London Fields by Martin Amis

Come back in an hour.'
    I played a mild hunch. That's what writing is, a hundred hunches, a hundred affronts to your confidence, a hundred decisions, every page. I said, 'There's no need for you to dress up for me. I'm not a contender in all this. I'm – disinterested. I won't stay long and I don't care how you look. I won't dissuade you . . .' There was a silence. Then she hung up. There was another silence. Then the buzzer sounded and I pressed my way through.
    It took me at least as long as it took Keith to get to the top. I passed the usual stuff: lurking bikes, the loathed mail of tan envelopes, mirrors, potted plants. On the last flight, past the inner door – you could feel it, well before she actually appeared on the stairs. Now I'm no chaser, and I failed in love, but I've felt these powerful feminine auras, these feminine shockwaves. Nothing like this, though, such intensity poised and cocked, and ready to go either way. Oh, entirely ready. And when she appeared at the top of the stairs – the white dressing-gown, the hair aslant over the unpainted face – I fielded the brutal thought that she'd just had fifteen lovers all at once, or fifteen periods. I followed her into the low room.
    'It's characteristic,' I said. 'Pleasantly anarchical.' Meaning the room. I couldn't get her to look up at me. Her demeanour appeared to express great reluctance, or even physical fear. But it's hard to know what's really happening, on a first date.
    'Do you want a drink or something?'
    'You have one.' A half-empty bottle of red wine stood on the table by the window. On another table Keith's flowers stood dying in their bowl. Nicola left the room; I heard the surge of the faucet; then she returned with the rinsed glass. The cork came off silently. Set against the clear light of the panes, the glass bore two faint smears of red, wine at the base, lipstick at the rim. Today's wine, yesterday's lipstick. She wore no lipstick now. Nor had her dressing-gown been recently washed. There was a certain pride in this. Her body had after all been recklessly adored, every inch of it. Even her secretions, even her waste (she perhaps felt), even her dust was adorable. She smelled of tragic sleep and tobacco. Not cigarette smoke but tobacco – moistly dark.
    Two wicker chairs faced each other, by the small table and its lamp. She sat in one chair and rested her feet on the other. The phone was at arm's length. So this was her telephone posture. I felt hope: she would communicate. I was looking at her but she wouldn't look at me. Everywhere else, but not at me.
    'Siddown,' she said wearily, indicating the couch. I placed the diaries on the floor at my feet. 'So you read them.' 'It wasn't difficult,' I said. 'I couldn't put them down.' She smiled to herself, secretively, so I added, 'You have a way with language, and with much else. In fact I'm envious.' 'Everything? You read everything.' 'Yup.' She blushed – to her fierce annoyance. It was quite a light-show for a while, the olive skin thickening with violet. Yes, some tints of rose were present in her darkness, She arranged the hem of her dressing-gown and said,
    'So you know all about my sexual. . .'
    'Your sexual . . . weakness? Predilection? Bugbear?'
    'Perversion.'
    'Oh. It's quite common.'
    'Is it?'
    She looked at me now all right. Her lower lip hung in considered hostility. I'd better get this one right, I thought. Or it could be all over. And if I wanted the truth from her, then I had to give the truth too. And I must have the truth.
    'Are you going "to go to the police" about it?' she asked.
    'We are most of us', I said, 'in some kind of agony. I'm not here to judge you.'
    'Thanks. What are you here for?'
    I was close to full confession, but I said, 'I'm just an observer. Or a listener.'
    'What's in it for me? For me you're just an unwelcome complication.'
    'Maybe not. Maybe I'll help simplify. I'm intrigued by what you say about the death of love . . . Nicola, let me be your