Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis Read Free Book Online

looked up at the glass window above Fielding's head. The middle-management of Manhattan stared on, their faces as thin as credit cards.
    'Okay,' said Fielding. 'You want to serve?'
    'You do it.'
    I watched Fielding bend forward, pat the ball, then straighten up to aim his gun. My serve is no more than a convulsion which occasionally produces a baseline overhead. But Fielding was precise in his stance, measured in his action, with a touch of the severity that all natural ballplayers have. What is it with ballplayers? What is it about roundness that they understand better than we do? The world is round. They understand that too.
    His opening serve I didn't see at all. It fizzed past me, losing its definition for a moment on the centre line, before thwacking first bounce into the green canvas behind my back. The passage of the ball seemed to leave a comet's trail of yellow against the artificial green of the court.
    'Nice one,' 1 called, and trudged across in my black socks and checked Bermudas. This time I managed to get a line on Fielding's first serve: it smacked into the tape with a volume that made me whimper — the sound of a strong hand slapping a strong belly. I edged up a few feet as Fielding daintily removed the second ball from the pocket of his tailored shorts. I twirled my racket and swayed around a bit... But his second serve was a real dilly too. Hit late and low with what I guessed was a backhand grip, the ball came looping over the net, landed deep, and kicked like a bastard. It jumped so high that I could return it only with a startled half-smash. Fielding had come sauntering up to the net, of course, and angled the ball away with acute dispatch. He aced me again at thirty-love, but on the last point of the game I got another crack at that second serve of his. I stood my ground and lobbed the brute, quite accurately, and Fielding had to stroll back from the service line to retrieve it. That lob was my last shot, really. I was never a contender after that. We had a rally of sorts: Fielding stood at the centre of his base line while I hurled myself around the court. Put it away, I kept telling him, but there were a good few strokes exchanged before he chose to place the ball beyond my reach.
    We switched ends. I didn't meet his eye. I hoped he couldn't hear my hoarse gasps for air. I hoped he couldn't smell — I hoped he couldn't see—the junk-fumes swathing my face like heat-ripple. As I took position I glanced up at our audience in their high aquarium. They were smiling down.
    My opening serve flopped into the net, six inches from the ground. My second serve is a dolly and Fielding murdered it in his own sweet time, leaning back before putting all his weight into the stroke. I didn't even chase his return. The same thing happened on the next point. At love-thirty I served so blind and wild that Fielding simply reached out and caught the ball on the volley. He pocketed it and strolled forward a few paces - several paces. I moved wide and, in petulant despair, hit my second serve as if it were my first. And it went in! Fielding was less surprised than I was but he only just got his racket to the ball — and he was so insultingly far advanced that his return was nothing more than a skied half-volley. The yellow ball plopped down invitingly in the centre of my court. I hit it pretty low, hard and deep to Fielding's backhand and lumbered cautiously up to the net. A big mistake. Fielding chose this moment to untether a two-fisted topspin drive. The ball came screaming over the tape, skipped a beat, regathered its tilt and momentum—and punched me in the face. I toppled over backwards and my racket fell with a clatter. For several shocked seconds I lay there like an old dog, an old dog that wants its old belly stroked. Now how's this going to look? I got to my feet. I rubbed my nose.
    'You okay, Slick?'
    'Yeah. I'm cool,' I murmured. I bent down for my racket, and straightened up. Behind the glass wall the