by Don DeLillo
After a while he lowered himself from the trunk and made coffee. We drank it quietly. Fenig held the large cup with both hands. To drink he lowered his head to the rim, making a small sacrament of the act. It was roughly the middle of the day. I could hear my phone ringing for the third time in the past hour. Fenig poured more coffee. He took his cup to the typewriter table this time. Soon he began to scratch at the keys, first with two fingers, then with his left hand, thumb capering on the space bar, eventually both hands working, ten fingers crashing on the keys, his head moving closer to the black machine, eyes appearing to follow the arc of each metal slingshot hurling ink upon the page.
I went downstairs and fell asleep almost immediately. The telephone rang and I dragged myself over there to lift away the noise. It was Watney somewhere in the British Isles.
“Back finally?”
“Here I am,” I said.
“Rang up before, Bucky. Three times exactly. No answer. Odd, I thought. Man’s not there. Wonder where, I thought. Wonder where the central figure in this rapidly evolving scenario is off to. Odd, innit? That’s what I thought.”
“I’m back finally.”
“Bucky, I’m contacting you as per our conversation of the twentieth last.”
“What conversation?” I said.
“We agreed I’d ring you at a specific time, such and such a day. That’s what I’ve been engaged in for the past hour. In other words I’m carrying out the specifics of our joint proposal as agreed upon. You said then you had no compass bearing on the product. I officially ask if the time is now a bit more propitious for a serious bid on the part of my Anglo-European associates and myself, as far as astrology and the gods are concerned.”
“The product is out of my hands completely. I don’t have it and I don’t know how to get it. Somebody named Hanes has it. Five feet seven. A hundred and thirty pounds. No marks or scars.”
“Somebody named Hanes,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Young. Slender. Fragile. Bored, sort of.”
“That’s him.”
“Alabaster skin.”
“That’s him,” I said. “Very descriptive. I like that. Oh, superb. Too bad he doesn’t have an aquiline nose. You’d have a good combination going. But sure, that’s him, that fits.”
“He’s had possession for a lengthy period of time, has he?”
“In terms of days or weeks I don’t recall. But I know he’s had the product since before you were here.”
“Fancy, fancy,” Watney said. “Seems I met Hanes in Toronto. He’d been lurking about for days. Dogging my every footstep. He came looking for me with that tarnished angelic look of his. Selling he was. What he called the ultimate drug. Selling outright. Selling shares. Selling European rights. He was flexible he was. See, all my information pointed to you, Bucky. You were the one with possession. I made my way through all of Canada, doing little bits of business here and there, laying groundwork, opening vistas. All the while intending to sneak up on the infamous Bucky Wunderlick and do some fanatical New York promoting. Lay a heavy-handed bid on my old comrade in arms. This boy Hanes came sauntering in with that desperate precious saunter of his. I gave it little thought I did. See, all the rumors in my dossier of rumors located the ultimate drug in your own notorious hands.”
“Hanes ran off with it. He was supposed to deliver it somewhere and then negotiate a deal. But he ran off to deal on his own.”
“Cheeky little bastard.”
“You threw him out, I take it.”
“Not a bit of it,” Watney said. “I never toss people out the door. People are human beings. They’re creatures of infinite capacity. They have immortal souls they do. No, I followed the usual procedure and sent a small sample of his wares by courier back to ground zero for analysis. Back to our clandestine waterfront laboratory somewhere in the center of Birmingham. Back to our first-rate technical lads in their white smocks and high-heeled, shoes. I speak in riddles, of course. I reveal only the salient findings.”
“Which were?”
“Let’s see then. A volunteer took a poke in the arm. Since then all he does is dribble and whine. Our technical lads did their clever tests at first. But the results were vague. So they called a volunteer out of the line and gave him a poke. Our biggest problem comes from volunteers queuing up on the sidewalk in broad daylight. So bloody eager they are to serve the cause of science. Let’s see then. The drug attacks a particular region in the left hemisphere of the brain. That’s the verbal hemisphere, it seems. Where the words are kept. The boy’s been reduced to chronic dribbling. Naturally when I got the report I informed your Hanes person that we wanted no part of his vicious product. Christ, ethics do exist. I told the technical lads they should have used a bloody cat. They pointed to the fact that cats don’t speak in the first place. Thus small value in injecting a cat. Little did I know when sweeping into your flat with my accustomed grandiosity that I’d already had my hands on the much-sought-after product.”
“Do you know where you left the bubble gum cards?” I said.
“The airline bag, is it? Is that where my man left it? Did he leave it with you? Blessy’s truly dim, you know. It’s not just a game we play. He wants watching, that one does. I shall have to rake him over the electric coals for this. Shall have to instruct that boy in the wages of sin. He claimed the driver of the limousine drove off with it. No harm done. But sets a nasty precedent.”
“If it’s not an unfair question, why do you travel around with bubble gum cards?”
“Not a bad likeness of me, is it? Taken some years back. All done up in blue velvet I was. A childhood dream come true. My own bubble gum card. They’re magic cards, Bucky. Very hush-hush. Promise not to breathe a word.”
“Okay.”
“Truly promise. Put heart and soul into it. A soldier’s oath. The vow of a pristine nun. Second thought, not much sense of obligation left in those quarters anymore. Give me a blacker oath. The kind they take in shabby inner offices. Narcotics agent. Postal inspector. Customs official. Give me an oath with blood on it.”
“Brothers,” I said.
“I take hundreds of bubble gum cards everywhere I go. The Watney bubble gum card. Hard-to-get item. Rarer than a pair of blue suede shoes in Tierra del Fuego. I’ve virtually cornered the market, you see. I’ve established a virtual monopoly. Sometimes two or three of the cards in my luggage are different from all the rest. These are the magic cards, a direct offspring of our own Industrial Revolution. Buy British, I always say. The magic cards are constructed in such a way that they can be sealed and resealed a number of times with our own private sealing agent. The tiniest sample of this or that item can be placed inside a miniature casing of anodized metal, which in turn is fitted into a given card and taken to a given place. Card unsealed. Item tested. We carried samples of microdot LSD in from Malta with Watney bubble gum cards. Thoroughly enjoy carrying the things about. Wonderful at parties. One’s own bubble gum card. Good fun to flash on unsuspecting fellow passengers aboard a great jetliner streaking across the heavens. I enplane at point A. I deplane at point B. Blowing metaphorical bubbles all the way. Just ordinary cards in the bag Blessy left at your flat. None of the magics there. The magics were in the luggage proper. The heavy luggage. The real thing. The baggage. Sets a bad precedent however. Shall have to get grim with that boy.”
“I’m. going back out on tour. What do you think? Do you think I’m crazy? I feel I have to do it. Time’s up. Have to make the move.”
“Back out, is it? Back into the pits and dung troughs. Best provide for all contingencies, old Bucky. Prepare an overdose for the critical minutes. Have it sitting on the dresser. Ancient bitch of the road. Best do it, old friend. You don’t want to drop apart gradually. Bad for the image. You’re required to go all at once. Excess. That’s the number under your name. I could never match the genius of your excess. I was too artificial. Had to make it all up and shake it all down. That was my critical failing. I fai
led to embody true and honest excess. I was just a wad of chewing gum on your shoe. So stick to the image, old Bucky. Prepare a careful OD and flame yourself away. Be deliberate about it. Be as thorough as humanly possible. Don’t forget to lick the spoon.”
“I want to become a dream,” I said. “I’m tired of my body. I want to be a dream, their dream. I want to flow right through them.”
“You have to die first.”
“I knew I’d left something out.”
“You have to die all at once. None of this gradual wasting away of the middle classes. You have to burst into flame. It’s all a worthless gesture, of course. Sorry to be the one who has to bear this depressing message. But true, it’s all worthless. One’s death must be equal to one’s power. The OD or assassination is esthetically lovely but in point of fact means little unless it reverberates to the sound of power. The powerful man who achieves a gorgeous death automatically becomes a national hero and saint of all churches. No power, the thing falls flat Bucky, you have no power. You have the illusion of power. I know this firsthand. I learned this in lesson after lesson and city after city. Nothing truly moves to your sound. Nothing is shaken or bent. You’re a bloody artist you are. Less than four ounces on the meat scale. You’re soft, not hard. You’re above ground, not under. The true underground is the place where power flows. That’s the best-kept secret of our time. You’re not the underground. Your people aren’t underground people.
The presidents and prime ministers are the ones who make the underground deals and speak the true underground idiom. The corporations. The military. The banks. This is the underground network. This is where it happens. Power flows under the surface, far beneath the level you and I live on. This is where the laws are broken, way down under, far beneath the speed freaks and cutters of smack. You’re not insulated or unaccountable the way a corporate force is. Your audience is not the relevant audience. It doesn’t make anything. It doesn’t sell to others. Your life consumes itself. Chomp. I hear it across three thousand miles of gray ocean. Chomp, chomp. I know illusions I do. Illusions forced me to change my life. I remember the end of my last regular tour in the music business. Broken man I was. Victim of illusion. No sorrier figure in all the realm. Shall I tell you how I tried to cope? Where I went and how I got there? It’s a sad tale, it is. Promise you won’t breathe a word. Have I got your oath in blood?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Promised like a true friend. Truly promised. Shall I tell you then? Shall I tell you what I did?”
“Sure.”
“I took a walk down Lonely Street to Heartbreak Hotel.”
24
HER NAME came back to me the moment before he spoke it. He opened a bottle of warm champagne and we gathered together, at angles of caricatured intimacy, huddled all three in the room’s lone dollop of sunlight. Globke passed out the drinks in paper cups he had brought along, suspecting unsanitary conditions in the native glassware. Seated in my bowl-shaped chair, knees above my belly, I drank to the health of the mountain tapes.
“Bucky, you remember Michelle.”
“Definitely.”
“You had dinner with us over at our place about a year ago, right after we just moved in.”
“I remember.”
“We had roast leg of lamb and two kinds of wine. Michelle made those fantastic Hindu vegetable things she makes. We listened to highlights from Madame Butterfly. We sipped our wine in the candlelight.”
“I remember,” I said.
“Then we sat on the upper terrace and talked about the uses of money. Then we talked about greed. Then we talked about the misuses of money. Then we had tea and that gummy dessert-shit I hate so much. Then I called a limousine to take you to the airport So anyway here she is. My young wife. Wife, mother, lover, colleague, friend. You remember Michelle.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Don’t touch her,” Globke said.
“I won’t.”
“It makes me nervous when she gets touched. See, oldness and fatness. See that? See what it does? Makes me a figure of fun. But I’m not succumbing without a fight. I’m pushing on ahead. I’m double-clutching through middle age. You should have seen me when I got my hands on the tapes. I was all action. My voice crackled with authority. I rounded up personnel, made plans, gave instructions. Then I put the tapes in my Pan Am flight bag and flew off in the night to Cincinnati, where I called you from. Combination studio-warehouse-record plant. Small but big enough. Known to few. A place where for years they recorded marching bands and high school chorales. Cincinnati. Queen city of the early West. All technical work on the tapes plus final pressing being done there. Call it unfounded fear but I was afraid to take that material anywhere else. Too much chance of sabotage. Material that there’s no way to duplicate can’t be handled like a job-lot product. We drink to the mountain tapes. The mountain tapes. Keep them safe, God of my fathers, until the record’s in the racks.”
“When do I leave?”
“We drink to the tour now. The tour. Day after tomorrow, Bucky. Zap, you’re gone. Drink up, everybody.
It’s all set. Day after tomorrow. We inaugurate the greatest record promotion in history. In fact I’m leaking word about the mountain tapes starting today. Tomorrow I begin co-opting the rumors behind the reason for your comeback. You’ve got an incurable disease. One year to live. You want to spend it with your fans.”
“Other rumors are bound to arise.”
“Will they compare?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“For sheer bad taste, will they compare? Will they even come close? I appropriate all other potential rumors. I sponge them up. They belong to me by divine right of bad taste. I come out of a tradition, Bucky. I’m not new money, new culture, new consciousness. I emerge from a distinct tradition. Bad taste. Michelle softens the edges of it but nothing can kill it completely. It’s there to stay and I’m proud and delighted. The dynamics of bad taste is something they should investigate with a research grant. A fantastic subject. My whole life is a study in bad taste. Bad taste is the foundation for every success I’ve ever had. I’m a self-made mogul in an industry that abounds in bad taste. Look at me. Mogul is written all over me. How did I get there? Aggressiveness got me there. Massive double-dealing. Loudmouthedness. Insults beyond belief. Little white lies. Farts and belches. Betraying a friend and then bragging about it. These are the things that give you stature in the industry. Not just respect or clout or notability. Stature. It’s not enough to betray a friend. That gives you respect at the very most. You have to supply the extra touch. You betray a friend and then you brag about it. That’s star quality. That gives you stature. Do you know what I have on top of bad taste?
I have self-starting entrepreneurial instincts. The combination is unbeatable.”
“I like your suit,” I said.
“Chemical-stretch three-piece herringbone. Factory outlet. Clifton, New Jersey. Twenty per cent less than wholesale.”
“Quietly assertive.”
“I sold the movie rights for two hundred thousand.”
“To your suit?”
“It goes before the cameras in late summer.”
“You’re in a good mood,” I said.
“Do you know what this suit has that other suits don’t have? Want me to tell you?”
“Go ahead.”
“Star quality,” he said. “This suit has star quality.”
“You’re really happy, aren’t you? You’re all puffed up with it. Action. You can’t wait to send me off.”
“But this isn’t my favorite suit. Far from it. My favorite suit is the suit I bought at Simon Ackerman in the Bronx in nineteen hundred and fifty-four. Revolving credit was just starting then. And I’ll tell you a funny thing if you want to hear a funny thing. That suit didn’t fit me then but it fits me now. That suit did not fit me in nineteen fifty-four. You should see it now. But what they should do, they should date suits the way they date automobiles or fine wines. You
could say I got a nineteen fifty-four Simon Ackerman. Shoulder fins and fully pleated. I got a nineteen sixty-eight Klein’s basement. Forty-four dollars, wear it off the rack, turns purple when it rains. But you should see that suit now. Tell him, Michelle. Is it a fit or isn’t it? Am I exaggerating or not? Are we here or aren’t we?”
“Seen Hanes lately?” I said.
“Hanes is back at work. Hanes? He’s back at work. Why do you ask, Bucky?”
“No reason.”
“We power our way up the charts,” Globke said. “We reach the break-even point. We determine our allocations. We gross and outgross. We work out test cities versus chart cities. We refill the record racks. We confer with our senior people. We climb and-grab. We yell over the telephone. We sell and outsell. We display perpetual bad taste.”
“The epics teach us that all work is equal to all other work,” Michelle said. “Once we have freed ourselves of fear and desire, no act we perform is more important than the act that precedes it or the act that follows. Non-attachment is the path to beyond-reality. Beyond-reality is where our true nature indwells. The body is an illusion. The epics teach us that men cannot leap across time to the eye of the absolute. Men must proceed in stages across many boundaries. Free of fear and desire, we find our true nature. Good. Goodness. God. Godhead. Evil is nothing more than attachment. Evil is attachment.”
