This Other Eden by Ben Elton Page A

asshole who’s
going to make me a celebrity.’
    Max
never understood why he got married. His wife Krystal, herself a huge star, was
no clearer about her own motives. It was almost as if they’d been forced into
it to feed the Max and Krystal industry that had grown up around them. Like a
king, Max lived in a world where everything he did was deemed to be important.
If he got drunk it was important. If he hit a journalist it was important. His
notorious decision to have a penis reduction (‘I owe it to the women I
sleep with’) had made the cover of Premiere and the number one news item
on MTV. This, despite the fact that MTV now had a core audience in its fifties,
twice Max’s age.
    The
problem was that, like most kings, Max began to believe that what he did was
important. There are few Canutes in the entertainment industry, people with the
strength of character to turn their face against the tide of popular obsession
and say, ‘I am not even one millionth as interesting a person as I’m cracked up
to be’. Certainly, Max could not resist the endless seduction of
self-importance. It was a short step from throwing up on request to getting
married on request.
    Since
then, both Krystal and he had assured the world that they had been tamed by
love and that their hell-raising days were over. But they weren’t. Krystal had
continued to paint the town at night and have her body reconstructed in the
morning, while Max had kept right on drinking, punching people, getting punched
and waking up face-down, not knowing where he was. Now it seemed he’d got
sufficiently off his head to make a real idiot of himself. Max did not love
Krystal but he had no desire to insult and embarrass her on the front page of
the National Enquirer.
    The
woman stirred.
    ‘Max, I
want a divorce,’ she said.
    Max was
surprised. He squinted his aching eyes to focus.
    ‘Krystal?’
he said.
    ‘What?’
she replied.
    Max
fell silent. He felt ashamed. It was all very well being a complete screw-up,
but not recognising your own wife was just gross. Certainly she had had a
number of faces since he married her, but a husband is supposed to keep track
of these things.
    ‘I want
a divorce, Max. Last night at Simone’s we got treated like yesterday’s news. I
felt like an old married lady. Well I’m not an old lady, I’m just twenty-four
and I want a divorce.’
    ‘OK,’
said Max.
    ‘Don’t
you have anything else to say?’ Krystal asked.
    ‘Well…’
Max thought for a moment. This was his wife and yet he scarcely knew her. This
beautiful woman was a stranger to him. The aimlessness of his existence swept
over him. For a moment he saw himself clearly and he saw nothing, for there was
nothing to see. His whole life was a pointless charade. Fortunately, for Max
introspection was a passing thing.
    ‘Any
chance of a final jump?’ he said.
    Krystal
never could resist a bit of romance.
    ‘Oh, go
on then.’
    Max
crawled forward across the carpet and up along Krystal’s astonishing body.
    ‘I
don’t think my breath’s too sweet,’ he confessed. ‘You didn’t see anyone taking
a leak in my mouth last night, did you?’
    Krystal
always had her disinfectant at hand. She sprayed Max’s mouth and then her own,
for she had dined on pepper vodka and garlic corn chips the previous evening.
Stretching across to her handbag she produced an altogether more formidable looking
aerosol.
    ‘OK.
Stand up and drop them,’ she said. ‘You may be my husband but I don’t know
where you’ve been.’
    ‘I
don’t think I can stand up, Krystal. Going anything higher than carpet before
I’ve had some coffee gives me vertigo.’
    ‘Stand
up and show, Max, or you can whistle for a wriggle,’ said Krystal, who had very
strict views when it came to sexual hygiene. Max knew that nothing blew a screw
quicker than resisting the precautions, so he staggered to his feet and dropped
his jeans. Krystal sprayed his crotch, coating his dick in spermicidal