The Sweet Smell of Psychosis Read Online Free PDF

a devil-may-care, rumpled-from-the-night-before, funky-dirty-stopover, essentially rugged and masculine demeanour. In this macho attitude Richard would rub his stubble vigorously against Ursula's cheek upon meeting, challenging her with insolent eyes to imagine its abrasiveness applied elsewhere – sanding her into submission.
    Richard's sagging, spotted trousers, bagging shirtand scuffed shoes would be taken by Ursula as telling evidence of a disconcertingly sexy and powerful lack of self-consciousness. He considered whether a nice further touch might be to give a mock-Yiddisher hunch of his shoulders and declaim to her, ‘Style, schmyle!’
    All of this kaleidoscoped through Richard's mind as he paced up and down the tatty concourse outside Archway Tower, his eyes stinging from the grit that cold, dry puffs of wind were kicking up. At least his hangover was on the wane; all he felt now were a certain wateriness in the lower belly, and a feculence of mucus rammed up both nostrils, not unlike two small coral reefs.
    As he paced he kept looking at his watch, feeling time course away from him, while he remained imprisoned in a permanent, embarrassed agony of the present. It was the window of Smith's that snapped him out of it, provided the visual salts. A rack of copies of the Radio Times was positioned so as to grab the attention of passers-by. It grabbed Richard all right, grabbed him like a street fighter grabbing a collar, thrusting a belligerent face into a cowering one. But it wasn't a face, it was faces. Bell's faces, serried ranks of Bells,a tintinnabulation of them resounding in Richard's head. Below each smiling visage was a version of his ever mutable slogan: ‘Can You Ring Me?’
    Richard resolved compromise. He got back on the tube and headed into town. Getting out at Tottenham Court Road he walked along to a menswear store and bought a pair of black chinos, a black blazer, a black pullover shirt, clean underwear and socks. He couldn't afford all of it really, but also couldn't stand not to look presentable, Ursula-worthy.
    Richard slid into the Sealink at five to seven, and ducked along the corridor to the gents’. Here he shaved with nose-hair-paring exactitude. He also crouched in one of the stalls, to swab the grooves of his body with wads of moistened toilet paper, before scrabbling at the cellophane packaging and wrapping himself in his new finery. Five more minutes in front of the mirror – ignoring the comments of Sealink regulars as they filed past him to snort, scratch and sniff – and Richard was as ready as he'd ever be. He advanced along the corridor, towards the bar, at a steady trot. A Norman knight at Agincourt.
    The first arrow came barrelling down vertically on him from the barman, Julius. Richard entered the bar,sidled up to the bar, put his elbow on the bar, and undertook the subtle business of gaining the barman's attention. This took about fifteen minutes. Finally the orange divot was in front of Richard and he essayed the following casual enquiry: ‘Julius – seen Ursula?’
    ‘No,’ came the reply, the ‘N’ riving him from occiput to nape, the ‘o’ set alight and dropping neatly around his neck. Not here? It was now ten past seven – she had to be here. Was she toying with him?
    ‘I'll have – ‘ but the orange divot was gone, to the other end of the bar, to serve an actor whose most impressive credit to date was the voiceover for a Pepto-Bismol advert.
    Richard ranged the Sealink Club with the loping, multijointed gait of a maddened polar bear. He charged upstairs, fell downstairs, looked in the brasserie-style cafeteria, the cafeteria-style brasserie, the table-football room; he even called her name several times outside the ladies’, softly, every bit of him agitated but pitching it low, in three quavering syllables, ‘Uuuur-suuuu-laaa . . .’, until two hack-harridans emerged, knock-kneed with merriment – charged on his account.
    Then he was back in the bar for a