Players

by Don DeLillo

  “It’s like the subway, two in the morning, you get the pukers.”

  “No, no.”

  “You get the dry heavers.”

  “Hawking is to puking as haiku is to roller derby.”

  “How can you be talking in the morning?” Pammy said. “Making these things, similarities, analogies, right after getting up, ratios, regardless of how stupid. I can barely open my mouth to drink.”

  “I like to feel the mucus come unstuck.”

  She went inside and toasted some bread. Later she walked all the way to Deer Isle village, followed for a quarter of a mile by two large dogs, and bought some postcards and groceries. She was accompanied part of the way back by a girl on a bike, who answered each of Pammy’s questions with one or two words before veering onto a bumpy path that led to a pleasant old house. Pammy realized she was smiling at the house, as she’d smiled earlier at the girl and before that at the dogs. She resolved to stop using this cheerful idiot squint.

  “Where’s Ethan?”

  “Stonington, shopping.”

  “I just shopped.”

  “He wanted fish things.”

  “I didn’t see him drive past. I guess I was in the market.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “The meadow?” she said.

  “There’s nothing to do.”

  They walked along the beach. Jack was barefoot, treading lightly among the rocks, enduring a certain amount of furtive pain, hunched slightly, hands out away from his sides. He was a bit shorter than Pam, the strength in his shoulders and legs easy to discern in the tank top and denim shorts he wore. She followed him around a large projecting rock, trying to judge the slickness of particular stones as she progressed by tentative leaps from one to another, the tide washing by. They walked another hundred yards to a set of wooden stairs that led up to a broad field, the grass waist-high in places. There was a sign: PRIVATE. It was a pastured square, woods on three sides, the bay to the west. Pammy lay back, undoing her shirt. At this hour sunlight reached nearly every part of the meadow.

  “I’m no longer dejected.”

  “Grass, it stings. It’s not like movie grass.”

  “We forgot the cheese, fruit, chicken, bread and two kinds of wine.”

  “I used to think grass, a picnic,” he said.

  “I’ve been secretly dejected. Now it can be told. I wanted an aggressive suntan. I came here seeking just that. A deep bronze effect. Middle-aged ladies have them sometimes. Like your skin is so parched and bronzed it’s almost verging on black. That baked-in look. Like you feel tremendously healthy and good but you resemble this creature, like who’s this dug-up thing with the weird wrinkles. I wanted to do that once in my life but fool that I am I didn’t realize this would not be the place. So I’m going to relax and get over my dejection and just get what’s available, a faint pink tinge.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Get into the grass.”

  “It has things.”

  “Come on, Laws, sink in, be one, merge.”

  “Be one with the grass.”

  “The earth, the ground.”

  “Earth, creature, touch.”

  “Blend,” she said.

  “Air, trees.”

  “Feel wind.”

  “Birds, fly, look.”

  “Wing, beak.”

  “Sound they make, calling.”

  “Up in sky.”

  “Make sound, talk.”

  “White gull, much air for wings to flap.”

  “Make fly over broad waters to land of Mamu the bear.”

  She sat up to take off her sneakers, then undid her jeans, pushed them off with underwear inside them and slid both away with her feet, a well-executed rejection, coming last out of the shirt, which she arranged beneath her before settling back again, arms at her sides. Jack stood up to undress. She liked seeing him against the sky, defined that way, clear and unencumbered, flesh tones a perfect compensation, a wry layered grade, for that extravagant blue. Trite, she thought. Muscled body against sky. Soft-core fascist image, Ethan would say. But what the hell, folks, it’s fun to mythologize.

  “Getting out of clothes.”

  “Don’t you love it?”

  “What is it about getting out of clothes, just stepping out?”

  “I know,” she said.

  She lifted one leg, trying to nick Jack’s left testicle with her big toe. He covered up in mock horror, squealing. A light breeze.

  They lay side by side, beginning to sweat a little, satisfyingly, as the day reached its warmest point. She raised up on one elbow, watching him. The grass was a problem, itching, digging in.

  It was to be a serene event, easefully pleasant sex between friends. The low-grade tension that existed would be released, softly, in a mutual assuagement, a sweetening, clement beyond the edges of its strangeness, the seeming inconsistencies. The child in Jack was what she would seek, the starry innocent, drifting, rootless, given to visions. It was to be a sympathetic event.

  She touched his belly with the back of her hand. Jack looked at her carefully, a testing of intentions, a question being put to both their souls, the armature, the supporting core, of their free discretion. He put his hand to her shoulder and moved it down the length of her arm until it met her own hand. He did not guide as much as accompany her.

  It became for a time a set of game-playing moods. They scribbled on each other’s body. They touched reverently. They investigated with the thoroughness of people trying to offset years of sensory and emotional deprivation. At last, they seemed to be saying, we are allowed to solve this mystery. This was part of the principle of childlikeness that she had sought to establish as their recognized level of perception. With slightly pious curiosity they handled and planed. It was the working-out of a common notion, the make-believe lover. They were deliberate, trying to match the tempo of their mental inventions, hands seeking a plastic consistency.

  This interval would pass, these midafternoon abstractions, the mild loving by touch, the surface contact.

  Jack sat leaning to one side, left arm giving support, left leg sprawled, the right flexed. Pammy knelt against his haunch, at the deep hollow formed by his hip and upcurved thigh, one hand in his lap, curled there, motionless, the other grazing his head, the back of Jack’s head, the patch, the white sign of something, Jack’s tribal secret, his meaning, what made him pristine. Posed almost classically on the grass, he kept his face turned from her. Strange, the unnatural whiteness, a pure grade of chalk, it seemed, ground down and mixed with water, the sort of transforming flaw that raises a thing (to be crude, she thought) in price. She rolled her thumb over the area, one inch square, feeling the hair spring back. It was well-trimmed here, of characteristic texture.

  He got to his feet and stood over her, cock-proud Jack, bits of dirt and grass stuck to his lower body.

  On his back, he put his thumbs to her nipples. His face was reddish and wet and he appeared to be in some middle state, he appeared to be wondering, he appeared to have forgotten something.

  Behind him, on their sides, she reached forward and lifted his leg back over hers. There was a small collapse in format and she settled in under him, taking hold, trying to work in, to cancel all distinction between surfaces.

  She straddled his chest again, knees inserted in his armpits. She forced his arms closer to his body and dug in, drove with her knees, off-balance, filling, working in, getting tighter, interlocking.

  The aspect and character of these body parts, the names, the liquid friction. Dimly she sought phrases for these configurations.

  Prone on her own shirt, she felt his hands pressing on her buttocks, redistributing bulk, spreading them to glide his cock along each side of the indentation. Her shirt somehow was the energizing object here. She forced her pelvis up, countering the pressure of his weight, and put her hand under the shirt, lowering her body onto it then, lightly, her left arm providing leverage, the right hand clutching the shirt, bringing a h
andful up into her crotch. Jack eased off as her legs closed around the shirt and she rolled on her side, knees tucked up, the shirt hanging out of the crease where her legs were joined.

  This left and right. Leg, index finger, testicle and breast. This crossing over. The recomposition of random parts into something self-made. For a time it seemed the essential factors were placement, weight and balance. The meaning of left and right. The transpositions.

  Jack, crosslegged, watched. She rubbed the shirt between her thighs repeatedly, knees coming unlocked in the surgical pressure and friction. She opened out toward him, a shade manic, breathing as though in some crosscurrent of exhaustion and need, her eyes empty of intent.

  It was no longer an event designed to surprise familiar pleasures. He would cross to her and she would reach out, blankly. They would thread onto each other, her hand at the back of his head. Who were they, stretched this way along each other’s length, refitting, going tight, commencing again to function? Her swimmer’s body arched against him. Ethan’s Jack and Pam. From time to time, weightless, she was able to break through, to study her own involvement, nearly free from panic and the tampering management of her own sense of fitness, of what agrees to observe reason. This lasted but seconds. The rest was dark, a closing over of extraneous themes. She sought release in long tolling strokes. What she felt, the untellable ordeal of this pleasure, would evolve without intervention, a transporting sequence of falling behind and catching up to her own body, its pre-emptive course, its exalted violence of feeling, the replenishments that overwhelm the mortal work of the senses, drenching them in the mysteries of muscles and blood. This ending segment then was “factual,” one-track, and she would close, slaked, in a fit of hiccups.

  Jack sat in the grass, his eyes following a large bird, cormorant probably, arcing out over the bay. Pammy got dressed, watching Jack, wondering why she was so concerned about him. Did it mean what they’d done had less effect on her than it did on Jack? Did it mean she thought Jack might blab? Did it mean Jack was upset, Jack was already having regrets? Her body was sore nearly everywhere. The earth had hurt. The goddamn ground. She wondered if she’d become too complex to be concerned about someone without listing possible reasons.

  “Where’s my shoes?”

  “You didn’t have them.”

  “I didn’t have them, right.”

  “I speak the truth.”

  “No shoes,” he said.

  “Which explains your feet.”

  “What, cut?”

  “Bruised,” she said.

  He dressed and then started hopping on one foot while he examined the other. Pammy was on one knee, lacing the second sneaker. It seemed too much effort to get up.

  “Which way back?”

  “I don’t know but we should get moving, I guess.”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “We say what?”

  “We were here, if he asks.”

  “We took a walk.”

  “We look, glaa, like a little messy.”

  “There’s a windjammer, look.”

  “We took a walk to the meadow,” he said.

  “Can you see it, three masts? Don’t worry. We took a walk. That’s all”

  “Sure, like this.”

  “So your shirt has a couple of wrinkles. No big deal, Jack.”

  “Hiccup, hiccup.”

  “Which way?”

  “We went to the meadow and what? Looked at some boat for all this time?”

  “It’s not a problem, Jack.”

  “Not for you, it’s not.”

  “Look, we skipped rocks for an hour and a half. We looted a graveyard. Who cares? He’s not going to question us. We clubbed baby seals for their pelts.”

  “Ethan is responsible for me. He is willing to be that. He accepts.”

  “Jack, it’s all right.”

  “I’m in no mood to start things with Ethan right now. He accepts, whatever it is. My whole life. He is willing to be responsible.”

  She realized she’d had that look on her face, briefly, gazing out at the windjammer, that dumb smile. They headed back through the woods, finding the right dirt road only after a period of some confusion, a brief disagreement over landmarks.

  After the rain she sat with Ethan by the fire. At this angle, in his deep chair, he appeared to be asleep. She walked away from the light source and opened, a side door just enough to thrust her face out into the night. The force of it, the snap of damp pine, was enough to startle her. Points of bioluminescence were evident nearby, fireflies bouncing on the air, thimblefuls of abdominal light. She noted a faint odor of decomposition, bayside. When she slid the door shut her face grew warm immediately. Awareness washed away in layers and she went back to her chair. Ethan got up just long enough to poke a log apart: rekindling and hiss.

  “There’s something about your hair tonight. It’s very black and shiny. A Japanese quality. The light, the way it hits.”

  “To go with my German mouth.”

  “It needs a topknot.”

  “What’s his name, the samurai?”

  “You should try that, Ethan. A topknot. Back at the office.”

  “I do sort of emit a certain feudal menace.”

  He prolonged the word “feudal.” Jack came in then. He took off his sweater and tossed it over the back of a chair. He sat on the flagstone hearth that extended about four feet into the room, his gaze directed between his feet. His voice was subdued, blending suggestions of fatalism and studied weariness. He paused often to take deep breaths.

  “I saw it again. Out near the car. There’s a gap in the trees. It was right there. I don’t know, two hundred yards away. It was the same one. It was pulsing. Maybe not as bright this time. Greenish. The same green. I could see from near the car right out over the bay. Blue-green light. But solid behind it. An object. The light glowed and pulsed so it was hard to tell the shape the thing was. But it was solid. I knew it. I said it to myself standing there. I was carefuler this time. Color, shape, I kept my mind on it. I said don’t move, keep it in sight. I never moved my head. I don’t remember even blinking. Then it dipped a little and glided up and further out over the bay, going south and west, getting smaller. Then the trees blocked my view and I ran down to the water and I still could see it. Just the light, bluish green, getting small, small, small. Nothing solid. But before that it was solid. I told myself. I said it standing there. This is light from an object. There’s a thing out there.”

  “A turquoise helicopter,” Ethan said.

  “The way to attack this,” Pammy said, “is to make a list of all the rational possibilities. Then see what we can eliminate and what we’re left with.”

  “But no problem. It’s a turquoise helicopter. Turquoise is the Maine state color.”

  “That was a police helicopter.”

  “Of course. No mystery whatsoever. Patrolling the bay.”

  “Patrolling the bay for UFOs.”

  “There’ve been sightings, I understand.”

  “I don’t care,” Jack said.

  “And which ties right in with the state motto.”

  “Turquoise Forever,” she said.

  “No, In Turquoise We Trust.”

  “But that’s only one rational possibility. We have to list many. Or two at any rate. It’s the government standard.”

  “A turquoise pigeon.”

  “No, no, come on, has to be different.”

  “A fourteen-ton turquoise pigeon breathing heavily.”

  “Go right ahead,” Jack said.

  “United in Truth, Justice and Turquoise.”

  “E Pluribus Turquoise.”

  “There’s got to be at least one other possibility,” she said. “The man here claims he saw it. It’s only right we come up with a second interpretation.”

  “Saint Elmo’s fire.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m naming the bloody things. Do I have to explain them too?”

  “You didn’t e
xplain the turquoise helicopter. I knew right away what you meant.”

  “It’s an electrical discharge. A phenomenon that takes place before, during or after storms. I don’t know—choose two. See, you people don’t know the references. Your early years were abortive, Pammy old kid. I could say a shirt with a Mr. B. collar. You’ve no idea, right? So-and-so’s decked out in his Mr. B. collar.”

  Jack headed upstairs, reaching for his sweater as he passed the chair, carrying it crumpled, one rust-colored arm brushing the edge of each step as he ascended. It started raining again. Pammy checked a row of paperback books set on a broad shelf between the portable TV and the wall. Mystery, mystery, spy, sex, mystery. The books were old, sepia-toned inside; pages would snap cleanly. Ethan poured a drink and returned to his chair. Proceeding slowly, measuring her steps like an animated toy soldier, heel-walking, she moved to the hearth, sitting where Jack had, a possible token of remorse.

  “How upset is he? Is he upset?”

  “Jack’s whole life he’s been made to feel expendable.”

  “Small things upset him.”

  “He takes things as accusations, diminishments. Then he in turn accuses, often privately, going off to sulk. I think he condemns his surroundings as much as anything. People he sees within that frame. Some places are good, somehow. Others he feels reduced in. He gets no sense of himself, I suppose. I guess there were places all along the line, earlier. Relatives, so on. The people are blurs now.”

  “Sometimes you can almost see his mind working. It darts back and forth. You can see he’s estimating away in there, working out the advantages.”

  “Some people have clandestine mentalities.”

  “It darts.”

  “Some people are open-natured, generous and humane.”

  “Us, for instance.”

  “You and me,” he said.

  In the middle of the night she heard the trees, that sound of wave action caused by high winds. There was someone in the living room, a fire. She got out of bed. Jack was sitting on the sofa, hands cupped behind his neck. She opened the door a bit wider and tilted her head in a certain way. Conciliation. Permission to enter his presence. He continued to grip his neck as though about to do a sit-up. She sat on the bed. When he passed, half an hour later, on his way upstairs, she was at the door. It was her instinct that touch makes anything possible. The slightest contact. She put her hand to his forearm. Barest touch. Enough, she thought, to restore their afternoon.