THE INFORMATION

"With the junkie wife."

"Demi? Demeter?"

"Who has a distinct liking for-for our colored brethren."

"Oh come on."

"Do you or do you not know how it goes? First off: she was a classic coke rat. In and out of those deluxe dryout joints. NA. All this. A big blond Lady who likes black stuff. You think that don't get around?"

"When was this? Why didn't it get around?"

"See, it's face. It's face. You're lying on a floor somewhere, right? All blissed out. The reason you're feeling so good is that Lance or whoever has just come in with the white bag and helped you pump it up your nose. And there's this great big solemn schwartzer staring down at you and holding out his hand the way they do." He held out his hand the way they do, with palm slowly upturned. "Everyone else, okay, they're half out of it, but not Lance, who touches nothing stronger than Lilt. You telling me she's going to say no to Lance? 'No thanks, mate'? With the political pressure on her? Half them pushers are only in it for the flip." "The what??

"The skirt. The women."

Making it clear, making it entirely clear, how the young man felt about flip: how he felt about women. Often accused of this sin himself (though never by his wife), and largely i

"Her dad's the Earl of…"

"Rieveaulx," said Richard, supplying the simple duosyllable-and intercepting (he imagined) the young man's Polack tonguetwister.

"Big co

"Fascinating," said Richard, who, at this stage, was sleepily considering the lunch he might soon arrange with Rory Plantagenet.

Steve had straightened up. He was looking shrewdly at the copyright page of Dreams Don't Mean Anything: there, opposite the pristine borrowing form. If Richard offered to sign it (which, as it happened, he never got round to) Steve would say that he'd fished it out of a cardboard box on the Portobello Road and paid thirty pee for it. He didn't know about literary pride, about literary face: not yet.

"I see-I see it was published . .. way back. What? You uh …"

"This very morning I delivered the new one. Breaking a long silence, as they say."

"Yeah? What's it called?"

Richard readied himself. "Untitled."

"Nice. Here's to it. Cheers."

"Cheers. All this with Demi." He was thinking: Demi doesn't drink. He was thinking of Demi at di

"My arse. Public relations that is. Don't want to believe everything you see on TV"

"How do you know all this?"

"You remember a Mrs. Shields? Cooks for them. Or did."

"Yeah," said Richard, with slow emphasis but without commitment. "That's my brother's mum." "… Your mum."

"Half brother."

"Same dad," said Richard, who unfortunately chose this moment to look at his watch. If he had gone on looking across the table he would have known for sure that the young man didn't have a half brother. Or a mum. Or a dad.

"She said she'd never seen a newlywed cry so much."

"And why would that be?"

"She wants kids: Catholic. And he won't have them."

Richard sipped his Rattlesnake with some wariness. He was wondering how good at walking he was going to turn out to be, when the time came. There was still a pretty good guy in here, he reckoned. But his voice was slipping from baritone to bass; and he knew the signs. He said,

"What do you do?"

"You've forgotten my name, haven't you? You've forgotten it."

"Yes. Come to think of it. I've completely forgotten it."

Again the hand was flexed out towards him, tense, vertical-the shot card.

"Steve Cousins. What do I do? Well I could say 'this and that.' As some do. 'Me? Ah you know. This and that.' You know. 'Bit of this. Bit of that.' Thing is I'm in a more fluid thing now. I don't need to interact now, financially. Semiretired if you like. My main activities now are what you'd call recreational."

For a moment they studied each other: quid pro quo. To Richard (who was "pixelated," and thoroughly, in the old sense), Steve looked like a white-and-gray chessboard: like a forensic suspect on TV, his face smeared into squares. To Steve (who was Sunday-best sober, as always), Richard looked like an artistic two-dimensionalization of himself, hollow, wavery, approximate and rendered with minimum talent: the work of a court portraitist. Richard was a witness. Richard was a character witness.

"So?" said Richard. He sipped and waited.

And Scozzy shrugged and said, "I fuck people up."

Richard turned in his seat. He felt that this called for another Rattlesnake.

The Little Magazine now lived in Soho, where it had only recently arrived and would not long remain. The Little Magazine had seen better days. The offices of The Little Magazine were little offices, and the rent was overdue.

The Little Magazine was born and raised in a five-story Georgian town house next to the Soane Museum in Lincoln's I

The Little Magazine, for many years now, had lurked and lurched across town with the ruddily averted face of bum or bag lady. Evicted often and forcibly from this or that blighted flatlet, it sometimes lingered in the dark behind the beaten door like a reeking squatter in his vest. The money was ru