Free Other People by Martin Amis

Don't break! ... Can you see another smash coming? How big will it be? If you see a smash coming and can't keep out of the way—don't break. Because if you do, nothing will ever put you back together again. I've taken a big one and I know. Nothing. Ever.
    • • •
    So now Mary started living by the rules.
    She awoke in the basement with her two room-mates at six-thirty sharp, to the sound of a bell. She always woke up in fright, quickly gathering her scattered senses. She got dressed at the same time as Trudy, a shrill-faced, chainsmoking divorcee, and together they joined the queue outside the bathroom while Honey, an apathetic young Swede, was left to linger moaning in bed before rejoining them later for breakfast in the dining-room upstairs, among all the other girls. There they would be stared at with cursory severity by Mrs Pilkington, the Sri Lankan co-superintendent, who ate alone at a table set apart. Her husband, lean Mr Pilkington, the other co-superintendent, would already be thrashing flusteredly through the day's paperwork in his hot office near the front door. Any trouble and the girls were out. Breakfast cost sixty pence, so Mary just drank her tea.
    'You'll go blind, you will, girl,' said Trudy.
    'No blind,' said Honey, blinking.
    'You will, you know. You can't leave yourself alone, can you? She can't. Knowing you, you'll probably nip down for another one, won't you, before clear-out. Just a quick one, just in case.'
    'Is good, it says.'
    'What says? All those pussy cookbooks you read?'
    'Is not cookbook. It say is good to touch yourself.'
    'Oh yeah?'
    'Is good for tension.'
    'What's so tense about you, brilliant? What have you got tension for. All you do is lie around wanking all day.'
    'I want a job,' said Mary. 'How do you get one?'
    'Oh you want a job, do you,' said Trudy, turning to Mary and nodding slowly. Beneath the table she waggled a crossed leg. 7 see. Well what's your calling, Madame? What sort of thing have you done before?'
    'I don't know yet,' said Mary, who often wondered what sort of things she had done before, before she broke her memory.
    'You people...' said Trudy. Trudy disliked Mary's good looks. She did: Mary could tell. She disliked Mary's looks because they were better than hers. On her bad looks Trudy blamed all her bad luck. Mary used to watch her staring out of the bedroom window, at nothing at all, with her stretched, smarting face. Mary knew what she was thinking. She was thinking: If I could have just traded in some of my good brains for some good looks. Boy, could I have done with some good looks ... Mary thought that people were probably quite right to go on complaining in their minds about this sort of thing. But she wasn't sure. Were things changeable? They had to be. People couldn't just be wasting their time.
    Honey was quite good-looking too, so when she said, 'I go down now', and began to move away with her cup and saucer, Trudy called out loudly, 'Off for another quickie, are you? You'll get dishmaid's hand, you will, Honey chile. Dumb split,' she added to Mary. 'She's amazing, that girl. Wanked to a frazzle. I mean, she's just all wanked out.'
    'I want a job,' said Mary. 'I want to make some money.'
    'Hang on, girl,' said Trudy. She looked at Mary narrowly. 'Jobs—they take time, you know.'
    'I know they do,' said Mary.
    You had to be out by nine. You couldn't come back until twelve. Time was slow on the streets when you had no money. Time took for ever. Through diamond-wire Mary watched children playing in the sun. Children gave off noise and motion helplessly all the time. She watched the tublike housewives plod from shop to shop. Housewives accumulated goods grimly until they could hardly walk, martyrs to their carrier-bags. She watched the men idling in loose knots outside the turf accountants' or on the corners by the closed pubs. Men moved their heads around in the wind and gestured freely, having for the time being nothing that they needed to do. A big dog