Don DeLillo - Underworld

The more you watch the tape, the deader and colder and more relentless it becomes. The tape sucks the air right out of your chest but you watch it every time.

Marian Shay drove up to Prescott on business, allowing herself one cigarette for the two-hour trip, which she managed not to smoke until she was ten miles from town, where the mobile homes began to gather and the fast food blazed, and she felt good about this, controlled and disciplined and clean deep through.

There was something going on in the courthouse square. She parked a block away and walked back down to the square and it was one of those days in the high pines when the sun and sweet breeze get into your underwear. There were cars arrayed on a closed-off street, four rows of vintage machines extending two city blocks along the edge of the plaza, and loudspeakers on the lawn did dance-party rock-and-roll.

She had fifteen minutes to spare and walked among the cars, many with hoods raised for the pleasure of connoisseurs. It was early, not yet eleven, and only a dozen people wandered about. She saw a red-haired man who looked faintly familiar and watched him bend under a hood and then stand back to appraise a customized Buick with a black lacquer chassis.

He stood donnishly posed with jutted elbow and cupped hand and she realized after a moment that he worked with Nick at Waste Containment and that his name, which took another moment, was Brian Classic, which rhymes with classic, which describes these cars.

He saw her and showed a beam of recognition. Then he did a little dance from half a block away, the slowest of clinging fox-trots from out of the fifties.

About two hours later they met for lunch in the dining room of an old hotel just up the street. The room was close and warm and she held the glass of ice water up against her face.

He said, "You are here?"

"For a job interview. There's a small design firm here that renovates old structures. They want to open a Phoenix office. I would be it."

"How did it go?"

"All right, I think."

"You've done this kind of work?"

"Not exactly. Before the kids I helped manage a small real estate operation. Since the kids I've done part-time things now and then."

"Your own office. This is a fantasy of mine. To come wandering in just before lunch. Like a private detective. Hungover, a faceful of stubble. Riffle through the mail. Throw it down."

"Do you get stubble?" she said.

"Yes, eventually. Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. I thought maybe the smoother and fairer the complexion."

"We do shave," he said.

"I don't think my office will resemble a private detective's."

"You want light and air."

"Great thick proposals in strong binders."

" You want scale models, with trees."

"Maybe."

"And little bland people on the sidewalk."

"Multiracially bland."

"Brava. Want a drink?"

"Why not?" she said.

Brian ordered drinks from an old fellow who probably doubled as hall porter.

She said, "And you are here?"

"For the cars. I read about the show last night and felt a sort of schoolboy itch."

"Couldn't even wait for the weekend."

"Crowded. I deserve a day off anyway."

" You had to wait around for lunch. I'm sorry. I thought you had a business appointment."

"I'm not finished with the cars. They're worth a second look. And what could be nicer than sitting here waiting for someone to bring our drinks and fix the air conditioner and do something about the stuffing in the banquettes?"

"Is that what smells?" she said.

She smoked of course. Once she ordered the drink she knew the facade would crumble. It took very little to bring it down. She would smoke all she had and then find more. He made her laugh a few times and was funny even when he wasn't trying to be. She thought he probably had a rabbit for a pet when he was small but she wasn't sure why this made sense.

"You're tall, aren't you?"

He asked this suspiciously, as if she'd been concealing it.

"No taller than you."

"My wife is small. Have you met her?"

"I'm not sure."

"She wants me to take her to New York next month. I have to consult with engineers at the Fresh Kills landfill, which is sort of the King Kong of American garbage mounds."

"Does Nick like this kind of work?"

"You're asking me?" he said.

"Yes, I'm asking you."

"I think he likes it more than I do. I think he sees it in purer terms. Concepts and principles. Because this is Nick-the technology, the logic, the esthetics. Whereas I, in my little gringo mind-set."

"You're moving into new quarters. That may help your self-image."

"Yes, a great bronze tower. Just like an investment firm or media giant. Of course the structure resembles a geometric turd but that's only fitting, no?"

The man brought their drinks and they looked at the menus in the nearly empty room, they talked and looked, not really looking-looking and forgetting. Marian felt the nice bite of the gin and wondered what it was about Brian that made him so easy to talk to. She thought he went around scared most of the time but did not try to hide it from women, some women anyway, maybe the rare woman he runs into a hundred miles from home, and he falls all over himself with honesty and self-scathing insight, the things he does not normally show the boys.

To reciprocate perhaps. She didn't know why else she'd tell the dog story if not to strut her own confessional skills. They had another drink and ordered lunch.

"The dog barked and whined incessantly, Dukey, but the kids were small and they loved their dog and he barked, he cried, he went bye-bye in the house, he yapped at other kids and the neighbors complained and I secretly tried to give him away but no one would take him and so I finally, on an impulse-this is awful, why am I telling you this?"

"Because the story haunts you. Because you see mercy in my eyes."

"Yes, a frantic impulse. I convinced myself the dog was miserable and sick and suffering some irreversible thing and I drove out on 85,1 think it is, down past some dam into stark stony desert, much farther than I absolutely had to go, and I just kept going and going and finally stopped the car and opened the door and set Dukey out on the ground and then drove home and told Lainie, Sweetheart the dog ran away and I'm so sorry. But I did not let it go at that. I went reeling out of control. I started driving them through the streets, both kids, day after day, calling out the windows for Dukey, Dukey, and it haunts me, yes, like something I only dreamed and what a relief it is to realize it didn't actually happen."

"And then you realize it did happen."

Brian was enjoying this immensely and so she began to enjoy it too, which was probably the point, she thought.

"Driving through the dead summer streets in the long afternoons. I can hear their voices. Dukey, Dukey. They were five and three, I think. Calling out the windows for their dog."

She was nearly laughing-crying, looking at Brian's mug alight with pleasure and feeling the misery and shame of her act and smoking in the middle of a meal in an empty dining room where the air conditioner is not responding.

He said, "Dukey, Dukey."

"Duchino actually. Little Duke. Nick came up with the name. Do you know he's half Italian?"

"Our Nick? When did this happen?"

"You don't see it in his face?"

"I hear it in that voice he does."

"What voice?"

"The gangster making threats."

"What gangster?"

"It's a voice he does. Expert, stereotyped, pretty funny."

"Speaking of backgrounds," she said. 'And if this is too personal, you don't have to answer. But did you ever have a rabbit for a pet?"

They were having a fine time. When he talked she found herself sorting through the responses, getting them ready, one after another, and sometimes she broke in irresistibly and watched his face go bright. She told him she played field hockey in school and missed it. She missed drinking from a garden hose. She missed her mother and father more than ever and they'd been dead nine years and six years and were stronger forces now, so deeply present in her life that she understood completely how people see ghosts and have conversations with the dead. She had a garden hose but did not drink from it and did not allow her kids to drink from it and this was the difference, less in lost things than in knowledge become suspicious and alert. She told him she missed smoking even though she hadn't been able to stop.