Free Other People by Martin Amis Page B

adepts of men, acquiescence and time. They talked about the things that money could buy as if money were a game, a trick, a word. Some girls were drunks. They talked about... well, Mary already knew what drunks talked about. She knew about drunks. She knew what drunks did.
    But she really didn't know whether she would ever get away from these people, these people who went out too deep in life and then swam up at you through the fathoms, trying to tug you under to where you would choke or drown. Would she ever get to the other side, the side that Prince had hinted at, the place where money didn't matter and time passed coolly? She looked at the girls and she knew there would always be these other people out there, always out there and always wanting her back, the lost, the ruined, the broken, the effaced. She thought: I mustn't go out too deep in life. I must stay in the shallows. I must keep to the surface. It's too easy to go under, and too hard to get up again.

    At night after lights-out Mary listened with a sense of deliverance to Honey's routine and low-IQ yodels of abandonment and release. 'I finish soon!' she would plead in response to Trudy's unpredictably vehement rebukes. Honey's pleasure was real, and Mary approved of that pleasure. But it worried her too. Secretly Mary had tried the technique herself, without success. She couldn't find anything to catch her mind on to. Her mind had nothing to do, so it thought about other things.
    'What do you think about when you do it?' she once asked Honey.
    'Nice men,' said Honey with a delighted glare. Her smile had an almost celestial vapidity at such moments. 'Nice big men.'
    'Oh I see,' said Mary.
    That night Mary tried to think about Gavin and Mr Botham. It didn't work. And she kept unwillingly thinking about Trev, which was no help either. That was it: you couldn't seem to control what you were thinking about. The whole activity was clearly among the strangest things that other people did.
    'What is it you think about the nice men when you're doing it?' she asked Honey the next day.
    'I think of Keith. He's my most favourite. And of Helmut. They whip me,' said Honey, beaming furtively, 'and make me do all these terrible things. Keith get me from the back and Helmut put his—'
    'Oh I see.'
    Honey looked up at her meekly and said, 'I do it to you if you wish?'
    'No, it's all right,' said Mary. 'But that's very kind of you.'
    'It's okay, don't mention it,' said Honey.
    As soon as she was alone in the bedroom Mary glanced through Honey's pamphlets— Love Yourself, To Be A Woman, Female Erotic Fantasies. She understood quickly: it was a memory game. Now she knew why she couldn't play.
    Mary wondered whether she had ever done the thing before, when she was alive. Had she gone into a room somewhere, and taken off all her clothes, and made herself so open like that? Had she wanted to? And who else had been there at the time? She couldn't remember: it might have been anybody. Trev said she had 'done this before'. Trev had meant it too—Mary never doubted that. But it was still hard to believe that she would ever want to do it again.

    It was on the seventh day that the letter came.
    'It's for you,' said Trudy.
    Mary was sitting over her morning tea. She looked at the white envelope, at the name and the address. Yes, Trudy was right. It was for her.
    'Is from a man?' said Honey.
    'Course it's from a man,' said Trudy. 'Look on the back.'
    Prompted by their eyes, Mary turned the letter over. Small black letters said, 'Be alone when you open this.'
    'Told you,' said Trudy bitterly.
    Mary went downstairs and sat on her bed. As she waited for her breathing to subside she inspected the envelope—quite calmly, she thought. She had seen other people opening letters but it turned out to be far more difficult than it looked. The envelope would jump and twirl from her hands, and kept incurring subtle rips whenever she tried to prize the letter free. Then she lost her nerve and brutally