Don Delillo - Players

"Does Luis Ramirez exist in this scenario?”

"Doesn't enter into it, no. But I wouldn't say he doesn't exist.”

"Is Marina married to him?”

"Could be; I don't know.”

"Is she related to Vilar?”

"Absolutely not.”

In this scenario.

"Or," Kinnear said, "Vilar in his revolutionary fervor decides it's time for the ultimate gesture. He will give his life for the cause. Perfectly in keeping. Vilar has always had tendencies. The rightist kills his own leader. The leftist kills himself. Taking as many people with him as can be accommodated in a given area. In this case a superb sadomasochistic coup. Half the Exchange goes with him. This, in its surface aspects, is scenario one, minus the timing device. George aborts, et cetera.”

"I think there has to be a reason besides revolutionary fervor why he'd commit suicide.”

"Check with Marina on that.”

"Did the bomb they found on Vilar really have a timing device?”

"No idea," Kinnear said.

"The papers must have said. I don't recall, though.”

"Don't ask me, Lyle. You were there.”

"I was there, correct.”

"In your well-pressed suit.”

Marina took him to a different train this time. She wore baggy clothes, smeared with paint and varnish. He watched her extract a crushed cigarette from the pack in her trouser pocket, leaning far to one side as she drove through heavy traffic. Vengeance, he thought. She would be the type who dedicated herself to exacting satisfaction for some wrong. She would work on personal levels, despite the sweeping references to movements and systems. It was possibly at the center of her life, the will to settle things, starkly. Coercive passions sometimes had a steadying element in their midst. To avenge, in a sense, was simply to equalize, to seek a requisite balance. There was forethought involved, precision of scale. Lyle watched her put a match to the bent cigarette. He'd never felt so intelligent before. His involvement was beginning to elicit an acute response. They had no visible organization or leadership. They had no apparent plan. They came from nowhere and might be gone tomorrow. Lyle believed it was these free-form currents that he found so stimulating, mentally. They gave no indication of membership in anything. They didn't even have a nationality, really.

She parked near the station.

"What did J. tell you?”

"There's been a penetration.”

"We believe.”

"Yes, a feeling, he said.”

"Do you know he colors his hair?”

"I love it.”

"It's the kind where the color changes gradually, a little a day. Then you touch up.”

"Comb your gray away.”

"He used to be a counselor," she said. "What do you know about that?”

"Nothing.”

"He used to be a counselor with a group up in the mountains somewhere, out west. Group sessions.”

"Encounter.”

"Encounter," she said. "It was clearly the thing. He conducted sessions. They all found God, et cetera.”

"That's where He lives, you know, in the mountains.”

"What can you add to this?”

"Nothing," he said.

"Nothing about a kidnapping? About when he was involved with a group in New Orleans?”

"No.”

"But he told you what we discussed.”

"Disinformation.”

"If you get a phone call and hear my voice, and if I stumble and mutter and tell you that I think I've dialed the wrong number, and if I then say the number I intended to get, write down and memorize the first, third, fourth, fifth and seventh digits. You'll be hearing again eventually.”

"First, third, fourth, fifth and seventh.”

"The rest is padding," she said.

Later he went to Centre Street. Night court consisted of policemen in and out of uniform, occupying the front rows, and about sixty others, families of the accused and of victims, spread elsewhere. There was no judge at present. Lyle watched a legal aid lawyer, a young woman in a J. Edgar Hoover sweat shirt. She talked to people seated through the courtroom and to others clustered in the aisles, Kafkian lawyers, scavenging. A judge walked in and people began to assume various stances. As cases were heard, there was a general sense of men and women straining to understand what was going on-what forces, exactly, had caused this cruelty and ruin. A cop turned in his seat, yawning. It was well past the time Kinnear had mentioned. Lyle watched the woman conferring with three black men in a far corner of the room. They were in their twenties, one of them sitting in a wheelchair. Lyle waited half an hour longer, the voices around him sounding as though they'd been generated by machine, some regulator of flawed destinies.

At home he drank two glasses of ice water. He started to call McKechnie, despite the hour, when he remembered Frank's wife was ill, his oldest child was behaving strangely, there were problems, problems. He closed all the windows and turned on the air conditioner and the TV set in the bedroom. All the lights were out. He smoked, watching a film about glass blowing, with perky music, and tried to imagine what Kinnear was doing or saying at the moment, or what he'd do tomorrow, whom he'd call, where he'd go and how he'd get there. Kinnear was hard to fit into an imagined context. Lyle could not reposition him or invent types of companions or even the real color of his hair. He occupied a self-enfolding space, a special level of exclusion. Beyond what Lyle had seen and heard, Kinnear evaded a pattern of existence.

Lyle switched to a movie about a man suspected of embezzlement. The man's wife, a minor character, wore low-cut blouses. She had brightly painted lips and kept taking cigarettes out of a silver case and then tapping them against the top of the case, totally bored by her husband's crime. Out-of-date sexiness appealed to Lyle. He stayed with the movie, bad as it was, waiting for glimpses of the wife, her low-cut blouse. When the movie was over he began switching channels every ten or fifteen seconds, drinking Scotch. At three in the morning he called Pammy on Deer Isle.

"Ethan, it's Lyle.”

"Good God, man.”

"Don't tell me I woke you. I didn't wake you.”

"I was reading.”

"This is New York on the phone.”

"By the fire," he said. "I was pretending to be reading by the fire.”

"The city's in a state of incipient panic. Invasion of strange creatures. Objects are hovering in the air even as I speak.”

"You don't know how unfunny that is.”

"I think I do, actually.”

"Jack claims he saw a UFO tonight. Naturally we were mildly skeptical. Well, this upset him. Jack's upset. Nobody believes his story.”

"Wouldn't finish his veggies.”

"Went to bed without his Calder penguin.”

"Is she up?”

"I'll get her," Ethan said.

Lyle turned to watch the TV screen.

"So that was you," she said. "You like waking people up. How are you?”

"Having fun?”

"This place is so great. Of course I have to say that-he's five feet away. But it is, it's just great. Gets a little cold at night, I'd say. Yes, a little nippy. Like I'm freezing to death. But we're coping well. How are you?”

"The city's in a state of incipient panic.”

"I don't want to hear about it.”

"So what it's like, trees?”

"We went to this terrific place today. Weaving, they did weaving, quilting, pottery. The whole schmeer, you know? I'm pretending to like it-he's five feet away. No, seriously, did you ever see how glass is blown?”

"No, tell me.”

"So, okay, it's a little boring. No, it's not, I'm teasing Ethan. Listen, I'll wake up Jack. If he's still here. You can talk to him. If he hasn't been spirited away in a little green capsule.”

"I heard.”

"We'll make an event out of it. I'll get Jack.”

They talked a while longer. She didn't get Jack. After he hung up he watched television. As time passed it became more difficult for him to turn off the set. He knew an immense depression would settle in between the time he turned off the set and the time he finally fell asleep. He would have to resume. That's why it was so hard to turn off the set. There would be a period of resuming. He wouldn't be able to go to sleep immediately. There would be a gap to fill. It caused a tremendous wrench, turning off the set. He was there, part of the imploding light. The room he occupied was unfamiliar for a moment. He had to learn it all over again. But it wasn't as bad as he'd expected. Only a routine depression settled in and he was asleep within the hour.