Night Train by Martin Amis Page B

act itself is without shape and without form. The human project implodes, contorts inward—shameful, infantile, writhing, gesturing. It's a mess in there.
           But I look around now and what I'm seeing is settled order. Tobe and myself are both slobs, and when a pair of slobs shack up together you don't get slob times two—you get slob squared. You get slob cubed. And this place, to me, feels like a masterpiece of system: Grooved, yet unemphatic, with nothing rigid in it. Homes of the self-slaughtered have a sullen and defeated aspect. The abandoned belongings seem to say: Weren't we good enough for you? Weren't we any good? But Jennifer's apartment looks as though it is expecting its mistress to return—to fly in through the door. And against all expectation I start to be happy.
           After weeks with a sour twist in my gut. The building is freestanding and even after a half hour you can feel the sun moving around it and changing the angles of all the shadows.
           Trader and Jennifer, they had two bureaus, two work stations, in the living room, not ten feet apart. On his desk there is a sheet of typing paper with stuff like this written on it: p(x) = a(sub)o + a(sub)i x + a(sub)2 x^2+ a(sub)3 x^3 +...
           On her desk there is a sheet of typing paper with stuff like this written on it: x = 30/10^-21m = 3 x 10^22m.
           And you think, Hey. He heard her. She heard him. They talked the same language. Isn't that what we're all supposed to want? The peer lover, ten feet away: Silence, endeavor, common cause. Isn't that what we're all supposed to want? For him a woman in the room. For her a man in the room, ten feet away.
           I popped the blue trunk.
           It contained nine photo albums and nine ribboned bundles of letters—all of them from Trader. This is their history, illustrated and annotated. And of course ordered. Ordered especially or ordered anyway? With a premeditated suicide there is generally some kind of half-assed attempt 'to put things in order': To attempt completion. To try for completion. But I didn't get that vibe here, and figured that the Trader 'shrine' had been up and running since year one. I hauled it all out and got myself down there on the rug. Starting at the beginning: His first letter, or note, is dated June 1988: 'Dear Ms. Rockwell: Forgive me, but I couldn't help noticing you on Court Two this afternoon. What a beautiful all-court game you have—and what a toreador backhand! I wonder if sometime I could prevail upon you to give me a game, or a lesson. I was the dark-haired, bow-legged hacker on Court One'.
           And so it proceeds ('That was quite a set of tennis!'), with little memos about lectures and lunches. Soon the album is taking up the story: There they are on the court, individually and then together. Then complication. Then complication falling away. Then sex. Then love. Then vacations: Jennifer in a ski suit, Jennifer on the beach. Man, what a bod: At twenty, she looked like a model in an ad for those cereals that taste great but also make you shit right. Bronzed Trader at her side. Then graduation. Then cohabitation. And still the handwritten letters keep coming, the words keep coming, the words a woman wants to hear. No dashed-off faxes from Trader. Faxes, which fade in six months, like contemporary love. No scrawled reminders propped against the toaster, such as I get from Tobe. And used to get from Deniss, from Jon, from Shawn, from Duwain. GET SOME TOILET PAPER FOR CHRIST SAKE. That wouldn't do for Jennifer. She got a fucking poem every other day.
           Complication? Complication fell away, and did not recur. But complication there certainly was. Its theme: Mental instability. Not hers. Not his. Other peoples. And I have to say that I was very, very surprised to see my own name featuring here...
           I prepared myself for what they're now calling a 'segue.' But a lot of this stuff I already