Amnesia by Peter Carey Read Free Book Online Page B

bewigged QC who patted her familiarly, the creep.
    Now, I thought, my wait is over. This woman needs me. Then a day passed, then another, then one more. I woke to discover bottles and pizza cartons and cold French fries littered over my quilt.
    My first thought was that Woody had got legless and trashed his own apartment. This was not a rash conclusion. I had been drunk with him many times and had witnessed a whole spectrum of behaviour that went from hiding raw prawns inside a motel’s hollow curtain rods to sharing the logic of a real estate development that would cost him $30 million. He could be rude, crude and sentimental, but throughout it all he had been my protector, never embarrassed to be an admirer or a servant to a higher cause.
    I had been pleased but not at all surprised when he came to sit with me in court each day. I cannot describe the comfort. That was how we had been together all our lives. He was, he said so often, “a fan.” It was only when my attention moved beyond the shocking debris on my bed, when I read the notes sellotaped around the bedroom wall, that I understood there had been a tectonic shift in our relationship. My fan was now my boss.
    YOU ARE PAID TO WRITE, NOT EAT YOURSELF TO DEATH.
    He awaited me at breakfast, dressed like a patron Pope in a carmine jogging suit, twin white stripes down each side. My computer was on hisgenerous lap and he was opening my files which contained all sorts of shit he had no business reading. The secrets of Celine’s mad mother and the imaginary father were not the worst of it.
    “It’s only notes, mate.”
    “I can’t publish your fucking notes,” he cried. “I want whole pages with proper spelling and punctuation. Australianise her, for Christ’s sake. Please, Feels. Be a sport.”
    I said I would prefer him not to read my files.
    For reply he slammed the MacBook shut and threw it on the table top.
    “Do you think we control the duration of the discovery process? How long will it take? Five months? A year? If there is going to be an extradition request we need your book in the stores by the time it happens. You saw her on TV? You think she’s cute, right? You got a hard-on just watching her. But listen to me, she’s on the spectrum. She’s scary. She does not respond normally.”
    “I need background. That’s what you’ve been reading on my laptop. Background notes.”
    “ My laptop,” he corrected. “It’s foreground I’m paying for, mate. That’s what we need. Do what you always do. Did you really go to the war in Bougainville? No. Was the piece impeccable? Absolutely. You’re a genius. Make it up, and most of all make the bitch loveable, all right?”
    “She won’t be like that, Woody. Remarkable people never are.”
    “Come on, Feels. Who’s the big sook who sat with you in court and smelled your socks all day? Who applauded when you told the court that there was no such thing as objective journalism?”
    “That was not a defence of making things up.”
    “Extrapolate, isn’t that how you explained it? Be intuitive. You want some useful advice? Don’t make this story all about yourself. That’s what pisses people off. That’s why they don’t like you. That is why you are always in the shit. No offence.”
    This was hurtful, and yet the very peculiar thing about the history of patrons is how often the most ignorant and barbaric amongst them have shaped great works of art. Only because of this offensive speech did I finally glimpse what my book might really be.
    “And for Chrissakes go and buy some clothes.”
    “I am waiting for her to make contact.”
    “You think you can dress like this for your interviews? What if you end up on TV? Get decent. Buy clean socks too. Go. I’ll wait here until you come back.”
    So it was, strolling across the Swanston Street bridge for the first time in forty years, I found myself swimming in the giddiness of time, knowing exactly where I was and having no idea at all. I chose to go to