Martin Amis - Heavy Water: and Other Stories  

Wildly diverse. [Heavy Water and Other Stories] showcases Amis extravagant talents and splashy intellect.

Time

[Heavy Water and Other Stories] demands to be read and re-read.

The Economist Review

Count on Martin Amis to take risks. He is contemporary Britains shape-shifter of fiction.

Newsday

Amis is hilariously eloquent.

The Plain Dealer

Martin Amis [has] persuasively established himself as one of his generations most ambitious and technically daring writers.

The New York Times

Amis throws off more provocative ideas and images in a single paragraph than most writers get into complete novels.

Seattle Times

FICTION

The Rachel Papers

Dead Babies

Success

Other People

Money

Einsteins Monsters

London Fields

Times Arrow

The Information

Night Train

NONFICTION

Invasion of the Space Invaders

The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America

Visiting Mrs. Nabokov and Other Excursions

MARTIN AMIS

HEAVY WATER

AND OTHER STORIES

Martin Amiss books include Money, Dead Babies, The Rachel Papers, The Moronic Inferno, Einsteins Monsters, London Fields, Times Arrow, The Information, and Night Train. He lives in London.

FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, MARCH 2000

Copyright 1998 by Martin Amis

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd., London, in 1998, and subsequently in the United States by Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Harmony Books edition as follows:
Amis, Martin.
Heavy water and other stories / Martin Amis.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78739-2
Contents: Career moveDentons deathState of EnglandLet me count the timesThe coincidence of the artsHeavy waterThe janitor on MarsStraight fictionWhat happened to me on my holiday. I. Title.
PR6051.M5H4 1999
823.914dc21 98-21779

Author photograph Quina Fonseca

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

To Delilah and Fernanda

W HEN ALISTAIR FINISHED his new screenplay, Offensive from Quasar 13, he submitted it to the LM, and waited. Over the past year, he had had more than a dozen screenplays rejected by the Little Magazine. On the other hand, his most recent submission, a batch of five, had been returned not with the standard rejection slip but with a handwritten note from the screenplay editor, Hugh Sixsmith. The note said:

I was really rather taken with two or three of these, and seriously tempted by Hotwire, which I thought close to being fully achieved. Do please go on sending me your stuff.

Hugh Sixsmith was himself a screenplay writer of considerable, though uncertain, reputation. His note of encouragement was encouraging. It made Alistair brave.

Boldly he prepared Offensive from Quasar 13 for submission. He justified the pages of the typescript with fondly lingering fingertips. Alistair did not address the envelope to the Screenplay Editor. No. He addressed it to Mr. Hugh Sixsmith. Nor, for once, did he enclose his curriculum vitae, which he now contemplated with some discomfort. It told, in a pitiless staccato, of the screenplays he had published in various laptop broadsheets and comically obscure pamphlets; it even told of screenplays published in his university magazine. The truly disgraceful bit came at the end, where it said Rights Offered: First British Serial only.

Alistair spent a long time on the covering note to Sixsmithalmost as long as he had spent on Offensive from Quasar 13. The note got shorter and shorter the more he worked on it. At last he was satisfied. There in the dawn he grasped the envelope and ran his tongue across its darkly luminous cuff.

That Friday, on his way to work, and suddenly feeling completely hopeless, Alistair surrendered his parcel to the sub post office in Calchalk Street, off the Euston Road. Deliberatelyvery deliberatelyhe had enclosed no stamped, addressed envelope. The accompanying letter, in its entirety, read as follows: Any use? If notw.p.b.

W.p.b. stood, of course, for wastepaper basketa receptacle that loomed forbiddingly large in the life of a practicing screenplay writer. With a hand on his brow, Alistair sidled his way out of therepast the birthday cards, the tensed pensioners, the envelopes, and the balls of string.

When Luke finished the new poementitled, simply, Sonnethe photocopied the printout and faxed it to his agent. Ninety minutes later he returned from the gym downstairs and prepared his special fruit juice while the answering machine told him, among many other things, to get back to Mike. Reaching for an extra lime, Luke touched the preselect for Talent International.

Ah. Luke, said Mike. Its moving. Weve already had a response.

Yeah, how come? Its four in the morning where he is.

No, its eight in the evening where he is. Hes in Australia. Developing a poem with Peter Barry.

Luke didnt want to hear about Peter Barry. He bent and tugged off his tank top. Walls and windows maintained a respectful distancethe room was a broad seam of sun haze and river light. Luke sipped his juice: its extreme astringency caused him to lift both elbows and give a single, embittered nod. He said, What did he think?

Joe? He did backflips. Its Tell Luke Im blown away by the new poem. I just know that Sonnet is really going to happen.

Luke took this coolly. He wasnt at all old but he had been in poetry long enough to take these things coolly. He turned. Suki, who had been shopping, was now letting herself into the apartment, not without difficulty. She was indeed cruelly encumbered. Luke said, You havent talked numbers yet. I mean like a ballpark figure.

Mike said, We understand each other. Joe knows about Monads interest. And Tim at TCT.

Good, said Luke. Suki was wandering slenderly toward him, shedding various purchases as she approachedcreels and caskets, shining satchels.

Theyll want you to go out there at least twice, said Mike. Initially to discuss They cant get over it that you dont live there.

Luke could tell that Suki had spent much more than she intended. He could tell by the quality of patience in her sigh as she began to lick the sweat from his shoulderblades. He said, Come on, Mike. They know I hate all that L.A. crap.