Free London Fields by Martin Amis

and Keith generally preferred the other kind, the glamour kind. The demeanour of the glamour model proclaimed that you could do what you liked with her. The demeanour of the fashion model proclaimed that she could do what she liked with you. Besides, and more basically, Keith generally preferred short girls with thick short legs and big breasts (no theoretical limit) and fat bums – girls in the mould of Trish Shirt and Peggy Obbs, of Debbee Kensit (who was special) and Analiese Furnish. The legs appeared to be particularly important. Keith couldn't help noticing that the legs he most often forced open, the legs he most often found dangling over his shoulders, tended to be exceptionally thick in the ankle, tended, in fact, to be ankleless, and exceptionally thick in the calf. He had concluded that fat legs were what he must generally prefer. The discovery pleased Keith at first, then perplexed and even worried him, because he had never thought of himself as being fussy. Nicola's ankles: you were surprised they could bear all that height and body. Perhaps she just wasn't his type. Oh, but she was. Something told him that she definitely, she deeply was.
    Nicola moved on. Keith followed. Other possibilities aside, she interested Keith in the same way that Guy Clinch or old Lady Barnaby interested him. She was in the A.1. bracket. Keith wasn't the sort of bloke who disapproved of people who had a lot of money. He liked there to be people who had a lot of money, so that he could cheat them out of it. Keith was sorry, but he wouldn't want to live in the kind of society where nobody was worth burgling. No way. Thus, as he trailed Nicola through the trash of the harrowed street, thinking that her backside might well be fatter than it looked and anyway the thinner bird often made it up to you in the crib, several considerations obtained.
    He waited until she approached the flower stall and stood there removing her gloves. Then he went in. Giving the nod and the pointed finger to old Nigel (who owed Keith and had good reason to be wary of him), and moving with his usual confident clumsiness, he wrenched a handful of brown paper from the nail and edged along the barrow picking the soaked bunches from their plastic tubs and saying,
    'Discover the language of flowers. And let their soothing words . . .' He paused, trying to recapture the full jingle. 'Soothe away all your cares like.' No wedding ring, he thought. Could tell that, even under the glove in the Cross. 'Daffodils. Glads. Some of them. Some of them. The lot. A time like this.' He held forth the throttled posy. 'Why be retiring? On me.' Bites her nails but the hands are lazy. Dead lazy. 'You heading on down this way? Or I got the Cavalier round the corner.' Without quite touching her, his hands merely delineating the shape of her shoulders, Keith urged Nicola forward along the street. Expensive suit. Not cheap. 'I see a girl like you. Bit of a beauty. Head in the clouds as such. You said you got your own place.' She nodded and smiled. 'Now.' The mouth on her. That veil'd be useful too. 'Me? I'm Handy Andy. Mr Fixit innit. You know, the fuse's gone. The boiler's creating or the bell don't work. You need somebody with a few connexions.' The shoes: half a grand. Got to be. 'Because I know. I know it's hard, Nicky, to engage any real services these days. To be honest with you,' he said, and his eyes closed with stung pride, 'I don't know what the fucking country's coming to. I don't.' She slowed her pace; briskly she removed her hat and the black clip that secured her chignon. With a roll of her throat she shook out her hair, Jesus: high priced. They walked on. TV. 'All I'm saying is I'm a man can get things done. Any little prob like. Cry out for Keith. This it?'
    They had approached the entrance to the dead-end street.
    'I live down there,' she said. 'Thank you for these.'
    As she slowed, and half turned, and walked on, and slowed again, Nicola fanned herself with the flap of a