Don DeLillo - Americana

Then I saw Jennifer Fine turning a corner and I went into the men's room. Later I went back to my office, woke up Binky and told her to go home. As she put on her coat she nearly fell, stone zombie drunk, and I had to help her to the elevator. On the way back I stopped at Jody Moore's desk and we talked about her upcoming trip to Indonesia. Then I got my coat and went down to the Gut Bucket. The bartender Leon, who was studying to be an actor, ignored me for five minutes while he talked to a girl wearing an eyepatch and a zoot suit. Finally he sauntered over, set both hands flat on the bar and gave me his ironical Marlonesque cowboy grin.

"The usual," I said.

"Now what would that be?"

"I thought you were Monty. Monty usually works this end of the bar. Cutty Sark on the rocks. It's so goddamn dark in here."

"One Cutty it is."

I was on my second drink when five or six network people came in, laughing and stomping, all gloved, scarved and rosy. They joined me at the bar. The men shook hands with me and the women kissed me. We were there for about two hours, in our coats and rubber boots, standing in snow puddles. I bought the last three rounds and then they left, complaining about trains and taxis, cursing the husbands who would be waiting for dinner to be cooked, the wives and Volkswagens meeting the trains, the children demanding their gifts, the boyfriends who would be jealous, the pets who would claw the furniture, the relatives who would be arriving, the time, the season, the epoch, the age. I told them to have a nice weekend. Then I had another drink, drew a smile from the girl in the eyepatch and departed without leaving a tip.

Wendy Judd lived in the east eighties, an area which always made me think of a drugstore stretching to infinity. Her building was called Modigliani Terrace Apts. The lobby was bleached in fluorescent lighting and decorated with gold-fringed mirrors and balding tapestries. There was a pool, full of cigarette butts, with a graceful stone naiad standing in the middle, rusty water trickling from her navel. Murals depicted Montmartre, Fort Lauderdale and Mount Fujiyama. The doorman asked my name and then called Wendy on the intercom and announced me. In the elevator was a printed notice pointing out that for the safety and convenience of the tenants there were hidden TV cameras in all the elevators as well as in the laundry room and in both the Giacometti and Lipchitz sculpture gardens. I walked down a long corridor. There was a Christmas wreath on Wendy's door with a note pinned to it that read: Dis is de place. She ushered me in, missing my mouth with a pigeon kiss. Then I had to stand at the entrance to the living room while she called off the names of the other guests, adding coy biographical notes. They nodded when introduced, one of the ladies raising her hand with kindergarten brightness, the men lifting their rumps from sofa and chairs like pianos that do not wish to be hoisted. Wendy took my coat.

"And this is David Bell, one of my ex-lovers," she said. "Isn't he something, girls? Pow."

Her apartment was decorated with revolutionary wall posters in Chinese script. There were smooth brown Buddhas sitting on the bookshelves along with several shiny volumes of Oriental art reproductions and a number of miniature samurai swords that seemed to be part of an ashtray arrangement. In addition to Wendy and myself, there were four men and four women in the room. None of them appeared to be beautiful, handsome or talented. I sensed tremendous hostility.

I sat on the sofa next to a girl whose left leg was in a cast.

"What do you do?" she said.

"I do things with McAndrew at Amherst."

"Have I heard of him?"

"No," I said.

"If you're wondering about the leg, I broke it skiing."

"I was about to ask."

"Are you a good lover?" she said.

"Even a hawk is an eagle among crows."

"You're real quick. I won't mess with you anymore. You're too quick for me. I was trying to get you off balance and you come up with a terrific line probably from some great old Randolph Scott movie in that green Technicolor. Where do you drink? We all drink at the Bow-Wow on Second Avenue.

The bartender's name is Roone. He's real quick too. Some of the things he says. Too much. But I don't like him visually. We're all sharing a house at Fire Island this summer. There's a half a share left. If you're interested, tell Barry or Spike. A half a share costs a hundred and sixty. Then you chip in for food, liquor and incidentals. Bring a blanket because it gets cold at night. The house we're getting this year is just one house down from the dunes. Are you a Scorpio by any chance?"

Then Wendy walked in, dragged a chair to the middle of the room and straddled it in the manner of a Berlin nightclub singer in the disillusioned twenties.

"I'm so delighted David could come tonight. David Bell is the only one who can save me. We were lovers in college. David had this white Thunderbird and we used to drive into the desert and take our clothes off. Pow. Where can you do that in New York? I went up to one of the sundecks in my blue bikini last August and they wouldn't even let me take off the top. In Panama City I had a lover who had David's eyes. It was fantastically uncanny. But he was a freak in everything else. I couldn't believe this man. He was some kind of banana agent and he had this thing about tarantulas. We were in a restaurant once and he said what if a big furry tarantula suddenly crawls out of your food; what will you do; you have to be ready for something like that in this part of the world. I've had some freaky lovers. Antony Ambrose wanted to put me to work in a SoHo striptease joint because of my breasts. I couldn't believe that man. When we split up he told me thanks for the mammaries."

I went into the bathroom. There were books, woodcuts, a magazine rack, two scatter rugs, a small bronze gong. I sat on the rim of the tub and flipped through a magazine article about the war. Each page of the article was adorned with color photographs. Opposite a picture of several decapitated villagers was a full-page advertisement for a new kind of panty-girdle. The model was extraordinarily lovely, a tall dove-colored girl holding a camel whip. The copy said this high-fashiony girdle clings to your bodyskin and comes in three huggy colors. I turned to a brandy ad. A woman in a white evening dress was walking a leashed panther across the lawn of a Newport estate. The war article covered about fifteen pages, the text set in very small type. I realized the bathtub was full of water bugs. I went into the kitchen and Wendy turned and then we were all over each other, heavy and ravenous, jammed into a corner, and what I saw in my mind was Binky asleep on my sofa.

Dinner was chicken and rice. We sat around the living room, plates on knees, and searched each other's raincloud faces for some clue to our dilemma. I counted the greeting cards which Wendy had placed on exhibit throughout the room. There were sixty-four of them.

"There are water bugs in your bathtub," I said.

"That's impossible," Wendy said, her mouth puffed with rice, and I was sure that all ten of us shared a skittering image of quick black creatures nesting in every scoop of rice in every bowl.

"I tried to count them but there were too many."

"This is a new building. It has a sanitary code you wouldn't believe. David is just being macabre, everyone. It's his own special brand of humor. Just go on eating and don't worry about a thing. Once a week they clean and scrub every inch of this building from top to bottom with the most modern equipment available."

"There were at least twenty," I said. "You have to be ready for something like that in this part of the world. I'm sure they've been scanned on the radar by this time. One of them was having babies."