Don Delillo - Players

"Hi, I'm J. Delighted. You want to turn, is that it?”

He smiled, shaking Lyle's hand, half winking, and sat on a stack of phone books, hunched forward, clutching his knees. His manner suggested they were fellow believers whose paths had diverged only through the force of horrid circumstance. Furthermore he was eager to hear the whole story. There was humor in the way Kinnear assembled this sense of flattering intimacy. He was at a distance from it but certainly not in a way intended to deceive. His hands were at his ankles now, absently scratching. Marina turned off the radio and made another phone call. The room hummed as the two men waited for her to speak before resuming their own conversation. Kinnear had a gaze that never quite penetrated. If there was such a thing as being stared at evasively, Lyle felt he was experiencing just that. Rusty brown hair. Remnants of widespread freckling. Creases about the eyes and mouth.

"A man from the floor itself.”

"The floor of floors.”

"Delighted, delighted.”

"What happens now?”

Kinnear laughed. He said he'd been making trips to and from the Coast. He said things were getting interesting. Lyle inferred that he wasn't supposed to ask questions. The room was warm. He wanted to go to sleep. He couldn't understand why he wasn't more alert, more interested. From the beginning, when Marina Vilar picked him up outside a bookstore on Fourth Avenue and took a less than direct route to the Midtown Tunnel, Lyle hadn't been able to feel wholly engaged. It was happening around him somehow. He was slipping right through. A play. It was a little like that. He found himself bored, often, at the theater (although never at movies), even when he knew, could see and hear, that the play was exceptional, deserving of total attention. This kind of torpor was generated by three-dimensional bodies, real space as opposed to the manipulated depth of film. So things here might take a while to pinch in, raise a welt or two. In the meantime she'd taken him shopping. He'd followed her up and down the aisles of a small market in Bayside.

"What's curious," he said to Kinnear, "is the little sort of reversal here. I'm a white collar. A walk-in. That was the secret dream of the white collar. To place a call from a public booth in the middle of the night. Calling some government bureau, some official department, right, of the government. 'I have information about so-and-so.' Or, even better, to be visited, to have them come to you. 'You might be able to deliver a microdot letter, sir, on your visit to wherever,' if that's how they do things. 'You might be willing to provide a recruiter with cover on your payroll, sir.' Imagine how sexy that can be for the true-blue businessman or professor. What an incredible nighttime thrill. The appeal of mazes and intricate techniques. The suggestion of a double life. 'Fantastic, sign me up, I'll do it,' 'Of course, sir, you won't be able to tell anyone about this, including your nearest and dearest.' 'I love it, I love it, I'll sign.' But what's happening here, J . ? That's the twist. You have somebody like George Sedbauer, to name just one instance of what I'm talking about, and what was old George up to, a white collar like old George? He was hanging around with the wild-eyed radicals, with the bomb-throwers. He was doing business with the other side. A white collar. What happened to the bureau, the service, the agency?”

Kinnear's smile emptied out as Lyle went along. The piano music stopped. He didn't change expressions; merely vacated his smile, leaving ridged skin behind. The woman passed between them and went upstairs. There was a pause. They waited for the effects of her presence to diminish, the simple distraction of her body in transit.

"Our phone bill is unreal. And we don't have two dimes to rub together.”

"But somebody like Sedbauer involved with terrorists, these total crazies from the straight world's point of view. What does that suggest to you, J.?”

"I want to show you something. It'll be your initiation into the maze you spoke of. I have this fool notion that once you see this stuff, you're in for good. This nearly mystical notion.”

Kinnear led the way to the basement. There was a door beyond the furnace. He snapped back the bolt and went into the back room. Lyle watched him lift paint-stained canvas from a large table. There was a stock of weapons on and under the table. Kinnear brushed dust from his hands, holding them out away from the rest of his body.

"I don't know how many rounds of machine gun ammunition.”

He worked on his trouser legs now, concentrating on removing dust, and then, beginning to speak, turned to face Lyle across the table.

"Ironically no machine guns at the moment. But the usual sawed-off shotguns, sporting rifles, handguns. Some flak jackets. Some riot batons, riot helmets. Explosives and explosive components of various kinds, i.e., Pento-Mex, ammonium nitrate, various other powders and compounds. Ah, yes, an alarm clock for guess what purpose. Silhouette targets, cartridge clips, tracer bullets, a whole bunch of nine-volt batteries. I don't know how many cans of Mace and CN.”

From that point, in sparse light, he seemed to be inviting a question or two, his head cocked and an element of serious expectation in his stance, generally-a fixing of distances. His hands were jammed into slash pockets, thumbs showing.

"Shouldn't this stuff be concealed better?”

"There's no reason for anyone to suspect this house of being anything out of the ordinary.”

"Somebody comes down to fix the furnace.”

"I come with him.”

"And you're showing this stuff very freely, aren't you? What do you know about me, J.?”

"That's what she would say. Or her brother. But I operate on basic, really visceral levels. Terror is purification. When you set out to rid a society of repressive elements, you immediately become a target yourself, for all sorts of people. There's nobody who mightn't conceivably stick it to you. Being killed, or betrayed, sometimes seems the point of it all. As for what I know about you, Lyle, I would say you're George Sedbauer's successor. That's clear to me. This difference: George didn't know who he was working for. George thought we were involved in high-level-quote-industrial espionage-close quote. We led him to believe we represented international banking and shipping interests. He copied all sorts of arcane documents from his company's safes and files and told us whatever he knew about the Exchange itself. He thought Vilar was liaison man for some secret banking cartel. It never occurred to him until the end, literally the last minute, I would think, that Vilar wanted to blow up the Exchange.”

"Boom.”

"Vilar was a little bomb-happy for my taste. But there it is. And George in the meantime was wearing out the Xerox.”

"Not knowing.”

"I liked George. We got along. George was an interesting man. We spent time together.”

"What did you do with the material he copied?”

"It was worthless.”

"A lot of waxy paper.”

"Look at this stuff," Kinnear said. "Riot shields, tear gas, all that anti-crowd business in the sixties. These are artifacts. This stuff is memorabilia. Aside from die explosives, I don't think any of this stuff even works anymore. And I can't really vouch for the explosives. Maybe these chemicals have an effective half life that expired ten minutes ago. But look at it all. Obviously hauled out of some National Guard armory in the middle of a night in spring. Pure nostalgia, Lyle. But I wanted you to see it. I would imagine a collection of weapons might have complex emotional content for someone in your position. It's an arsenal, after all. Only fair you know the nature of the game.”

He propped one of the silhouette targets against the wall. He took out his handkerchief and cleaned off the top of an upended milk crate, then sat facing the target. He touched a finger several times to the dust on the face of the target. Entertainment, Lyle thought. A little show biz.