Players

  “Inside.”

  “He’ll hear.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Jack, inside.”

  “He’ll hear, I said.”

  “I want you naked.”

  “Forget, no, we can’t.”

  “He won’t know, Jack.”

  “Where will I be?”

  “Jack, let’s fuck?”

  “Where will I be then?”

  Over the next few days she noticed that Jack’s sentences never quite ended, the last word or words opening out into a sustained noise that combined elements of suspicion, resentment and protest. This, his New York voice, with variations, effectively replaced the factual near-neutrality he’d established in his report on the UFO.

  She went shopping for antiques with Ethan. Jack hadn’t wanted to come. To fill this gap she found something to laugh at everywhere, handling stoneware, flint glass with barely suppressed hysteria. Ethan, trying to respond helpfully, stretched one side of his mouth, exposing a gold tooth, and sent air down his nostrils, little sniffles of mirth. When they returned Jack was behind the counter in the kitchen, washing a glass.

  “What’s in the larder?” Ethan said.

  “Lard, that’s what the fuck’s in the larder—fucking lard.”

  She watched Jack through binoculars come up along the path from the beach. Tree branches smudged the foreground. She lowered the glasses when he got within earshot.

  “Is Mamu the bear angry?” she said.

  She listened, in bed, to sounds, weak cries, coming from their room, indistinct whimpers. A car passed on the dirt road. It was getting colder but she was past the point of exercising sufficient will to get out of bed and go over to the closet, where blankets were stacked. She was ten minutes past the point, approximately.

  Ethan made a mild joke about the white circles around her eyes, a result of Pammy having left her sunglasses on while lounging on the deck most of the previous afternoon. Jack chimed in. This became the theme that day. White Eyes. Masked Marvel. Bagels … Lox. She didn’t think it was worth a whole day.

  When the man at an ice cream stand asked what flavor, she said: “Escargot.” Neither Jack nor Ethan laughed. Their turn to team up.

  She played tennis with Ethan. He slammed his racket against the mesh fence, refused to answer when she asked if he’d hurt his knee. Pammy was inspired to remember West Fourteenth Street, that smelly gymlike floor, the salving triviality of tap-dancing.

  Ethan began using stock phrases to get laughs, the same ones over and over. “Body stocking.” “Training bra.” “Hostess Twinkies.” “Hopatcong, New Jersey.” “Starring Maria Montez, Jon Hall and Sabu.”

  They took the long drive out to Schoodic Point. Jack sat in the back seat, making a birdlike sound, his mouth pursed slightly, upper lip twitching. On a straightaway near Ellsworth, Ethan turned from the wheel and swung his right arm in a wide arc, hitting Jack on the side of the head. “He knows I hate that sound.”

  They stood on the stark granite shelving, watching surf beat straight up on impact. The sky to the east was going dark, a huge powdery stir, as of sediment. Ethan made his way down to a point nearer the sea. She couldn’t take the wind anymore. It came in stinging and wet, forcing her to adjust her stance occasionally, pit her weight against the prevailing blast. She went back up to the car. About twenty minutes later Jack followed. She could see lobster boats making for home through racks of whitecaps.

  “Spray, my God.”

  “Did you really see it?”

  “What?” he said.

  “The UFO.”

  “Twice.”

  “I believe you.”

  “I’m going this time. I should have done it years ago. This is no life.”

  “You keep saying Ethan. Ethan’s willing to be responsible for your life.”

  “Not this time. I’m not saying it, notice. I didn’t even mention his name.”

  Obviously she’d begun to distrust her affection for Ethan and Jack. A place was being hollowed out, an isolated site, and into it would go the shifting allegiances of the past week, the resentments surfacing daily, all the remarks tossed off, minor slights she couldn’t seem to forget, and the way they tested each other’s vulnerability, the moment-to-moment tong wars. It occurred to her that this was the secret life of their involvement. It had always been there, needing only this period of their extended proximity to reveal itself. Disloyalty, spitefulness, petulance.

  She watched Ethan come up over the rail. His nylon wind-breaker seemed about to be torn from his chest. The sea was an odd color in places, though beautiful, the whitish green of apples.

  It wasn’t that bad, really. Close quarters too long. That was all it was. Tong wars, my God. It wasn’t nearly that. Everybody’s involvement with everybody had a secret life. Misgivings, petty suspicions. Don’t be so dramatic, so final. It would fix itself, easily, in weeks. They were friends. She would have them to look forward to again. Aside from the thing with Jack. That might take longer to fix.

  Through wailing traffic, a summer of parched machines, she looked across Route 3 to a miniature golf course, catching glimpses of three boys walking over a small rise, shouldering their clubs. It was decided Jack would go looking for a service station, a repairman, a telephone, whichever turned out to be more accessible. Jack didn’t favor this arrangement. Jack favored tying a handkerchief to the door handle and waiting for someone to stop. He and Ethan stood behind the car, arguing. Pammy sat on the fender, eyes narrowed against random velocities, the chaos and din of heavy trucks. The boys were meticulous and solemn, measuring out hand spans, precise club lengths, clearly influenced by what they’d seen on television or at the country club. They deliberated endlessly, hunkered down like tribesmen. The course had windmills, covered bridges, all the suspect pleasures of reduced scale. Something about the hour, the late-day haze and traffic fumes, or the vehicles themselves, intervening, some trick of distance made space appear to be compacted, the boys (from Pammy’s viewpoint) isolated cleanly from the sprawl around them, the mess of house trailers, tombstones and fast-food outlets. It was near sunset, an antique light falling over the course. She felt she could watch indefinitely, observe, without being seen. One of the players reached for his ball, bending from the waist, mechanically, leg up, leg down, an abstract toy. She felt at ease here, fender-sitting, despite the noise and stutter-motion and crude landscape. The voices of her friends edged in at times, piping cries, small against the headlong grieving stream. She had a history of being happy in odd places.

  9

  Lyle set things out on his dresser. When the phone rang he didn’t want to answer it. He’d already fixed in his mind certain time spans. There were boundaries to observe, demarcating shades of behavior. Some faint static could disturb the delicate schedule he’d established, a closed structure of leave-taking and destination.

  Driver’s license, traveler’s checks, credit cards, note pads (2), keys, wrist watch, road map, street map, ballpoint pen, wallet, U.S. dollars (4,000), Canadian dollars (75), cigarettes, matches, chewing gum.

  It turned out to be Kinnear, surprisingly. Deprived of all but phonetic value, J. was no less a regulating influence, a control of sorts, providing standards of technique that Lyle was never slow to note. It was a good connection and his voice was warm and persuasive and distinctly pitched, a tone of countless small detonations, as from a stereo speaker, right there at Lyle’s ear, reasonable, so close.

  “I’ve been thinking about certain aspects of your involvement, Lyle—i.e., the Exchange, our friend Marina, whatever plan or plans may be in effect. It occurred to me that you mightn’t be able to shake loose so very easily. Let me say: don’t let it reach the point where either way you turn there’s pure void, there’s sheer drop-off. You let it get too far, it will literally happen, this business about being George’s successor, with the same depressing results. Remember, George thought he was associated with money ma
nipulators, illegal banking combines. You have the advantage. You also have a clear way out. I don’t have to say more than that. Marina’s capable. She can get the thing to the point where either way you turn, Lyle.”

  “I never intended it to get there.”

  “You saw the basement. George didn’t. Take advantage.”

  “I knew how far.”

  “These things really go off, Lyle, when they’re put together properly. It accomplishes nothing. It’s another media event. Innocent people dead and mutilated. Toward what end? Publicize the movement, that’s all. Media again. They want coverage. Public interest. They want to dramatize.”

  “I never thought of reaching the point where either way I turned.”

  “The whole plan was and is stupid. A lot of ridiculous theatrics and it’s just childishly, stupidly worked out. Imagine being so lacking in resources and strategies that you have to base a major operation on this tentative alliance, this weak, weak, weak relationship with someone who works for the very entity that’s the target and who stands to lose everything and gain nothing from the whole affair. If there’d been any way I could have prevented what happened to George, I’d have done so at any and all cost.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “We’ll talk more when you get here,” Kinnear said. “We’ll talk about New Orleans. Things happened you wouldn’t believe. I worked on Camp Street for a while. I’ll give you one guess who came looking for office space at five four four Camp. His Fair Play for Cuba period. And who kept turning up at a bar called the Habana. It gets more interesting than that. Mazes, covert procedures. Strange, strange, strange relationships and links. We’ll talk.”

  Marina, when she picked him up outside the old Fillmore East, 3 p.m., barely looked his way. She drove east, saying nothing. They’d entered a new phase, it appeared. Lyle, in a T-shirt and old trousers, carrying only four or five dollars and no ID but wearing his watch, hung his right arm out the window, feeling drowsy. She parked behind a Mister Softee truck. They walked several blocks and through a vacant lot and then one more block, past milling children and men playing cards at a table on the sidewalk, to a five-story tenement building. A man with a German shepherd sat on the stoop. The dog barked as they approached and the man, shirtless, a huge lump on his shoulder, hooked four fingers onto the animal’s collar as Marina and Lyle went past. Another dog, this one in a second-floor apartment, started barking as they mounted the steps. Shat ap. Facking cacksacker. On four, Marina took out a set of keys. They climbed the last flight.

  The apartment was furnished sparely. Lyle stood by the window, looking out at a large ailanthus tree. When Marina started speaking he turned toward her and sat on the window sill. There were several cardboard boxes nearby, filled with hub caps and automobile batteries. A yard or so of bright orange material, nylon perhaps, stuck out of a knapsack. A man emerged from the bedroom and walked between Lyle and Marina on his way to the toilet. He was young and moved quickly, making a point of not looking at Lyle as he went by.

  “In prison there’s nothing that can’t drive a person to self-destruction. This is the purpose of jails. Vegetables not cooked right. No TV for twenty-four hours. Things like that are enough. Everything is broken down. All your strength and will. You have to be dependent on the environment to give you an awareness of yourself. But the environment is set up to do just the reverse. The exact reverse.”

  (It was roughly here that the young man crossed the room.)

  “Lyle, we have to be honest. Now if never again. I want you to know about my brother. In his life there has always been an element of madness. I use that word instead of a more clinical one because I don’t want to be evasive. I want to give it as forcefully as I can. To those who knew him, there was never any certainty that it wouldn’t come at a given moment. Violence, rage, threats of suicide, actual attempts. You had to be prepared to kill him, or love him, or stay away. There was nothing else. Rafael was ready to die. This is the single most important thing about him. Everything around him, all of life, all of people, was an attack on his spirit, his weakness. I witnessed some of this, previews of his death. To be his comrade, or his sister, you had to be willing to accept the obligations that went with it. His behavior, everything he was and did, this was your duty to accept as your own life. He had to know you accepted it. I saw blood more than once.”

  The toilet flushed. Then the door opened and the man crossed the room again, touching Marina’s hand this time as he walked past her. Lyle estimated height and weight.

  “It’s important to know this about Vilar because in a way everything we’re doing here, or about to do, comes from him, originates with his plans, his philosophy of destruction. I’ve talked of one aspect only. He was brilliant too. He had university degrees, he could discuss ideas in any company. And he could manufacture bombs. He was an angel with explosives.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m less interesting,” she said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “I wanted you to hear the truth. In the past I’ve been guilty of sanctifying my brother. I have no doubt that on the floor of Eleven Wall that day with George, there were elements of self-destruction. About myself, there’s little to reveal. I’m determined to use this chance we have. To cause serious damage at the Exchange, at this one place of all places in the world, will be a fantastic moment.”

  “Attack the idea of their money.”

  “Do you believe in the value of that?”

  “I do, actually. The system. The secret currents. Make it appear a little less inviolable. It’s their greatest strength, as you said, or your brother, and to incapacitate it, even briefly, would be to set loose every kind of demon.”

  “To announce terrible possibilities.”

  “I believe that,” he said.

  She called the other man by name, Luis. He stood in the doorway, an elaborate leather band on his wrist. He had the same look Lyle had seen on the faces of a thousand young Latins in New York, boys standing outside supermarkets waiting to deliver groceries, or edging through the rhythmic quake of subways, one car to the next—a secret energy, a second level of knowledge well-nourished by suspicion, and therefore negative and tending to resist, and dangerous. It was present in his eyes, the complex intelligence of street life. You learn to take advantage. You make them pay for being depressed by your existence.

  “He wants to use propane.”

  “I picked up tanks,” Luis said. “They’re very small. Good size for what we want. I found out about the powders. We have a good mix. Then we add propane in these tanks.”

  “He wants a fireball.”

  “When the thing goes, you get a fireball from the propane. Cause more damage that way. All he has to do is get me inside and show me a place to conceal it good. It’s exact. I’m making it so it’s exact. No loose ends, man.”

  “How big will the whole thing be?” Lyle said. “You can’t walk out on the floor with a shopping bag.”

  “Hey, I’m telling you. The right size. Just for what we want.”

  “He has a touch, Luis.”

  “We’ll rip out that place’s guts. Hey, you know the sound fire makes when it shoots out of something?”

  “Sucking air,” Lyle said.

  “All he has to do is get me inside.”

  “Luis has hands. Right, Luis?”

  “It’s a little different, bombs. I’m taking my time.”

  “You should see what he does, Lyle. Credit cards, a master. Sometimes he gets moody, though. We’re working on that.”

  “I go to the library. Whatever you want to make, once you know how to use the library, it’s right there. I go to Fortieth Street. Science up the ass they got. Technology, all you want.”

  “Luis has a parachute.”

  “I wondered.”

  “Where did you get it? Tell Lyle.”

  “I stole it in Jersey off some nice lady, she had it in her car.”

  “Orange and sky blue.”

  “
I saw it sticking it out there,” Lyle said.

  “A radio and a blanket came with it.”

  “Common thief,” she said.

  “A little more time, I would of had the engine block.”

  “When people come up, he tells them he’s with the government. They see the parachute, he says CIA. He tells them he has to keep it nearby, it’s in the manual.”

  “CIA, man.”

  “The manual has a whole page on how to care for your parachute.”

  “I say, Hey man I can’t go with you tonight if you’re taking all those people because then there’s no room in the car for my parachute.”

  “He has to keep it nearby at all times.”

  “It’s in the manual.”

  Luis stepped out the window and onto the fire escape. Lyle leaned out, watching him climb the metal ladder to the roof. He felt sleepy. Ninety minutes from now he would have to be back at the apartment picking up his things.

  “When do we do it?”

  “Two days at most we’ll be set.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Thirty-two,” she said.

  “He looks younger, much.”

  “He’s developed a manner. A dozen ways. He’s very quick, he slips away. You never know he’s gone until you look for him. Don’t believe what he says necessarily. He likes to make up a character as he goes along. He doesn’t necessarily want you to trust him or respect him. I think he likes to appear a little stupid when he doesn’t know someone. It’s a strategy.”

  “He refers to me in the third person.”

  “His manner.”

  “Even when he’s looking right at me.”

  “Luis has lived here half his life. To you, he seems one thing. To us, another. Your view of our unit is a special perception. An interpretation, really. You see a certain cross-section from a certain angle. And everything was colored by J., who occupied only a small and routine area of the whole operation. Of course you couldn’t know this.”