Don DeLillo - Running Dog

Back in the smaller of: he two basement rooms he set the blank on the metal base of the testing machine he'd designed himself. It was fitted with wheels, gauges, handles, weights, a fulcrum arm and a precisely sized diamond tip, and it measured the hardness of steel. First time the blank tested out high, as he'd anticipated. Too brittle at that level. He reheated it for an hour. After it cooled he tested again. About right this time. It wouldn't break or chip easily. It would hold its cutting edge.

He took off his apron and lit up a cigarette. Then he lay supine on a long workbench, watching the smoke drift toward the ceiling. Upstairs the baby was crying.

The man next to Selvy drank beer. He wore a touring cap well down on his forehead, almost touching his nose. His bills and change were set before him in a small puddle of beer.

"You a TV type?"

"No," Selvy said.

"The old Madison Square Garden used to be right across the street there. We used to get TV types coming in here all the time. Knick fans, Rangers. I mention it because I'm promoting something sensational. Madison Avenue should give it a look."

He waited for Selvy to ask what he was promoting. Selvy kept an eye on the mirror. They were in the bar. He saw them take a booth near the men's room. One of them had a mustache, very sparse. The other, with sunglasses, had a tapering face. Both wore light windbreakers.

"What I'm doing is a contest to the death. Man versus polar hear. Combat supreme. Polar bear is vicious. Polar bear can decimate a herd of reindeer in like a matter of minutes. I'm lining up this guy Shunko Hakoda. A sumo wrestler. He goes three-fifty, easy. His agent's hedging right now but I think we got the numbers. Meanwhile I'm negotiating with the president of Malawi to hold the fight there. I'm envisioning a large cage in the middle of a soccer stadium. You're asking yourself where we'll find a polar bear in Malawi."

Selvy eased off the bar stool and walked out. He headed back toward Times Square, taking the same route. Naked karate. Pagan baths. A battle-scarred Cadillac moved slowly down Broadway, a man's foot hanging out one window. It weaved on past, bumpers caked with mud, streaks of dirt across all four doors. Selvy watched it plow into the back of the maroon and gold pimpmobile. Tinkling glass. Little puffs of dust. The onlookers were overjoyed. They glanced at each other wide-eyed as if to confirm the dimensions of the event. In seconds the owner-pimp emerged, wispy beard, a trifle hassidic in his mink hat and understated black velvet suit. He moved in little scat steps, half a dancer, aggrieved and restive in this sidewalk crush, already eyeing the Cad, which sat throbbing in a patch of broken glass and chunks of rusty dirt dislodged from the fenders.

Selvy was pinned by a dozen spectators. He reached out for an awning support in order to avoid being swept in a given direction against his will. Over the heads of some teenage girls he saw the two men at the edge of the crowd, earnestly discussing something. He couldn't tell whether they'd spotted him. Also hard to tell what they might be carrying under those loose-fitting windbreakers.

The doors of the Cadillac slowly opened and bodies of various sizes and types became visible. The car was full of Hispanics (official police designation), maybe ten or eleven, at least three of them children. The crowd turned its attention back to the pimp.

Selvy used the awning support to stand fast while most of those around him took about four involuntary steps into the street. Traffic was halted at the scene of the accident. Whole masses of onlookers were rocked one way or another by sudden imbalances elsewhere in the crowd. A police siren sounded at a steady volume with the car unable to make progress in the stalled traffic.

Selvy forced people aside and made it to the nearest open doorway. He climbed a long flight of stairs. The walls on both sides were full of graffiti. At the top he turned and looked back. Then he walked down the corridor. He passed several rooms with small curtained booths, a few people milling about. He passed another room with a man standing in the doorway.

"Photograph live nudes," the man said sleepily.

Selvy turned right into another corridor. He stopped by a window. Down on the street a mounted policeman was moving through the crowd. He passed another open door. Gadgets, novelties, devices, creams, ointments, marital aids. Wholesale only. At the end of the corridor was a black metal door with two words painted on it in vivid red: NUDE STORYTELLING.

Selvy looked behind him. Then he opened the door and stepped inside. The outer office consisted of a desk, a telephone and a couple of chairs. A chubby black man in a porkpie hat sat at the desk, smoking a cigar. He had a racing form spread in front of him.

"Be a short wait," he said.

"Who's doing the storytelling?"

"Not me, guarantee."

"How much per story?"

"Cost you upwards of thirty-fi' dollars for a half-hour story, depending."

"How much minimum?"

"I let you get away with fifteen down. What I'm saying, the basic story is fifteen. Activities can run you a little more."

"All right," Sehvy said.

"You a cop, Jim?"

"Just want to hear a nude story."

"Because if this is a sweep of the area, you ought to be sweeping anywheres but here. What I'm saying, it's all seen to."

"How long do I wait?"

"Pick out a chair, Jim. There's a story in progress."

Mudger trued up the cutting edge with a coarse hone. He found this mysteriously pleasing. There was a lightbulb directly overhead so that he could determine the best sharpening angle by noting the shadow cast by the blade on the stone, and its gradual disappearance. Sight, sound, touch. He maintained a steady pressure as he moved the blade-edge into the stone.

The shape of tools. Proportions and heft. The satisfactions of cutting along pencil lines, of measuring to the sheer edge of something and coming out right, of allowing for slight variations and coming out right, of mixing fluids and seeing the colors blend, a surface texture materializing out of brush striations.

Cleaning up grit wheels. This made him happy. He liked the touch of rough surfaces. He liked the sounds things made when excess finish was removed. Sandpapering, grinding, buffing. He liked the names of things.

It was midnight. He went into the washroom. Standing over the commode he tried to spit into the stream of urine as it emerged. On the third try he connected, watching the blob of spit go skipping into the bowl.

He set to work on the handle. It would be burl maple. The names of things. Subtly gripping odors. Glues and resins. The names. Honing oil. Template. Brazing rod. The names of things in these two rooms constituted a near-secret knowledge. He felt obscure satisfaction, something akin to a freemason's pride, merely saying these names aloud for Tran Le or her grandmother or the two men, Van and Cao. Carborundum. Emery wheel. Tenon and drawbore. You couldn't use tools and materials well, he believed, unless you knew their proper names.

Cleaning up grit wheels. Hand-stitching a leather sheath. Doing your own heat-treating.

Sharpness: dry-shaving a square inch of your forearm with a freshly honed blade.

By heat-treating the steel blank himself, he knew he was sacrificing some of the exactness a commercial firm would provide. But he preferred it this way. _His_ instrument start to finish.

He fitted a brass guard to the steel. Then he took two slabs of burl maple and roughed out a fit. He sanded, applied epoxy and set rivets. Ought to hold forever.

When the unit was dry he leveled out the finger grooves and used the belts and sanders to get the handle down to a tighter, firmer fit.

He buffed the wood and brass to a fine sheen. Then he alternately polished and sharpened the blade, finally using various buffing wheels to get the edge and finish he wanted.