Don DeLillo - Running Dog

"We want to talk about a can of film."

"We being who?" Richie said.

"You and me."

"I don't want to do any talking about any can of film."

"It's on this plane. I think I speak for both of us."

"You think you speak for both of us when you say what?"

"That's it's on this plane."

"Nothing you mention is on any plane I know of."

"Richie, be a grownup."

"Do we know each other?"

"I'm called Lomax."

"Why are you here?"

"I could tell you I was supposed to meet another party. Aboard a different plane. There was a mixup. I found myself on the wrong plane. That's one version."

"Nobody checked? Nobody asked you?"

"Apparently I'm one of those people who blends well. I'm not noticeable. That's something I've had to learn to live with. Blending well. Failing to stand out."

"They know I'm here. Daryl and those. In case you're wondering."

"There's another version."

"I don't want to hear it."

"You're fully grown, Richie. You're not going to get any bigger. It's only right we treat each other as adults."

"Yeah, but for right now I have to start getting ready because we'll be landing soon."

"Certainly."

"Landing is bad enough with clothes on."

"I understand," Lomax said. "We'll continue later." Richie got dressed and went out to the passenger compartment. He was stopped by a young woman named Pansy. She was Daryl Shimmer's girlfriend and for weeks she'd been trying to prevail upon Richie to get Daryl a dune buggy with chromed exhausts for his birthday. Richie was in no mood.

"Look around," he told her. "All these Vic Tanny imbecues with their goggles, their male jewelry, their sculptured hair. It's like helmets they're wearing. It never moves, short of an earthquake. Get them out of here with their dipping shirtfronts, with their space boots. I want normal for a change. I want ordinary. People with real hair. I want less orgasmics around here. Everybody looks like they're climaxing. I walk into the warehouse, there's live bands, people writhing. I get on the plane, they're still shaking, it never stops. What happened to normal? Where is normal?"

About fifteen minutes later, as the plane approached DFW, Lomax sat in a swivel chair, belted in, munching on roasted nuts. People were still dancing. He glanced over at Richie Armbrister. With the plane descending toward the runway, Richie had assumed a bracing position. His shoes were off. There was a pillow squeezed between the fastened seatbelt and his stomach. Another pillow lay across his knees. He'd bent his upper body well forward, head resting on this second pillow. His bony hands were clasped behind his knees.

Nadine crawled across the motel bed. Reaching over Selvy's body, she pointed one end of the cylindrical reading lamp right at his face.

"What are you?"

"Explain," he said.

"I'm analyzing your features."

"Racially, you mean. As to type and so forth."

"What are you?"

"An Indian."

"You don't look like an Indian."

"I've trained myself to look different. There's exercises you can do. Muscular contractions."

"Those aren't Indian features, Glen. You're not Indian stock."

"You can look different if you train. You start with a good mirror. It's like anything. Quality tells. You get yourself a quality mirror."

"If you're an Indian, that's not your name, what you've been telling people all these years. What's your real name, your Indian name?"

"Running Dog," he said.

Van wasn't ready for solid foods. He was living on milk shakes and soup. He never complained, Gao noticed, but he was clearly more intense than usual. That was worse than complaints.

They listened to country music and kept on driving, through Lexington, Bowling Green, Memphis, Little Rock, Dallas, San Angelo, and on toward a pinpoint on the map called Ozona.

Road signs baffled Cao. The country grew rugged, empty and vast. He wanted to turn back. It was Van who kept them rolling. His cheek was still badly bruised. His upper lip was swollen and purplish. He referred to his road map constantly when he wasn't driving.

In Ozona, the lone town in a sprawling county, they saw a Toyota that appeared to match the one they were looking for. It was parked in a service station, off to one side, away from the pumps. A young woman sat on the fender drinking a Coke. Using binoculars, Cao checked the license. D.C. plates. Numbers matched.

The rangers were parked alongside the town square. Van showed his partner the map, gesturing excitedly at the line he'd drawn from New York, where they'd started, through a point tangent to the curve in the Ohio River near Huntington, where they'd been ambushed and humiliated, and down across four states and into Mexico. The line was straight and passed very near Ozona.

Gao was happy because Van was happy.

It was decided Van would telephone Earl Mudger. Van knew the place names and had an easier time pronouncing them.

Moll sat in the back of a checkered cab, thinking this was the best time of year, unarguably-the snap and clarity of autumn. The driver kept missing lights, mumbling to himself.

At one of these lights a car appeared on the right, a silver Chrysler. From the corner of her eye, Moll watched the driver's window come steadily down. Reflections gradually vanished, replaced by Earl Mudger's smiling face.

"I called."

"Once."

"I see," he said. "You have a point system."

"Did you leave a number?"

"There's a point system in effect. I lost points."

"I don't think you left a number."

"I called only once and I didn't leave a number. I'm dead. They're taking me away. A new low, pointwise."

The light changed. Her driver edged the cab forward. Mudger kept pace so that his front door was even with the taxi's rear door.

"My car or yours?" he said.

"I like it this way."

"Tell you what."

Horns were blowing. Her driver was mumbling again. They crawled up Central Park West. Mudger suddenly floored it. There was a split second of noisy tire-gripping and then the Chrysler sprang forward. Half a block away he braked into a U-turn and went slamming into a parking space nose first. The door opened and he came ambling out, crossing the center stripes just as the taxi approached. He kept on walking, forcing the cab to stop, and then came around the right side and opened the rear door. Moll slid over in the seat. Mudger got in and closed the door as the sound of horns grew thick behind them.

"We want the park," Mudger told the driver. "Flip an R first chance and make some circles in the park."

He looked at Moll.

"You like these old cabs."

"Character."

"I don't know how to talk to you. You know that? I think that's why I'm here. To learn how to talk to you."

"I thought our chat went fairly well."

"You had me on the defensive," he said.

"It was your territory."

"You don't know what to call me, do you? We have this little difficulty with names."

"It was your territory. You managed my arrival and departure."

"We have this little tension between us."

They were in Central Park, heading north toward the Eighty-sixth Street transverse.

"Here on business, I think you said."

"Lining up customers."

"What for?"

"The Mudger tip."

"Yes, your invention. I recall."

"Steel," he said.

Heading east they passed the volleyball courts where she'd played tennis with Selvy. These goddamn bastards. Who were they and what did they want?

"This is your territory," he said. "Which means I don't stand a Chinaman's chance."

"You're still managing the arrivals."

"Only my own."

"You're commandeering taxis. That little old man is terrified."