Don DeLillo - Running Dog

"After we ride around a while and get all this dialogue out of our systems, I think we ought to have some dinner."

"I've given it up," she said.

"What else have you given up?"

"You guessed it."

"Now why would you want to do a thing like that?"

"The humor's gone out of it. It's basically a humorous pastime, but lately the laughs have been few and far between."

"Two myths about women. Women see the humor in sex and appreciate men who do the same. Women care more for tenderness than for the act itself, the hardware involved- techniques, proportions, etcetera."

"Who's talking about sex? I'm talking about movies. Going to the movies."

"I said it, didn't I? Don't stand a chance. She left me gasping."

"What is it about our sparring and jabbing that gives you so much pleasure?"

"Does it show?" he said. "I didn't know it showed."

"I think that's called a shit-eating grin."

"It's my military smile. Can't seem to shake it."

"We've all read about the tough time you combat vets have had making the transition. One day you're standing around a provincial interrogation center, supervising the torture of some farmer."

"Better slow down," he told her.

"Next day you're back in the States, looking around, a little bewildered. It's no wonder you're still using the same smile. I know, the farmer was dangerous. The enemy was everywhere."

"You're way beyond your range."

"True," she said. "It's prim and smug for noncombatants to criticize Those Who Were There. I understand that viewpoint and sympathize with it. Still, I've always felt the best view is the objective one, and sometimes this is made sharper and keener by distance. By thousands of intervening miles. The suffering we witness on either side can amount to a lie. But you're right, by and large. In my ridiculous urge to be fair, I definitely see your viewpoint. And I agree. I'm beyond my range. So let's stay closer to home. Things I've heard and seen."

The cab headed downtown along the western edge of the park.

"You and the Senator are chasing the same item. I know what it is, although I can't say I fully understand the various motivations. Doesn't matter. What's important is that a man was killed because of it."

"You think that's important."

"It merits consideration."

"I don't think it's so important."

He was crowding her a bit, edging her way, his left arm moving along the back of the seat.

"Are you learning how to talk to me?" she said.

"What?"

"You said you didn't know how to talk to me. That's why you're here, you said."

"I'm learning something. I'm not sure what it is. You think that's important. A man was killed. Did you think that was important ten years ago? In the days of your demolitions expert."

"You know about him. Of course."

"Of course I know. Late, great Gary Penner. And there you were, a slip of a girl, in your greatcoat with epaulets. How many people did Gary put into orbit, plying his trade? You ought to know. Living with the man. Having lived with the man. A few night watchmen. A few passersby. Arm here, leg there."

She looked out the window.

"You didn't take part directly. Enough fun just watching from the sidelines. But you've matured, haven't you? Terror isn't the erotic commodity it used to be. We know too much. We've seen. We've taken up organic gardening."

"You think I've matured, do you?"

"Somewhat," he said. "To a certain extent. Enough so that you've drawn a line."

The smile. The head tilting right.

"What you think is taking place, I'm flat-out telling you it's not that way. To the extent I straightened out the alliances for you once before, that's the way it still stands. There you go now. Putting me on the defensive again."

"In the flesh you have your convincing moments. I'm the first to admit."

"We have this tension. The air's a little crackly. Maybe I shouldn't let it bother me. Maybe it's auspicious. It might be I'm misreading the thing completely. Sometimes tension's to be encouraged. Sure, tension's a bitch of a stimulant sometimes. See, down home everything's so smooth, so mellow, a man can be put off by the little mocking noises he hears in a place like New York. Sure, these little whipcracks, these hard edges. Personal relations work like machinery. The air is taut. People know what they want. There's a rasp, a little machinelike whine you hear in conversations in restaurants and shops. Women walk around with little numbers clicking behind their eyeballs. I wonder what they're seeing in there. My impression, New York women, they're always keeping something in reserve, holding it back, saving the little extras. Who for, who for? Their analysts. That's why bald-headed Jews always look so happy. Nobody keeps a secret from a bald-headed Jew. They get all the leftovers, the most interesting parts, the greasiest and wettest and sweetest and best. Let me figure out how to decipher this suspense between us. I want to see if I can find out what it is people enjoy about these uneasy codes they keep sending into the air, all this nervous strain. Tension's an edge, that must be it, a goading force, a heightener. It betokens something good. Maybe there's a wild time in the works. What do you think? Who knows? Some all-out supersonics."

He started edging toward her again. Twilight. The cab moving uptown now. Fifth Avenue 's taupe stone buildings. That surfer's gleam rising to Mudger's face. His lustrous blue eyes seemed to have been attached to him independent of his other features. They were devices of a sensitivity and distinctness she didn't associate with Mudger, although she was willing to consider the possibility she was wrong. All she had to do was recall the number of varying moods he'd already composed and demolished in the relatively brief time they'd been in the taxi together.

She would have liked to suspend judgment, somehow to sabotage her own capacity to perceive the crux of things. When she was with Mudger earlier, in Virginia, sitting under the scarlet oaks, she'd felt they were communicating from either side of a semitransparent curtain or theatrical scrim. It was a weakness of hers. She liked drifting into strange terrains. It was what she'd had for a while with Selvy. That other son of a bitch. That son of a bitch in entirely different ways.

But things were clearer now. She was able to follow this man's line of attack, or that man's, or the other's, nearly to the end. The only real question remaining was a rhetorical one, a lament, uttered solely for effect. Who are these bastards and what do they want?

They passed a horse-drawn cab, four tourists huddled in the chill. Some kids chased each other across the road, causing the driver to start mumbling. Mudger sat with his head tilted back. She noticed the cuts and crosshatchings on his fingers, the eroded skin near his thumbnails.

"Who are you sleeping with these days?" he said.

"That's what my father used to ask me."

"Was he jealous?"

"Just sophisticated, that's all, and a little stupid."

"You should have slept with Percival. He knows interesting people. You could have had some sneaky fun. Junkets galore. You could have written a book. Lloyd's into everything. He'd love having someone like you to show off for. We talk, Lloyd and I. Not directly. There are channels. It never hurts to stay in touch."

He was getting ready to deliver another preemptive speech. Mo!! had noticed during their first meeting how he tried to establish prior rights to convictions and views he assumed she held. A tactic she found amusing.

"People are born conservative. They have to learn how to be liberal. In substance, at the bedrock, we're all of us conservative. People at the helm, I'm talking about. Lloyd's an instance of this. Slowly, surely reverting. Progress, mild reforms, old Lloyd's made a name. But those are the gleanings, the accidents, the random accretions. It all slides off eventually. It becomes sheer biology at a certain point." Here he smiled thinly, as though anticipating a joke on himself. "You return to your origins. What's old age but a kind of jaded infancy? You get physically smaller. You start to babble. You become sexually neuter."