Free The Butt by Will Self

made no move to look in the bag. ‘Don’t get me off the point, young man, this is important. You probably think – or you’ve been told by that tight-ass Adams – if you lay out for my medical bills, it’ll play well with the Intwennyfortee mob, but it ain’t that way at all . . .’ He tailed off, and Tom realized that even this short speech had exhausted Lincoln.
    He made to disengage his hand from the old man’s, while muttering, ‘I don’t want to tire you out–’
    But Lincoln gripped Tom’s hand tighter. ‘I’m inquivoo, see, nothing I say or do counts for any damn thing any more. Thing is’ – he looked at the door through which the nurse had exited, as if he suspected she might be eavesdropping – ‘you’re nothing until you’ve had the cut.’ His hand tightened still more, his voice grated up the scale. ‘The cut, Tommy boy, the cut – you gotta have it! Now, Tommy boy, now!’
    Lincoln’s insistence on ‘the cut’ – whatever that might be – jarred Tom, as did his bad-mouthing Adams. On leaving the hospital, he finally followed Martha’s advice and called the embassy, which was in Capital City, 5,000 miles to the south, across the desert heart of the crumpled island-continent.
    After holding and holding again, being transferred from this clerical assistant to that secretary, he finally spoke to a junior attaché. To begin with the woman’s chirpy tone was as redolent of home as a ball-game commentary. ‘Uh-huh, sure, I see,’ she interjected as Tom explained his predicament. He tried not to sound as if he had misgivings concerning the Honorary Consul, but the attaché still picked them up. ‘Look, Mr Brodzinski,’ she sighed. ‘I appreciate that you’re in a pretty lousy situation, but there’s not a lot we can do from way down here. Adams is the man on the spot, and he has the full support of the Ambassador. He’s sent us a report, and he’s confident it can be settled without any jail time.
    ‘If I were you, Mr Brodzinski, I’d go with him on this one. Should anything left-field emerge from the prelim’ hearing, either someone from my department will come up or, if the judge permits it, you can fly down here for a meeting.
    ‘One thing’s for sure, sir, and that’s our mission: we never, ever, leave our citizens out in the cold. Citizenship is a sacred bond for us – you should appreciate that. No matter what one of our own is accused of, he remains exactly that: one of our own.’
    Out in the cold . What a ridiculous expression, Tom thought, as the cellphone slipped between his sweaty fingers.
    But then, as Tom tried to convey the absurdity of a mere accident being treated as a crime, the attaché’s manner changed abruptly, her tone becoming clipped. ‘See here,’ she said. ‘I’m not in a position either to judge your intentions or even to know exactly what it is you did. One thing I do know is that Mr Lincoln is an elderly man, and a very sick one. Another thing I know for a fact is that cigarette smoking is both personally and publically injurious–’
    ‘I was giving up!’ Tom spat into the cell. ‘It was my last goddamn cigarette!’
    ‘I’m going to have to stop you right there, Mr Brodzin-ski.’ The attaché’s prissiness was shot through with menacing self-righteousness. ‘Embassy staff have the right to undertake our work free from the threat of physical violence or verbal intimidation. I’m going to have to terminate this call immediately, as a direct result of your speech acts. I suggest you cool off and pay a little more attention to your own responsibilities, rather than seeking more victims for your dangerous hostility.’
    Later, sitting on his corpse of a bed at the Entreati, it occurred to to Tom that this conversation had been a sickening replay of the butt-flick itself: an unthinking ejaculation into the attaché’s ear, followed by a massive overreaction.
    Musing in this way brought Tom Brodzinski closer to the essence of what had