THE INFORMATION

'Not tennis. Not tennis. I always thought tennis was an effeminate game. No offense meant.'

'None taken,' said Richard sincerely. His impulse now was to flip his wallet onto the table and produce the photographs of his two boys.

'Squash is my game. Squash. But I don't play down there. I'm not even a Squash Member. I'm a Social Member.'

Everybody knew about the Social Members of the Warlock. They didn't go down there for the tennis or the squash or the bowls. They went down there because they liked it.

'Well, I'm injured,' said Richard. 'Tennis elbow.' This was true. Lift a racket? He could hardly lift a cigarette.

His interlocutor nodded: such was life. He was still holding the (closed) book out in front of him; it seemed inevitable, now, that he would have to say something about it. The anxiety this gave rise to led Steve Cousins to consider a rather serious change of plan: from plan A to plan B or plan V, plan O, plan X. To activate plan X he even reached into his pocket for the eyedrop bottle. This was plan X: lace his drink with lysergic acid and then, the minute he started looking nauseous or talking stupid about the funny lights, take him outside, for some air, down the walkway near the water, and kick his teeth out one by one. Scozz paused.

Plan A regained its substance. It was like the glow that came up on a stage set. With a soft gulp of effort he said, 'I'm an autodidact.' Yes, listen, thought Richard: he can even say autodidact… He wavedto the waitress. No, not another Tarantula, thank you: he would try a Rattlesnake. Actually Richard was undergoing a series of realizations. Which was just as well. He realized that the young man was not a type. Not an original, maybe; but not a type. He also realized (for the first time) that autodidacts are always in pain. The fear of ignorance is a violent fear; it is atavistic; fear of the unknown is the same as fear of the dark. And finally Richard thought: but, I'm nuts too! Don't be steamrollered: show your own quiddity in the field where the mad contend.

'I got a First at Oxford,' said Richard. 'Autodidact-that's a tough call. You're always playing catch-up, and it's never wholly that you love learning. It's always for yourself.'

This turned out to be a good move of Richard's. It didn't calm the young man, but it made him more cautious. He weighed Dreams Don't Mean Anything in his hand and held it out at arm's length, to assess it, to see it in perspective, with parallax. 'Interesting,' he said.

'Interesting how?'

'You shouldn't smoke, you know.'

'Oh really? Why ever not?'

'Toxins. Bad for your health.'

Richard took the cigarette out of his mouth and said, 'Christ, I know that about it. It says on the fucking packet that it kills you.'

'You know what? I found it… very readable. It's a page-turner.'

That proved it. It was clinically impossible that this guy was playing with a full deck. Richard knew very well that nobody found him readable. Everybody found him unreadable. And all agreed that Dreams Don't Mean Anything was even more unreadable than Aforethought.

'I read Aforethought too. Raced through that one as well.'

It hadn't occurred to Richard that these admissions were bluff or hoax. Nor did it seriously occur to him now. And he was right: the young man was telling the truth. But he said because he wanted to cover himself,

'What big thing happens exactly halfway through Aforethought?'

'It goes into the-into italics.'

'What happens just before the end?'

'It goes back again,' said Steve, opening the book and gazing down 'fondly,' so to speak, at the copyright page (because the modern person isn't always well served by the old adverbs), which also bore, beneath a thick film of polyethylene, the borrowing card of the hospital library he

had stolen it from. Not the hospital library from which he had stolen Aforethought: the library of the hospital to which Kirk had been transferred, after his second savaging by Beef. With tears in his eyes (andblood-soaked bandages all over his mouth) Kirk told Scozz that Lee was going to have Beef put down. Now Kirk wanted Scozz to go over and do Lee! Scozzy said, 'Don't talk rucking stupid.' Yet Kirk swore that Beefs death would not pass unavenged … If literary courtesy compelled him to have the author sign his own book, then Scozzy had an answer ready. Dreams Don't Mean Anything was in very good condition: as new. The wonky-hipped old dears, the wraiths in towel robes awaiting the results of tests, the stoical criminals on the mend from line-of-work spankings and stripings-none of them, apparently had sought solace or diversion in the pages of Dreams Don't Mean Anything …

'At the Warlock. You play with the other writer.'

'Gwyn.'

'Gwyn Barry. Best-seller.'

'That's him.'

'Numero uno. Beyond meteoric. Quite an achievement.'

'Yes, it is. Quite an achievement. When what you write is unadulterated shit.'

'Total crock.'

'The purest trex.'

'Complete crap.'

Richard looked at him. The eyes lit but narrowed. The bent slot of the mouth. A violent maniac who hated Gwyn's stuff. Why weren't there any more where he came from?

'With the junkie wife.'

'Demi? Demeter?'

'Who has a distinct liking for-for our colored brethren.'

'Oh come on.'

'Do you or do you not know how it goes? First off: she was a classic coke rat. In and out of those deluxe dryout joints. NA. All this. A big blond Lady who likes black stuff. You think that don't get around?'

'When was this? Why didn't it get around?'

'See, it's face. It's face. You're lying on a floor somewhere, right? All blissed out. The reason you're feeling so good is that Lance or whoever has just come in with the white bag and helped you pump it up your nose. And there's this great big solemn schwartzer staring down at you and holding out his hand the way they do.' He held out his hand the way they do, with palm slowly upturned. 'Everyone else, okay, they're half out of it, but not Lance, who touches nothing stronger than Lilt. You telling me she's going to say no to Lance? 'No thanks, mate'? With the political pressure on her? Half them pushers are only in it for the flip.' 'The what??

'The skirt. The women.'

Making it clear, making it entirely clear, how the young man felt about flip: how he felt about women. Often accused of this sin himself (though never by his wife), and largely innocent of it, in his view (in his view he was just candidly and averagely semi-fucked-up, along the usual male lines), Richard could spot genuine woman-hatred at twenty paces. It was something in the eyes or something in the mouth. The mouth,