The Sweet Smell of Psychosis by Will Self

Two men stood by a window in one of the private rooms of the Sealink Club, and watched a third who was hovering around on the corner of D'Arblay Street. The man they were watching was plump, in his late thirties and wearing a mid-price trench coat. His thin, brown hair wasn't making it all the way over his pate. The two watchers could see this distinctly, because they were four flights up and looking more or less straight down.
    ‘I don't think he's going to do it,’ said Richard Hermes. ‘I think he's going to go home to wifey.’
    ‘I’m not so sure,’ , replied his companion, Todd Reiser, taking a pull on the joint they were sharing. ‘He almost definitely wants to – it's just a question of getting his bottle together.’
    The man on the corner moved to the edge of the kerb, as if about to cross the road and head off, but then turned once more to look at the building behind him.It was a nondescript place, made timeless by grime, the portico studded with bellpushes. Even though Richard couldn't make them out at this range, he knew that above the bellpushes were Sellotaped bits of paper or card with ‘MODEL’ written on them. There was also a freestanding sign to one side of the doorway, like the ones that rotate in the slipstream by roadside petrol stations, displaying first the legend ‘PETROL’ and then the legend ‘DERV’. But this sign simply stated ‘MODEL’, and when it revolved reiterated it.
    The trench-coated potential punter was havering once more, rocking from heels to toes on the very edge of the pavement. ‘Five quid says he'll do it,’ Todd said, pulling a crumpled note from the side pocket of his jacket.
    ‘All right, you're on.’ Richard didn't want the man on the corner to go up and fuck one of the brasses. Richard wanted him to walk down to Tottenham Court Road and take the Central Line back to Parsons Green, or Turnham Green, or whichever Green it was he lived at, and stroll back from the station to wifey, with his conscience clear and his cock unscented with spermicidal lubricant. Richard wanted this quite passionately.
    Suddenly, as if the man were actually responding to the thoughts of the two voyeurs, he turned on the spot, glanced quickly up and down the street, and bolted into the building. Richard and Todd continued to watch as his – now distinctive – profile appeared first at the window of the first-floor landing, then at the window of the second, then the third.
    ‘Must be viewing the merchandise on the up escalator,’ Todd sneered.
    ‘Or perhaps he knows where he's going,’ Richard replied.
    Then they couldn't see him any more. Richard sighed, trying to picture what was going on in there. The uneven floor of the brass's room, thinly, dunly carpeted. The bed – what could that possibly be like? A vessel built for a thousand short transports, none of them delightful. A roll-on, roll-off kind of bed, collapsed and pummelled. Richard imagined the odour of the place, compounded of the cheapest of perfumes, cigarette smoke, legions of cocks, more legions of condoms. Over it all the almost faecal odour of baby oil. And what of the brass herself? Some grimacing ugly, Richard decided, coldly presenting her dry gash to the baldingman as he took off his trench coat, folded it, placed it on a three-legged chair.
    ‘Where's that fiver then?’ Todd interrupted his thoughts, stamped on them with his leather-sole tongue. Then he passed Richard the joint, which was by now little more than a stub. Richard faffed around trying to avoid burning himself while he forced his hand into the tight pocket of his jeans.
    But the trench-coated man had reappeared. He came out of the front door of the knocking shop at a brisk trot.
    ‘Look at him!’ Todd expostulated. ‘He's got the wind up him now.’
    Richard ceased looking for the fiver. ‘You've lost,’ he said.
    ‘Whassat?’
    ‘You've lost,’ Richard said again. ‘I mean to say, no one could have fucked anybody in the time he was