THE CRUDEST TYPE OF LUCK
Kingsley Amis burns
What’s the proper solution to the following problem? You wake one morning in a bed not your own to find that ash from a carelessly enjoyed cigarette at the end of the night—one that you don’t exactly remember smoking—has burned through two bedsheets and a blanket. Additional brown marks and grooves indicate damage to the bedside rug and table. Now keep in mind the following conditions: (1) The burns were not caused by an intruder but certainly by you; (2) you smoked the cigarettes after sneaking out of the house to a pub and consuming eight pints of beer; (3) you returned to make out with Margaret, a woman sleeping across the hall, for whom you have at best ambivalent feelings and who has been recently suicidal and is too prim to be counted on as an accomplice; (4) after she sent you away, you also had a nightcap of half a bottle of sherry from your host’s liquor cabinet; (5) your host and the owner of the house, whose idea of a party involves choral singing (at which you are incompetent), is your boss; (6) you don’t enjoy much job security at the moment; (7) you are suffering from a hangover that leaves you feeling as if you’ve been worked over by the KGB.