THE INFORMATION

'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.

Two children, two little girls wearing flower dresses and kinky up-pointing braids were playing in the garden of the detached pebbledash: swing, climbing frame, slide. Under thrashing trees. Such a scene struck no chord in Steve's past. Watch out, girls: here comes mum. Cooking in a track suit, with her face in the steam. Now she's calling out the kitchen window. Be there in a minute … Steve was in his Cosworth with its low racing skirt. He swiveled his neck: 13, asleep on the back seat. What did he do last night? Stole a double-decker and went to Scotland and back. The triangles of Steve's face-the equilateral, the isosceles, the scalene- stirred and recomposed themselves.

'I deplore gratuitous violence,' Steve used to say. Which was untrue, which was well known to be untrue. One of his nicknames was Gratuitous.

'Jesus,' said 13.

Steve turned: gone back to sleep again … Richard Tull intelligent? Steve knew wholesalers who were just down from Oxbridge or wherever. Twenty-two, twenty-three, and they had a chain of command that covered five thousand miles, with Afghani army captains, Japanese diplomats, and British customs officers all on their payroll. That was intelligent. That was organized. With drugs, with supplying, you tended to go on and on until you exploded like a tick full of blood. And big time was just a big drag. Considering the business he was in, it was prudent to have your

midlife crisis at the age of twenty-nine. Now what? He had money. But

he couldn't see himself taking the usual route. Running a bar in Tenerife. Flogging San Migs and scotch eggs and screening FedExed videos of 'Match of the Day.' Probably that's all different now. They got Sky.

chained playground some large and muffled figure creaked alone and pleasurelessly on the pendulum of the swing; it stopped, and then started again, in a slower but no less desperate rhythm … The night before Richard had dreamed that he was having an unhappy love affair with his own son Marius. 'Let's not do it any more,' Marius had said. And Richard had said, 'Yes-let's not.' And Marius had said, 'Because Daddy, if you do, it means you're inadequant.' Inadequant. Ah, innit sweet.

Gal Aplanalp called.

She said at the outset that she had an unfortunate coincidence to report.

Richard sat there, waiting. He felt far from resilient. His right ear still throbbed from its recent hour with Anstice. And then Gwyn, newly returned, had phoned in a knuckle-whitening celebration of Italian warmth, generosity, erudition and discernment-and Italian willingness to buy a novel called Amelior in record numbers.

'Tell me about it,' said Richard.

On Tuesday, Gal explained, her assistant, Cressida, had stayed at home to apply herself to Untitled. So Cressida didn't go to work on Tuesday. And Cressida didn't go to work on Wednesday either, or on Thursday. Why was this? Because halfway through Tuesday morning, and halfway through the anomalously brief first chapter of Untitled, Cressida had suffered an