Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge

The cartoon comes back on, the villain is brought to justice. “And I would’ve got away with it, too,” he complains, “if it hadn’t been for those Medellín kids!”

“So,” innocent as she can manage, “how was krav maga today?”

“You know, funny you should ask. I begin to see the point.”

Right after class Nigel was outside someplace looking for his sitter, and Emma Levin was going around setting the security perimeter, when Ziggy heard a beep from his backpack.

“Uh-oh. Nige.” Ziggy fished out his Cybiko, checked the screen, started punching buttons with a little stylus. “He’s in the Duane Reade around the corner. There’s a van out in front of this place with some creepy guys and the motor idling.”

“Hey, cool, a pocket keyboard, you can send, like, e-mails on this?”

“More like instant messaging. You don’t think this van is anything to worry about?”

Suddenly there was a huge flash of light and burst of noise. “Harah!” muttered Emma, “the tripwire.”

They ran out the back exit to find a large paramilitary-looking party in the areaway blinking, staggering, and cursing. Everything smelling like fireworks.

“Something we can do for you?” Emma stepping quickly to the right and motioning Ziggy to the left. The visitor turned toward where she’d spoken from and appeared to be reaching for something. Emma went blurring into action. The ape didn’t fly very far through the air but was disorganized enough by the time he hit that it took her only a few economical gestures, with Ziggy as backup, to dispose of him.

“Not only an amateur but stupid too. He doesn’t know who he’s fooling with?”

“You’re awesome, Ms. Levin.”

“’Course, but I meant you. You’re part of my unit, Zig, nobody messes with any of us, he didn’t even get that far with it?”

She searches the intruder and finds a Glock with an oversize magazine. Ziggy’s eyes grow distant, as if attending to something internal. “Hmm… maybe not a civilian, yet not much of a professional, what else does that leave, I wonder.”

“Private contractor?”

“What I was thinking.”

“So you’re a sleeper cell after all.”

Shrug. “I’m on call 24/7. When I’m needed, I’m there. Looks like I’m needed. Just let me set another flashbang here, then we’ll check down in the basement, find a dolly, roll this idiot out to someplace his friends in the van can collect him.”

They rolled the unconscious gunhand on up the block and dumped him by the curb next to a broken pressboard credenza, swollen and lopsided from rainwater. They discussed whether or not to dial 911, figured what could hurt. “And that was about it. Nigel typically was pissed that he didn’t get in on it.”

“And… this is all something you saw on Power Rangers or one of them,” Maxine hopefully.

“Bad karma to lie about stuff like that… Mom? You all right?”

“Oh Ziggurat… I’m just glad you’re safe. So proud of you, how you handled yourself… Ms. Levin must be, too. OK if I call her later?”

“Tellin ya, she’ll confirm.”

“Just to say thanks, Ziggy.”

Otis and Fiona come blasting out the bedroom door.

“Listenna me, Fi, lose the perpetuity language, you’ll regret it.”

“It’s only boilerplate, Satjeevan says I can walk anytime I want.”

“You believe that? He’s a recruiter.”

“Now you’re acting like a jealous boyfriend.”

“Real mature, Fiona.”

Horst comes blinking into the apartment, has a look at Maxine. “Need a minute with yer ma here, guys,” lifts her by one wrist, gently steers her to the bedroom.

“I’m all right,” Maxine avoiding eye contact.

“You’re shaking, you’re whiter than Greenwich, Connecticut on a Thursday. It’s nothing to worry about, darlin. I talked to Zig’s instructor, just the standard New York creep that krav maga’s designed to deal with.” She knows what this honest never-to-be-wised-up face can change into, knows she better let this ride unless she wants to collapse under whatever it is, call it guilt, settles for nodding, distant, miserable. Let Horst have the standard-creep story. There are a thousand things in this town to be afraid of, maybe even two thousand, and there’s too much else he won’t likely ever know. All the silences, all the years, fraud-examiner infidelities without the fucking, plus unexpectedly some real fucking and now the other party is dead. No question of improvising around what happened today, first thing Horst will go, this dead guy, you were seeing him? and she’ll flare up, you don’t know what you’re talking about, then he’ll blame her for putting the boys in danger, then she’ll go, so where were you when you should’ve been here for them, and so fuckin on and on, yes and it’ll be right back to the olden days. So best to just dummy up here, Maxine, once again, just, dummy, up.

NEXT DAY EMMA LEVIN CALLSwith news of an anonymous floral bouquet heavy on the roses delivered to her studio, with a note in Hebrew to the effect that all will be well.

“The BF, maybe?”

“Naftali knows flowers exist, he sees them at the corner market, but he still thinks they’re something to eat.”

“So maybe…?”

“Maybe. Then again, nobody pays us to be Shirley Temple. Let’s wait and see.”

Still, maybe, at least, not such a bad sign? Meantime Avi and Brooke having just moved into a co-op near Riverside for a settling price whose obscenity is consistent with Avi’s salary at hashslingrz, Maxine now has a halfway-plausible excuse to stash the boys for a little while with their grandparents, whose building enjoys security arrangements rivaling any to be found in our nation’s capital. Horst goes for this eagerly, not least because he is rediscovering his quasi-ex-wife as an object of lust. “I can’t explain it…”

“Good, don’t.”

“It’s like committing adultery, only different?”

Mr. Elegant. Maxine guesses it is mysteriously not unconnected with loose-woman vibrations she is giving off like it or not, plus Horst’s insane suspicion of every man, ghost or whatever, who gets within ass-grabbing distance of her, and since it does not take too much shift in her own perversity level to feel flattered here, she lets him think what he’ll think, and the hardon situation does not suffer thereby.

Additionally, one day out of nowhere Horst hands her the keys to the Impala.

“Why would I need these?”

“Just in case.”

“Of…”

“Nothing solid, only a feeling.”

“A what, Horst?” She peers. He looks normal enough. “You’d be good with that? Given your ding-intolerance problem?”

“Oh, cost of body work, you’d have to pick that up o’ course.”

Which doesn’t mean he’s lounging around the house all the time. One night he and his runningmate Jake Pimento, who has moved out of Battery Park and up to Murray Hill, are out on an all-nighter with a posse of venture capitalists from across the sea newly interested in rare earths, which Horst by ESP has determined is the next hot commodity, and Maxine decides to stay over with her parents and the boys.

She crashes early but keeps waking up. Dream fragments, cycles she can’t exit. She looks in a mirror, a face appears behind her, her own face but full of evil intent. All night these vignettes keep sending her each time up into a vibrating hollowness of heart. At some point, enough. She rolls muttering from between the damp sheets. Somebody is blasting up and down upper Broadway in a car whose horn plays the first eight bars of Nino Rota’s Godfather theme. Over and over. This happens once a year, and tonight, apparently, is the night.