Don DeLillo - Running Dog

"You're way ahead of me," he said.

"Isn't that why the English are so good at espionage? Or why they seem so good at it, which comes to the same thing. Isn't it almost rooted in national character?"

"I didn't know the English controlled world rights."

"To what?"

"Being queer," he said.

"No, I'm saying the link is there. That's all. Tendency finds an outlet. I'm saying espionage is a language, an art, with sexual sources and coordinates. Although I don't mean to say it so Freudianly."

"I'm open to theorizing," he said. "What else do you have?"

"I have links inside links. This is the age of conspiracy."

"People have wondered."

"This is the age of connections, links, secret relationships."

"What would you think of this?"

"What?"

"If I told you this," he said.

"Tell me."

"_Running Dog_ is a propaganda mechanism."

"Who for? You're kidding."

"I don't know who for."

"That's bullshit, Selvy."

"You're right, I'm kidding."

"I don't like that smile."

"Just a little joke."

"Granted, it's a crappy magazine. Granted, we play to people's belief in just what I've been talking about. Worldwide conspiracies. Fantastic assassination schemes. But we are not anybody's mechanism."

"I'm not even smiling, look."

"I mean granted, we do things in the schlockiest way imaginable. You'd better be kidding."

"A kidder," he said. "I like to kid."

"Whose mechanism?"

"Can't you take a joke?" he said. "Don't you know when someone's joking?"

"Because it makes me think of how we named the goddamn magazine. Except we meant it ironically, of course. Using the Hanoi line then current. The familiar taunt."

"What taunt?"

"Imperialist lackeys and running dogs."

"All comes back."

"Perfect name for a radical publication, considering the temper of the times. The name had impact then. It fairly sparkled with irony."

Moll this time slipped down the side of the ottoman to sit crosslegged on the floor.

"We almost named it _H. C. Porny_. H. C. Porny was a cartoon character we'd planned on using. He was supposed to represent the government. More precisely the government plus big business. Short, fat, leering old man. We'd hoped, see, to replace Uncle Sam as a national symbol."

"H.C. meaning Hard Core."

"Our cartoonist OD'd, unfortunately. OD meaning overdose. And that was the early end of H. C. Porny. Where were you then, Selvy?"

"Fasting."

"I'll bet you were. Praying and fasting. People had flag decals. Everybody had something. People had bumper stickers. AMERICA -LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. So this friend, it's clear as day, this well-meaning friend gave me a sticker of my very own, which I thought was so devilishly clever I immediately proceeded to affix it to the bumper of my little Swedish car. VIETNAM -LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. And don't two guys come staggering out of a bar on Eighty-sixth Street while I'm stopped for a light? And don't they see my sign and start pounding on my car until the whole thing gets out of hand and there's a mob of people and I end up with a broken ankle and my car half wrecked?"

"Passions quicken in wartime. We see this time and again."

"Sure, sex was in the parks and streets. What lovely urgent folly. But what were you doing, pal? We're waiting to hear."

"I was preparing for the desert."

"You were oiling your goddamn.38."

"That was my desert period."

"You were leaping through burning hoops for a better America."

She watched him close his eyes and go to sleep. It took only seconds. Pure of heart, she thought. She found some brandy in the cabinet and sat a while drinking, watching him sleep. The digital clock in the wall unit had stopped days earlier at 4:01. 4:01 sounded about right. She finished the brandy and got up off the floor, creaking a bit. Selvy's head was tilted left. She put her hand to his face: sleep and warmth. Then the other hand, framing him. He opened his eyes finally. She waited for him to adjust to his surroundings.

"What would you do differently, knowing what you know now?"

"What do I know now?" he said.

There was an interval of dusky sex. Both half asleep, alternately active and listless, they lay diagonally across the bed, breathing deeply and evenly, muttering at times. It must have been a dream, she thought later, seeing him naked in the dawn, a dream in first light, crouched rigidly by the window, body leaning slightly forward, arms enfolding his knees, head lowered, a dream in gray space, motionless, absolutely still, she thought later, as though he'd learned from some master of the wilderness how to suspend even the rhythms of his breathing.

The maroon and gold pimpmobile, double-parked outside a nude-encounter studio, drew a crowd of admirers, largely because its rear window was custom-fashioned to resemble a lightning bolt.

It's Times Square Saturday night. Everybody's in costume. Cowboys, bikers, drag queens, punk rockers, decoy cops, Moonies, gypsies, Salvation Army regulars, Process evangelists in dark capes, skinhead Krishna chanters in saffron robes and tennis sneakers. Glitter and trash everywhere. Hot pants, blond wigs, slouch hats, silver boots. Late-season heat blasts. Waves of humid air pour over the crowds. Horns blowing, engines revving, music wailing from loudspeakers in record stores. There is swamp fever in the air. Everybody's soaked through with sweat, eyes glassy and distant. Priests, doormen, movie ushers, French sailors, West Point cadets, waitresses in dirndls, Shriners wearing fezzes.

The two men seemed composed, totally untroubled by the heat. Selvy had first noticed them an hour ago and about a mile away, near the Coliseum. Now they were standing on a corner watching the quasi-Hindus dance and chant. They were both small, both in western boots; one wore dark glasses. They thought the chanters were funny. They stood laughing at them, pointing occasionally.

Selvy crossed the street. A kid with a walkie-talkie moved with him nearly stride for stride as he headed north on Broadway. Magic massage. Topless pinball. Scandinavian skin games. The kid was gangly, maybe sixteen, with the supercharged look of a once bright child who'd failed to develop. The walkie-talkie had an antenna that measured roughly ten feet, tall enough to scrape the bottom of theater marquees, and so the boy kept toward the edge of the sidewalk, often balancing on the curbstone itself. At Forty-fifth Street, he put the set to his mouth.

"Code blue," he said. "Prepare to activate all units. People in the street, take your positions. Camera one, code blue. This is a take. Give me a reflector over here. This set is closed. Camera's rolling, you people. Everybody's live. We are shooting live. This is a live action scene. Prepare sound stage to record. All right, you cab drivers, let's hear it. Watch those cables, everybody. Closing the set to all but essential personnel. Nude scene, nude scene. Get it moving, everybody, please. Am leaving the district. Repeat. Am leaving the district."

Overloaded with static, random brain noise, he stepped off the curbstone and went striding diagonally across the street, trailed now by four smaller kids. Selvy found an Irish bar on Eighth Avenue. He knocked back a couple of Jim Beams and waited for something to happen.

The blank of tool steel was cherry-red. Earl Mudger held it to the anvil with a pair of tongs, rough-forging the shape he wanted with a double-faced hammer.

He took off his gloves and put on a pair of goggles. He held the steel blank to a grinder belt, further shaping and sizing, removing excess metal.

Leaving the goggles hanging from a hook, he went into the next room, where there was a band saw, a drill press, a lathe, a grindstone and a small heat-treated furnace. He heated the steel blank for twenty minutes, then immersed it in quenching oil.