THE INFORMATION

like the palette of a busy artist: some modern primitive who worked in pastels.

'Bung it in the fucking MW,' Darko decided.

MW equaled microwave. That was good. The word had fewer syllables than its abbreviation. Especially good, especially self-defeating, because the microwave was a device intended to cheat time. Anyway Darko had already heated it, and was already eating it-his mango pizza or pomegranate rissole-with both hands… On a video he'd hired and admired, Richard remembered the motorist hero referring to his FWD, or four-wheel drive. One might add that there are certain frolicsome cosmologists who refer to 'the WYSIWYG universe,' or 'What You See Is What YouGet.' To be fair, this isn't an abbreviation but an acronym. They don't actually stand there and say Double-U-Why-Ess-Eye-Double-U-Why-Gee. They stand there and say Wysiwig. Those assholes. Whom we ask to do the job of wondering how we're here. The wysiwyg universe is the one in which dark matter, the overarching shadow comprising perhaps 97 percent of universal mass, remains unexotic, the usual proton- neutron-electron arrangement, just planets, possibly, bigger than Jupiter but not big enough to shine, 'massive compact halo objects,' known (what is it with these guys?) as MACHOS. What is it with these guys? The 'free lunch' universe. The 'designer' universe. The 'charisma bypass' universe? Sending their minds back eighteen billion years, they reach for catchphrases that were getting old eighteen months ago.

'Will Belladonna be joining us? And tell me more,' said Richard, making sure there was plenty of amusement in his tone, 'about her thing with Gwyn Barry.'

Darko held up a ringer while he finished a demanding mouthful, one that involved much tongue work on all four sets of molars. At last he said, 'Who?'

'Belladonna.'

'You mean Diva. She's called Diva now. Now I don't know Diva mega-well.'

'Is that right.'

'With men, everywhere you look there's Divagate.'

No, not divagate: Divagate. Like Watergate, etcetera.

'A lot going on,' Richard suggested. 'More than meets the eye.'

'She gives good girlrock, I reckon. Yep.'

Richard went on standing there.

'Oh yeh,' said Darko with resignation. 'Diva's wild for the wild thing.'

'Have you known her mega-long? Where is she, for instance?'

Darko excused himself and left the room through a door beyond the kitchen. When he came back he looked at Richard suddenly and said, 'Who are you?'

'Richard. Who are you?'

'Ranko.'

'You mean Darko.'

'Darko is my twin brother. He's Croat. I'm Serb. We look the same but we've got nothing in common.'

'Well you both eat pizza. You've still got a bit of it hanging from your mustache.'

The man stood there neutrally, continuing to clean his teeth with his tongue. 'She's getting up,' he said. 'Me I'm off out.?

Richard was alone in the room he should never have entered for only five or six turbulent seconds, while one door closed and another opened. If you could have micro-monitored this time frame you would have found: fear of injury, disease and murder, fear of the dark that was now descending, fear of poverty, of poor rooms, fear of Gina and her swelling irises; despair for the stranded self and its timidly humming blood; and, among all these fears and hates, the sense of relief, of clarity and surety a man feels, at the prospect of temptation, when he knows he has washed his cock before leaving the house. He took one smeared glance at Diva as she came slanting into the room and thought: hopeless. He's safe. I'm safe. Not deadly nightshade. Just poison ivy. We're all safe.

'Hi.'

'Hi.'

'Richard,' she said.

'Diva.'

She turned a full circle and looked up at him, saying, 'Belladonna. That's me.'

Richard surveyed her, now (he felt), with a census-taker's detachment. No doubt she would have laughed in his face to hear him say so (she was probably a goth or a grrrl or a bombo: I haven't yet read the Saturday newspapers, he thought, with a self-fortifying swallow, but Belladonna was a punk. That is to say, she had gone at herself as if to obliterate the natural gifts. Her mascara she wore like a burglar's eye- mask; her lipstick was approximate and sanguinary, her black hair spiked and lopped and asymmetrical, like the pruned trees outside the window. Punk was physical democracy. And it said: let's all be ugly together. This notion held a lot of automatic appeal for Richard-for Richard, who would not mind being poor if no one was rich, who would not mind looking rough if no one looked smooth, who would not mind being old if no one was young. He certainly didn't mind being nuts, though, however many were sane; in fact he was really enjoying it, and believed it was the only good thing that had happened to him for years. She was very young and very small and very brown. With effective perversity she wore her underwear as overwear: floppy pink knickers over the black cycling pants; tight white bra emblazoning the black T-shirt. Her voice was London. Richard could not place her, ethnically. He thought she probably came from some island.

She said, 'You're not like I imagined you.'

'Really?' This was a novel idea: that anyone imagined him. He said lightly, 'You mean I'm different from my book reviews?'

Belladonna looked for somewhere to sit down, and selected the sofa.

'You're not as I imagined you either.?

'Yeah?'

'You're so young. I don't know. You don't seem to be Gwyn's type.'

'He's like … in love with me.'

With a defiant shake or twitch of the head. On the word love.

'Is he now?' said Richard as he sat beside her. She was gazing down at her clasped hands: anchorectic Belladonna. He found himself entertaining the reckless hope that she was already pregnant. 'And how do you feel about that?'

'Pleased, obviously. Proud. I know he's married or whatever.'

'Are you .. .? I mean has this been going on long?'

She smiled secretively. 'You know what my thing is? Read my lips.' My thing, she said silently, is my mouth.

'Your mouth.'

'That's what they call me: The Gob. The Mush. Ever since I was little I had this mouth.' My thing is my mouth. I'm famous for my mouth.

'You're still little,' said Richard.

Here, he thought, we had the second punk principle. Everyone their own artist. Everyone their own legend. That guy's thing is to have a kilo of old newspapers glued to his hair, that girl's to wear a clothespeg through her cheek. Belladonna's thing was her mouth. Richard felt the contradiction (or would later feel it: he was busy now), because the talent was still no-talent, still idly particular, with no claim on the universal. It picked on a contradiction of Richard's. He wouldn't mind having no genius, if no one else had any? No, not true. He did want people to have it, genius; he wanted it to be out there.

Come and look, Belladonna mouthed. Look