Don Delillo - Players

He didn't react.

"It has to be shattered to whatever extent we can manage before they decide to close it down for their own purposes. All this decentralization we see. It is a reaction to terror? I amuse myself by thinking they have a master plan to eliminate prominent targets. To go underground. Or totally electric. Nothing but waves and currents talking to each other. Spirits. So, the thing should be hit to whatever extent, now.”

"Thus your interest in a second George.”

"It's easier with a George.”

"I would think so.”

"Don't you think?”

"I would certainly think so.”

"Of course a George isn't everything," she said. "We need a Vilar as well. Someone who does explosives in his sleep.”

Lyle got out of the car, automatically checking his pockets for keys, change, wallet, cigarettes. He watched her edge away into light traffic. They'd changed to Ohio plates.

He spent the evening in the district. It was hazy and dense, even by the river. Two men ignored a third, their buddy, urinating, as they wrestled in slow motion near the tennis dome at the foot of Wall, one of them trying to reach a bottle the other had in his back pocket. Lyle turned a corner and walked slowly west. He knew the lack of activity was deceptive, time of day, day of week, an illusion of relief from the bash of predatory engineering. Inside some of the granite cubes, or a chromium tower here and there, people sorted money of various types, dizzying billions being propelled through machines, computer-scanned and coded, filed, cleared, wrapped and trucked, all in a high-speed din, that rip of sound intrinsic to deadline activities. He'd seen the encoding rooms, the microfilming of checks, money moving, shrinking as it moved, beginning to elude visualization, to pass from a paper existence to electronic sequences, its meaning increasingly complex, harder to name. It was condensation, the whole process, a paring away of money's accidental properties, of money's touch. Somehow he'd come back to South Street. All three men wrestled now, back-pedaling in a roistering circle that seemingly had the bottle at its center. Their grappling took place in even slower motion than it had before, a film of reaching and mistimed grips, and they murmured and cursed, hanging on. What remained, he thought, could hardly be identified as money (itself, in normal forms, a compression of one's worth). The process remained, Marina's waves and charges, a deathless presence. Lyle thought of his own money not as a medium of exchange but as something to be consigned to data storage, traceable only through magnetic flashes. Money was spiritual indemnity against some unspecifiable future loss. It existed in purest form in his mind, my money, a reinforcing source of meditation. He watched a woman move from phone to phone in a series of open booths outside an office building near the Cotton Exchange. This view of money, he felt, was not the healthiest. Secrecy, possessiveness, cancer-bearing rationality. The woman, depositing no coins, lifted the phone off the hook, screamed something into it, then threw it back into the booth. After she'd done this to the sixth and last phone, hurling it fiercely, she saw Lyle approach and smiled at him, her raw skin cracking. When he smiled back, blinking a bit, she said: "Suck out my asshole, mister." He stopped, watching her hobble down the street. Then he picked up one of the dangling phones and called Rosemary Moore, letting it ring and ring.

Pammy bare-breasted on the redwood deck watched Ethan row toward shore, varying light between them, fire opal and conifer bronze, a checkered shade from house to water's edge, curt blue noon beyond. She sat on a bench while Jack Laws cut her hair. The house was all glass and cedar shingles, built vertically, its reflecting surfaces dense with trees. Jack muttered instructions to himself, thinning out an area behind her left ear. She looked west toward silhouetted hills, the mainland.

"What are you up to back there?”

"You wanted drama, right? A change. Don't interrupt.”

"What'll we do for lunch?”

"That's all we do here. We plan meals at great length with all this business about fresh vegetables, fresh lobster, country-fresh eggs, this bullshit routine. We talk about it, right? Then we actually plan it, the specifics. Then we do it, we make it. Then we sit down and eat it, talking about it all the while.”

"I don't want you doing things to my hair in this mood.”

"Then we, what, clean up, throw away, wash and dry. And then it's time to discuss mealtime, foodtime, the next meal. Quick, drive out to roadside stands. Blueberries, squash, corn, hurry.”

"It's not a life-enhancing mood you're in. I sense little warmth there, Jack.”

"After dark," he said. "The quiet.”

"I don't like scissors in your hand.”

"Do you believe how dark?”

"It's called night, Jack. We call that night.”

"I didn't know it would be like this. I thought swimming at least. Do you believe this water?”

"Cold, I know.”

"I thought morning swims. I thought at last, freedom from crowded beaches. But this water. Who knew?”

"It's not totally out of the question.”

"It's the pits.”

"Try again," she said. "Maybe it was just that day.”

"You have nice breasts.”

"A bit hairy right now.”

"Nice breasts for a girl.”

"I still want to know what we'll do for lunch.”

"If he ever gets here to supervise.”

"He rows well, I think.”

"The supervisor," Jack said. "If the supervisor ever gets here.”

"Anytime Ethan wants to rent a house this nice in a setting this lovely, cetra cetra, I'm perfectly happy to have him supervise.”

"What's he got in that boat, four tons of pig iron, the way he's rowing?”

"I like watching him. People rowing. People rowing and people bicycling. They're nice to watch. Once we were in England and somewhere near Windsor Castle we saw these boys rowing, prep school, in racing boats, rowing as teams in these sculls, and along the shore there's the instructor going along on this little path right along the shore on his bicycle, this towpath, calling out instructions.”

"I'm doing this par excellence.”

"So rowing and bicycling together," she said. "Boy, what a treat for my jaded cranium.”

"This is drama extraordinaire.”

"All I want's a new head.”

"You got it, charley.”

She'd always lived in apartments. This was a house in the woods at the edge of a bay, a house that inhaled the weather, frequent changes in temperature. She heard noises all night long. Animals lived in the roof and cellar. There were bats in the unused chimney. In bed, curled under blankets and quilts, she couldn't tell the difference between the sounds of wind and rain, or bats and squirrels, or rain and bats. There were ship-creakings everywhere and charred wood hissing in the fireplace, sputtering up at times, never quite still. When fog worked in from the bay it seemed to suggest some basic change in the state of information. The dampness in foul weather was penetrating. Birds flew into the huge glass windows, seeing forest within, and were stunned or killed.

They watched Ethan step out of the dinghy and pull it onto the stony beach, up over the tide line. He came up the makeshift steps and along a bending path, disappearing in the trees once or twice, head down when he emerged, trudging. Pammy went inside to find a shirt.

Lyle watched television, sitting up close, his hand on the channel selector. Near midnight he got a call from J. Kinnear. He imagined Kinnear looking out the window as he spoke, down at the dark yard.

"Where will you be Tuesday, eleven-thirty, night?”

"Happening fast.”