Don DeLillo - Underworld

"I took her to the zoo," Matt said. "She has the zoo across the street but it's the first time in twenty years I could get her to go. Practically forced her out the door."

"You're on a mission."

"She says she has more animals on television than she can handle. I can't make her see the point of living breathing creatures."

"I'm getting her out of here," Nick said.

"Is that right?"

"To Phoenix. That's right. There's no reason anymore for her to be here."

"She has friends here. You know this."

"I know this? How many friends? What friends?"

"To Phoenix," Matt said.

"How many friends?"

"We haven't done a head count lately. But if she wanted to go, we'd take her gladly."

"You don't have room."

"We have room," Matt said.

"Listen to me. You don't have room. We have room. We also have climate."

"Climate."

"This is important at her age."

"Janet's a nurse. You want to make a contest out of it? Janet's a nurse."

"This is stupid."

"Of course it's stupid. This is why we're doing it," Matt said.

Nick was at the window again.

"Why would they put a motel in a place like this?"

"I don't know."

"It's a convenience, this motel, for sex and drugs. Because what else is it here for? Or homeless. A shelter for homeless people. They put them in motels now."

"She likes it here, Nick. It's her life, it's what she's used to. She has her church, her stores, all the familiar things. And the friends that are still alive. Ask her for a list."

"You don't know. I know. It's a convenience, this motel, for what they're doing."

Nick went into the kitchen and started opening cabinets. He inspected the area under the sink. Kids were riding tricycles in the hallway. He poured another seltzer and went into the living room. The bike bells sounded down the hall.

"How's Janet? Janet's all right?"

"She had a lump removed from under her arm."

"Did I know this?"

"It's okay. She's doing okay. The kids are okay."

"These lumps are everywhere. Everybody's looking for lumps."

"I read something in the paper not long ago. Made me think of you," Matt said. "Remember those machines they had in shoe stores? Tall consoles sort of like old radios, but with a slot down near the bottom."

"Jesus, yes. I haven't thought of that."

"The clerk puts shoes on the kid's feet and then the kid goes and stands with his feet inside the slot."

"I haven't thought of that since I was, what. They stopped making them."

"And the clerk looks into a viewer at the top of the device and can see the feet inside the shoes."

"To check the fit," Nick said.

"To check the fit. Well, the machine was a fluoroscope and what it did was transmit x rays through the shoe and into the foot, it's called differential transmission and it makes a shadowy greenish image. I just barely remember this. Jimmy's buying you a pair of shoes and then he's lifting me up so I can look into the machine and see your feet inside your shoes and your bones inside your feet."

"The question is, Where are those shoes now?"

"No, the question is, Did you do this enough times to suffer bone damage because the machine was basically spraying your feet with radiation."

They heard the key in the lock.

"I have healthy feet," Nick said.

"I'm relieved."

"But thanks for the scare. I'll do the same for you someday."

Rosemary Shay came through the door with a shopping bag in each hand, her body slanted toward the heavier bag. She saw that Nick was here. She stood and looked at him, eyes alive and searching. She was always searching him for something, some sign, some change. He moved toward her to help with the bags. Her face had furrows nearly everywhere, gathers and tucks, little parchment pleats above the mouth. Her hands were old, they were long and worked, milky blue veins lapping the scored knuckles.

They took the bags away from her, complaining that she did not allow them to help her sufficiently. They warned of back strain and heat exhaustion. She told them to shut up even as she tried to take the groceries away, items passing hand to hand. Nick embraced her, laughing, and she felt unpersuadable in his arms.

They ate and talked, took second helpings, corn on the cob, enormous tomatoes the grocer kept in the back room for special customers, grown in his yard on City Island-the old deep tomato taste, summery and blood-buttery and voluptuous.

"Tell him about the job," Rosemary said.

"He doesn't want to know."

"He's your brother. Tell him."

"Another job change?" Nick said.

"Yes. A research institute."

"Then this is not a change."

"A different one. Nonprofit. We draw up studies to help third world countries develop health services and banking facilities."

"Goody-goody stuff."

"Yes," Matt said happily. "We produce paper. We smoke pipes, those of us who smoke."

"A think tank," Rosemary said.

They let this term hover above the salad. Year by year, job by job, Matt was separating himself from the science he did in the 1970s, work whose precise nature eluded Nick, government work that involved classified projects and remote locations. Not that Nick was eager to reach him. It was strange, that's all, for younger brother to be the tight-lipped guy for a change, not inclined to answer questions readily.

"My kid's learning the game. Jeffrey."

"What game?" Matt said.

"What game. What game would I be talking about? Your game."

"My game."

"He plays against his computer. His computer has a chess program with a take-back option so he can undo his dumber moves."

Matt said nothing.

The cats came out of hiding. They curled around the chair legs, hooked their backs, rubbing against the legs of the people, undulant in the mazy space down there, and they went swaybacked and yawned, asses up.

"We have room for you," Nick said to his mother.

"Where did this come from?"

"It was always here. You know that. We've been waiting for you to say you're ready."

"Well I'm not. We have dessert. Who wants coffee?" she said. "I have the decaf. I know Matty takes it."

Then she told them a story about Jimmy downtown. She told it over coffee and they listened with a shared intensity that no other subject could remotely provoke. It was the thing that made them a family, still, after all the silences and distances-the father in his lost glory, making book.

"It was a funny thing, funny-strange I mean, but the first bets he ever took were from cops. He was a plumber's helper at the New Yorker Hotel. Then he was moved into the security office, which I visited several times, we were keeping company then, a big noisy office in the freight delivery area, and the security chief had made a space for the local bookmaker to come and do his tally every morning. He charged him rent, very reasonable, I'm sure. Soon the bookie makes Jimmy his runner. Jimmy loved this. He made payoffs to winners, he collected money from losers. He did the rounds every day, all through the garment district this was. He was light on his feet, dodging the boys who pushed the racks. He started picking up extra action, action for himself, sitting on bets it was called-he selected carefully, a bet here and there. And it was often the police he was getting his business from. So you have the security people and the police and what else is new? Then once a month a detective, this is the bagman, he went to the Solomon Brothers car dealer and he picked up the protection money to distribute in the precinct house. So the money's flowing back and forth and everybody's happy. The Solomon brothers ran the bookie operation for the whole area, Arthur and I forget the other Solomon, Arthur and Bernie, and Arthur and Bernie wore beautiful suits and had a box at the Polo Grounds and knew ballplayers and show people, and eventually Jimmy got his own small piece of action, on the up-and-up, and the Solomons paid him eighty dollars a week, this is after you're born," she said to Nick, "and after he already left me once, plus a bonus for a good business month."