Don DeLillo - Underworld

He calls him Charles now, for the social aspect, gentlemen drinkers at the club.

And he waits for Charles to drink. A moment of stinging truth. Manx has put his mouth to the rim of the flask and now he waits for Charles to do the same.

A brief, deep and knowledgeable suspense.

Doesn't even wipe off the rim. Just tips the flask and drinks, too deep, and comes up teary-eyed and gasping but happy too. Both men happy, having a princely time.

"Went down the wrong pipe," says Charlie, forcing out the words.

"Happens to the best."

"Occupational hazard," says the gasping man.

Hands over the flask. Manx takes a klondike swig and keenly feels the effect, oh yes, as the Irish aerates a number of crucial passages in his head and chest.

They pass the flask a while.

"One of mine's a girl," Manx says. "Rosie. Best ever daughter you could find."

"How old?"

"How old," he says.

He feels a drifty look come into his eyes.

"Maybe twice yours. Yours eight, right? Imagine being eight."

They pass the flask.

"I'll be honest," Charlie says. "You were honest with me. Least I can do is tell you what I'm thinking,"

All up and down the line there are people crouched in sleep or in drowsy bundled waiting, out of conversation now, heads slumped, some cigarettes going, most people asleep in blankets or thick parkas or just nodding off, squinch-eyed, and a cough and a moan and a radio playing Latin music but not too loud, and shaking awake and nodding off and a cop on a horse over by the barricade, and Manx shifts position slightly to observe the stillness of the tall brown animal, a dead-still quality that is not like men when they are motionless, or dogs for that matter, or fish in a bowl, and not peaceful or unperturbed but immobile in its own way, great and strong, shining at the flanks.

"Til be honest," Charlie says, "because what's the point of all this if we're not honest?"

"Go, man."

"I don't know if you're telling me the truth. But the ball looks like a ball they'd be using in a National League game in the year 1951. That's one mark in your favor, relatively minor, because there's balls and there's balls."

"And there's ball breakers."

They pass the flask.

"And the other mark is, the major mark, I look at you and I don't think I see a con man or a liar."

A brief pause.

"Then you the first," Manx says.

They laugh and stop and laugh again. It's one of those jokes that reverberates for ten or twenty seconds, bouncing around the premises, one meaning echoing into another, and it's only a matter now of signing on the line.

"How much?" says Charlie.

Manx looks away. He hasn't come this far in his tactics and plans and he doesn't know how much. But he feels himself get tense. The horse makes a snuffling sound behind him.

"It's entirely up to yourself," he says, and feels immediately, unspecifically cheated.

Charlie holds the ball in both hands now, pressed up under his chin.

"See, I don't know what I'm buying," he says. "This is a consideration we have to keep in mind. Sure, buyer beware and all that. But we're talking about an object that belongs properly to the heart."

You don't want to squeeze the eagle on me, do you, boss?

"Entirely up to yourself. Because I trust you to do right. You know your baseball. A fan. I want a fan to own this thing," Manx says.

He feels his gaze sliding away, drifting inward, and notes a certain tightness in his chest.

Charles. Charles is suddenly all-decisive. A little lull, you see, with the mention of money. But suddenly Charles is sliding up the wall to dig into his pockets and he's all bustle and rush.

Manx tips the flask and drinks.

Pulling bills out of two or three pockets and uncrumpling a five and smoothing out a single. Manx looks down the line at the nodding heads, men breathing steam in the chill air, sleepers and dreamers deep in the night.

The sum arrived at looks like this. A ten, two fives, another ten, two singles, a quarter, two nickels and a tiddlywink dime.

Plus the kid pops out of the camp bag.

Charlie says, "I want you to take it all because it's all I've got. Even the change. I want you to even have the change. Because I've got the ticket money here." And he pounds his chest. 'And the car keys here." And he slaps his thigh. 'And I want you to have every nickel in my pocket above and beyond."

Manx thinks all right. He tries to keep his eyes from fluttering while they count. He thinks this is more than he could have gotten for those snow shovels he boosted from the utility room in his building. Plenty more. A hell of a lot, actually, more.

The small angry head is jutting from the bag.

"I want to go home now," Chuckie says.

Manx takes the money. He licks his thumb to count it for the benefit of the kid. Says some things to the kid, feeling good, trying to draw half a laugh.

Says to Charlie, "Bought yourself a souvenir of the great game. Calls for a drink, old boy."

They pass the flask and this is the only thing in the course of the long night and early morning that seems to engage Chuckie, the sight of two men guzzling booze right out of the bottle.

Half sigh, half pain in the sound they make when they open their mouths to exhale the fumes, eyes tight and pink.

Charles arches his fleecy brows.

"Now that the ball is mine, what do I do with it?"

Manx retakes the flask.

"Show it around. Tell your friends and neighbors. Then put it in a glass case with the fancy dishes. You saw those crowds go crazy in the street. This is bigger than some wars I seen."

Manx has no idea what he means by this. The Irish is beginning to talk. He sees that Charlie is feeling slightly down at the moment. Charlie is probably passing from the stage of half belief to the stage of disbelief. Feeling rooked and beetle-brained. Slyed out of his honest wages by some rogue off the street with a tale so staggering Charlie's embarrassed to tell his friends.

Let the buyer, like they say, beware.

He tries to think of the word that means a thing will increase in value over the years. But the Irish is not only talking, it is thinking, and anyway it is probably not a good idea at this point to say encouraging things to Charles. Only sound phony, won't it?

They look at each other. Charles has the baseball and the flask and Manx has the money. Okay. It is one of those happenstances where the mood downshifts once the deal is made. Only normal. The boy is asleep now, his face partly visible over the flap, and Manx wonders if he'll recall any of this, ever, or if it's already sunk in the dreaming part of his mind, the vague shape of a crouched man who is part of the night.

Charles looks at Manx and smiles, complicatedly, with an element of drowned affection in the mix.

Then they shake hands wordlessly and Manx is on his feet and out of there, feeling a slight ache in his calves and a hard tight serious-minded pain in his left hand from dragging the fire drum across the sidewalk. Put some butter on it when he gets home.

He walks past the humped and bundled bodies and the smoky grills where some of them cooked their meals and he walks past the cop on the tall horse and goes back across the bridge and up to Broadway and maybe there's the faintest line of light low in the eastern sky.

It occurs to him. A lot of things occur to him, all dulled by drink, but it occurs to him that he doesn't want to stand on an empty platform under the street waiting for a train.

He walks down Broadway and begins to wonder why the man gave him the change in his pockets. There wasn't any need for coins to be changing hands. Maybe it was just what the fellow said, the heartfelt thing of wanting to give whatever's on your person, giving the shirt off your back, or maybe it's an honest deal that two men make and one of them turns it into a handout.