Don DeLillo - Underworld

"Let's set the record straight. I did not grow up with head trauma. I had a healthy, basically, type childhood."

The car approaches briefly, then falls back.

"Why are you doing it?"

"Say what?"

"Why are you committing these murders?"

"Let's just say it's a nice seasonal day where I'm located here, with scattered clouds, and if that's a hint to my location, then take it as a hint, and if this is all a game, then take it as a game."

On the screen the man at the wheel does his little wave, the friendly understated wave to the camera and the future and all the watching world, his hand wagging stiffly from the top of the wheel.

"You are aware, are you not, that one of these crimes is said to have been the work of a copycat killer. Can you comment on that for us?"

Now here is where he gets it. Matt could not look at the tape without wanting to call out to Janet. Hurry up, Janet, here it comes. Getting her mad. Mad at the tape and mad at him. And the more often they showed it, the more singsong he put in his voice. Hur-ree u-up, here it co-omes. An anxious joke, a joke in somebody else's voice, not meant to be funny. Janet swore at him and said enough. But it wasn't enough. It was never enough.

"Let's just say, okay, the police have their job and I have mine."

The eeriness of the car that keeps on coming after the driver is shot. It approaches briefly, then falls back.

"Which the correct term for this is not sniper by the way. This is not an individual with a rifle working more or less long-range. You're mobile here, you're moving, you want to get as close to the situation as humanly possible without bringing the two vehicles into contact, whereby a paint mark might result."

The car is drifting toward the guardrail now. The odd sound of the caller's voice, leveled-out, with faint tremors at the edges, odd little electronic storms, like someone trying to make a human utterance out of itemized data.

They cut to the face above the desk. The anchorwoman live. Her elbows rested on the desk now, hands tucked together beneath her chin. Matt wondered what this meant. Every shift of position meant a change in the state of the news. The green eyes peered from the screen. And the altered voice went on, talking in that flat-graphed way, he was actually chatting now, confident, getting the feel of the medium, the format, and the anchorwoman listened because she had no choice and everybody watched her as she listened. They were watching her in Murmansk in the fog.

The voice said, "I hope this talk has been conducive to understand the situation better. For me to request that I would only talk to Sue Ann Corcoran, one-on-one, that was intentional on my part. I saw the interview you did where you stated you'd like to keep your career, you know, ongoing while you hopefully raise a family and I feel like this is a thing whereby the superstation has the responsibility to keep the position open, okay, because an individual should not be penalized for lifestyle type choices."

They began to run the tape again. It showed the man at the wheel of the medium Dodge.

When his mother came in he was scouring a frying pan with a short-handled brush. She stood there and looked at him.

"You'll wear it out," she said.

"I did this in the army. I liked doing it. It was the best thing about the army."

"That was a long time ago. Besides, the pan is already clean. Whatever you think you're doing, you're not getting the pan any cleaner."

"The TV was on. When I walked in," he said. "You normally leave the TV on?"

"Not normally. But if you say it was on, I guess it was on. Abnormally."

"I always thought you were careful."

"I'm pretty careful. I'm not a fanatic," she said. "You're wearing out the steel. You'll clean right through it."

He made dinner for them and they kept a fan going because the air conditioner seemed to be running at half strength.

"I walked over there today. Quite a few buildings are gone. Nothing in their place. Parking lots without cars. It's very strange to see this. There's a skyline, suddenly."

"I don't go over there," Rosemary said.

"Good. Don't."

"I don't like to go."

"I looked at 611."

"I don't want to see it."

"No, you don't. Eat your asparagus," he said.

He heard thunder in the west, the promise of rain on stifling nights, one of the primitive memories.

"I caught Nick just before he left the hotel. Told him the doctor said you were in great shape."

"Don't get carried away."

"They'll send me printouts of all the tests."

"Does he ever say anything to you?"

"Nick?"

"Does he ever say anything?"

"No."

"Not to me either."

"He erased it," Matt said.

"I guess what else could he do."

"What else could he do?"

"I don't know," she said.

They ate quietly for a while. Two of the cats came out of the bedroom. They slipped past the chairs like liquid fur.

"I went to see Mr. Bronzini."

"Albert. He's the last rose of summer. I told him last time I saw him. See a barber. He goes out in his house slippers. I said to him."

"He lost weight."

"What did I say? You're turning into an old eccentric."

They finished eating and Matt went into the kitchen and got the fruit he'd bought, huge ruby grapes that did not have the seeds bred out of them, and peaches with leafy stems.

"What time do you want me to wake you up?"

"Don't bother," he said.

"What time is your plane?"

"When I get there."

"You have your ticket all set?"

"I'm taking the shuttle."

"The shuttle."

"I don't need a ticket."

"What's the shuttle?"

"I go to the airport, I get on the plane and we go to Boston. Unless I get on the wrong plane. Then we go to Washington."

"Where was I when they stopped using tickets?"

"I pay on the plane."

"What if all the seats are taken?"

"I get the next plane. It's the shuttle. One plane goes, there's another waiting."

"Where was I when they did this? The shuttle. Everybody knows this but me."

He waited for her to say something about the enormous grapes bunched in the ceramic bowl, or to eat one, rinsed and glistening.

"What about Arizona?"

"What about it?" she said.

"I don't know What about it?"

The last cat came out of the bedroom, the shy white one, and Matt scooped it onto his thigh.

"Scrubbing pots and pans."

"That was the best part of basic training," he said. "Because it was the most civilian part."

"I don't know how many nights I stayed awake when they sent you over."

"How many letters did I write saying I was nowhere near the combat zone?"

"You were in the country. That was near enough for me."

"The country's not that small. If they fired a shot in Khe Sanh, I wasn't about to get hit wherever I was sitting, comfortably indoors, doing my drudge work."

"You were luckier than a lot of others."

"You sure you don't want to go?"

"I'm staying here," she said.

They sat there with the fruit between them. He heard rain glancing off the window, sounding cool and fresh, and he looked at his mother. She didn't see peaches with leafy stems as works of art.

"I'm going to early mass."

"Say hello to God for me. I'll have coffee waiting when you get back."

"He erased it," she said. "Because what else was he supposed to do?"

She said good night and went inside. The cats vanished while he made up the sofa. Nick was always the subject, ultimately. Every subject, ground down and sifted through, yielded a little Nicky, or a version of the distant adult, or the adolescent half lout looking to hit someone. These were the terms of the kinship. He lay in the dark and listened to the rain. He felt little. He felt small and lost. His wife was little. He had undersized kids. They did nothing in the world that would ever be noticed. They were innocent. There was a curse of innocence that he carried with him. Against his brother, against the stature of danger and rage he could only pose the fact of his secondness, his meek freedom from guilt.