Don DeLillo - Great Jones Street

He looked at my hands and then my face, as if checking flesh tones and textures to measure against his camera's passion, the nibbling skills of its enormous jaws.

"Come back when I'm not here," I said. "It'll be easier. You can do whatever you want."

"I'm really anxious to fill those slots, Bucky. Your power grows. I hate to think of all those slots going unfilled. What'll we put in there? We've used clips of rock festivals absolutely everywhere but in the Okefenokee Swamp and I'm sure that's next with everybody either getting typhoid or ripped apart by alligators."

"That's an interesting shirt you're wearing."

"This shirt I'm wearing? This shirt is a knit concept. Higher neckband than the average knit. Treble-button cuffs. Strong coloration. Snug body-fit. It's a Scandinavian import and it totals out at twenty-two ninety-five. Take a look at my face."

"Why?"

"Take a look at my face. Go ahead, a close look. Now what do you see?"

"I don't know," I said.

"You see healthy pores. You see pores that aren't clogged. How do I do it, right? I've got a facial-aid skin machine. This is a device for cleansing pores of all the pollutants in the air. It blasts pollutants right out of the holes in the face. Why do I take the trouble, right? Listen, I'm on camera an average of three minutes total every day of the week six days a week. That tells you everything. The heat. The lights. The tension. The sweat. The tight close-ups. Now it begins to make sense, right? The skin machine. The accessory pore-brush. The clear gel peel-away mask. The deep dissolving nonaller-genic soap. I make it my business to communicate a crisp image. Do you want me to tell you how I knew you were here?"

"No."

"Somebody talked," he said. "Somebody's pushing. Somebody's trying to get you out of here. But meanwhile it's time for me to get back uptown. Shame to waste that slot. God bless, despite everything. So long now. See you soon. Peace."

"War," I said.

I listened to the radio. Announcers took turns reciting the same news reports. Each man gave way to the next man in the series until a cycle was completed. Wording was altered only slightly and vocal tones remained consistent all through the hour. Out of a nest of static came a new voice now, fantastic and savage, beautiful to my ear, churning with gastric power.

"Lissen what I say, bay-bee, this be Doo-Wop here, bop and groove, yow yow yow, lissen what I say but no do what I do, boogie with your footie, ay chihuahua, stone gold monster music, down and round, popping at my console, Doo-Wop bay-bee, lissen and live, stone gold number eight, Bad Jasper Brown with Mama Mama Mama, jive and dive, Doo-Wop bopping your dead head, yow you) yow, stone gold eight, mama mama what's it all mean, Bad Jasper, cut me down."

Hanes visited then. His exemplary fatigue made him appear even younger than he was, stylish boy of the boulevards, intelligent and frail, ever ready to renounce even his own spectral pleasures, a voluptuary indulging himself in the idea of restraint. He was carrying a Macy's shopping bag.

"Regrets et cetera," he said. "She was just beginning to accept me as a person. She even said she might eventually learn to like me. I have no reason to believe it wouldn't have worked out – Opel and I working together."

"Did you come for the package?"

"There's a corpo on the steps outside."

"Must be recent," I said.

"His head's been bashed."

"We need Florence Nightingale to come back and tell us how to deal with these matters."

"I may get an eight-track stereo cartridge recorder. What kind do you recommend I get? It's the one thing my music system's missing. Don't let money interfere with your line of thought. I may very soon be in a position to afford pretty much the best."

"I'm not up on things," I said.

"You're missing a lot. There's a lot going on. It's all under the surface, of course. Surface events are practically nil. But that doesn't mean nothing's going on. Incidentally you were seen in three different cities in England day before yesterday. And you're buried in an unmarked grave in rural Montana. As opposed to urban Montana, I guess."

"The rumors are getting a little sloppy."

"Poetic is the word according to Globke. But things keep going. Things haven't let up at all. The press is still having the dry heaves over your disappearance. The underground press. The radical press. The trade press. The straight press. The revolutionary press."

"It can't be much of a disappearance. ABC was here this morning. Do you want the package or not?"

"Do I want the package or not? Well now that's not the easiest question to answer. I do want the package, yes. But what do I want to do with it? Now that's something else. I've been given a plane ticket and certain instructions. But there are other courses I might pursue. These people known as Happy Valley aren't necessarily prepared to understand every little nuance of the situation. I mean presumably the thing is up for bidding. It's a free market, isn't it? There are subtleties. Maybe somebody is prepared to bid on this product. There are nuances. There are ambiguities. Life itself is sheer ambiguity. If a person doesn't see that, he's either an asshole or a fascist."

"But you'll take the package with you."

"Absolutely," he said. I'll do that absolutely. In fact I leave on vacation in a matter of hours. Point or points unknown. Globke will have to get along without me for the next few weeks. Actually I haven't made my big decision yet. I want to wait till the last minute. This flight or that. I may choose to take my seat at the negotiating table with Dr. Pepper. Or I may decide to deal on my own. Straight salary gets to be boring, tax structures being what they are. So who knows? I may risk all."

"Florence Nightingale and a whole lot of bandages."

He raised the shopping bag.

"Here, take this," he said.

"What is it?"

"It's the product."

The package he took from the shopping bag looked the same as the one in the trunk. Brown wrapping paper. Brown gummed tape. Same size. Roughly the same weight. Hanes displayed his amusement by putting his hand to his face and gazing into the middle distance.

"Opel," I said.

"Very good. Excellent. I didn't think you'd know. She gave it to me when I was last here. You were sleeping the sleep of the innocent. She told me to call it the product. I don't normally approve of private jokes. But in this case, two people I've admired – why not? Apparently she was going to leave it here for you to find once we were on our way to Pepperland. She had no intention of coming back here, as you may or may not know. When we finished with Dr. Pepper she planned to head directly for Spain. Eventually you'd find the package and that would be the end of the little joke. But when the courier turned out to be an old acquaintance, namely myself, she thought it would be a nice idea to embellish the joke by having me deliver the goods. I have no idea what's in there and don't intend to ask. To be opened when the Glob begins to menace. Her words. When the Glob begins to menace."

"Whatever it is, it's my birthday present."

"Happy birthday," he said. "But I want you to know I'm disappointed you don't have any advice for me on what kind of cartridge recorder to get. I love to get advice from people at the top of a particular professional heap. Any kind of advice from such people I find is worth listening to."

"Any kind at all?"

"Absolutely," he said.

"Be willing to die for your beliefs, or computer printouts of your beliefs."

"That's nearly a very interesting remark," Hanes said.

I opened the trunk, gave him the original package and replaced it with Opel's gift. That night there was a woman in the hall when I went down the stairs. She was in the process of opening the door to the first floor apartment. Her galoshes, with shoes inside them, were set against the wall, dripping snow, and she stood in bare feet and sorted through the keys in her handbag. She was a short compact woman whose ankles seemed to have a special density. I nodded to her – the kind of greeting exchanged by men confined in submarines for long periods.