure, stress and anxiety.
Of course they could now afford to look back on all this with a certain wry amusement. At their timorousness, their inhibition. That was in the past. These days, how boldly Richard reached, how broadly he roamed, for his excuses! Poor circulation, unhappy childhood, midlife crisis, ozone depletion, unpaid bills, overpopulation; how eloquent he was as he frowned his way through Marco's learning disability or the new damp patch on the sitting room ceiling. (Sometimes she liked it purely physicaclass="underline" upset stomach, bruised knee, tennis elbow, bad back.) There were disappointments, naturally. Book reviewing, for instance, never got off the ground, despite the clear appeal of stuff like deadlines and sub-editorial deletions and late payment. Richard didn't know why, but he couldn't quite bring himself to blame his plight on Fanny Burney or Thomas Chatter-ton or Leigh Hunt. On the other hand, artistic frustration, and more par-need a bag of in his kit, the pubic triangle, Richard judged, was quite tastefully rendered: an economic delta of dark brushstrokes. She was definitely younger than him. He was a modernist. She was the thing that came next.
"What favorite?"
"My favorite."
"Your favorite what?"
"You know. Like you were saying that time. The thing that tells you so much about someone. The thing that everyone has. A favorite."
She turned to him: a cartoon of nudity. There was no indignation in her voice-only puzzlement. "A favorite what?"
"Like you said. Do a little dance and-"
"I don't do that any more."
"Ah. What do you do?"
"I only do my favorite."
"Which is?"
"Everything."
"Everything?"
Belladonna stared into space and said zestlessly, "You do me and then I do you. Then straight, then cowgirl, then doggy. Then there's all the other stuff. How long have you got?"
Richard didn't look at his watch. And he didn't ask himself how old he was: because the answer was ninety-five. These rhythms, these rhythms of thought-he just didn't know these rhythms, and that was that. His voice cracked straight into near-senility as he said, "I ought to be home in half an hour."
"That's no good. I'd need that long just to get started." She reached down for her handbag. Another cigarette? No. She handed him a sheet of paper (a printout, a coded damage report: curlicues of computer graphics, marked here and there with a yellow highlighting pen), and said, "My blood test. You said you were going to take me round to Gwyn's."
All in good time, my dear. "And so I shall. And so I shall." He stood up. Richard used to think that young girls, these days, might like old men for reasons of hygiene. They could look at the old man's wife and think: Well, she's still walking. Well, he was still walking. But only just. He said, "I have to insist, I think, that you …" He swayed, and steadied himself on the sofa's arm. "I'll have to insist that you tell me all about it. And that you'll ask him about his favorite."
"Okay, Richard. I guarantee it."
He stood on the corner of Wroxhall Parade. Across the way in theOcularly the strains associated with Untitled, proved to be almost embarrassingly fruitful. Gina really bought that shit-or could sound as if she did. Best of all, unquestionably (no contest), was the death of the novel, not as a cause of general concern (Gina wouldn't mind if the novel died) but as it related to Richard personally. The End of Fiction, the foreclosure of Richard's art, the casting of his staff into the cold waters: because they couldn't afford it. That worked. Not for the first time, and not insincerely, Richard pitied life's straightmen, its civilians, its one-dimensioners, all non-artists everywhere, who couldn't use art as an excuse. In any event, all that was behind him now. He didn't need to make excuses anymore. Because he didn't go near her. And she didn't go near him.
So Richard was now where he imagined he very much wanted to be: on the sofa of the big front room near the corner of Wroxhall Parade, in illicit evening light. Not only that: Belladonna was at his side, and she was also, in a certain sense, already more than in the nude. When he went to bed with Anstice that time Richard somehow persuaded himself that he was doing it "for Gina"-for his marriage, for his rattled virility. And that turned out real good, didn't it? With Belladonna, the internal argument was considerably more challenging (and harder to follow). If Richard succeeded in sleeping with her, then many benefits would of course be passed on to Gina, who would reap them in the marital bed, at her sated leisure. Besides, it wasn't his fault-it was death's fault. Every sensitive man was allowed a midlife crisis: when you found out for sure that you were going to die, then you ought to have one. If you don't have a midlife crisis, then that's a midlife crisis. Finally, Richard's presence in this room was just one more move in the great game of Gwyn's ruin. He was here for the information. He had it all worked out.
Belladonna was at his side. Neither of them had spoken for three or four minutes. Richard told himself that this shared silence, maintained over a period of three or four minutes (that deracinating eternity), was clear proof of how relaxed they must be. Her face was half-averted. Soft-skinned and luminous, she smoked, with concentration, with self-communing ardor.
"I've been thinking," said Richard, with a faint and fussy smile, "about my 'favorite.'"
That wasn't really true. Richard's favorite, by now, would have taken eight hours to summarize, let alone perform. He was glad the room was getting darker, because that meant he could look at her without unavoidable and intrinsic lechery. For Belladonna wore a printed body-stocking which bodied forth-the body: the naked female body. Unlike the nipples, which were pink and rubbery, the kind of nipples a plumber might"Piece of shit," said Steve Cousins (to himself, and to the old man who was taking ten minutes to cross the road: the zebra stretched before him like a track event). He turned off Floral Grove and entered Newland Crescent. When they get like that they're better off dead. Number sixty-eight: he pulled up. This was Terry's house-the Quack. Scozzy wasn't looking for Terry himself. Home, out Wimbledon way, was clearly the last place you'd look for Terry. He'd be in a club somewhere, or fucking up some deal in some Quacko go-down, or under a jukebox of black flips in that flat he had above the casino in Queensway. See those blokes doing dope: ropes of smoke coming out of their noses like their skulls were on fire.