"There's green," she said.
Lyle sat reading alongside the set she was looking at. She faced both him and it. The book he read was hers, a history of the dance. She glanced that way every time he turned a page.
"Well dial the thing.”
"Color very lurid.”
"Thanks, seeing what I spent.”
"Color is roloc.”
"We have to connect it," he said. "It has to get hooked up on the roof.”
"Roof is foor.”
"They'll get a guy.”
"There wis green. There wis pink. There wis o-range.”
"Master antenna, as in 'master antenna.''
Pammy sat back. She raised and flexed her legs, alternately, as though limbering up. She put her hands on her head and moved her legs faster now, cycling. After a while she stood up, took off her jeans and did stretching exercises. Lyle developed an erection. She sat and watched television. It was nearly dark. The Mister Softee truck was on their street.
"Pant, pant.”
"Out of shape.”
"Way out of shape," she said. "You wouldn't believe what's inside this body. What a little old dried-up crone. It's down there, hear it? Bang crash, you son of a bitch. I'd like to call someone. Run over a dog, truck, and get shot by its owner, oompty boom." "Right, complain.”
"Sympathize or you can't read my book that I purchased.”
"I'm saying complain. Call Broadway Maintenance. They'll come with a light bulb next Tuesday.”
She turned her attention to something in the carpet, leaning over to pick at tufts of fabric.
"Look at me when you speak. Take your face out of my purchase that I bought. We need shampoo for this rug-o and still that wax for in there which is your appointed task that you have to get.”
"You'll forget. You'll go out and buy fruit.”
"Your task, you.”
"That's all you'll buy.”
"You buy.”
"You'll come home with fruit by the gross weight and announce it grandly and wash it with songs of ritual washing and put it away in the box below and it shrivels and rots every time.”
"It's called a fucking crisper," she said.
"It's a bin, what kind of crisper. It's a fruit compartment.”
"It's a fucking crisper, you asshole.”
"Watch the tube.”
"They're green, look.”
"Dial the fucking dial.”
"Neerg," she said. "They're all neerg. These people here are neerg.”
They chattered and made sounds a while longer and got up and walked and stretched and ate-and-drank a little and bumped each other and gestured, this the commonplace aim-lessness of their evenings, a retreat from stress lines and language. Pammy watched Lyle reseat himself near the TV set.
On the screen some people on a talk show discussed taxes. Something about the conversation embarrassed her. She didn't know what it was exactly. Nobody said stupid things or had speech defects. There were no public service commercials showing athletes teaching retarded children to play basketball. It wasn't a case of some woman in a news film speaking ungrammatically about her three children, just killed in a fire. (She wondered if she'd become too complex to put death before grammar.) These people discussed taxes, embarrassingly. What was happening in that little panel of light that caused her to feel such disquiet and shame? She put her hands over her ears and watched Lyle read.
Early the next morning he was with Rosemary Moore in a place with exposed beams, fake, Oscar's Lounge, and a coat of arms of some sort over the bar, sitting at a table in a dark corner, solemnly watching the other patrons. A waiter kept moving in and out of the swinging doors that led to the kitchen, talking angrily as he emerged, beginning to grouse again even before he'd re-entered. For a while they listened to his argument with the unseen chef.
"This is the kind of place," Lyle said, "where the ketchup always comes out of the bottle without having to hit the bottom. Don't ask me what that means but it's true. I like this kind of eerie sameness about this kind of place. It's metaphysical.”
"My drink is way too strong.”
"I'll get another.”
"It's all right.”
"No problem, I'll get another.”
"No, it's all right.”
"It's all right, Lyle," he said. "We're using names today.”
Everything he said and did seemed all right to her. It was all right to come for a drink so long as she didn't stay too long. The walk over here was all right. The place itself was all right. It was all right to sit either at the bar or back here. Again there was a lull as they watched the other customers. Everybody seemed to be having a better time than they were. It was hard to tell whether Rosemary was uncomfortable. There were shades of blandness from genial to serene; hers was closer to the median, lacking distinctive character, dead on.
"So you've been with the firm how long?”
"About three weeks now.”
"Before this, what?”
"I had a job where I was on the phone all day talking to buyers. That was crazy. Then I was a stewardess, which was all right at first, places to see. Then a friend got me a job in a shipping office. That wasn't too bad but I got mononucleosis. I was a temp for a while after that. Then I got this.”
"We hope you'll stay.”
"I have to see.”
"Do you smoke, Rosemary? See, I'm using names. Mustn't forget that.”
"Some people can never quit. I smoke for a few days and then I stop. Getting addicted to things is in your personality. Somehow I can stop.”
"Where do you live?”
"Queens.”
"Of course.”
"You should see the rents, what difference.”
"My powers grow stronger with age.”
"But you have to get there," she said.
"What about when you were a stewardess? You were right there. You lived in a high rise with four hundred other girls in their neatsy-clean uniforms. Always near the phone. Sorry, love, I'm on standby. Roach coach to San Juan.”
"I'm lucky I have friends with a car," she said. "Except the traffic.”
"Can't trust those porta rickens to sit there like civilized folks. I don't mind the cha-cha music but when they start in with the green bananas, it's too much, the FAA ought to do something, banana peels coming out of the overhead compartments not to mention in the seat things inside that wrinkled cloth. You know that wrinkled cloth?”
He caught the waiter's eye and gestured. The man brought two more drinks. Lyle felt a strange desolation pass over him. They sat awhile in silence. He watched a man at the bar put a partially melted ice cube in his mouth.
"This is my last," Rosemary said.
"If it's too strong, I'll get him to take it back.”
"I don't think it will be.”
"Cigarette?”
"I just finished but all right.”
"How did you get your job, this one, if I can ask?”
"This girl I used to know's brother.”
"She was with the firm, or he was, I guess.”
"He used to be in the stock market but not our company.”
"Maybe I know him.”
"I don't know," she said.
"What's his name?”
"George Sedbauer.”
"You see me pause," he said. "That's the guy got shot.”
"I know.”
"His sister was a friend of yours and you met George through her and then he more or less recommended you or gave your name to someone.”
"He told me who to see and all.”
"Did you know him well? I didn't know him at all but a friend of mine knew him and we talked about it after it happened, Frank McKechnie, in this bar right there.”
"I met him at a party type thing. We were introduced. His sister Janet. He was very nice. I used to laugh.”
"How long ago was this?”
"Two years? I don't know.”
"But you had time to get to know him fairly well.”
"I liked his macabre humor," she said. "George could be very macabre.”
Briefly he envied Sedbauer, dead or not. He always envied men who'd done something to impress a woman. He didn't like hearing women mention another man favorably, even if he didn't know the man, or if the man was disfigured, living in the Amazon Basin, or dead. She turned her head to exhale. The waiter came out of the kitchen, talking.
"What about something to eat? I'd like to hear more. We can go somewhere decent. I just thought this place was convenient and not the big cocktail hour with huge swarms.”
"I can't stay.”
"Another drink then.”
"This one's full.”
"I'd like to hear more, really.”
"About what?”
"You, I guess. I think it's interesting you knew Sedbauer. I was a few yards from the body when I guess he died. The man who did it was George's guest that day. Did you know that?”
"Yes.”
"I think it's interesting. I wonder what happened between them. George was in trouble with the Board, you know. Did you know that? The Exchange Board of Directors. George was apparently a little this way and that. Not quite your run-of-the-mill dues-paying member. I wonder what he was doing with this guy wearing a guest badge and carrying a gun. We go through all those days not questioning. It's all so organized. Even the noise is organized. I'd like to question a little bit, to ask what this is, what that is, where we are, whose life am I leading and why. It was a starter's pistol, adapted. Did you know that?”
"Yes.”
"Yes, she said. You are well informed, he exclaimed. Where is the check, they inquired.”
She smiled a bit at that. Progress, he thought. It wasn't macabre, perhaps, but it had a little something all its own.
6
Pammy was writing a direct-mail piece on the subjects of sorrow and death. The point was to get people to send for a Grief Management brochure entitled "It Ends For Him On The Day He Dies-But You Have To Face Tomorrow." The brochure elaborated on death, defined the study known as grief management and offered a detailed summary of the company's programs ("Let Professionals Help You Cope") and a listing of regional offices. It cost a dollar.
Pammy had written the brochure months earlier. Ethan, in one of his moments of feigned grandeur, had called it "a classic of dispassion and tact." There were others in the office who considered it too "nuts-and-boltsy," like a four-page insert for radio condensers in some dealer publication.
"Death is a religious experience," Ethan had said. "It is also nuts-and-boltsy. Something fails to work, you die. A demonstrable consequence.”
In a context in which every phrase can take on horribly comic significance, she thought she'd done well. Her job, in the main, was a joke, as was the environment in which she carried it out. But she was proud of that brochure. She'd maintained a sensible tone. There was a fact in nearly every sentence. She hadn't let them print on tint. If people wanted to merchandise anguish and death, and if others wished to have their suffering managed for them, everybody could at least go about it with a measure of discretion and taste.
"Say it, say it.”
"Maine.”
"Again," he said. "Please, now, hurry, God, mercy.”
"Maine," she said. "Maine.”
There was activity on the floor. Lyle left post 5 and stopped at the Bell teleprinter. A young male carrier went by, blond shoulder-length hair. Lyle pressed the E key, then GM. Feed him to Ethan. Paper slid along the floor before settling. There was a second level of noise, very brief, a clubhouse cheer. He stepped back to get a look at the visitors' gallery. Attractive woman standing behind the bulletproof glass. He looked at the print-out as he walked back to his booth. Range for the day. Numbers clicked onto the enunciator board. Eat, eat. Shit, eat, shit. Feed her to us in decimals. Aggress, enfoul, decrete. Eat, eat, eat.
V.R. GM-12.33 2524
106.400 10.10 69 12.30 70 10.12 68% 12.33 +70+ i%
He went to the smoking area, where he saw Frank Mc-Kechnie standing at the edge of a noisy group, biting skin from his thumb. Lyle isolated two members of the group and began doing a routine from a comedy record he'd recently bought. It was something he felt he did particularly well. It suited his careful stance, the neutral way his eyes recorded an audience. He could read their delight at his self-containment, the incongruity of enclosed humor. They began to lean. They actually watched his lips. When a third member of the group edged in, drawn by the laughter, Lyle ended prematurely and went over to McKechnie, who looked off into the smoke that rose above the gathering.
"So where are we?”
"Who knows?”
"We're inside," Lyle said.
"That's for sure.”
"It's obvious.”
"It's obvious because if we were outside the cars would be climbing up my back.”
"The outside world.”
"That's it," McKechnie said. "Things that happen and you're helpless. All you can do is wait for how bad.”
Lyle didn't know exactly what they were talking about. He exchanged this kind of dialogue with McKechnie often. He'd watch his friend carefully throughout. McKechnie seemed to take it seriously. He gave the impression he knew what they were talking about.
"I want to ask you about this man who shot Sedbauer.”
"Huge page in today's paper.”
"Sedbauer's guest.”
McKechnie made a motion with his thumb and index finger, indicating a headline.
"Mystery of Stock Exchange Murder Unraveling Slowly.”
"So far I like it.”
"Gunman, obscure background, dum dum dum, carrying, get this, a bomb on his person, dum dum. Suspected terrorist network. Confusion over identity. Links being sought, dumdy dum. The guy refuses to talk, see a lawyer or leave his cell.”
"He had a bomb when on his person?”
"When he was caught. After he shot George. He was standing right over there. A miniature explosive package. I quote.”
"Nice.”
"Where are we, Lyle, as you put it so beautifully yourself?”
"We're inside.”
"Where do we want to be?”
"Inside.”
"Those both are right answers.”
"I prepared.”
"Wait and see how bad," McKechnie said. "That's all you can do. I'm getting ready to raise the barricades. There's a serious health problem in the family. There's my brother piling up gambling debts and making midnight phone calls complete with whispering and little sobs. Bookies, loan sharks, threats. Very educational. Interest compounded hourly. Then there's my oldest, who has a hearing problem to begin with and now out of nowhere who's found sitting on the floor in his room just staring at the wall. Twice last week. Has trouble moving his arms. Doesn't want to talk. He's too young to take drugs. It's not drugs. We had him to the doctor. They did these scans they do. Nothing definite. So now we're thinking of a shrink for kids. Did you ever feel you were in a vise? I walk around thinking what happened.”
"Let's try to have lunch next week.”
McKechnie reduced his cigarette butt to a speck of tobacco and a speck of paper. He dropped these on the floor. Then he jumped about a foot in the air, landing on the specks.
"Enjoy that?”
"Very advanced," Lyle said.
"I used to be better. You should have seen me.”
"It's something you couldn't do in the outside world. They'd point and say ya ya.”
"Why don't we have lunch right now as a matter of fact? We'll go upstairs.”
"I don't eat up there anymore.”
"Why not?”
"I don't know, Frank.”
"There has to be a reason.”
"I suppose.”
"You don't know what it is.”
"I just haven't been up there in a while.”
"Lyle, I'm not exactly a promoter of tight-ass social customs. I don't have decanters full of sherry that I wheel out for my guests with their Bentleys parked outside. But there's nothing wrong with eating at the Exchange. It's halfway civilized and that's something.”
"It's inside.”
"It's inside, right. It's convenient, it's quick, it's good, it's nice and it's halfway fucking gracious, which is no small feat these days. So stop being stupid. You're talking like a jerk.”
"No pissa me off, Frank.”
Pammy had dinner with Ethan and Jack. They went to a place in SoHo. She was excited. Dinner out. Somewhere in her waking awareness there were glints of anticipation whenever Ethan and Jack walked into a room or when she picked up the ringing phone and it was one of them on the other end. Most people in her life were dispiriting presences. She looked forward to being with these two. If Ethan ever left his job, she'd sink into stupor and mutism.
The restaurant was full of hanging plants. A young woman arrived with the wine, telling them their food order would be delayed.
"There's a smoky fire in the basement right now. The kitchen staff is down there arguing over whether or not they want to pee on it. I opted out, unless they rig a swing, I told them. Distance is not my thing. There's Peter Hearn the conceptualist and his dog Alfalfa. I can never uncork without rupturing myself in the worst places, unless you don't consider sex important. Do you ever see how they uncork, with the knees? I'm sorry but I refuse to do that. It's degrading. I give a little bend, which is gruesome enough. More than that, forget about, you'll have to go somewhere else.”
They started on the wine. Smoke seeped into the main room but nobody left. There was no food being served. Everybody felt obliged to crack jokes and to drink a little faster than usual. A situation such as this could not be allowed to evolve without comic remarks and a trace of sophisticated hysteria. Ethan's mouth slid gradually into a secret grin. A woman at the other end of the room coughed and waved a handkerchief. Jack took the empty wine bottle to the waitress, who returned eventually with another, which Jack opened. Pammy wondered if her face was blotched. Wine did that. The man with the coughing woman ordered another round. Another man came out of the basement and began carrying plants out the front door. A two-inch needle, a sect ornament of some kind, was embedded in the flesh beneath his lower lip, pointing downward, its angle of entry about forty-five degrees. Jack hit the table and looked away, trying to suppress his laughter. The man left plants on the sidewalk and came back in for more. Wine squirted out of Jack's mouth. The room was filling with smoke. There was noise in the street, then wide beams of interweaving light. About ten firemen walked in. Pammy started to laugh, chewing at the air, her face blazing and clear, transcendently sane in this rose-stone glow. The firemen waddled around, bumping into each other. Ethan finished off another glass. The room seemed physically diminished by their entrance. They were outsized in helmets and boots, stepping heavily, lifting themselves like men on skis. Pammy couldn't stop laughing. The firemen cleared the place, slowly. Everybody was coughing, bottles and glasses in their hands. They trooped out, disappointed at the lack of applause.
It was dark. There were two hundred people in the streeet. Jack stepped onto the narrow platform at the back of one of the fire engines. He swung out from the vertical bar. The gaiety they'd brought into the street dissolved in minutes. Ethan and Pam started off down the block but Jack didn't want to get off the fire truck. He shouted commands and made wailing noises. Nobody paid much attention. The man with the needle beneath his lip came out with the last of the plants. Firemen dragged a hose around the corner. Ethan stood looking at Jack, a steadying distance in his gaze.
"I wonder what happened to the rain they predicted," Pammy said.
Jack came along finally. They turned a corner and headed south, moving toward Canal Street and the possibility of a taxi. Standing outside the cast-iron buildings were large cardboard cylinders that contained industrial sweepings from the factory lofts. Jack charged one of them, shoulder-first, knocking it down. They followed along quietly as he ranged both sides of the street, crashing into containers. Just past Grand he hurdled an overturned container and veered neatly, forearm out front, body set low, to run into a metal garbage can. Pammy, eventually, noted that Ethan hadn't altered stride and she had to hurry to catch up with him. Jack was sitting in the gutter, holding his knee. The can was on its side, rolling only slightly back and forth, much of its contents still within, an indication of weight. To Pammy it made sense in a way. He'd always appeared to have reserves of uncommitted energy. A hitter of garbage cans. She watched him get to his feet, raggedly. Although there was no sign of an empty cab, Ethan leaned into the sparse traffic, arm high in the air.
"Does he do this often?”
"Tuesdays and Thursdays," Ethan said. "The rest of the week he speaks in tongues.”
Lyle sometimes carried yellow teleprinter slips with him for days. He saw in the numbers and stock symbols an artful reduction of the external world to printed output, the machine's coded model of exactitude. One second of study, a glance was all it took to return to him an impression of reality disconnected from the resonance of its own senses. Aggression was refined away, the instinct to possess. He saw fractions, decimal points, plus and minus signs. A picture of the competitive mechanism of the world, of greasy teeth engaging on the rim of a wheel, was nowhere in evidence. The paper contained nerve impulses: a synaptic digit, a phoneme, a dimen-sionless point. He knew that people want to see their own spittle dripping from the lacy openwork of art. On the slip of paper in his hand there was no intimation of lives defined by the objects around them, morbid tiers of immortality. Inked figures were all he saw. This was property in its own right, tucked away, his particular share (once removed) of the animal body breathing in the night.
When Pammy got home, he wasn't there. This was disappointing. Lately she'd found that the nutritive material for their sex life was often provided by others, whoever happened to be present at a party or other gathering. She wondered whether she'd become too complex to care whether the others were gay or straight. It would be nice, so nice if he walked in right now. When she realized how late it was, she grew angry. Soon she was doing what she always did when she was mad at Lyle. She began to clean the apartment. First she mopped the kitchen, then the bathroom. She swept up in the living room and, once the kitchen floor was dry, quickly did the dishes. It was an intricate cycle of expiation and virtue, a return to self-discipline. Whenever things went badly between them, she took it as a preview, seeing herself alone in a brilliantly well-kept apartment, everything in place, everything white somehow, a sense of iron-fisted independence clearly apparent in all this organization. In the middle of the night, obviously too late to vacuum, she took a shower, put on her pajamas and sat reading in bed, feeling good about herself.
Lyle came home.
"Your face is splotched," he said.
"You'll get hit.”
"What are you doing up? You're still up. It's unbelievably late. I've never seen it so late. It's really late out there. You should see. Go to the window and look. No, don't. You won't learn a thing that way. Stay where you are.”
"He feels like talking.”
"I was downtown. I walked around down there till now. What was it like, she asked. Well, to begin with, it was cool finally, a rivery breeze, and no one around, nothing, a drunk or two early on but later nothing, a car, another car, another car, looking for the tunnel. The district, outwardly, is like the end of organized time-outwardly, mind you. At night I mean it's like somebody forgot something. They went away. The mystery, right, of why everybody left these gorgeous pueblos.”
"Inwardly?”
"Things happening. Little men in eyeshades.”
"Fascinating, these insights of his.”
"What is it, Splotch? Annoyed at my lack of consideration? I called. You weren't here.”
"We ought to go out more.”
"There's nothing out there. That's my point. Everybody went away. You can hear doors blowing shut in the wind. The scientists are mystified.”
7
Lyle cultivated a quality of self-command. As a corollary to this extreme presence of mind, he built a space between himself and most of the people he was likely to deal with in the course of daily events. He was aware of his studied passage down the corridors of his firm's offices. Happily he parodied his own manner, swiveling toward a face and beaming an anemic look right past it. It was satisfying to stand on the floor, say, during a lull in trading, or after hours in a bar in the district, and note how some people subtly exhibited their relative closeness to him while others, sensing his apartness or knowing it for fact, were diligent in keeping ritual distances.
The waiter, at six feet four, let his head slip down a notch as he took their orders.
"I want something outer spacelike," Lyle said. "What's a zombie? Bring me one of those.”
Rosemary Moore had a Scotch and water. Her boss, Larry Zeltner, ordered gin and tonic for himself and also for the two young women, known to Lyle only as Jackie and Gail. He'd come upon them in the elevator as he and Rosemary were leaving the office. Zeltner suggested they all go for a drink. Lyle quickly agreed, trying to indicate that he and Rosemary had entered die elevator together by chance, just as the others had.
"It's what I said this morning," Zeltner said. "It's what I always say: who'll do it? Get somebody to do it and I'm with you. Otherwise goodbye. Then there's the situation, how do we total, who's reconciling, where do you tighten up the indicators?”
Lyle made a point of conversing with Jackie, who was unattractive. He didn't know why he took this precaution or what, exactly, it meant. Somehow it seemed a safe course. He finished his drink before the others were halfway through with theirs. Jackie appeared to be studying him as she spoke, measuring his attentiveness or wondering why his replies had dwindled to simple nods of the head, three every ten seconds. Rosemary said she had to leave. He emptied his face of indications. Zeltner told her not to bother with money; it was his treat, et cetera. Lyle watched her walk out the door. She hadn't implied to the others, in any manner at all, that she'd ever spoken a word to him before this evening. He wasn't sure whether this was by specific design or part of a social code that prevailed in all her relations with others.
"Yumpin' yimminy," he said. "My train to catch. Have to go out to the boonies to see this friend of mine's wife with all kinds of problems. Jesus, hospitals, I hate them. Kid is all screwed up. Wife may be serious. I told him I'd be out tonight. Larry, lunch, without fail, the soonest.”
He smiled at the women, left money and hurried out, trying to detach himself from the tiny disaster of that speech. It was rush hour in the streets. He half ran toward the corner where the Volkswagen usually arrived to get her. His body was filled with chemical activity, streams of desperate elation. She was still there, waiting. Again he could see his lips moving as he spoke through a hole in the air. Rosemary put her sunglasses on.
They were in a taxi heading uptown. Strategically he'd chosen a bar near the approach to the Queensboro Bridge. It seemed the way to deal with her. She was the kind of woman whose very lack of reaction summoned in him a need to resort to discredited tactics. The driver's name was Wolodymyr Koltowski. Lyle tried to ignore the hack number. He was sweating extensively. Traffic on the East River Drive was unusually manic-depressive, a careening streak of excitation and suicidal gloom. Lyle felt at fault, as he always did in a cab, with a woman, when traffic moved too slowly or at this raging pace. He realized he'd forgotten to put stamps on some envelopes the night before.
The place was crowded. There were no empty tables and they couldn't get near the bar. He didn't know this area well. He didn't know what was around. It had been there all day, this unfinished space, a negative awareness. He reached in for their drinks and worked his way toward her. She stood near the door, legs crossed at the ankles. He'd meant to put stamps on the envelopes. There were bills inside. He'd written the checks and wanted to get them in the mail. To pay a bill was to seal off the world. The pleasure here was inward-tending, an accumulation of self. Putting stamps on the envelopes was the decisive point. Stamps were emblems of authentication. Her hands were folded in front of her, purse dangling from her wrist. Wolodymyr Koltowski. Shut up, he told himself. The crowd at the bar continued to grow, pressing out toward them. Rosemary didn't seem to mind.
It was a challenge to something deeper than virility. To be recognized by this woman, accepted as a distinct and welcome presence in her murky ken, was the end toward which his passions were now directed.
They rode out over the bridge and onto Queens Boulevard. They got out of the cab and walked north half a block. It was still light. She lived on the ground floor of a row house with a corrugated aluminum awning outside and webbed beach chairs stacked in the hallway.
There were three small rooms and a large kitchen. Until he wandered into the kitchen he saw nothing he might identify with Rosemary as occupant of the place-Rosemary Moore as opposed to someone he'd never seen before, or talked to, or wanted to touch, another woman entirely, or a man dressed as a woman, snatching him out of a dark hallway into this square bag of space, these shades of gray and beige. There was no feeling of individual history, the narrative in things, habits intact in one's belongings.
In the kitchen he stood before a large corkboard. Pinned there were ticket stubs, menus, matchbook covers, photos of Rosemary with various people. The echoes of her self-absorption converged here, apparently. In one photo she sat on a sofa between two men. There was no one else in the picture but Lyle suspected that others (besides the photographer) were present in the room. One man's sidelong glance, the other's half-sheepish mien indicated the possibility of onlookers. The man being sheepish was George Sedbauer, heavy-set and balding. Lyle had seen news photos of him after the shooting. Of course he'd also seen him dead, although he wouldn't have been able to identify Sedbauer from those scattered glimpses on the floor. Rosemary handed him a drink. It had only two ice cubes in it. It wouldn't be cold enough. He wanted a cold drink. He realized, incredibly, that he'd forgotten what he was going to ask her. He had to work his way back to it.
"That's George, isn't it?”
"Yes.”
"Who's with him?”
"That's me in the middle. That's somebody Vilas or Vilar. I think it was on a weekend. We went to Lake Placid? It was supposed to be to ski. That's the lobby where we stayed. Or that's the room. I think that was someone's room.”
"Who's somebody Vilas?”
"That's the man who shot George.”
"Interesting," he remarked.
"He was around a lot sometimes. Other times you never saw him for long periods.”
"I think that's interesting, said the wide-eyed young man.”
"George didn't ski. That was it. When we got all the way up there, George hated snow.”
Unsure of something, she'd narrow her eyes and gaze into space. She gestured slowly. Her face betrayed the barest abandonment when she turned to find him staring. It was necessary, he knew, to talk to her about herself. She was tall, more pale than fair, walking in a somber frost.
To be alone with her was to occupy the immediate center of things. There were no gradations to this kind of desire. Everything turned on the point of her chalk image. It would be essential to talk awhile. He would find his way to her through this process of filling in.
"This drink needs about eleven more ice cubes.”
"I don't think you can stay too long.”
"Let's sit in the living room. I'm a living-room fanatic. I'm a buff, really. I have this thing. Without a living room around I'm dead, just about.”
The sensual pleasure of banality was a subject worth the deepest investigation. He lingered in the kitchen to watch her walk into the next room. He sat facing her, ten feet away, knowing she would cross her legs. There were cigarettes and liquor, absolute necessities when he was with her. He tried to limit his remarks to tapered extensions of predictable types. He was working toward a pure state, some embryonic science of desire, perhaps to be known as reciprocal hypnotism. When she spoke he concentrated every effort on creating a face that would return to her not only a sense of what she'd said but of the person speaking, Rosemary Moore in a camisole dress. He moved to the sofa, settling in next to her. Together they would craft the branding instrument of character.
"When I was flying," she said, "I was always sleeping too little or too much. I used to sleep whole days sometimes. This is a little more regular. But I don't know how interesting it'll wind up being. There isn't enough to do. I have to see if I'm going to stay. The people are pretty nice, though. Not like this job with buyers that I had. That was insane. They would shout into the phone. I don't like when people do that.”
He took the glass out of her hand and put it on the end table next to his own drink. She moved her head briefly, shaking hair out of her eyes or ending one sequence of encounter to begin another. The second he touched her, touch turned to grip.
8
Pammy put tap shoes and tights into her shoulder bag. The class was on West Fourteenth Street, two evenings a week, eight-thirty to ten. In charge was Nan Fryer, a woman with brittle hair and a scar across one side of her jaw. There were as many as forty people there some nights. The studio was rented from a theater group called Dynamic Tranquillity. Nan was a member of the group and she attributed her prowess in tap to ethical systems of discipline. "Hop, you're not hopping. Shuf-ful, shuf-ful." Pammy danced before a mirror at the back of the room. Her body was suited to tights, one of the few such bodies in evidence. She was practicing a routine that involved a precarious off-balance change. Pammy loved tap. She had dancing feet, it appeared. A born hoofer. Arms flung up, toes crackling, heels beating out a series of magnetic stresses, she repeatedly sought a particular cadence, the single instance of lucidity that would lift her into some dizzy sphere of ecstasy and sweat. Tap was so crisp when done correctly, so pleasing to one's sense of the body as a coordinated organism able to make its own arithmetic.
Nan Fryer clapped her hands, bringing the tapping to a halt. People drooped somewhat, bodies throbbing. The men in class were dressed variously, from track suits to routine casual wear. Most of the women wore tights or flared slacks. Nan walked among them, talking. She wore silver shoes, cut-off jeans and a Dynamic Tranquillity T-shirt. It was an outfit that made her facial scar appear all the more tragic.
"I like your breathing. You're all breathing so well. This is important in that we're concerned with movement and the forces affecting movement. There are areas and awarenesses in you that tap makes accessible. You are accessible to yourself. Notice how calm you're getting. Little by little, deeper and deeper. Unblock your nervous systems. Believe in your breathing. This is so essential to getting the most out of tap. When I first came to tap, I thought it was just a ticky tacky dance. It can be so much more. Movement and force. Force and energy. Energy and peace. You are a free person for the first time in that your whole body is aware of the physical and moral universe.”
Pammy looked out a window at the back of the room. Traffic moved swiftly. There were flushes of sunset in a glass door across the street, a bargain shop. Her hands were over her ears.
"Okay, kids, crossover time.”
The rest of the session Pammy danced intently, cracking down on her heels, definitive contact. She worked awhile on the intermediate routine, step number two, moving sideways across the face of the mirror to confront a radiator and pipes. Nan played an old show tune on the phonograph and danced a set of advanced combinations. The students formed a circle around her. Soon they were all dancing, trying to duplicate the complex floor patterns, tapping, swaying, elbowing out into some private space to strut awhile, quietly, on the hardwood floor.
"Do not tight-ten. Com-plete loose-ness. Re-lax ank-les, Arnold Mas-low, do not tight-ten.”
Lyle stood in a phone booth in Grand Central waiting for McKechnie to pick up and watching people heading for their trains, skidding along, their shoulders collapsed-a day's work, a drink or two causing subtle destruction, a rumpling beyond the physical, all moving through constant sourceless noise, mouths slightly open, the fish of cities.
"You're sure it's not too late.”
"Lyle, say what you want to say.”
"The other day we talked about George Sedbauer. Who shot him, so on, so forth. Well remember you mentioned this secretary of Zeltner's one time? She knows a little about this. I got to know her a little. She first of all knew Sedbauer. She knew the man or knows the man who shot him. That's the key thing. There's a photograph. I saw it. And she knows about the gun, what kind of gun, but the gun she could have read in the paper. The key thing is the man who did the shooting. She knows him. Should somebody be told about this? Or what, Frank?”
"You saw this picture.”
"They were in it. George, her, the guy. Unless she's inventing. But why would she invent?”
"I want you to talk to a friend of mine," McKechnie said. "I'll have him get in touch with you. Yeah, we'd better do that.”
Ethan and Jack came over the next evening with meat loaf leftovers. They all went up to the roof, where management had laid slate over the tar and provided four picnic tables (chained to the walls) and several evergreen shrubs in large planters. Lyle arrived last, carrying drinks on a tray.
"I didn't know this was up here," Jack said.
"It's to give Pammy a look at the World Trade Center whenever she's depressed. That gets her going again.”
"I want to drink something classic," Ethan said. "None of this tequila business. What is that, tequila? I've decided to live after all. No more poison pinwheels.”
"A bit of poetry, that," Pammy said. "Here, somebody serve. Give me a small piece. Are we eating or drinking? I'm confused and we're just getting started.”
"What's that?" Jack said. "Is that the Municipal Building? Is that, what, the Woolworth Building? You can't see that far from here, can you?”
"If you'd brought wine I could give you something classic. I could give you wine.”
"We brought meat loaf. Who else brings meat loaf?”
"You left the wine in the cab, I take it, from past experience.”
"We had this cabdriver coming up here," Jack said. "No spikka da English too good. Tried to come up here via Chinatown.”
"Ah so.”
"Threats of bodily harm," Ethan said.
"Who's what here? I'd like some bread with this. No, I wouldn't. Forget that. Cancel that order, waiter. I'm a dancer now. Austerity is my life. What's it called-an austere regimen. I will accept a drink, however, if one of you turdnagels will pass me a glass, being careful at all times, these being new and extremely high-priced drinking vessels.”
"This salad's fabulous.”
"Thank you, Jack.”
"A salad among salads," Ethan said.
"Lyle tossed it.”
"Loud and prolonged applause.”
"I tossed it.”
"Meaning to ask, Lyle, what's happening on the street?”
"The street of streets.”
"Have you been declared officially antiquated or what? Are you viable, Lyle? We all want to know. Will there be a floor to trade on in the near future? Or does it all pass into the mists of history, ladies and gentlemen, and you are there.”
"I vote for the mists of history. But who knows, really? There's an awful strong argument for the membership's point of view. But the current's the other way.”
"Really, you'd haul it all down?”
"It's not hauling it down. It's opening it up. Of course you don't know exactly what it is you're opening up. That's the trouble with currents.”
"They can take you right over the falls.”
"Right over the falls and your barrel too.”
"Should we be worried?" Ethan said.
"Pick an opening and move right in. That's the only, you know, method of, whatever-maintaining some kind of self-determination, a specific presence. Out into the streets, clerks of history, package-wrappers. Freedom, freedom.”
"You've learned your lesson well, Spartacus.”
It was nearly dark. Lyle went down for more liquor and ice. He dialed Rosemary's number. No one answered. In the kitchen he moved past a glass cabinet and realized there was a flaw in his likeness. Something unfamiliar in the middle of his face. At the same time he felt dampness there. He went into the bathroom. It was his nose, bleeding. He held some tissue there until the flow diminished. Then he put a box of Kleenex on the tray, along with tequila, vodka, bitter lemon and ice, and went back up to the roof. Someone was at one of the other tables. It was a small boy wearing a straw fedora. He stood against the chair, eyes averted. Lyle sensed that the others were watching him to measure the comic dimensions of his reaction to the boy. He walked toward them, looking out over the umbrella that was set into the table. Deliberately he placed the tray down, moving objects out of the way with calculated disdain. They waited for him to say something. He sat, moving slowly as possible. His nose started bleeding again. This became the joke, of course. It was funnier than anything he could have said. He inserted a tissue in his nostril and let it hang there, his expression one of weary forbearance.
"His mother left him," Jack said. "She'd come right back. You leave kids on roofs?”
"He's a forties kid," Pammy said.
"But that hat, I can't believe.”
"He's a forties kid. He's got a two-toned little suit. I bet he never grows up. He'll stay three feet something. He'll smoke a little pipe and never go anywhere without that hat and two-toned suit. His name will be Bert Follett and I'd like to marry him. I'd also like a white wine with club soda please.”
"Where am I supposed to get it?”
"Wherever it is. It exists, that's all. Existentially you should be able to get it.”
"She's such a snarly nymphet," Ethan said. "Isn't she at times? In the office they fear her on sight.”
"Oh, she's a proper moll, she is.”
"Take the Kleenex out of your nose.”
"Nose, what, who… he trailed off.”
They finished the meat loaf. Pammy went over to talk to the boy. They had a pleasant conversation about dogs in the neighborhood. Her attentions made him glow a little. She felt he was aware of the whole scene, not just their talk. He was enjoying himself as part of it. Child among adults. Cute suit. The ambiance. His mother came to take him away and Pammy rejoined the others.
"I'm saying this is it," Lyle said, "and we don't know what it means. It's collapsed right in on us. It's ahead of schedule. Look who's back looking a little sick about something. It's backed into us. It's here.”
"Vales of time and space.”
"If I had a mother like that," Jack said, "I'd hang around on rooftops too. I do anyway, hubba hubba.”
"What is this, tequila?" Ethan said. "I don't want this. Take it away, someone. If this is tequila and if I'm drinking it, there's something seriously amiss.”
"That plane looks like it's going to hit.”
"I think I'm sick, guys,”
"I wanted so very much for us to be brilliant together this evening.”
"I think I may blow my cookies any minute.”
"I was sure it would hit," Jack said.
"I don't want to blame the meat loaf but there's something happening in my stomach that's not supposed to.”
"She's going to blow her cookies, Lyle. Get her out of here.”
"If we had something brilliant to drink perhaps. Too long I've accepted second best.”
"Lyle, you smoke? I didn't know you smoked. When did you start smoking?”
In the bathroom mirror he watched the blood seep out. It was pretty in a way. It came so slowly, an idealized flow, no sense at all of some impelling force. He watched it fill the indentation above his lip. The color of his blood intrigued him, its meaty bloom, a near sheen of the gayest sap imaginable. He held his head back, finally, until the bleeding stopped, then went into the kitchen, where Pammy stood before the steaming basin. He opened the refrigerator, pressing her against the sink as he did so, an offhand attempt to annoy, not even mildly riling, and lifted out a jar of olives.
"How come no dishwasher?”
"I want these glasses to know what it feels like to be washed by human hands," she said. "I don't want them to grow up thinking everything's done the easy way, by machine, with impersonal detergent.”
"It's broke again?”
"You call.”
"You, for once.”
I called the other.
"I'm not calling. I don't care. Let it be broke.”
"Don't call. We won't call. I don't care.”
"I'm serious," he said. "I don't care.”
"I won't be here, so.”
"Neither will I except in and out.”
She made a prissy face and delivered a distorted version of his tone of voice.
"Neither will I except in and out.”
After the close Lyle showed up at the office. She wasn't at her desk. He lingered in the area, trying to be inconspicuous. Deciding finally that she'd left early or hadn't come in at all, he went into an empty office and called her at home. She didn't answer. Three times, at ten-minute intervals, he returned to dial her number. On the elevator he thought: grieved suitor. Was he coming to understand the motivating concepts that led to obsession, despair, crimes of passion? Haw haw haw. Denial and assertion. The trap of wanting. The blessedness of being wronged. What sweet vistas it opens, huge neurotic landscapes, what exemptions. Gaw damn, Miss Molly. In the taxi he was oddly calm. He had the driver take him two blocks past his destination. (It was that kind of involvement, already.) He called her number from a booth near a gas station. When she didn't answer he walked to the house and rang her bell in the vestibule. He waited there an hour, then went back to the phone booth. There was no answer. He thought he saw the VW turn into her street. He ran across Queens Boulevard and hurried to the corner. The car was parked in front of her building. It was still early, at least two hours or sunlight left. He smoked and waited. A man and a woman (not Rosemary) came out of the building. The car moved north. He went to the house and pressed her bell again. No one came to the door. He remained in the vestibule half an hour, ringing and waiting. Then he went to the booth near the gas station and dialed her number. There was no answer. He waited five minutes and dialed again. Then he decided to count to fifty. At fifty he would call one last time. When she didn't answer, he lowered the count to twenty-five.
Pammy in the back of a rented limousine sat drinking from a Thermos bottle full of gin and dry vermouth. When the car passed a delicatessen near the Midtown Tunnel she asked the driver to stop. She ran inside and bought a lemon. She came running out, in high boots and a puffy cap, her getaway gear. Back in the car she tore off a strip of lemon rind with her teeth and thumbnail. She rubbed it over the inner edge of the Thermos cup, then dropped it in. If she had to fly, she would do it at less than total consciousness. She drank much faster than usual. It was roughly eight parts gin to one vermouth. She didn't like martinis particularly but felt they represented a certain flamboyant abandon, at least in theory-a devil-may-care quality that suited a trip to the airport. If she had to go to the airport at all, she would go in a limousine, wearing high boots, faded denims and a street kid's jive cap. She knew she looked pretty terrific. She also knew Ethan and Jack would enjoy her story of going out to the airport, smashed, in a mile-long limo, although she had to admit she disliked hearing other people go on about their drinking or drug-taking, the quantities involved, the comic episodes that ensued. But they'd be glad to see her and they'd love her outfit. She felt so good, leaving. Maine was up there somewhere, vast miles of granite and pine. She could see Jack's face when she walked into the arrivals area, hear Ethan's arch greeting. It would be a separation from the world of legalities and claims, an edifying loss of definition. She poured another cup. When the land began to flatten and empty out, she knew they were in the vicinity of the airport. It was a landscape that acceded readily to a sense of pre-emption. She lowered the shades on the side windows and rode the rest of the way in semidarkness, conscientiously sipping from the cup.
Lyle was slightly surprised by the degree to which he enjoyed being alone. Everything was put away, all the busy spill of conjugal habits. He walked through the apartment, noting lapsed boundaries, a modification of sight lines and planes. Of course it hadn't nearly the same warmth. But there was something else, an airy span about the place, the re-distancing of objects about a common point. Things were less abrupt and sundry. There was an evenness of feeling, a radial symmetry involving not so much his body and the rooms through which he passed but an inner presence and its sounding lines, the secret possibilities of self. He'd seen her, after he stepped off the bus, come out of the building and walk to the limousine. He was half a block away. She'd stood briefly on the sidewalk, checking her shoulder bag for tickets, keys, so forth. The long boots were a surprise, and the hat as well, making her seem, even from this distance, never more captivating, physically, a striking sight really, and vulnerable, as people can appear to be who are fetching and carefree and unaware of being watched. He felt his soul swing to a devastating tenderness. She was innocent there, that moment; had put away guile and chosen to distrust experience. Short of pretending to be blind, he could do nothing but succumb to love. The bronze shock of it was pure truth, the kind that reveals conditions within, favors and old graces coming into the light. He watched the automobile glide into traffic. He shared her going, completely. It would be only several weeks but in that time he knew the simplest kitchen implement would be perceived as brighter, more distinct, an object of immediate experience. Their separations were intense.
9
He passed McKechnie several times on the floor but said nothing, as was customary, and avoided eye contact. He looked for him during slack periods and again in the smoking area. That night he called him at home.
"Frank, a friend of yours was supposed to get in touch with me.”
"I told him the thing.”
"Who is he, where is he, when do we talk?”
"I don't know what he does but he does it in Langley, Virginia.”
"Which means what?”
"Christ, Lyle.”
" 'Christ, Lyle.' What's that? 'Christ, Lyle.' “
"Use your head," McKechnie said.
"Look, just tell me, will you?”
"Langley fucking Virginia.”
"What is that? 'Langley fucking Virginia.' What is that?”
"Don't be stupid. You're being intentionally stupid.”
"Is there a curse attached if you utter the goddamn thing? What happens, your eyeballs drop out?”
"Shit but you're dumb sometimes.”
"Langley, Virginia.”
"That's right.”
"When do I hear?”
"Don't ask me.”
"This is supposed to be some kind of obscure figure and everybody's searching for terrorist links and here's this secretary walking around who's met the man, who knows him apparently, who's got his picture hanging in her kitchen. It could be important, Frank.”
"Not to me it couldn't.”
"You don't even know what he does, your friend.”
"I don't know, that's right.”
"And you don't want to know.”
"Never righter, Lyle.”
"But he does it in Langley, Virginia.”
"Wow but you're stupid.”
"Say it, Frank.”
"Either you know or you don't. If you don't know, try guessing.”
"I want to hear you say it.”
"Try guessing.”
"Utter it, come on.”
"I'm hanging up," McKechnie said.
"Whisper it in my ear.”
"I'm putting down the phone, dumbfuck.”
10
Rosemary's flesh, her overample thighs, the contact chill of her body were the preoccupations of his detachment from common bonds. Once her clothes were off, she rarely spoke. He gripped and bit at her, leaving spit everywhere. Her breath was milky. She was uninterested in all but the most commonplace sex. Suitable, he thought. Perfectly acceptable. Why not? She clutched the back of his neck. Her flesh obsessed him, color and touch, bland odors coming off it. She might almost have been a drugged child. He wanted to scratch at her flesh, to leave teeth marks, pink ridges, alternately lapping and clawing away. It was hardly the mood of squandered afternoons. He wanted to put his mouth inside hers; roar.
"It's that I'm all through with that. I'm out. Let it all come down. Don't you think everybody, nearly, feels that way about their work, where they work all those years? It's insane, besides. The whole thing is. Besides, why not?”
She never let him undress her. She would go into the bathroom, emerging ten minutes later, slightly ill at ease although not about her nakedness, he felt, but about the way she walked when barefoot, a somehow downhill step, heavy-tending. She showed little sign or whatever measures or desire his own body might have been expected to arouse in her.
"There may be some people you can meet.”
"Of course, I know.”
"I was wondering," she said. "The car?”
"Sure, I remember, clearly.”
"That picks me up from work sometimes.”
"Absolutely, who else but them?”
"If you want to.”
"Why not, certainly, what am I here for?”
Her thighs distorted the line of her body. A plodder's thighs, surprisingly. Hard to spot in someone who wears a dress but reassuring in that it confounded the set of his expectations. He pressed onto her constantly, all his body, ravenous for flesh, his hands mixing and working her into a mass of mild discoloration. She never approached orgasm. He accepted this not as a deficiency he might correct (as people often interpret the matter), using patience and skill, the bed mechanic's experience; nor as a deeper exhaustion, a failure of the spirit. It was simply part of their dynamics, the condition of being together, and he had no intention of altering the elements of the spell or even of wishing them otherwise. One kind of sex or another was not the question. The triteness that pervaded their meetings supplied what he wanted of eroticism and made "one" or "the other" a question of recondite semantics. He gripped her fiercely. There was never any point at which he guided himself past a certain stage or prepared to approach a culmination. It was too disorganized, the moments of intensity only loosely foreseen. He would climax unexpectedly, barely aware, feeling both criminal and naïve.
one is padding to the bathroom, he thought. Holding her breasts she admires her body in the full-length mirror. She is rosy with fulfillment. Two waiting-maids enter to prepare her perfumed bath. On the bed of carved walnut, he thought, her lover reclines against a mound of silk pillows, recalling how she'd groaned with pleasure.
TWO
1
She turned the car into a dead-end street. It was Sunday and very still, midafternoon. Lyle looked out the side window, dreamily, his arm hanging out over the door, a surfer returning from a day at the beach. The woman parked, turned off the ignition and sat there. Lyle waited. Only one sidewalk was paved. The house was gray frame, two-storied, fronted by shrubs and a single tree. She made a small noise, routine irritation, as she attempted to bend herself out of the car. She looked back in at Lyle, who hadn't yet reached for the door.
"I forgot the Cheerios," she said. "This will precipitate a small crisis in the morning. Is that right-'precipitate'?”
"I think so," he said. "Maybe not quite.”
She reached in for the groceries.
"Do I come in now?" he said. "Or wait out here.”
"Oh, I think come in. By all means now. I think it's clearly the thing.”
He heard piano music coming from the back of the house, a record player apparently, upper floor. The woman, reacting to the sound, turned on the radio. She gestured to Lyle and he sat in a deep chair with enormous laminated arms. The woman, Marina Vilar, stood behind the table the radio was on, reaching over the top of the radio to turn the station selector. Through the window behind her Lyle could see part of a bridge, either the Whitestone or the Throgs Neck. He knew they weren't far from the Nassau County line but couldn't recall which was the easternmost bridge. The woman found what she wanted, a rapid-fire disk jockey, and turned up the volume, grimly satisfied, her look directed toward the top of the stairs.
Marina was squat, close to shapeless, dressed in what might have been thrift-shop clothing. Her face had precise lines, however, strongly boned, a trace of the socialist painter's peasant woman, broad arcs and shadows. Her hair was parted in the middle and combed back over the ears. She had eyes that concentrated intently and would not easily surrender their assertiveness. She believed in one thing, he felt, to the exclusion of everything else. Although he didn't know what this thing was as yet, he was certain she'd imbued it with a particular kind of purity, a savage light.
"You didn't meet my brother, unfortunately. Only Rosemary, is that right? My brother did the rockets at Tempelhof. He planned it to the last detail.”
"I don't know if I recall.”
"They hit the wrong plane. They hit the DC-9. They were totally stupid. One plans something to the closest degree of precision. What happens?”
"They go and hit the wrong plane," he said.
The place was full of blond furniture, secondhand, the kind of thing found in rec rooms or settlement houses. Everything had a chemical veneer. Marina put the groceries away and made some phone calls, not bothering to reduce the volume on the radio. During the third such call, J. Kinnear came down the stairs, moving quickly, feet wide apart, taking the last few steps with a rhythmic little canter. Five nine or ten, Lyle thought, identifying yet another suspect for some detective lieutenant. Checked shirt, brown pants, brown loafers, older than he appeared to be at very first glance.
"Hi, I'm J. Delighted. You want to turn, is that it?”
He smiled, shaking Lyle's hand, half winking, and sat on a stack of phone books, hunched forward, clutching his knees. His manner suggested they were fellow believers whose paths had diverged only through the force of horrid circumstance. Furthermore he was eager to hear the whole story. There was humor in the way Kinnear assembled this sense of flattering intimacy. He was at a distance from it but certainly not in a way intended to deceive. His hands were at his ankles now, absently scratching. Marina turned off the radio and made another phone call. The room hummed as the two men waited for her to speak before resuming their own conversation. Kinnear had a gaze that never quite penetrated. If there was such a thing as being stared at evasively, Lyle felt he was experiencing just that. Rusty brown hair. Remnants of widespread freckling. Creases about the eyes and mouth.
"A man from the floor itself.”
"The floor of floors.”
"Delighted, delighted.”
"What happens now?”
Kinnear laughed. He said he'd been making trips to and from the Coast. He said things were getting interesting. Lyle inferred that he wasn't supposed to ask questions. The room was warm. He wanted to go to sleep. He couldn't understand why he wasn't more alert, more interested. From the beginning, when Marina Vilar picked him up outside a bookstore on Fourth Avenue and took a less than direct route to the Midtown Tunnel, Lyle hadn't been able to feel wholly engaged. It was happening around him somehow. He was slipping right through. A play. It was a little like that. He found himself bored, often, at the theater (although never at movies), even when he knew, could see and hear, that the play was exceptional, deserving of total attention. This kind of torpor was generated by three-dimensional bodies, real space as opposed to the manipulated depth of film. So things here might take a while to pinch in, raise a welt or two. In the meantime she'd taken him shopping. He'd followed her up and down the aisles of a small market in Bayside.
"What's curious," he said to Kinnear, "is the little sort of reversal here. I'm a white collar. A walk-in. That was the secret dream of the white collar. To place a call from a public booth in the middle of the night. Calling some government bureau, some official department, right, of the government. 'I have information about so-and-so.' Or, even better, to be visited, to have them come to you. 'You might be able to deliver a microdot letter, sir, on your visit to wherever,' if that's how they do things. 'You might be willing to provide a recruiter with cover on your payroll, sir.' Imagine how sexy that can be for the true-blue businessman or professor. What an incredible nighttime thrill. The appeal of mazes and intricate techniques. The suggestion of a double life. 'Fantastic, sign me up, I'll do it,' 'Of course, sir, you won't be able to tell anyone about this, including your nearest and dearest.' 'I love it, I love it, I'll sign.' But what's happening here, J. ? That's the twist. You have somebody like George Sedbauer, to name just one instance of what I'm talking about, and what was old George up to, a white collar like old George? He was hanging around with the wild-eyed radicals, with the bomb-throwers. He was doing business with the other side. A white collar. What happened to the bureau, the service, the agency?”
Kinnear's smile emptied out as Lyle went along. The piano music stopped. He didn't change expressions; merely vacated his smile, leaving ridged skin behind. The woman passed between them and went upstairs. There was a pause. They waited for the effects of her presence to diminish, the simple distraction of her body in transit.
"Our phone bill is unreal. And we don't have two dimes to rub together.”
"But somebody like Sedbauer involved with terrorists, these total crazies from the straight world's point of view. What does that suggest to you, J.?”
"I want to show you something. It'll be your initiation into the maze you spoke of. I have this fool notion that once you see this stuff, you're in for good. This nearly mystical notion.”
Kinnear led the way to the basement. There was a door beyond the furnace. He snapped back the bolt and went into the back room. Lyle watched him lift paint-stained canvas from a large table. There was a stock of weapons on and under the table. Kinnear brushed dust from his hands, holding them out away from the rest of his body.
"I don't know how many rounds of machine gun ammunition.”
He worked on his trouser legs now, concentrating on removing dust, and then, beginning to speak, turned to face Lyle across the table.
"Ironically no machine guns at the moment. But the usual sawed-off shotguns, sporting rifles, handguns. Some flak jackets. Some riot batons, riot helmets. Explosives and explosive components of various kinds, i.e., Pento-Mex, ammonium nitrate, various other powders and compounds. Ah, yes, an alarm clock for guess what purpose. Silhouette targets, cartridge clips, tracer bullets, a whole bunch of nine-volt batteries. I don't know how many cans of Mace and CN.”
From that point, in sparse light, he seemed to be inviting a question or two, his head cocked and an element of serious expectation in his stance, generally-a fixing of distances. His hands were jammed into slash pockets, thumbs showing.
"Shouldn't this stuff be concealed better?”
"There's no reason for anyone to suspect this house of being anything out of the ordinary.”
"Somebody comes down to fix the furnace.”
"I come with him.”
"And you're showing this stuff very freely, aren't you? What do you know about me, J.?”
"That's what she would say. Or her brother. But I operate on basic, really visceral levels. Terror is purification. When you set out to rid a society of repressive elements, you immediately become a target yourself, for all sorts of people. There's nobody who mightn't conceivably stick it to you. Being killed, or betrayed, sometimes seems the point of it all. As for what I know about you, Lyle, I would say you're George Sedbauer's successor. That's clear to me. This difference: George didn't know who he was working for. George thought we were involved in high-level-quote-industrial espionage-close quote. We led him to believe we represented international banking and shipping interests. He copied all sorts of arcane documents from his company's safes and files and told us whatever he knew about the Exchange itself. He thought Vilar was liaison man for some secret banking cartel. It never occurred to him until the end, literally the last minute, I would think, that Vilar wanted to blow up the Exchange.”
"Boom.”
"Vilar was a little bomb-happy for my taste. But there it is. And George in the meantime was wearing out the Xerox.”
"Not knowing.”
"I liked George. We got along. George was an interesting man. We spent time together.”
"What did you do with the material he copied?”
"It was worthless.”
"A lot of waxy paper.”
"Look at this stuff," Kinnear said. "Riot shields, tear gas, all that anti-crowd business in the sixties. These are artifacts. This stuff is memorabilia. Aside from die explosives, I don't think any of this stuff even works anymore. And I can't really vouch for the explosives. Maybe these chemicals have an effective half life that expired ten minutes ago. But look at it all. Obviously hauled out of some National Guard armory in the middle of a night in spring. Pure nostalgia, Lyle. But I wanted you to see it. I would imagine a collection of weapons might have complex emotional content for someone in your position. It's an arsenal, after all. Only fair you know the nature of the game.”
He propped one of the silhouette targets against the wall. He took out his handkerchief and cleaned off the top of an upended milk crate, then sat facing the target. He touched a finger several times to the dust on the face of the target. Entertainment, Lyle thought. A little show biz.
"It's this uncertainty over sources and ultimate goals," Kin-near said. "It's everywhere, isn't it? Mazes, you're correct. Intricate techniques. Our big problem in the past, as a nation, was that we didn't give our government credit for being the totally entangling force that it was. They were even more evil than we'd imagined. More evil and much more interesting. Assassination, blackmail, torture, enormous improbable intrigues. All these convolutions and relationships. Assorted sexual episodes. Terribly, terribly interesting, all of it. Cameras, microphones, so forth. We thought they bombed villages, killed children, for the sake of technology, so it could shake itself out, and for certain abstractions. We didn't give them credit for the rest of it. Behind every stark fact we encounter layers of ambiguity. This is all so alien to the liberal spirit. It's a wonder they're bearing up at all. This haze of conspiracies and multiple interpretations. So much for the great instructing vision of the federal government.”
He turned from the target to face Lyle, who stood on the other side of the table.
"What really happened?" Kinnear said. "Who ordered the wiretaps? Why were the papers shredded and what did they say? Why does this autopsy report differ from that one? Was it one bullet or more? Who erased the tapes? Was so-and-so's death an accident or murder? How did organized crime get involved-who let them in? How deeply are the corporations involved in this or that mystery, this or that crime, these murders, these programs of systematic torture? Who ordered these massive surveillance programs? Who wrote the anonymous letters? Why did these witnesses drop out of sight? Where are the files? Where are the missing bullet fragments? Did this suspect work for the intelligence service or didn't he? Why do these four eyewitness accounts clash so totally? What happened, Lyle, on the floor that day?”
"I thought I'd get around to asking you.”
"I wasn't there," J. said. "You were there. I didn't even know it was supposed to happen. They did it on their own. A brother-sister act.”
"You want to know what happened.”
"What happened, Lyle? How many shots were fired? Who did the shooting? Was it one person or more? Did you see a gun? What did the suspect or suspects look like?”
Kinnear paused here, summoning forensic energy for the windup.
"When governments become too interesting, the end is in sight. Their fall is contained not in their transgressions, obviously, but in the material that flows from these breaches, one minute sinister and vicious, the next nearly laughable. Governments mustn't be that interesting. It unsettles the body politic. I almost want to say they had too much imagination. That's not quite it, though, is it?”
"Fantasies.”
"They had too many fantasies. Right. But they were our fantasies, weren't they, ultimately? The whole assortment. Our leaders simply lived them out. Our elected representatives. It's fitting, then, no more than fitting, and we were stone blind not to guess at it. All we had to do was know our own dreams.”
"You ought to take this lecture on tour," Lyle said. "They pay well.”
"I sense you're enjoying this. You need this, don't you? A sense of structure. A logical basis for further exposition.”
Lyle heard footsteps right over him. A door closed, causing slight vibrations. He picked up what he thought might be an M-16. It was heavier than he'd expected. He held it at belly level, bouncing it lightly in his hands. Through a small window high on the wall he could see beyond the latticework that skirted the back porch. Marina was unfolding a beach chair in half shade. The weapon made him uneasy. The simple feel of it contained the severity of its ends. G-g-g-gun, he thought. No doubting its authority. Down to the smallest spiral groove it was clearly a device cut and shaped to function with chill precision. Memory of a toy's coppery taste on his tongue. The thing was near perfect. It could kill a man before the color of its stock registered in his mind. He put it down, deciding Kinnear was homosexual.
Later he sat out back with Marina. He didn't know who anyone was, really, but it didn't seem odd that he was here. He could have napped in his chair, easily, one hand cupped above the grass. Marina was reading a newspaper. She kept chopping at it to keep it compact in the wind.
"I'd like to ask if I can.”
"What?”
"Why, exactly, you chose the Exchange to hit? Or is that too obvious?”
"The fact of George.”
"He gave you access.”
"They get threats. They're aware. Guards every few feet.
But having someone on the floor. It was handed to us. We knew we would do something. Rafael wanted to disrupt their system, the idea of worldwide money. It's this system that we believe is their secret power. It all goes floating across that floor. Currents of invisible life. This is the center of their existence. The electronic system. The waves and charges. The green numbers on the board. This is what my brother calls their way of continuing on through rotting flesh, their closest taste of immortality. Not the bulk of all that money. The system itself, the current. That's Rafael. The doctor of philosophy approach to bombing. 'Financiers are more spiritually advanced than monks on an island.' Rafael. It was this secret of theirs that we wanted to destroy, this invisible power. It's all in that system, bip-bip-bip-bip, the flow of electric current that unites moneys, plural, from all over the world. Their greatest strength, no doubt of that.”
"What did Kinnear think of this?”
"They have money. We have destruction. What?”
"J.-what did he think?”
She looked back at the newspaper. Lyle felt it was important to ask questions that would not disappoint her. He may have missed right there. Kinnear was standing in the window above them, a telephone in his hand.
"It would have appealed to him if he had known. Not the bombing of itself. The thinking behind it. He would have discussed, discussed, discussed. J. is all theory. He's waiting for the instruments of world repression to fall apart on their own. It will happen mystically in a pink light. The people will step in and that will be that. One way of betraying the revolution is to advance theories about it. We don't only make doctrines, my brother and I. We're here to destroy. When we did the dynamite in Brussels, the embassy, it was beautiful because we were technicians completing an operation. In and out. The cleanest piece of work imaginable. Theory is an effete diversion. Its purpose is to increase the self-esteem of the theorists. The only worthwhile doctrine is calculated madness.”
"Impossible to anticipate.”
"Is one permitted to say 'moneys'-the plural?”
"Absolutely," he said.
In the early evening she drove him to a subway station. He had a long conversation with himself, internal. One voice was Lyle as a former astronaut who'd walked on the surface of the moon. The other voice was Lyle as a woman, interviewing the astronaut in a TV studio. The astronaut persona spoke movingly of weightlessness as a poetic form of anxiety and isolation. Somewhere at the top of the original Lyle's head, the interviewer smiled and cleared her throat. They drove past houses, more houses. Then they were on Main Street, Flushing.
"Rosemary doesn't know me as Vilar. She knows me as Marina Ramirez.”
"Okay, good.”
"But you know me as Vilar.”
"Correct.”
The woman persona asked questions about colors and shapes, loneliness among the stars. Will we ever walk on Mars, she said. There were waits for lights to change. The conversation trailed off. He felt stupid, having had it. Marina was watching him as she glided to a stop behind a line of other cars.
"We still have the intent to hit Eleven Wall.”
He didn't react.
"It has to be shattered to whatever extent we can manage before they decide to close it down for their own purposes. All this decentralization we see. It is a reaction to terror? I amuse myself by thinking they have a master plan to eliminate prominent targets. To go underground. Or totally electric. Nothing but waves and currents talking to each other. Spirits. So, the thing should be hit to whatever extent, now.”
"Thus your interest in a second George.”
"It's easier with a George.”
"I would think so.”
"Don't you think?”
"I would certainly think so.”
"Of course a George isn't everything," she said. "We need a Vilar as well. Someone who does explosives in his sleep.”