Don DeLillo - Americana

"No."

"That was Weede," he said. "Listen, how come he's going to the Coast? People don't usually go on business trips just before Christmas. It must be something important. Did he say anything about it?"

"Quincy, I'd tell you if I could. But it's privileged material."

"Come on, Dave. How long have I known you? We've come up through this thing together. You've seen my wife naked how many times?"

"I can't say a word."

"Well, is he taking Kitty along with him at least? I can't believe he'd let his wife stay behind over Christmas. It can't be that important."

"They're having marital problems," I said.

"A lot of things are happening around here. Just before lunch I picked up my phone and I could hear voices. The wires must have got crossed. It was Walter Faye talking to somebody I didn't recognize. Walter was giving him the salaries of everybody in Weede's unit. Reeves Chubb makes more than we do."

The door of Quincy's office was orange and his sofa was dark gray. Some of us in Weede's group had doors of the same color but sofas of a different color. Some had identical sofas but different doors. Weede himself was the only one who had a red sofa. Weede and Ted Warburton were the only ones with black doors. Warburton's sofa was dark green and so was Mars Tyler's door. But Mars Tyler's sofa was ecru, a shade lighter than Grove Palmer's door. I had all this down on paper. On slow afternoons I used to study it, trying to find a pattern. I thought there might be a subtle color scheme designed by management and based on a man's salary, ability, and prospects for advancement or decline. Why did no two people have identical sofas and doors? Why was Ted Warburton allowed to have a black door when the only other black door belonged to Weede Denney? Why was Reeves Chubb the only one with a primrose sofa? Why was Paul Joyner's perfectly good maroon sofa replaced by a royal blue one? Why was my sofa the same color as Weede's door? There were others who felt as I did. When Paul Joyner walked in to find a new sofa in his office he immediately started a rumor that he was being fired. But this sofa incident had taken place two years prior to the current rumor, the origins of which were never disclosed. He had not been fired; it was not that easy to find the connection. The connection was tenuous but I was sure it was there. At least a dozen times I had taken that piece of paper out of my files and tried to correlate a man's standing with the color of his door and sofa. There had to be a key. If only I could find it. What I would do when and if I found it was a question that did not disturb me. I would do something. I would change something. I would have protection. I would know the riddle.

"I had Mexican food for lunch," Quincy said. "I have to go to a meeting in Livingston-that-son-of-a-bitch's office in five minutes. Smell my breath, will you?"

He leaned over and exhaled.

"It's fine," I said. "Rose petals."

"Tacos are hard to get off your breath. I brushed my teeth twice."

"Okay," I said. "Now you smell my breath."

He leaned over again.

"No problem," he said. "Not the slightest little inkling."

We were both lying. Half an hour later Binky came in, hung her coat behind the door and went right out again. I dialed her extension.

"Miss Lister."

"Welcome back to the animal farm," I said. "Are you mad at me? Wait'll you see what I'm getting you for Christmas.

You're the best secretary I've ever had. Cross my heart and piss in a ditch."

"What was that all about?" she said. "I didn't understand what you were trying to do. I went out and got stoned on bloody marys."

"I'm sorry, Bink. I've been tense and neuralgic. I really have. I've been here seven years. It gets to you. Come in for a minute."

"No."

"You're the only friend I have in this place."

"I told Jody what happened. She thinks you're cracking up."

"My coat and yours, Binky. Hanging together behind the door. Thunderin' jasus, a grand feeling it is to know our respective bearskins are huddling back there in the darkness. Darlin', will you be coming in now for just a pop of the cork? I've been reading the Irish playwrights. C'mon, Bink."

"No."

"Bejasus, Binky. Your truly winning calf. That tiny secret grotto behind your knee."

"Drop dead, David."

I wanted to go home and sleep but it was too dangerous to leave this early. Although Weede had gone, Mrs. Kling had not, and it was her practice to make spot checks whenever he was out of the office. I closed the door. I got out the bottle of Cutty Sark I kept hidden in the cabinet, poured out half a glass and drank it neat in four swallows. Then I crumpled a piece of paper into a tight little ball and tossed it toward the wastebasket. Two points. I retrieved the ball and started practicing my hook shot. I moved slowly over the rug in a minstrel shuffle and as my right hand made dribbling motions I expelled air from my nose, synchronizing breath with dribble; and then, my back to the basket, I lifted the right leg, raised the left arm slightly for balance, and swung the right arm over my head and let loose a fifteen-footer.

"Swish," I said.

I changed to foul shots for a while, then to left-hand hooks and finally to the breathtakingly intricate pattern of my double headfake turn-around jump shot. In that cloistered office I played my silent game. I experienced no sense of boyish self-amusement. No, I played quite seriously, my tie bellying out at each jump shot, sweat blossoming under my arms. No one, not even Binky, knew about these basketball games. I had been my team's leading scorer in prep school; first in scoring, last in assists. Since then the game had followed me, the high amber shine of the gymnasium floor, the squeak of rubber sneakers, the crowd, the crowd, and at parties years later I would turn a cocktail peanut between my fingers and gaze at a distant fishbowl. Basketball has always seemed to me the most American of sports, a smalltown thing, two kids in a driveway and a daddy-built backboard. And now I jumped, released and missed. I picked up the paper ball, stepped back ten feet for an easy one-hander, and missed again. Six times I missed from that distance. The phone rang and I shot again and missed again. I knew I wouldn't answer the phone until I had made that simple shot. I was perspiring heavily as I fired twice more and missed both times. Cursing, I picked up the ball again. The ringing stopped and I figured that Binky had answered on her phone. I went back to precisely the same spot. This time I hit. I stood there for a moment, trembling, then went to the sofa and dropped. The door opened and Binky came in.

"That was Warren Beasley again," she said. "Why didn't you answer your phone? You look rotten."

"Smell my breath."

"It stinks."

"I knew it," I said. "That bastard Quincy."

"Mr. Beasley said to tell you he didn't call."

"What do you mean?"

"That was his message. He didn't call. But he'll call back."

"I think I'll have another drink," I said. "Join me?"

"What do you have?"

"Scotch."

"On top of bloody marys?" she said.

"Don't be fastidious. These are urgent pleasure-grabbing times, or don't you know there's a war on."

I got another glass from the cabinet and blew out the dust, a shoulder-bolstered Sterling Hayden holed up in a rooming house. I poured the two drinks.

"I don't think I could take it straight, David."

"I think there's some froggy water left in that carafe."

"I'd better close the door," she said.

We drank in silence. It was very warm in the office and sleet struck the window at intervals. I expected Mrs. Kling to walk in at any minute. I imagined her sitting now in Weede's office, watching television, a cigarette planted in the center of her mouth, knees angled out, hands coupled on abdomen. During an office party several years before I had gone into Walter Faye's office, pursuing a rumor of striptease and frolic, and there had stood Mrs. Kling, alone and unaware of me, standing rigid, shoeless and blouseless, brassiered like a bank vault almost neck to navel, her left foot forward, two clenched fists raised before her, left guarding the face, right lower, the classic Queensberry stance of the pier brawlers. It had been one of those moments for which an explanation evades the mind forever, an underwater moment tilted and warped by a rapture of the deep. Much later, shod and bloused again, she returned to the party. And then, as if to demonstrate the excellent craftsmanship of her digestive tract, its grinding and juicing abilities, she heaved all over a cluttered desk, thus creating, simultaneously, both a legend and a monument to that legend, the Thelma Kling Memorial Desk.