Don Delillo - Players

"Where am I supposed to get it?”

"Wherever it is. It exists, that's all. Existentially you should be able to get it.”

"She's such a snarly nymphet," Ethan said. "Isn't she at times? In the office they fear her on sight.”

"Oh, she's a proper moll, she is.”

"Take the Kleenex out of your nose.”

"Nose, what, who… he trailed off.”

They finished the meat loaf. Pammy went over to talk to the boy. They had a pleasant conversation about dogs in the neighborhood. Her attentions made him glow a little. She felt he was aware of the whole scene, not just their talk. He was enjoying himself as part of it. Child among adults. Cute suit. The ambiance. His mother came to take him away and Pammy rejoined the others.

"I'm saying this is it," Lyle said, "and we don't know what it means. It's collapsed right in on us. It's ahead of schedule. Look who's back looking a little sick about something. It's backed into us. It's here.”

"Vales of time and space.”

"If I had a mother like that," Jack said, "I'd hang around on rooftops too. I do anyway, hubba hubba.”

"What is this, tequila?" Ethan said. "I don't want this. Take it away, someone. If this is tequila and if I'm drinking it, there's something seriously amiss.”

"That plane looks like it's going to hit.”

"I think I'm sick, guys,”

"I wanted so very much for us to be brilliant together this evening.”

"I think I may blow my cookies any minute.”

"I was sure it would hit," Jack said.

"I don't want to blame the meat loaf but there's something happening in my stomach that's not supposed to.”

"She's going to blow her cookies, Lyle. Get her out of here.”

"If we had something brilliant to drink perhaps. Too long I've accepted second best.”

"Lyle, you smoke? I didn't know you smoked. When did you start smoking?”

In the bathroom mirror he watched the blood seep out. It was pretty in a way. It came so slowly, an idealized flow, no sense at all of some impelling force. He watched it fill the indentation above his lip. The color of his blood intrigued him, its meaty bloom, a near sheen of the gayest sap imaginable. He held his head back, finally, until the bleeding stopped, then went into the kitchen, where Pammy stood before the steaming basin. He opened the refrigerator, pressing her against the sink as he did so, an offhand attempt to annoy, not even mildly riling, and lifted out a jar of olives.

"How come no dishwasher?”

"I want these glasses to know what it feels like to be washed by human hands," she said. "I don't want them to grow up thinking everything's done the easy way, by machine, with impersonal detergent.”

"It's broke again?”

"You call.”

"You, for once.”

I called the other.

"I'm not calling. I don't care. Let it be broke.”

"Don't call. We won't call. I don't care.”

"I'm serious," he said. "I don't care.”

"I won't be here, so.”

"Neither will I except in and out.”

She made a prissy face and delivered a distorted version of his tone of voice.

"Neither will I except in and out.”

After the close Lyle showed up at the office. She wasn't at her desk. He lingered in the area, trying to be inconspicuous. Deciding finally that she'd left early or hadn't come in at all, he went into an empty office and called her at home. She didn't answer. Three times, at ten-minute intervals, he returned to dial her number. On the elevator he thought: grieved suitor. Was he coming to understand the motivating concepts that led to obsession, despair, crimes of passion? Haw haw haw. Denial and assertion. The trap of wanting. The blessedness of being wronged. What sweet vistas it opens, huge neurotic landscapes, what exemptions. Gaw damn, Miss Molly. In the taxi he was oddly calm. He had the driver take him two blocks past his destination. (It was that kind of involvement, already.) He called her number from a booth near a gas station. When she didn't answer he walked to the house and rang her bell in the vestibule. He waited there an hour, then went back to the phone booth. There was no answer. He thought he saw the VW turn into her street. He ran across Queens Boulevard and hurried to the corner. The car was parked in front of her building. It was still early, at least two hours or sunlight left. He smoked and waited. A man and a woman (not Rosemary) came out of the building. The car moved north. He went to the house and pressed her bell again. No one came to the door. He remained in the vestibule half an hour, ringing and waiting. Then he went to the booth near the gas station and dialed her number. There was no answer. He waited five minutes and dialed again. Then he decided to count to fifty. At fifty he would call one last time. When she didn't answer, he lowered the count to twenty-five.

Pammy in the back of a rented limousine sat drinking from a Thermos bottle full of gin and dry vermouth. When the car passed a delicatessen near the Midtown Tunnel she asked the driver to stop. She ran inside and bought a lemon. She came running out, in high boots and a puffy cap, her getaway gear. Back in the car she tore off a strip of lemon rind with her teeth and thumbnail. She rubbed it over the inner edge of the Thermos cup, then dropped it in. If she had to fly, she would do it at less than total consciousness. She drank much faster than usual. It was roughly eight parts gin to one vermouth. She didn't like martinis particularly but felt they represented a certain flamboyant abandon, at least in theory-a devil-may-care quality that suited a trip to the airport. If she had to go to the airport at all, she would go in a limousine, wearing high boots, faded denims and a street kid's jive cap. She knew she looked pretty terrific. She also knew Ethan and Jack would enjoy her story of going out to the airport, smashed, in a mile-long limo, although she had to admit she disliked hearing other people go on about their drinking or drug-taking, the quantities involved, the comic episodes that ensued. But they'd be glad to see her and they'd love her outfit. She felt so good, leaving. Maine was up there somewhere, vast miles of granite and pine. She could see Jack's face when she walked into the arrivals area, hear Ethan's arch greeting. It would be a separation from the world of legalities and claims, an edifying loss of definition. She poured another cup. When the land began to flatten and empty out, she knew they were in the vicinity of the airport. It was a landscape that acceded readily to a sense of pre-emption. She lowered the shades on the side windows and rode the rest of the way in semidarkness, conscientiously sipping from the cup.

Lyle was slightly surprised by the degree to which he enjoyed being alone. Everything was put away, all the busy spill of conjugal habits. He walked through the apartment, noting lapsed boundaries, a modification of sight lines and planes. Of course it hadn't nearly the same warmth. But there was something else, an airy span about the place, the re-distancing of objects about a common point. Things were less abrupt and sundry. There was an evenness of feeling, a radial symmetry involving not so much his body and the rooms through which he passed but an inner presence and its sounding lines, the secret possibilities of self. He'd seen her, after he stepped off the bus, come out of the building and walk to the limousine. He was half a block away. She'd stood briefly on the sidewalk, checking her shoulder bag for tickets, keys, so forth. The long boots were a surprise, and the hat as well, making her seem, even from this distance, never more captivating, physically, a striking sight really, and vulnerable, as people can appear to be who are fetching and carefree and unaware of being watched. He felt his soul swing to a devastating tenderness. She was innocent there, that moment; had put away guile and chosen to distrust experience. Short of pretending to be blind, he could do nothing but succumb to love. The bronze shock of it was pure truth, the kind that reveals conditions within, favors and old graces coming into the light. He watched the automobile glide into traffic. He shared her going, completely. It would be only several weeks but in that time he knew the simplest kitchen implement would be perceived as brighter, more distinct, an object of immediate experience. Their separations were intense.