Don DeLillo - Underworld

"Who they playing in the Series?"

"Yankees, who else?"

"All New York in other words."

"All New Irbrk series. And people already lining up for tickets. Heard it on the radio. All night they'll be lining up. Sleeping bags, you know. Hove to go myself."

"All night?" Manx says.

"People do anything to see this series, the way the Giants got in."

Manx likes the sound of that. People do anything. He tells Phil to pour one for himself, knowing the man will decline, he always declines, and Manx feels a little snakelike, caught it from Antoine.

He goes back to the table with a little shuffle in his step.

" You leave your brother standing in the cold."

"I know it," Antoine says.

"He wants the car one night is all."

"I'm doing him a favor. Because that lady he's looking to make is all kinds of two-faced."

"Let him find out for himself. He's a young guy looking for some action."

"See, you're not a jealous man. Let me explain something. I'm a jealous man. When I say jealous I mean the full meaning of the word. Everybody jealous," Antoine says. "The word don't mean shit unless you give it the full meaning. It needs a adjective. Like crazy jealous or can't-think-straight jealous. So if I say I'm jealous, you have to picture eyeballs filled with blood."

"You already done with her. What do you care? He's a good boy, Franzo. Let him learn."

"Let him find out, you mean. Because he won't learn nothing."

But Antoine seems to soften. He eases toward the tabletop, elbows spread, his chin nearly touching the brandy glass.

"Yeah I like that boy a lot. He's a good boy, Franzo. But I got my car in an awkward position."

" You wrap it around a pole?"

" You know Willie Mabrey?"

"Don't think so," Manx says.

"Willie and I been talking about my car. A way to make some fast cash. I ain't broke per se. But I can use some hurry in my income." Sipping his brandy. "And this here's my first payment in advance. Go down smooth. The cream de la cream."

"Payment for what?"

"Willie opened a restaurant about six weeks ago. Doing okay. But he's got a problem with his garbage. The city's talking about private companies coming in to pick up this trash. But right now the city does it and there's an ordinance about what time of day or night a restaurant can leave garbage on the street. You can't leave it there all night."

"Smells bad."

"Smells bad, attracts vermin. And if you keep it on the premises, you have a situation where the rats talking to the customers."

"So you made an arrangement with the man."

"Me and my car both."

"Which this reminds me," Manx says. "You mind give me a lift?"

"Take you anywhere," Antoine says.

They drain their glasses and get up and sort of shake themselves out, shake off the complacent airs and humors of the tavern and rearouse themselves for whatever's out there, the edgy wind-spooked street.

Antoine gets into his jacket and rolls his shoulders and zips the jacket to the throat. He cuffs his nuts for good measure, aligning for comfort and symmetry, placing them squarely at the center of the world. Manx is already wearing his jacket, he never took his jacket off, he's been wearing his jacket since he left the house in the morning, drinking in it, eating dinner in it, washing the dinner dish, and he zips it to the throat and sinks into the hull, the shell, already a little lightweight for the season.

They wave to Phil on the way out. They walk down to the end of the block, where the car is parked. Manx goes around to the passenger side and puts his hand on the door handle and then he stops and looks.

Antoine says, "Get in, man. Faster you get in, faster we move. Where you want to go?"

Manx is looking. He looks in the window at the rear seat and it is filled with garbage. He'd smelled it when he walked down the street but this is not an unoccurring smell and he took it for the general thing it was, garbage in an alleyway or empty lot. Now he sees it is Antoine's car that smells, it is Antoine's car packed with mounds of ripe trash.

"Oh man. Sheesh. I misdescribed this in my mind. Because I thought."

"Get in, man. Friggin cold tonight."

There is garbage in paper bags and cardboard boxes. There are two metal garbage cans wedged between the front and rear seats, regulation street-size cans with dented tops sort of erupted up by the pressure. Manx sees garbage stowed on the ledge by the rear window. He sees front-seat garbage in a peach crate smack on the seat, the oozy smell so near you can drink it.

"I thought you were on your way to get the man's trash and take it somewhere."

"Took it here. Trash right here. I filled up the trunk while they were still eating their dinner. Then I started on the inside of the car, working backseat to front seat. Move the crate and get in."

Manx opens the door and sets the peach crate on the mat and sits down, trying to find room for his feet on either side of the crate.

"Where you want to go?" Antoine says.

"Not far. But fast. Up by One Fifty-fifth Street. Where you taking this stuff?"

"Drive it to the Bronx. There's a tower of garbage under the White-stone Bridge somewhere. I fling the trash out the door and press the gas pedal hard."

" You do me a favor and press it now," Manx tells him. "Because I'm about to die sitting here conferring."

"Be calm. I take you where you going."

Antoine puts the vehicle in motion. He drives steady and unfazed, pointing the car up Broadway like a poison dart.

Manx realizes this is why the snow shovels were not in the car, where he'd told Antoine to put them. No room for shovels in the car.

Then he realizes they left the shovels in the barroom. Good a place as any. Except they won't be there tomorrow. So cross that little caper off the slate.

The last thing he realizes is that Antoine's been telling him all night to raise his sights. And him driving a DeSoto full of garbage.

"You drop me just up ahead there."

"I take you exactly where you're going."

"Broadway be fine," Manx says.

The stink is killing him, lifting him out of the insulated state of a day's slow whiskey burn.

The trash is bumping and mashing around and it has a life of its own, a kind of seething vegetable menace that pushes up out of the cans and boxes, it's noisy and restless, or maybe that's just the vermin moving around, on the verge of being carsick.

"This here's fine," Manx says. "Right at the corner."

"You're not gonna tell me where you're going?"

"I tell you where you're going if you want to take this trash to the Whitestone Bridge. You cross the river and get on One Sixty-first, which I think it runs two ways, and you take it to Bruckner, you be okay, Boulevard."

Antoine looks at him. Manx is already out of the car and he's standing on the sidewalk and Antoine looks at him, sitting unfazed at the wheel. A long lazy snake-eye look.

"Or I could dump it in the street."

"That's what I thought. That's what I said to myself."

"While the city sleeps," Antoine says. "And the cops be eating their chowder."

Manx watches the car move off. The feel of empty streets after midnight and the wind off the Hudson as he walks east. The hawk at his back. The cutting wind that sends loose trash skidding in the street.

Could be Antoine unleashing early.

He'd like to see an Alka-Seltzer is what he'd like to see, sizzling down the length of a cold glass of water.

He walks down the long ramp with the ballpark on his left, the Polo Grounds, and he looks for people standing in line or huddled on the pavement with blankets and food, the all-nighters, the men and boys eager for tickets, the kids who get paid by scalpers to stand in the cold and buy tickets that desperate fans will haggle over next day, paying prices out of sight.