He lingered by the window while the new photographer deployed his lights, his tripods, his white umbrellas. The new interviewer was a girl (unattractive). With nonspecific hostility Gwyn noticed that Pamela had at some point deposited a fresh stack of weeklies onto the round table by his armchair. Next to last week's weeklies. And he hadn't even . . . An avid reader, Barry always. He felt it was his duty to keep up with as many. Here as elsewhere, Barry was committed to the spirit of serendipity: everything was grist to his-

"Do you mind if I use a tape? .. . Could you say something? What you had for breakfast?"

"Let me think. I had half a grapefruit. And some tea."

"You once said, 'Nobody seems to like my books. Except the public.' Would you still say that?"

Beyond the window the cherry blossoms rolled. London went on from there, spreading out in all directions.

"How, then, do you account for your universal appeal?"

London went on from there, spreading out in all directions. The world was like a lover that loved you only sometimes. Sometimes, when you touched her, she went mmmm and enveloped you with all her warmth.

"Is Amelior a kind of promised land? Does it play on that myth and on that appeal?"

Sometimes when you touched her she went mmmm and enveloped you with all her warmth. But sometimes she was hair-trigger, was fingertip, in her hate. And she twisted to your touch.

"Are the two books formal Utopias?"

She twisted to your touch. And this you could live with, could even understand. Only: all her brothers were out there.

"Could they be described as pastorals?"

All her brothers were out there. All her brothers were out there, waiting to break your face.

"Do you see the reinvention of society as one of the novelist's responsibilities?"

One last interview after this interview. He hoped the last interview would be easier than this interview. He wanted an interview with more questions like Did he set himself a time to write every day? or Did he use a word processor? or (come to think of it) How much money did he earn? or Who was he fucking? These days he was being taken far more seriously. Because it worked the other way round now: the literature-and-society people came in through the back door, to investigate an incidence of mass appeal. Gwyn liked being taken seriously and wanted-and expected-much much more of it. He felt strongly attracted to the idea that his work was deceptively simple. But he wished they'd make their questions easier. Now, as he traipsed through his answers, Gwyn checked the schedule to see who was coming next. Someone from the in-flight magazine of a charter firm based in Liverpool. Good.

After that, the great Abdumomunov was expected: to teach him chess. Gwyn used to go to the great Abdumomunov (up on some crag in Kensal Green) but now the great Abdumomunov came to him. He supposed that the old grandmaster must relish these visits. And he was wrong. These visits pained the great Abdumomunov; they pained him in the chess sense, which was more or less the only sense he had. He was used to teaching pampered but owlish ten-year-olds in whom you encountered a riotously burgeoning vocabulary of the thirty-two pieces and the sixty-four squares. Gwyn was hospitable enough, and paid the carfare, and his house was pornographically luxurious; but he never learned anything. It was like teaching poetics to someone who could only say bus, hot and floor. Currently they were working on stonewall openings where a pawn-infested center gave drawing chances to Black.

It seemed to the great Abdumomunov that Gwyn wanted to learn how to cheat at chess. Cheating at chess, or wanting to cheat at chess, had a long and illustrious history. Seat your opponent with the sun in his eyes was a maxim that went back to the indolent nawabs and the reclining caliphs of sixth-century Asia. Of course, you couldn't cheat at chess: with cheating, all you could do, at the chessboard, was think you were being cheated. Like many old grandmasters the great Abdumomunov could still teach the game but he couldn't bear playing it. Forced stalematesgave him some pleasure. Agreed draws left him more or less undisqui-eted. He couldn't bear losing. He couldn't bear winning.

Gal Aplanalp said, "Wait. You're not asking me to fire him."

Gwyn was out of the house. This was his weekly meeting with his agent, something he didn't want to skip, so near to publication day. He said,

"He's fired himself. He has cast his staff into the cold waters. His wife goes out to work. He stays home and minds the kids."

"I'm going to go to hell for placing him with Bold Agenda. Who knew they were that Mickey Mouse? He didn't even call me and bawl me out. Why?"

"Shame," said Gwyn.

".. . It is sad. Kind of."

"Kind of. Anyway. Now: foreign rights. I see from my statement that I'm paying one and sometimes two extra chunks of five percent to various intermediaries. These intermediaries are probably very good at sending and receiving faxes. But what other services do they do me? And why is it twenty percent in Japan?"

Gal told Gwyn that this was how it had always been. Gwyn told Gal to find a new and better way. Then he said,

"What time is it?"

"Uh-oh."

He got out of bed and began the business of locating the socks and Y-fronts he had hurled here and there forty minutes earlier-in an imitation of heedlessness which he now found overdone. Then, too, Gal's bedroom was disappointingly unkempt. From somewhere in his digestive tract came a cluck of quiet confirmation: the impeccable career-woman led you from her impeccable office, and you followed her stocking seams and their impeccable perpendiculars, upstairs-into an arena of neurotic disarray .. . Actually, Gwyn felt wonderful. Nothing had happened to him on his way to St. James's. And he had a hunch that nothing would happen to him on his way back to Holland Park. It was like being back on C after a month of the sweats. Wishing to express his confidence, wishing to give that confidence expression, Gwyn turned and said,

"Don't fire Richard. He lends a kind of respectability to your client list. Otherwise it's pretty cheesy stuff, isn't it. Novels by weather forecasters. And darts players and royal chauffeurs … You ought to go on a diet, love."

Gal waited. She then said, "You think I'm not on a diet already??

"Seriously though, love. I don't see myself with a fat agent. It wouldn't do. I'd have to go elsewhere: to Mercedes Soroya at IPT. Can you believe those eyes? And those ankles!"

Patiently Gwyn went on standing there with his Y-fronts hanging from his hand. Gal, who was half out of bed, now rolled back into it, saying,

"It's not fair. You're a world-famous novelist. And you have the body of a young boy."

"Thanks, love."

For a moment he stopped thinking about Mercedes Soroya and started thinking about Audra Christenberry, who would shortly be in town. Then he thought about Demeter: indulgently.

"About next week. Demi's dad has taken a turn for the worse. Yeah. She wants us to go up there for a few days. So I can't make it next week."

"Boo-hoo," said Gal.

"Now what was that look all about?"

"Nothing. You know I always smile when I watch you getting dressed."

He stood upright, in his socks, his Y-fronts, beneath the inlets-the lagoon-of his male-pattern baldness, and said,

"Thanks, love."

This time it was like walking into a lamppost. He always dipped his eyes, discreetly, as he came out of Gal's and took a sapless little hop off the last step to generate a turn of speed . . . "You're ready, mate." The black guy cast out of black iron flattened him up against the railings and leant forward holding the pads of his thumbs-so warm, so firm, so aromatic even, like a doctor's touch-over Gwyn's closed lids, saying, "What can I tell you. We've all heard it all on the TV. I'm your worst nightmare. I'm going to put your lights out. We've all heard it all. On the TV. You're ready, mate. Look at the way you drop your head. You're ready.?