Don DeLillo - End Zone

"Did you hear?" he said.

"What?"

"He's wearing those sunglasses again. Shaved skull and dark glasses. What the hell does it mean?"

"I don't know," I said. "It probably doesn't mean anything. He's a remote individual. The dark glasses conceal him. Or conceal whatever's around him. I don't know."

"What about the skull, Gary?"

"I don't know why he shaved. I have no idea."

"Don't you care to speculate?"

"I leave that to the joint chiefs. I'm just a lowly captain."

"I heard, Gary. Nice going. Although you'll probably regret it as soon as Coach starts in with the tonguelashings. He saves that stuff for the quarterback and the two captains."

"I know," I said. "He told me to expect trouble."

"Verbal tonguelashings. Public humiliation."

"I know, Bing."

"First time it happens you'll wish you never even saw a football. You'll experience total personality destructuring."

"We're wasting spacetime," I said. "I have a lot to do."

"I'll tell you why I came in here in the first place. I want to grow a beard. I want hair. It's a question of increasing my personal reality. I'm serious about this, Gary."

"What color beard?"

"Gary, I'm serious now."

"Because if you want it the same color as the hair on your head, you'll have a lot easier time growing it."

"I'd like you to talk to Coach. You're one of the captains now. You've got a power base. There's no word out on excess hair. I want you to find out what the word is."

"It's very curious," I said. "All these juxtapositions of hair and nonhair. I half expect Anatole to come walking in with a long white mane down over his shoulders."

"Talk to Coach. Talk to him. It's just an ounce of hair but it'll mean a whole lot to me. I'm becoming too psychomythical in my orientation. I need a reality increment. Find out what the word is."

"He'll ignore me, Bing. He'll just look away in disgust."

"Keep after him. Hound the son of a bitch. I want some excess hair. I'm serious about this. Tell him I'm willing to shave it off when spring practice begins. But I need a beard now. Try to explain personalized reality to him."

"These are subglacial matters," I said. "I can't just snap my fingers and decide. Besides I have no real power. He'll just look away in disgust. All I can do for the moment is think about it. I'll think about it."

"Think about it," Bing said. "I'll be in Conway's room looking at the insects."

I went for a walk. It had stopped snowing. The lamps were lit along the straight white paths. It was dinnertime and everyone was inside. I inhaled deeply, feeling the air enter and bite. My right shoulder ached from the game in the snow. I rotated my arm slowly. Then I saw Alan Zapalac coming down the library steps, an enormous yellow scarf circling his neck two or three times and terminating at his kneecap. He made his way carefully, using the heel of his right shoe to probe each step for ice beneath the stacked snow. I waited for him at the foot of the stairs. He wore an armband on which was printed the word trees, green on light blue.

"Escort me to the administration building," he said. "If I fall down and break my leg, I'll need somebody to tell the others not to move me. If you weren't here and if it happened, breaking my leg, they'd come along and move me, broken bone and all. If you yourself slip, which I doubt will happen with your athletic prowess and tremendous genetic advantages, make sure you don't reach out and grab for me. I know that's everybody's natural instinct but I want you to fight off the urge because if you take me with you with my delicate bone structure I'm as good as dead. They'd probably use me in one of their experiments with hogs or chickens. None of my organs would be safe. Tomorrow you'd go behind that white building that looks like somebody pinned a surgical gown over it and in that pen they've got out back for the inoculated animals you'd see a hog walking along with my kidneys inside it, urinating the last dregs of my life into the alfalfa."

"I'm going that way anyway," I said. "Good, good, good. How's the lady friend?" "Myna," I said. "Myna's fine as far as I know." "I'm no good at names. My students are catching on. In one of my classes there's an allout hoax being perpetrated, supposedly at my expense. They've invented a student. His name is Robert Reynolds. After class somebody always comes up to my desk to ask a question. Whoever it is, he makes it a point to identify himself by name. It's a different boy every day but the name is always Robert Reynolds. I get test papers from Robert Reynolds. Yesterday there was a new attendance card in my bunch, very authentic looking, full of IBM holes. It was Robert Reynolds' card. So I called out his name when I took the attendance. Naturally somebody answered. Everybody else said here. But the Robert Reynolds person, said present. You could sense the laughter being contained, the greatness of their mission, how they had banded together to perpetrate this thing at my expense, the teacher, the socalled font of wisdom. For the moment I'm playing dumb. I'm letting them get away with it. They think I don't know what's going on. But there are ploys and there are counterploys. Getting back for a second. Your lady friend. Why is she so fat?"

"The responsibilities of beauty," I said. "She thinks they'd be too much for her. They'd cause her to change. I think I tend to agree."

"My wifetobe is a white Protestant fencepost. A very onedimensional bodyshape. She's rough and tough, a classic Midwest bitch. When we argue she squeezes the flesh on the back of my hand. She really twists it hard, pinching it simultaneously. Her face becomes very Protestant if you know what I mean. A Zurich theologian lives inside her."

"I don't understand why you'd want to marry somebody like that. If somebody like that twisted my flesh, to be perfectly frank with you I think I'd hit her. I'd hate to have my flesh pinched and squeezed on any kind of recurring basis."

"I've never punched or slapped a woman," he said. "I like to bodycheck them instead, like a hockey player. I smash them into the boards. It surprises them. A bodycheck is something they can't interpret with their normal uncanniness of knowing exactly how to retaliate, with whatever exact giveandtake, the way only women can do, giving back tenfold but with a genius that makes it seem even steven."

"But why would you marry somebody like that?"

"She loves me. I'm the only person she's ever loved. Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the whole world she's capable of loving. She calls me longdistance every other day. I jump with joy every time the telephone rings. She's three inches taller than I am but why quibble over inches when you're involved in matters of eternal import. Speaking of tall and short, notice the length of my scarf. Little men like to wear long scarfs. The reason for this is lost in the mists of time. But to return to love. Love is a way of salvation. It makes us less imperfect and draws us closer to immortality. I want to stir up ecstasy in my soul. I want to ascend to the world of forms. Love basically is the suspension of gravity. It's an ascent to higher places. The very existence of her love will stir me to deep ecstasy. I'll begin to climb. Notice the selfish element in my scheme."

"You mentioned salvation," I said. "What kind of salvation?"

"I believe in the remission of sins," Zapalac said. "The world's, the nation's, the individual's sins. Do penance and they shall be forgiven. Salvation consists in the remission of sins. Whatever penances can be performed. Whatever denials or offerings up."

"Are you serious?"

"The nation's sins," he said.

"That was the administration bunding."

"I'm going in the back way. It's part of my overall schemata. I like to turn up behind people's backs. Suddenly there I am, at their shoulder blades, ready to be a friend to the enemies of injustice."