Don Delillo - Players

Pammy became giddier. Jack arranged his sleeping bag across the length of a collapsible beach chair and got inside. Outlines of small islands became apparent. Ethan walked across the deck and opened the sliding door.

Later Jack struggled out of his sweater. A lobster boat appeared at the southern point of one of the islands. Pammy heard the first gull. There was an animal presence in the air, a binding of appetites.

It was slightly warmer now. She saw Jack's shirt on the deck. Things caught her eye continually, birds mostly, a small boat now and then, a seal close to shore, its slick head vanishing, reappearing. The binoculars were inside.

"All right, how many gay friends do I have?”

"What?" she said.

"Gay friends.”

"How many does it take?”

"But you must have noticed how almost nobody I'm really friendly with is gay. Some, maybe, that I've lost touch with but Ethan thinks that are hanging around our building lobby and rooftop. Almost nobody by now.”

"It only takes one, I thought.”

"It's my mind and body," he said.

"Ah, point of agreement.”

She forced herself to remove the blanket and get out of the chair, stiffly. She went inside, found the binoculars and came back out on the deck to look at the seal.

"I see myself doing a lot of traveling in the near future," Jack said. "Just place to place. An unsupervised existence. It's what I should have done a long time ago. I don't want to be pinned down anymore. Not in one place and not in one kind of life.”

"He came up here because he thought it's what you wanted.”

"He thought wrong.”

"I think he's even prepared to make it more or less permanent, although how, financially, he expects to do this, I don't know.”

"What are you looking at while I'm talking? I can't believe, Pam, I'm telling my life and you're with these binoculars, totally somewhere else.”

"It's the seal, except it's gone, I think.”

"The seal again, it's here?”

"The seal is back, except it's around that bend again, I think.”

"Except it's not a seal," he said. "It's a frogman, spying.”

She lay in bed, shivering a bit, curled away from the source of light. She tried to convince herself she was only seconds from sleep. Moments and episodes passed through her mind.

Later she woke up and heard Ethan in the kitchen, coughing noisily, bringing up phlegm and spitting it out. The bed was immersed in sunlight. She shed blankets, her body sprawling awake under a lone sheet, unbending to the comprehensive warmth.

For years she'd heard people saying, all sorts, really, here and there: "Do whatever you want as long as nobody gets hurt." They said: "As long as both parties agree, do it, whatever." They said: "Whatever feels right, as long as you both want to do it and nobody gets hurt, there's no reason not to." They said: "As long as there's mutual agreement and the right feeling, no matter who or what." "Whatever feels right," they said. They said: "Follow your instincts, be yourself, act out your fantasies.”

Lyle hadn't been down here in years, the Lower East Side, that ethnic pantechnicon, streets, people, a history of flawless suffering. The car was parked on a side street near the Manhattan Bridge. Marina leaned forward, arms over the steering wheel, her head resting there, eyes right, watching Lyle. It was nearly dark. Five bottles, thrown from a roof, hit the pavement at ten-second intervals. Marina's eyes revealed the faintest clue of amusement.

"A little gasoline, you have a political act.”

"As it is, what?”

"Public nuisance," she said.

"Who's the target, I wonder.”

"The bottle is the target. They're breaking the bottle.”

"That's Zen," he said.

"Whatever works, we try.”

"The bottle is the target, master.”

"So, Zen, why not?”

Marina was about seven years his senior, Lyle estimated, and was showing today, for the first time, an inclination to be at ease, not quite so rigorous in her convictions, or less disposed, at any rate, to locate every exchange inside an absolute structure.

"Where will J. go?”

"Not far enough," she said. "It's not easy, disappearing, when your previous cover places and routes are closed off to you. J. has no money. He can't have friends, many, anyway, who'd be willing to help him.”

"What happens, terrorist discipline?”

She continued to look right at him, saying nothing. This disappointed Lyle. He'd been trying to get her to talk about aspects of Kinnear's situation, past and present. The experiment, as J. had called it, obviously wasn't a case of penetration in the conventional sense. Still, Lyle believed there was an element of premeditation involved. J. had planted himself; he'd infiltrated, at a conscious level, long before he decided to contact Burks or whatever agency it was that Burks represented. His "selective" disclosure of information merely confirmed the material existence of the space he'd chosen to occupy, the complex geography, points of confluence and danger. Lyle found these speculations absorbing and hoped that Marina would provide factual data to round out his concept. Fitting human pieces into gaps on the board. Such activity was thrilling. It was possible Kinnear had been an agent, in spirit, for twenty years. He'd functioned simultaneously on two levels. Counterpoise. His life was based on forces tending to produce equilibrium. Everything had a delayed effect. He could not act without considering entire sets of implications. Ended now. Collapsed inward. Possibly he'd worked it that close to the edge intentionally.

"Is J. homosexual?”

She didn't know.

"Is he likely to turn completely, sign on the dotted line?”

Gesture of indifference.

"Will he be killed, if and when?”

"Forget all doubts.”

"Yes, he will be killed.”

"It's not an urgent matter," she said. "We have other things to occupy us.”

She moved back from the steering wheel and toward Lyle, awkwardly, her right leg somehow in the way, preventing the effect she sought, a forceful intimacy, the exchange of intense commitments. Finally she put both hands to his face. The contact was such that it produced a cross-channeling, a lane of immediate reciprocity. Her eyes were fixed, a little mad-the wrong effect again. It was interesting, always, being touched by a woman, the first time, whose mind you know runs on different lines from your own, who lives by another map, entirely.

"Are we close to something?”

"Getting there," she said.

"Do we have a Vilar?”

"We have someone willing.”

"Is it possible he can get instructions from your brother?”

"You mean to prepare.”

"Because I'd hate for anything to detonate before it was supposed to.”

"Vilar is in total closed confinement. He tried to kill himself several times. They have him under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Vilar will kill himself rather than remain in prison. It's a matter of time, nothing else. It's the act he has rehearsed all his life. Death before pig justice. This is the destiny of one's class.”

She returned to her part of the front seat and looked out the side window at the rubble across the street. Three more bottles struck the pavement, about half a block away, again at ten-second intervals.

"But you have someone.”

"Definitely.”

"He does bombs?”

"He does passports," she said.

It was dark. A group of men and boys stood down at the far corner, laughing. Three of them disengaged and headed up toward the car, teenagers, one holding a bottle between his legs, duck-walking.

"So then I wait.”

"Very soon, Lyle.”

"We do it the same way, is that it? I let your man come onto the floor as my guest. He leaves the thing. Middle of the night, it goes.”