by Don DeLillo
“Dramatic,” she said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I live here, creepo.”
“But it’s cold, Opel. Dead of winter. I was sure you’d sit out the winter in some timeless land.”
“I’ve got business,” she said.
9
“THERE’S NOTHING more boring than a well-traveled person.”
The old tub was mounted on the bruised feet of an ambiguous creature, possibly an imperialistic lion. Opel batted some suds off her nose. She wallowed in the hour-old foam, occasionally adding hot water, sinking quickly to her neck whenever she felt a chill in the room.
“So you’ve got nothing to tell me,” I said.
“It’s boring. Who cares? People who travel a great deal lose their souls at some point. All these lost souls are up there in the ozone. They get emitted from jet aircraft along with the well-known noxious chemicals. There’s a soul belt up there. People who travel talk about nothing but travel. Before, during and after. This is the world’s worst soap, Bucky. Shit, you come into my apartment and live here and go out shopping and bring back absolute crap in the way of amenities for the body. How’s a girl supposed to stay pretty? Least you can do is come rub my back. There’s a tremendous inner sort of destructiveness to travel talk in the midst of travel. Also too much travel simply isolates people. It narrows them. It makes them boring.”
I decided to walk into the tub, not bothering to take off my clothes. We splashed around for a while. That sort of thing isn’t fun for long. Opel stepped out of the tub, dried herself and got into bed. I changed clothes and followed. It was probably late afternoon. I was never sure of time while she was there. Alone I lived in the emergency of minutes, in phases of dim compliance with the mind’s turning hand. The room had seasons and I responded to these; it was the only way to evade chaos. I knew the phases. I did not fear the crisis inherent in time because I borrowed order from it, shifting with the systematic light, sitting still in darkness. Now none of this mattered. There was a mind besides my own, closing over the room. All need for phases soon vanished, as did all hope of order. We remained in bed a long time, getting up only when necessary. The bed became a shelter within the room. We saw no reason to undress when getting in or to dress when getting out. No one thing kept us there. We immersed ourselves in love and conversation, favoring the latter, ready to settle for the pastels of sex, these milder pleasures being all we could hope to know in our combined quiescence. We lived in bed as old couples rock on porches, without hurry or need, content to blend into benevolent materials, to become, for instance, wood. Even the weather seemed distant, that hard winter pressing less insistently on the window. Opel talked a great deal, delivering herself of observations, conceits and verities. Her more complex monologues were spiral staircases with no ultimate step, just an attractive patch of surreal sky. Other times she inhabited moods of bottomless gloom. My own talk was spare, consisting mainly of background noise. Each day passed, detached from time, linked to no causal nexus, an accident of form and consolidation. The room was striped in transitional light. Through morning’s polar tones we huddled under blankets, opening our bodies only to the dark, babbling all the time, eating limp sandwiches and swilling tea. The bed grew in splendor and it began to seem imperative that we remain there. I chose this moment to leave.
“Dip up some ice cream, will you, Bucky?”
“I’ve been managing without the refrigerator. But I’ll go out and get some if you want.”
“What are you doing in that chair?”
“Change of scene.”
“Not that it’s not good riddance. This bed isn’t meant for more than one, unless it’s wee folk we’re talking about, and even then they’d better lie still.”
“Do you need a doctor?” I said.
“What for?”
“Nausea and vomiting. Cramps. Back pains. Body tremors. Fevers. Headaches. Coughing spasms. Severe depression.”
“That sounds more like you than me. You’re the one who looks on the verge. I take medication for my inner organs, to show them I care whether or not they function. I take medication, Bucky. What do you take? You look on the absolute brink. You’re functioning day to day on leftover nervous energy. I take medication. Except when I forget.”
“Do you want me to go out for some?”
“Some what?” she said.
“Ice cream.”
“Some basic weed to suck up might be nice.”
“I’d have to get in touch with Hanes. He’d probably have access to just about anything.”
“Not Hanes for now. All the fun’s gone out of sexual ambiguity. Hanes was never one of my favorite people anyway. Remember how he was always underfoot? A very snaky boy. Sheer snake. Heavy-lidded reptile eyes. But the real reason I don’t like him is because he’s hard to forget. Every so often I find myself thinking of Hanes. I hate people I don’t like who are hard to forget.”
“And you’re jealous of his heavy-lidded eyes,” I said.
True.
“You’ve always wanted heavy-lidded eyes.”
“Too true.”
“Why did you come back? What kind of business? It’s cold here, Opel. You’re never happy when it’s cold.”
“I need money, Bucky. Some people offered me an assignment. I’m taking them up on it.”
“Maybe I can arrange for you to have some money. Whatever you need for now.”
“No, this is business. I’m here to deal. What I make is mine. There’s a package here, right?”
“In that trunk.”
“Have you peeked inside?”
“I assume it’s dope.”
“The package contains a raw sampling of what was described to me as the ultimate drug,” she said. “Happy Valley Farm Commune stole this stuff from a research installation out on Long Island. The stuff is new, just been developed, has no trade name. They think it’s some kind of massive-strength product. But really massive. A colossal downer. They’ll know for sure once they get it tested. Happy Valley’s anxious to market the stuff but this is their first dope venture on a large scale and they want to be sure not to fuck things up. They don’t want to operate out front either. They prefer to work through intermediaries and cover people and so on. I don’t want to sound like a gossip columnist of the underground but people have been whispering about this event for weeks now. The dope was taken from a top-secret installation. U.S. Guv. So people figure it’s something vicious, mean and nasty. Something U.S. Guv has been putting together to brainwash gooks or radicals. People are anxious to try it and see. People are agog. They’re convening in out-of-the-way places and whispering to each other. They’re stopping cars on the street and passing the word. Everybody’s anxious to get off on this stuff. If U.S. Guv is involved, the stuff is bound to be a real mind-crusher. Anyway that’s the consensus. People are agog. It’s the dawning of the age of God knows what.”
“Your job is to put the stuff in hollowed-out chocolate bunnies and take a plane to Miami.”
“I’ve advanced,” she said. “I’m bargaining agent for Happy Valley. I have bargaining powers. I wheel and deal. I don’t just hang around the principal parties trying to win Brownie points. There’ll be a courier all right but it won’t be me. What happens is we’ll take the stuff to wherever Dr. Pepper is located these days. Latest word is Dr. Pepper doesn’t travel anymore. There’s an obvious risk in going to a registered lab so we go to Pepper. Then I haggle for his services. He tells me what the product’s chemical capacities are, whether he can manufacture it in sufficient quantities, how much street value it has. So on, so on, so on. Eventually Happy Valley wants to set up a network of wholesalers, retailers and distributors. But for right now what they need is a technical consultant.”
“I’ve been hearing about Dr. Pepper for years,” I said. “But never set eyes on the man.”
“Some men are legends in their own time. Dr. Pepper is merely a rumor. He’s without a doubt the scientific genius of th
e underground. But very elusive and very crazy and even wears disguises of various kinds. Happy Valley is almost sure they know where he is. Once the location is verified they’ll assign a man to me and he’ll come walking up the stairs in order to knock on this very door. I will hand him the product and off we’ll go to grandmother’s house. When the job’s all done I will prepare and submit an expense voucher. This is known as finalizing the details of remuneration. Just so you don’t think it’s all so smooth, I might mention there are two distinct factions at Happy Valley. Certain amount of dissension. That’s one of the reasons the product ended up here. The one thing they agree on is your integrity. The true blue example of your life and work, ha ha. They refuse to come in direct contact with you. They consider it an infringement of the worst sort. They’re believe it or not very apologetic about involving you in this thing and only did it as a gesture of homage. They have a quaint sense of theater, like all barbarians.”
“Time being you just sit and wait, is that it?”
“I don’t speak till I’m spoken to,” she said. “I just sprawl out in bed and wait for events to take shape.”
“In other words you don’t initiate.”
“I maintain.”
“You maintain while others initiate.”
“The operative is the one who initiates.” “And eventually there’ll be a transaction.” “It depends on the operative. The operative is also the intermediary. Both of them get their instructions from the comptroller. I just sit here until somebody turns up at the door. A tall laconic man with a scar. No, a hip black business-type, that’s what I want. One of those purple Cadillac freaks. Stoned behind the wheel of a bulletproof limousine with silver and gold brocade upholstery. A slow-motion sprinter, that’s what I want, neatly spaced on your better-grade euphoriants. I want to carry a Mark Cross briefcase and travel in a purple Caddy.”
“Would Happy Valley have blacks working for them?”
“The boundaries are getting indistinct. You never know. Where you’ve got profit motive the possibilities are endless. But in other ways the lines are getting thicker and straighter. So you never know.”
“This business about privacy. What do you know about that?”
Opel took a long breath, obviously bored by the prospect of delivering an interpretation.
“Happy Valley thinks privacy is the essential freedom this nation, country or republic offered in the beginning. They think you exemplify some old idea of men alone with the land. You stepped out of your legend to pursue personal freedom. There is no freedom, according to them, without privacy. The return of the private man, according to them, is the only way to destroy the notion of mass man. Mass man ruined our freedoms for us. Turning inward will get them back. Revolutionary solitude. Turn inward one and all. Isolate yourself mentally, spiritually and physically, on and on, world without end. Sustain your privacy with aggressive self-defense.”
“Killer,” I said. “Killer ideas. Heavier than cotton candy. Puts me in the mood to read something. About time I read something. What do you have in the house that I can read?”
“What do you want to read about? People, places or things?”
“Things,” I said.
“Why not people, creepo?”
“I’m not very interested in human relationships.”
“Get behind some coke, Bucky. Shit, if you’re interested in reading about things, you might as well take a little sniffy now and again. In the long run that’s where thingness lies. I met a track star in Dakar. Australian. There to compete in the games. I don’t know what games he meant. He kept saying the games. Here for the games. Compete in the games. He gave me some nothing dope. Whatever athletes use. Zero effect. Stepped on about forty times. This is funny. Let me tell you this. I’m sitting in his room waiting and waiting. The games. Here for the games. Compete in the games. Outside the streets are full of lepers. I’m waiting and waiting and waiting.”
She went on with the story. It seemed to take hours. I sat in my chair and Fenig paced his floor. This was a perfectly acceptable sonic environment. It was as though tapes of remixed sounds had been run through a computer to extend their frequency range. There was a consoling remoteness to sound now. It lapped across the room in wave-shaped bands, touching nothing. What was said existed on a plane behind the words themselves. Opel was a lump in the bed. I drifted around the room, returning eventually to the circular chair, happy to dwell in the syntonic dome of well-engineered voices.
“I don’t guess you care to hear about the galvanized tank under the choir loft. Back home’s what I’m talking about as a matter of fact.”
“Tell me about West Africa,” I said. “How would you rate it in terms of its being timeless? Using, say, Yemen as the norm. Give Yemen a mean rating of ten even. Okay, where does that put West Africa?”
“It’s too dull to talk about. I only mentioned it in the first place to get my point across. Thingness. If you’re interested in things, either take dope or travel to an ancient country. When’s the last time you consumed something?”
“The last something I consumed was an animal tranquilizer. That was maybe eleven weeks ago, give or take five or six weeks.”
“What was it like?” she said.
“I really don’t remember. It was Dodge and me. We were on a hotel roof. We were looking down on the rooftops of the city. Whatever city it was. And I was trying to work out a theory about how you can determine the psychic state of a given society by looking down on its rooftops. Dodge meantime was cackling over this little plastic box he had in his hand.”
“It’s quiet, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What’s going to happen to all of us?”
“All of who?”
“I thought it was best to go someplace completely different. Everything was over. Nobody even knew what to wear anymore. The music didn’t mean the same thing. I used to absolutely disappear in that sound. But then it ended. What do you do when something ends? I thought it best to go away.”
“Sure.”
“What are you laughing at?” she said.
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“Then stop.”
“I’m trying — really.”
“Go ahead, laugh. Bastard. Laugh at nothing. It helps pass the time.”
“I’m trying to stop,” I said.
“No, laugh. I want you to.”
“Should I laugh or not? I’m trying to stop. But now you’re telling me laugh. I can’t talk. Wait a minute. It hurts. Should I laugh or shut up? It really hurts.”
“Laugh, idiot.”
“Okay, it’s over now. It’s all over. Wait a minute. It’s not over. It’s starting again. It’s coming up from my appendix. It’s beginning to hurt some more.”
“You were laughing at what I said. Bastard. All I said was the whole thing was over.”
“And you were right to go,” I said. “It was better than staying.”
“All through now? All finished with your private riot?”
“I think so.”
“When are you going back to them?” she said.
“Back to them-who?”
“Here it comes. Another five minutes. Choke, choke, sputter. Somebody give him a bedpan to gurgle into.”
“No, I’m stopping. It was a flurry left over from the other one. When am I going back to them? I know exactly who you mean. The people. The crowd. The audience. The fans. The followers.”
“The public,” she said.
“When I have something to go back with. Something or nothing. Nothing takes more time.”
She was sitting up now. I reached over the side of the chair and lifted several tissues out of the box on the floor. I rolled them up and decided to toss them over to Opel because I knew she would clap her hands softly as soon as she realized my intention and I wanted to witness that small gesture of hers, simple prefix to a game of catch, the mildest of handclaps transformed to a radiant act of grace by the beauty of
the child reconstructed in the gesture. After the toss and catch we rested a while, allowing our brief symmetry to decompose.
“I don’t guess you care to hear about my piano teacher’s biblical sky. This is down-home regional material you can’t get just anywheres.”
“Hardly hear your voice.”
“I’m under the covers again.”
“Is that you?” I said. “I thought it was me. I’ve been sitting here thinking that mound was me. Or that mound had me under it.”
“How could you think that? You’re there and I’m here. You’re the chair. I’m the bed.”