Heavy Water and Other Stories

fumes and echoes and the heap of cheap clamps, gasping, dripping, jetsam of the machine age.

7. SAD SPRINTER

“Operagoers.”

Sheilagh said, “Operagoers?”

“Operagoers. Okay, it was a bit of a liberty, me and Fat Lol. You could argue we was out of order…”

“You sure it was operagoers?”

“Yeah. I thought it might have been a premiere crowd. Been to a Royal Premiere or something.” Mal and Linzi had recently attended a Royal Premiere, at considerable expense. And he thought it must have been decades since he had been with a rougher crew: fifteen hundred trogs in dinner jackets, plus their molls. “No, they left programs. The Coliseum. They ain’t nice, you know, She,” he cautioned her. Sheilagh had a weakness for films in which the aristocracy played cute. “The contempt. They were like vicious.”

“I’ve been to the Coliseum. They do it in English. It’s better because you can tell what’s going on.”

Mal nodded long-sufferingly.

“You can follow the story.”

He nodded a second time.

“You doing the dads’ race?”

“Well I got to now.”

“With your face in that state? You’re no good on your own, Mal. You’re no good on your own.”

Mal turned away. The shrubs, the falling leaves—the trees: what kind were they? Even in California… Even in California all he knew of nature was the mild reek of rest stops when he pulled over, in his chauffeur’s cap, for leaks between cities (a can made of nature and butts and book matches), or lagoon-style restaurants where mobsters ate lobsters; one year She came out with little Jet for a whole term (not a success) and Mal learned that American schools regarded tomato ketchup as a vegetable. And throughout his life there had been symbols, like fruit machines and hospital fruit salads and the plastic fruit on his mother’s hat, forty years ago, at his Sports Day. And his dad’s curt haircut and Sunday best. Say what you like about forty years ago. Say what you like about his parents, and everyone else’s, then, but the main thing about them was that they were married, and looked it, and dressed it, and meant it.

She said, “If you come back—don’t do it if you don’t mean it.”

“No way,” he said. “No way, no day. No shape, no form…”

With a nod she started off, and Mal followed. Mal followed, watching the rhythmic but asymmetrical rearrangements of her big womanly backside, where all her strength and virtue seemed to live, her character, her fathom. And he could see it all. Coming through the door for the bear hug with Jet, and then the hug of Momma Bear and Poppa Bear. The deep-breathing assessment of all he had left behind. And the smile coagulating on his face. Knowing that in ten minutes, twenty, two hours, twenty-four, he would be back out the door with Jet’s arms round his knees, his ankles, like a sliding tackle, and She behind him somewhere, flushed, tousled, in a light sweat of readiness to continue with the next fuck or fight, to continue, to continue. And Mal’d be out the door, across the street at Linzi’s, watching Asian Babes and freeing his mind of all thoughts about the future… As he stepped over the fence he looked toward the car park and—whoops—there she was, Linzi, his Asian babe, perched on the low boot of her MG Midget. Sheilagh paused. Linzi on her car boot, She in her boiler suit. Boots and boilers. Where was transformation? If Linzi wanted new breasts, a new bum—if she wanted to climb into a catsuit made out of a teenager—then it was absolutely A-okay with Mal.

“Dad?”

“Jet mate.”

“They’re ready.”

Mal kicked off his tasselled loafers and started limbering up: A! He was giving Jet his jacket to hold when his mobile rang.

“Lol! Been trying you all day, mate. Some Arab answered.”

Fat Lol said he’d had to flog it: his mobile.

“How come?”

His van got clamped!

“Tell me about it. They did me BM!”

You and all!

“Yeah. Look, can’t talk, boy. Got a race to run.”

Fat Lol said he was going to do something tonight.

“Yeah?”

Onna car alarms.

“Yeah?”

“Dad? They’re waiting. Boost it.”

“I’m on it, mate. Bye, son.”

“And don’t fuck up,” said Jet.

“When do I ever?”

“You’re a crap sprinter, Dad.”

“You what?”

“You’re a sad sprinter.”

“Oh yeah? Watch this.”

The dads were in a rank on the starting line: Bern, Nusrat, Fardous, Someth, Adrian, Mikio, Paratosh and the rest of them, no great differences in age but all at various stages along the track, waistlines, hairlines, worldlines, with various c.v.s of separation, contentment, estrangement, some of their dads dead, some of their mums still living. Mal joined them. This was the dads’ race. But dads are always racing, against each other, against themselves. That’s what dads do.

It was the gunshot that made the herd stampede. Instantly Mal felt about nineteen things go at once. All the links and joins—hip, knee, ankle, spine—plus an urgent liquefaction on the side of his face. After five stumbling bounds the pain barrier was on him and wouldn’t get out of the way. But the big man raced on, as you’ve got to do. The dads raced on, with heavy ardor, and thundering, their feet stockinged or gym-shoed but all in the wooden clogs of their years. Their heads bent back, their chests outthrust, they gasped and slavered for the turn in the track and the post at the end of the straight.

New Yorker, 1996

LET ME COUNT THE TIMES

VERNON MADE LOVE to his wife three and a half times a week, and this was all right.

For some reason, making love always averaged out that way. Normally—though by no means invariably—they made love every second night. On the other hand Vernon had been known to make love to his wife seven nights running; for the next seven nights they would not make love—or perhaps they would once, in which case they would make love the following week only twice but four times the week after that—or perhaps only three times, in which case they would make love four times the next week but only twice the week after that—or perhaps only once. And so on. Vernon didn’t know why, but making love always averaged out that way; it seemed invariable. Occasionally —and was it any wonder?—Vernon found himself wishing that the week contained only six days, or as many as eight, to render these calculations (which were always blandly corroborative in spirit) easier to deal with.

It was, without exception, Vernon himself who initiated their conjugal acts. His wife responded every time