Saw Marty properly today. I did pop in briefly last week to visit but he wasn't receptive. He was just kneeling on his chair, his desk covered in empty packets of prawn cocktail crisps and busted blister packs of Blissedobliv (tm) pills. When he saw me come in he just continued to kneel there, his eyes wide and a growing grin on his face. There was clearly no point talking to him.
Anyway, this week he seems a bit more BUSINESSlike and back, to some extent, to his irritatingly pugnacious self. Primula, his priceless PA, let me in to find him standing by the window, his head tilted right back, delicately prodding at his own face. He said he had something in his eye. I took a look for him, very carefully holding back his eyelid but, as I did so, he suddenly let out a long, loud genuine Bronx cheer and said that it had gone. We walked over to his desk, wading through discarded crisp packets like fallen autumn leaves on the floor. He sat on his chair, electronically raising it to the top of its travel so he could look down on me as I sat in his guest chair which was ratcheted so low that my knees were almost up by my shoulders.
The good news is that 'Badge' is still very much go. Marty didn't want to talk about it, though. He just told me not to worry as everything was in hand. He was far more interested in talking about his erstwhile Ukrainian giantess and her sapphic snatch, as it were, by the ethereal Ms. Rosie Hoal-Riemer.
"You should move on, Marty," I said. "You're better off without her - forget about her."
"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Marty said venomously with narrowing eyes, before pulling out another fresh pack of prawn cocktail crisps from his drawer which he ripped open and thrust his face into, inhaling the aroma deeply. "I'm sorry," he said, eventually raising his head from the foil pack. His face, coated in a salty layer of dusty pink prawn cocktail flavouring, was visibly calmer, clearly comforted by the immediate buzz of the crisp-hit. "I just get so tense these days, ya know?"
He paused thoughtfully. "Say, whaddaya make of this?" He pushed a box file across his desk.
I opened it and looked inside. "Marty, why should I be interested in a value pack of 'Doctor Gleebutt's Sphincter Tincture'?"
"Huh? Nah, nah, nah - I mean this..." he said, pushing another box file towards me.
I opened it. Inside was a booklet of grainy photographs taken with a high-powered telephoto lens. They were of Marty's ex at Rosie's house. Though blurred, her massive muscular form was unmistakable. What was different, though, was that her hair, usually elaborately coiffured and sculptured, was chopped aggressively square and short and coloured red. Additionally, instead of her usual designer finery and glittering bling, she appeared to be wearing only an old pair of paint-spattered dungarees. I looked closer. It was definitely her. The denim bib of her overalls was clearly straining against the inelastic protuberance of her prodigiously solid tits and the frayed straps were cutting in to the well-defined hollows of her sinewy shoulders.
"Is that a tool-belt she's wearing?" I asked, squinting at the fuzzy photo.
"You tink for me I should call hah?" Marty said.
"She appears to be putting up shelves," I said, holding the pictures close to my face. "Marty, how did you get these?"
"You're right - I should call," he said.
"No, Marty, I don't think you should call her, I really don't."
His eyes narrowed again. "Yeah, that's just what you'd..." he buried his head prawnwards once more "...sorry... you're right, I know, I know."
Well... we talked a little about 'Badge' pre-production stuff but all the time Marty's eyes kept flicking down to the phone on his desk.
"I'm gonna call hah already."
"No, Marty, don't call her."
"You tink for me I should call Hoal-Riemer?" he asked. "I got hah nummer."
I just sighed. Marty giggled. He leaned over to the phone then sprang back, sniggering. I began to continue our conversation. Marty wasn't listening. Five seconds later, he lurched forward, tapped a quick-dial button and jumped back in his chair, giggling girlishly again. I heard the numbers being automatically dialled and then the ringing tone.
"Don't do it, Marty, leave her..." I trailed before I heard the click of the call being connected to Rosie's answering machine. I slumped back with my face in my hands.
Rosie's upper-class vowels sounded out like a shower of cut crystal. The beep sounded, then the hiss of line static. Marty wasn't saying anything. He just sat there hugging himself, hyperventilating with excitement. I leaned forward to stop the call, when the answerphone was suddenly interrupted with a cluster of clicks followed by Rosie's enquiring voice.
"Helloo?" she said, sounding slightly short of breath. In the background, I could hear the sound of alternating sawing and hammering.
"Helloo?" Rosie said again, then, away from the phone, "I dehn't know who's winging, I can't hear them" in response to an unheard query at her end of the line. The sawing stopped and I heard the slapping of heavy naked footsteps getting louder as they approached Rosie. There was a loud sproinging noise like the sound of a giant ruler being twanged on the edge of a desk and Rosie suddenly gave out a squeal of laughter. Then there came a high-pitched electrical whirring sound. "No.. no.. not the electwic buffer again..." I heard Rosie giggle, "I'm on the phone, warely, I'm on the..." Rosie's voice started to tremble and the words gave way to a drawn-out, incoherent fluttering sigh. I heard the phone drop from her hand but it remained connected.
Marty and I looked at each other, our faces draining of colour. For Rosie was no longer using the English language but rather had found a more atavistic form of expression as her vocal cords channelled wordless syllables of utter abandonment. There came a loud crash, the electric whirring changed a gear, speeding up as Rosie's panting cries sang out and coalesced into a protracted C sharp of paroxysmal ululation in concordant harmony with the whining F sharp of the power tool. But it was not the sweet Mixolydian moaning that disturbed Marty and me. Rising up, there came another voice - a deep bassy rumbling, a baying roar of concupiscent release - sounding out at an unsettlingly dissonant augmented fourth, completing the weird choir with a deeply disturbing bellowing of terrible tritonal tension.
"Marty, do you think they're...?" I stuttered.
He didn't answer. Breaking his reverie with a sudden shiver, he lifted himself up off the chair and blurted out "CARPET CLEANER!" into the phone in a bizarre attempt at a fake accent before then slapping at the receiver with his little white hands to hang up.
We sat in silence for a while, avoiding eye contact.
Eventually I said "Marty, when you yelled 'carpet cleaner', did you mean to say 'rug muncher'?"
His face looked momentarily confused, then disappointed, then defiant. "Yeah, yeah, whatevah, whatevaarrghh. I showed her, huh? I showed hah."
"Yes Marty," I said resignedly, "you really showed her."
The phone rang.
We both jumped back. The phone continued to ring as we stared at it. Marty shoved it across his desk towards me. "Pick it up, pick it up" he whispered as if the caller could already hear him. I shoved it back but he lifted up the handset and thrust it into my hands before jumping back in his chair and curling up into a ball.
"Hello?" I asked, hesitantly. "Marty..?" I looked at Marty. He frantically shook his head and waved his arms across his chest. "Uh... Marty isn't here right now, can I take a message? Yes... yes... okay... yes, I'll tell him."
I put the phone down. "That was Rosie," I said. "She says that if you don't stop calling her she'll wip off your mansacks and thwust them wight up your wubberwy wectum."
Marty didn't move.
"Marty, she also said something else. What does spatchcocking mean?" He didn't answer. "Look, you shouldn't call her again. I've seen her wield a clown shoe. It was a terrible sight. Stop pestering her - it's more dangerous than violating a hibernating grizzly with your shoelaces undone. Just leave her be!"
I left Marty to consider his actions. On the way out, I passed Primula. She was talking into the intercom to Marty, saying something about grilling chicken. She acknowledged me as I walked by her but sternly shook her head as I started to push open the toilet door. I backed away and decided it would be better if I used the facilities at the beef-tea bar down the road.
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