Don DeLillo - Great Jones Street

Hanes insisted on changing trains every few stops. We spent the afternoon this way, shouting into each other's head, standing on platforms, hurrying through barren tunnels, altering our level of descent from train to train. In the last car again, somewhere beneath the ruck of Red Hook, we saw a boy and two girls steal a sleeping derelict's shoes. The man stirred, then curled more tightly into the bouncing seat. Opening the door between cars, the three children headed for the heart of the train.

"Too young to understand the dignity of shoes," Hanes said.

"Why did you call me?"

"I keep moving. I haven't stopped since I got back. Those people are not pleased with me. You'll have to intervene, Bucky. Return the product to Happy Valley with my deepest regrets for the delay involved. My vacation ends tomorrow morning. I'm due back at the office. Clearly I can't appear in such an obvious place with Bohack lathered up the way he undoubtedly is. What do I do then? I can't go to my apartment. I can't keep riding subways. I can't get on another plane and soar away. You'll have to intervene."

"No good," I said.

"You'll have to tell them you've got the product and it's theirs for the asking, no harm done, just show a little compassion toward Hanes, boys, he forgot himself and tried to turn dealer. His fatal taste for silver. But no harm done, right, boys?"

"You don't need me. Do it yourself. Just give it back and say you're sorry. I'm tired of that package. Don't want to see it anymore."

"My vacation ends tomorrow," he said.

We changed trains one more time. A woman wearing torn clothing and a surgical mask stood laced to one of the poles. About a dozen young students got on, dressed in black, nodding their bodies to the train's demonic flutter, serene rabbinical boys, hair solemnly curlicued, their ears like desert fruit. A man brought up battle sounds from his scarred throat. Creatures of the subway passed through the weaving cars. A woman across the aisle, carrying fifteen or twenty shopping bags inside each other, leaned forward and spoke to us.

"What happened to all the young men on shore leave from the air force? You never see them anymore. What's been done to them? There's something fishy going on. People know it in their bones but they won't say it out loud. Everybody's missing. Little by little everybody's disappearing. In our bones we know it."

We got off the train and walked through a series of cold passageways. Hanes carried the airline bag cradled to his chest. A strange wind lingered in the tunnels. The stone walls seemed to have a refrigerating effect and I submerged myself in my coat. Train-noise reverberated over our heads and beyond the blank walls. A small man stood in position before a monolithic hooded trash container, a neat stack of newspapers in his arms, waiting to be added to. I turned a corner and moved toward the stairway.

"You have to talk to them, Bucky. Make jokes. Tell them what a slimy child I am. Once they're off balance, move in with the old show-biz compassion."

"No good."

"The dignity of shoes," Hanes said. "The dignity of a record changer with a solid walnut base. The dignity of room equalizers. The dignity of a custom designed speaker component group."

I left him in the subway. There was still about an hour of light and it wasn't nearly as cold on the street as it had been below. A woman and two men looked closely at me, gesturing almost imperceptibly to each other as I walked past them. I stood across the street from the building on Great Jones, realizing I'd never before considered it as a total unit, having limited myself, in the visual idiom of the area, to the lower parts of small tenements, the middle and upper parts of the cast-iron titans. There wasn't much to see, no tilted skylight or skinny minaret, just Fenig hunching past his window. Beauty enough for the upward diggers. The poet's noble bones buried with his manuscripts.

After Hanes, events moved with virgin speed. The time was near when I'd have to return my body to the thermal regions and so I made minor raids on the night, a kind of training procedure, venturing out on circular journeys, extending the radius each succeeding time. Virgin speed. The thermal regions. Each succeeding time. The first event after Hanes was a phone call from California. Dodge. I hadn't talked to him since I'd left the tour in Houston and it took me several seconds to place the voice. Dodge played bass guitar in the last two groups I'd headed, a loose-limbed scrawl of a boy, never more at home than when having his stomach pumped. Our connection was excellent.

"Azarian's throat's been cut. They found him in the back of a gutted TV set that was sitting in a vacant lot in Watts."

"Strange," I said.

"It was a real big Magnavox console. He was stuffed into the back. Dead about ten hours when they found him. My mother's been trying to reach him all day."

"Strange. So strange."

"My mother's a spiritualist. I don't know if you knew that, Bucky. She's getting real good at it. But she thinks Azarian might be too far away. She can't establish voice contact. The vibrations are there. It's just that he's too far away to talk to."

"Weird," I said. "Oh so weird."

Near midnight Menefee led me in the rain to a meeting with Dr. Pepper. He sheltered me with a large black umbrella, the kind doormen use, almost twice the normal size. Our route was circuitous in the extreme, full of loops, detours and backtrackings. A man emerged from beneath a freight platform and came toward us, barking strange words, his hair pasted straight back in choppy wet strokes, like a Cuban prize fighter's hair. He lunged at Menefee, who tossed the umbrella away and backed quickly to the middle of the street where he leaped repeatedly in panic, inundated by his own cape.

"New York!" he screamed at the man. "New York! New York! New York!"

The man, who'd stopped only long enough to lunge, continued on his way. I picked up the umbrella and tried to calm Menefee. We turned a corner, doubled back and then walked north on Lafayette. There was nobody in sight ana the rain fell heavily. A car went by and Menefee lowered the umbrella until the spokes grazed our heads.

Water began to flood the sewers and when we crossed a street we had to wheel around the estuaries developing at every corner.

"Azarian's been murdered."

"Far out," he said.

On Astor Place he pointed to a city bus parked on the dark corner where the route begins and drivers take their break. The front door was open and I got on, leaving Menefee on the sidewalk. Dr. Pepper was sitting on the long seat at the back of the bus. I joined him there. He was hatless this time, dressed in a belted trench coat equipped with buttons, zippers, flaps, epaulets and at least four pockets. Although it was dark in the bus I could tell he was wearing perforated shoes.

"Driver's having a cup of coffee over at Iggy's. He's a good boy, friend of mine. I have friends in low places. I cultivate such people. It pays to have friends in low places. I find they do more for me in the long haul than the average maker and shaker."

"Azarian's been murdered," I said.

"He was a good boy," Pepper said. "Never met him myself. But the word on him was good. A good boy. I heard they did a number on his throat."

"That's what they did. Last time I saw him, he had a destroyer escort. Black woman. About twenty-five. Dressed for the heavyweight championship of the world. Epiphany Powell. I'd say she was five-eight, kind of dumb-sounding, no marks or scars."

"She's a police informer. Her name's Ferry or Sperry or something. Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, et cetera, et cetera, state of California, so on, so forth."

"This is ending for me. I've got other things on my mind. What do you want to see me about?"