Don Delillo - Players

Flying made her yawn. She yawned on the elevators at the World Trade Center. Often she yawned in banks, waiting on line to reach the teller. Banks made her guilty. Tellers and bank officers were always asking her to sign forms, or to resign forms already bearing her signature, or to provide further identification. It was her own money she wanted to draw out, obviously, but there was still this bubble of nervousness and guilt, there was still this profound anxiety over her name, her handwriting, there was still this feeling that the core content of her personality was about to be revealed, and she would stand on line with two dozen others, roped in, yawning decorously, a suspect.

Pammy heard Lyle in the corridor outside. She leaned forward and closed the toilet door. He entered the apartment, walked down the hall, stopped outside the door, then opened it. She made a monkey face and uttered a series of panicky squeals, bouncing on the seat. He closed the door and went into the bedroom.

She called out: "What'd you get me for Valentine's Day?”

"A vasectomy," he said. "Is this February?”

"I only wish.”

"Why?”

"So our vacation would be over.”

"Why?”

"Because I know we're not going to take one.”

"You go.”

"What will you do?”

"Work," he said.

She came out of the bathroom. He followed her into the kitchen zipping up lightweight cords, his pelvis drawn back to avoid the primal snare. They jostled each other before the open refrigerator.

"Goody, cheddar.”

"What's these?”

"Brandy snaps.”

"Triffic.”

"Look out.”

"No you push me, you.”

They went into the living room, each with something to eat and drink. Lyle turned on the new television set and they watched the evening news. Pammy became embarrassed on behalf of someone being interviewed, a man with a minor speech defect. She put her hands over her ears and looked away. The air conditioner made loud noises and Lyle turned it off. Then he went into the bedroom and watched television in there for a while.

"Are you watching this?" she called out.

"What, no.”

"The beauty technician.”

"No.”

"Put it on quick.”

"Gaw damn, Miss Molly, a man can't watch but one thing at a time.”

"Put it on, on seven." "Later, I'm watching.”

"Now," she said. "Hurry. Hurry up. Quick, seven, you dumb.”

Embodied in objects was a partial sense of sharing. They didn't lift their eyes from their respective sets. But noises bound them, a cyclist kick-starting, the plane that came winding down the five miles from its transatlantic apex, rippling the pictures on their screens. Objects were memory inert. Desk, the bed, et cetera. Objects would survive the one who died first and remind the other of how easily halved a life can become. Death, perhaps, was not the point so much as separation. Chairs, tables, dressers, envelopes. Everything was a common experience, binding them despite their indirections, the slanted apparatus of their agreeing. That they did agree was not in doubt. Faithlessness and desire. It wasn't necessary to tell them apart. His body, hers. Sex, love, monotony, contempt. The spell that had to be entered was out there among the unmemorized faces and uniform cubes of being. This, their sweet and mercenary space, was self-enchantment, the near common dream they'd countenanced for years. Only absences were fully shared.

"What's with Grief?" he called. "I don't hear lately.”

"Ethan and I made a secret pact. It don't exist far's we's concerned.”

"You bottomed out in the second quarter. You're in the midst of a mini-surge right now. You're also talking about diversification.”

"Let me lower this.”

"What?”

"Can't hear you.”

"Diversification.”

"Is that, what, Dow Jones or the other guys?”

"Theme attractions," he said. "That's very much a part of the shed-ule, pending word from the data retrieval chaps.”

"I don't think.”

A fantasy ranch in Santa Mesa County, Arizona. Grief fantasies. People dressing up to grieve.”

"Hee hee, I know you're stupid.”

"No tengo tiene.”

"We never eat paella," she said. "Remember the place on Charles, was it? Or West Fourth?”

"Maybe the corner," he said. "Is there a corner there?”

Her father had made her yawn. Whenever she picked up the phone to call him, she would feel her mouth gaping open with "fatigue," "boredom," her countermeasures to compelling emotion. He'd lived then near the northern point of Manhattan, mentally distressed, a man who preferred gestures to speech. During her visits he would answer most of her questions with his hands, indicating that this was all right, that was not so bad, the other was a problem. He nodded, smiled, showed her the contents of various cigar boxes and shopping bags. On the phone he begged for documents. Birth certificate, savings passbook, social security card, memberships, compensations, group plans. She'd remind him where everything was, having learned to steady her desperation until it became a stretch-tight level of patience. Sometime before he died she learned from one of his neighbors that he often stood on corners and asked people to help him cross the street, although he wasn't physically impaired. He would take the person's arm and walk to the other side, then continue slowly on his own to the next corner, where he'd wait for someone else. She wished she hadn't known that. It suggested a failure on her part, some defect of love or involvement. Dialing his number she would yawn, reflexively. Whatever the point source of this mechanical tremor, she'd learned to accept it as part of growing up and down in the vast world of other people's pain.

"There's green," she said.

Lyle sat reading alongside the set she was looking at. She faced both him and it. The book he read was hers, a history of the dance. She glanced that way every time he turned a page.

"Well dial the thing.”

"Color very lurid.”

"Thanks, seeing what I spent.”

"Color is roloc.”

"We have to connect it," he said. "It has to get hooked up on the roof.”

"Roof is foor.”

"They'll get a guy.”

"There wis green. There wis pink. There wis o-range.”

"Master antenna, as in 'master antenna.''

Pammy sat back. She raised and flexed her legs, alternately, as though limbering up. She put her hands on her head and moved her legs faster now, cycling. After a while she stood up, took off her jeans and did stretching exercises. Lyle developed an erection. She sat and watched television. It was nearly dark. The Mister Softee truck was on their street.

"Pant, pant.”

"Out of shape.”

"Way out of shape," she said. "You wouldn't believe what's inside this body. What a little old dried-up crone. It's down there, hear it? Bang crash, you son of a bitch. I'd like to call someone. Run over a dog, truck, and get shot by its owner, oompty boom." "Right, complain.”

"Sympathize or you can't read my book that I purchased.”

"I'm saying complain. Call Broadway Maintenance. They'll come with a light bulb next Tuesday.”

She turned her attention to something in the carpet, leaning over to pick at tufts of fabric.

"Look at me when you speak. Take your face out of my purchase that I bought. We need shampoo for this rug-o and still that wax for in there which is your appointed task that you have to get.”

"You'll forget. You'll go out and buy fruit.”

"Your task, you.”

"That's all you'll buy.”

"You buy.”

"You'll come home with fruit by the gross weight and announce it grandly and wash it with songs of ritual washing and put it away in the box below and it shrivels and rots every time.”

"It's called a fucking crisper," she said.

"It's a bin, what kind of crisper. It's a fruit compartment.”