“No,” Courtney replied. He was sitting at the breakfast table, shoveling food into his mouth.

“What about the gig with The Face?” Fire asked, chopping the plum tomatoes.

“No.”

“I can’t see why she doesn’t get hired. She’s a good photographer.” He reached into a cupboard for a bottle of honey.

“She’s got problems,” Courtney said, flatly.

“I know,” Fire replied with a chuckle. “You.”

Courtney changed the subject. “How’s your dad?” he asked.

“Fine,” Fire replied, spilling the box of currants he was opening. “Still at the School of Art. How’s yours?”

“All right. Still a cantankerous bugger, but e’s all right. E’s still fucking around with that twenty-one-year-old Paki girl. I wish I can be like im at is age. E’s sixty-seven! D’you realize tha? And e’s still able to keep up! E’s got the dick of deaf. I’m convinced that’s how Mum died. Fuck cancer. He poked er to deaf.”

“Where’s he living now? The old man told me he moved.”

“Wimbledon. Did he also tell you Dad’s girlfriend is pregnant?”

“Get the hell outta here!”

He stirred the eggplant, the currants, and the honey into the rice. Only the dill was left.

“Serious as cancer … or getting poked to deaf for tha matter. Six months pregnant. Maybe Dad didn’t tell your old man because he didn’t want to get im jealous. Your dad’s not into girls anymore, is e?”

“Whatever.”

“So school begins next week,” Courtney said, retreating from this sensitive issue. “It’s Kings College ain it?”

“Not this year. I’m doing some fiction workshops for emerging writers at the Eurolink Center. Word Star is putting it on.”

“Well that’s mighty nice of you. From what I’ve heard they don’t have much money to pay a big shot like you. Mr. Somerset Maugham Prize. What’s next then, a Booker? Nan says you’ve been—what—short-listed for Dangling on the Brink of the Edge? Maybe that’ll be your breakthrough in America. It’s a shame you don’t do well there.”

“Well, if it should be it will be. What is for you cyaah be un-for you, y’know, Courts. The American market is so difficult. So big and so competitive. They have so many of their own writers to admire. Updike. William Kennedy. I have enough money now to do the things I like to do: buy music and books, travel, help people, laze about. And success in America might ruin that. See, Courts, there is a certain point, with money, where it can become a burden. Where you always feel like you have to be watching it. And you have to hire people to watch it for you. Then you have to start watching them. Then you won’t have any time to read books and listen to music and just laze about. And then you don’t want to help people because the money becomes an end in itself, and you become so taken up with making it grow, as they say, that you don’t want to do anything that might make it stand still even for a little bit. Yeah, I want my money to grow. But not like a tree. Like grass. Spread out.”