Don Delillo - Players

Lyle dressed quickly, watching her, recumbent, the soft room growing dim about her body. There was a noise on the roof, concussion, someone jumping down from a higher roof or ledge. His hand circled her ankle.

"Does Luis raise pigeons up there or maybe hides explosives in a chimney.”

"We get a fireball," she said.

"Whoosh.”

He hailed a cab on Avenue C. At the apartment he changed and was out again in fifteen minutes, having already packed. He was well ahead of schedule, as anticipated, and was now operating from an interior travel plan, the scheme within the scheme, something he did as a matter of course when traveling, being a believer in margins, surplus quantities. He rode out to La Guardia, relieved to be clear of the apartment, where he was subject to other people's attempts to communicate. The cabdriver drank soup from a styrofoam cup.

Lyle paid for his ticket, using a credit card, watching as the woman at the console entered various sets of information. He'd thought of traveling under an assumed name but decided there wasn't reason enough and wished to avoid appearing ridiculous to anyone who might be interested in his movements. He checked his bag and went looking for a place to get a drink. It was early evening by now and across the runways Manhattan's taller structures were arrayed in fields of fossil resin, that brownish-yellow grit of pre-storm skies. The buildings were remarkable at this distance not so much for boldness, their bright aspiring, as for the raddled emotions they called forth, the amber mood, evoking as they did some of the ache of stunning ruins. Lyle kept patting his body-keys, tickets, cash, et cetera.

He found a cocktail lounge and settled in. The place was absurdly dark, as though to encourage every sort of intimacy, even to strangers groping each other. Airports did this sometimes, gave travelers a purchase on what remained of tangible comforts before their separation from the earth. Piano music issued from a speaker somewhere. Lyle had two drinks, keeping an eye on his watch. Five minutes before boarding he went to a phone booth and dialed the number Burks had given him. To the man who answered he gave his own phone number by way of identification. Then he reported Marina's address and where her car was parked and provided a physical description of Luis (Ramirez) and a general idea of what kind of explosive device he was putting together. The man told Lyle to stay by his phone. They'd be in touch.

The 727 set down at the airport in Toronto. He told the man in the customs booth he was visiting friends-two or three days. Then he rented a car and drove toward the lake, deciding to spend the night at a motel called Green Acres. Looking over one of the maps he'd brought and the street index attached to it, he came across the names Parkside, Bay-view, Rosedale, Glenbrook, Forest Hill, Mt. Pleasant, Mead-owbrook, Cedarcrest, Thornwood, Oakmount, Brookside, Beechwood, Ferndale, Woodlawn, Freshmeadow, Crestwood, Pine Ridge, Willowbrook and Greenbriar.

In the morning he drove southwest, about sixty-five miles, to a place called Brantford. He put the car in a parking lot and walked around. Stores, a movie theater or two, a monument of some kind. The town was a near-classic, so naturally secure in its conventions that he suspected J. had chosen it partly for (anti) dramatic effect. Another of his bittersweet maneuvers. To Lyle, enmeshed in a psychology of stealth, Brantford's clean streets and white English-speaking population took on an eerie quality, an overlay of fantasy. It was more familiar than the street he lived on in New York. He'd come all this way, border-crossing, to encounter things he'd known at some collective level, always. Common themes. Ordinary decencies. He could enjoy the joke, even if it was at his expense, more or less, and even if it wasn't a joke.

He crossed a large square and waited outside the modern city hall. About ten minutes after the designated time, he saw a figure half a block away, recognizing the walk, the fluid stride, as familiar, the body itself, familiar, its set of identifying lines and verges. Seconds passed, however, before he realized who it was, coming toward him through a group of children playing a game, that it was Rosemary Moore, her skirt swinging in the breeze. Of course, he thought. Ambiguity, confusion, disinformation. A learning process. Techniques, elaborate strategies.

He decided to offer a warm smile. Took her hand in his. Kissed her cheek. She brushed a lock of hair from her forehead and suggested a place for lunch.

"Just the two of us," he said.

"If that's all right.”

"Sure, absolutely, why not.”

They walked down a hill to a restaurant called the Iron Horse, a converted train depot. It was dark inside. At the next table four men discussed a shipment of gypsum, speaking the flat language of industrial cultures, a deflated tone, unmodulated, fixed in its stale plane. The waitresses wore trainmen's caps and abbreviated bib outfits. Rosemary took off her sunglasses finally, prompting Lyle to lean toward her, surveying intently.

"Really you, is it?”

"Yes, it is.”

"Call me Lyle. Use names.”

"I quit my job.”

"You quit your job.”

"I'll have to find something, I guess.”

"Job-hunting.”

"I have to see.”

"Seeking employment," he said.

"I'd like to get something more interesting this time. I sat at that desk.”

"Fly, go back to flying.”

"That was awful. You wait on people. I hated it after a while.”

It continued through a couple of drinks. He spoke and listened on one level, observing from another. The curiously stirring monotony of it. The liquor and dim lighting. The unvarying sounds from the next table-ladings and capacities. The waitresses coming out of dark pockets on the floor, all legs, all pussy and ass. The surface context, a landscape unaccountably familiar, the sanity of a clear afternoon.

"J. wants to know did you have trouble with the money part.”

"No," he said. "But tell him I'm let down, frankly. Tell J.”

"It's a precaution. He couldn't be sure type thing.”

"Do I give you the money?”

"If it's all right.”

"Can I at least call him?”

"He's not at that number anymore. He's at a different number.”

"Have another drink," he said.

"I shouldn't.”

"Have another drink.”

"If you tell her to make it weak.”

"You'll be with J. indefinitely, I take it.”

"I don't know. I still have my apartment, at least two months to go. I may go back and look for a job. I have to see.”

"Do I get to talk to him at all? He said we'd talk.”

"He promises.”

"He wants me to stay in the area?”

"He said not to go back right away.”

"So he'll call.”

"You're supposed to give me a number.”

"I'll have to find a motel. What happens, you come with me?”

"All right," she said.

"Did he tell you to do that?”

"Why does it matter?”

"Use names.”

"You have to give me the phone.”

"He didn't tell you to suggest that, going to a motel with me?”

"He said a number, let him give you a number to reach him at.”

"Where is he, nearby?”

She nodded. They smoked awhile in silence and then ordered something to eat. The place had emptied out by the time they finished lunch.

"You've been with him for a while then, I take it.”

"I guess, sort of.”

"You impress me. I'm impressed.”

"Why?”

"One more drink," he said.

"Maybe one.”

"He buys a new identity, is that it?”

"He knows someone who can get him whatever he has to have.”

"What else?”

"He practices looking different.”

"Practices looking different how?”

"In front of a mirror," she said.