Don Delillo - Players

"I never intended it to get there.”

"You saw the basement. George didn't. Take advantage.”

"I knew how far.”

"These things really go off, Lyle, when they're put together properly. It accomplishes nothing. It's another media event. Innocent people dead and mutilated. Toward what end? Publicize the movement, that's all. Media again. They want coverage. Public interest. They want to dramatize.”

"I never thought of reaching the point where either way I turned.”

"The whole plan was and is stupid. A lot of ridiculous theatrics and it's just childishly, stupidly worked out. Imagine being so lacking in resources and strategies mat you have to base a major operation on this tentative alliance, this weak, weak, weak relationship with someone who works for the very entity that's the target and who stands to lose everything and gain nothing from the whole affair. If there'd been any way I could have prevented what happened to George, I'd have done so at any and all cost.”

"I'm aware.”

"We'll talk more when you get here," Kinnear said. "We'll talk about New Orleans. Things happened you wouldn't believe. I worked on Camp Street for a while. I'll give you one guess who came looking for office space at five four four Camp. His Fair Play for Cuba period. And who kept turning up at a bar called the Habana, It gets more interesting than that. Mazes, covert procedures. Strange, strange, strange relationships and links. We'll talk.”

Marina, when she picked him up outside the old Fillmore East, 3 p.m., barely looked his way. She drove east, saying nothing. They'd entered a new phase, it appeared. Lyle, in a T-shirt and old trousers, carrying only four or five dollars and no ID but wearing his watch, hung his right arm out the window, feeling drowsy. She parked behind a Mister Softee truck. They walked several blocks and through a vacant lot and then one more block, past milling children and men playing cards at a table on the sidewalk, to a five-story tenement building. A man with a German shepherd sat on the stoop. The dog barked as they approached and the man, shirtless, a huge lump on his shoulder, hooked four fingers onto the animal's collar as Marina and Lyle went past. Another dog, this one in a second-floor apartment, started barking as they mounted the steps. Shat ap. Packing cacksacker. On four, Marina took out a set of keys. They climbed the last flight.

The apartment was furnished sparely. Lyle stood by the window, looking out at a large ailanthus tree. When Marina started speaking he turned toward her and sat on the window sill. There were several cardboard boxes nearby, filled with hub caps and automobile batteries. A yard or so of bright orange material, nylon perhaps, stuck out of a knapsack. A man emerged from the bedroom and walked between Lyle and Marina on his way to the toilet. He was young and moved quickly, making a point of not looking at Lyle as he went by.

"In prison there's nothing that can't drive a person to self-destruction. This is the purpose of jails. Vegetables not cooked right. No TV for twenty-four hours. Things like that are enough. Everything is broken down. All your strength and will. You have to be dependent on the environment to give you an awareness of yourself. But the environment is set up to do just the reverse. The exact reverse.”

(It was roughly here that the young man crossed the room.)

"Lyle, we have to be honest. Now if never again. I want you to know about my brother. In his life there has always been an element of madness. I use that word instead of a more clinical one because I don't want to be evasive. I want to give it as forcefully as I can. To those who knew him, there was never any certainty that it wouldn't come at a given moment. Violence, rage, threats of suicide, actual attempts. You had to be prepared to kill him, or love him, or stay away. There was nothing else. Rafael was ready to die. This is the single most important thing about him. Everything around him, all of life, all of people, was an attack on his spirit, his weakness. I witnessed some of this, previews of his death. To be his comrade, or his sister, you had to be willing to accept the obligations that went with it. His behavior, everything he was and did, this was your duty to accept as your own life. He had to know you accepted it. I saw blood more than once.”

The toilet flushed. Then the door opened and the man crossed the room again, touching Marina's hand this time as he walked past her. Lyle estimated height and weight.

"It's important to know this about Vilar because in a way everything we're doing here, or about to do, comes from him, originates with his plans, his philosophy of destruction. I've talked of one aspect only. He was brilliant too. He had university degrees, he could discuss ideas in any company. And he could manufacture bombs. He was an angel with explosives.”

"And you?”

"I'm less interesting," she said.

"I doubt it.”

"I wanted you to hear the truth. In the past I've been guilty of sanctifying my brother. I have no doubt that on the floor of Eleven Wall that day with George, there were elements of self-destruction. About myself, there's little to reveal. I'm determined to use this chance we have. To cause serious damage at the Exchange, at this one place of all places in the world, will be a fantastic moment.”

"Attack the idea of their money.”

"Do you believe in the value of that?”

"I do, actually. The system. The secret currents. Make it appear a little less inviolable. It's their greatest strength, as you said, or your brother, and to incapacitate it, even briefly, would be to set loose every kind of demon.”

"To announce terrible possibilities.”

"I believe that," he said.

She called the other man by name, Luis. He stood in the doorway, an elaborate leather band on his wrist. He had the same look Lyle had seen on the faces of a thousand young Latins in New York, boys standing outside supermarkets waiting to deliver groceries, or edging through the rhythmic quake of subways, one car to the next-a secret energy, a second level of knowledge well-nourished by suspicion, and therefore negative and tending to resist, and dangerous. It was present in his eyes, the complex intelligence of street life. You learn to take advantage. You make them pay for being depressed by your existence.

"He wants to use propane.”

"I picked up tanks," Luis said. "They're very small. Good size for what we want. I found out about the powders. We have a good mix. Then we add propane in these tanks.”

"He wants a fireball.”

"When the thing goes, you get a fireball from the propane. Cause more damage that way. All he has to do is get me inside and show me a place to conceal it good. It's exact. I'm making it so it's exact. No loose ends, man.”

"How big will the whole thing be?" Lyle said. "You can't walk out on the floor with a shopping bag.”

"Hey, I'm telling you. The right size. Just for what we want.”

"He has a touch, Luis.”

"We'll rip out that place's guts. Hey, you know the sound fire makes when it shoots out of something?”

"Sucking air," Lyle said.

"All he has to do is get me inside.”

"Luis has hands. Right, Luis?”

"It's a little different, bombs. I'm taking my time.”

"You should see what he does, Lyle. Credit cards, a master. Sometimes he gets moody, though. We're working on that.”

"I go to the library. Whatever you want to make, once you know how to use the library, it's right there. I go to Fortieth Street. Science up the ass they got. Technology, all you want.”

"Luis has a parachute.”

"I wondered.”

"Where did you get it? Tell Lyle.”

"I stole it in Jersey off some nice lady, she had it in her car.”

"Orange and sky blue.”