Players

loss. It existed in purest form in his mind, my money, a reinforcing source of meditation. He watched a woman move from phone to phone in a series of open booths outside an office building near the Cotton Exchange. This view of money, he felt, was not the healthiest. Secrecy, possessiveness, cancer-bearing rationality. The woman, depositing no coins, lifted the phone off the hook, screamed something into it, then threw it back into the booth. After she'd done this to the sixth and last phone, hurling it fiercely, she saw Lyle approach and smiled at him, her raw skin cracking. When he smiled back, blinking a bit, she said: 'Suck out my asshole, mister.' He stopped, watching her hobble down the street. Then he picked up one of the dangling phones and called Rosemary Moore, letting it ring and ring.

2

Pammy bare-breasted on the redwood deck watched Ethan row toward shore, varying light between them, fire opal and conifer bronze, a checkered shade from house to water's edge, curt blue noon beyond. She sat on a bench while Jack Laws cut her hair. The house was all glass and cedar shingles, built vertically, its reflecting surfaces dense with trees. Jack muttered instructions to himself, thinning out an area behind her left ear. She looked west toward silhouetted hills, the mainland.

'What are you up to back there?”

'You wanted drama, right? A change. Don't interrupt.”

'What'll we do for lunch?”

'That's all we do here. We plan meals at great length with all this business about fresh vegetables, fresh lobster, country-fresh eggs, this bullshit routine. We talk about it, right? Then we actually plan it, the specifics. Then we do it, we make it. Then we sit down and eat it, talking about it all the while.”

'I don't want you doing things to my hair in this mood.”

'Then we, what, clean up, throw away, wash and dry. And then it's time to discuss mealtime, foodtime, the next meal. Quick, drive out to roadside stands. Blueberries, squash, corn, hurry.”

'It's not a life-enhancing mood you're in. I sense little warmth there, Jack.”

'After dark,' he said. 'The quiet.”

'I don't like scissors in your hand.”

'Do you believe how dark?”

'It's called night, Jack. We call that night.”

'I didn't know it would be like this. I thought swimming at least. Do you believe this water?”

'Cold, I know.”

'I thought morning swims. I thought at last, freedom from crowded beaches. But this water. Who knew?”

'It's not totally out of the question.”

'It's the pits.”

'Try again,' she said. 'Maybe it was just that day.”

'You have nice breasts.”

'A bit hairy right now.”

'Nice breasts for a girl.”

'I still want to know what we'll do for lunch.”

'If he ever gets here to supervise.”

'He rows well, I think.”

'The supervisor,' Jack said. 'If the supervisor ever gets here.”

'Anytime Ethan wants to rent a house this nice in a setting this lovely, cetra cetra, I'm perfectly happy to have him supervise.”

'What's he got in that boat, four tons of pig iron, the way he's rowing?”

'I like watching him. People rowing. People rowing and people bicycling. They're nice to watch. Once we were in England and somewhere near Windsor Castle we saw these boys rowing, prep school, in racing boats, rowing as teams in these sculls, and along the shore there's the instructor going along on this little path right along the shore on his bicycle, this towpath, calling out instructions.”

'I'm doing this par excellence.”

'So rowing and bicycling together,' she said. 'Boy, what a treat for my jaded cranium.”

'This is drama extraordinaire.”

'All I want's a new head.”

'You got it, charley.”

She'd always lived in apartments. This was a house in the woods at the edge of a bay, a house that inhaled the weather, frequent changes in temperature. She heard noises all night long. Animals lived in the roof and cellar. There were bats in the unused chimney. In bed, curled under blankets and quilts, she couldn't tell the difference between the sounds of wind and rain, or bats and squirrels, or rain and bats. There were ship-creakings everywhere and charred wood hissing in the fireplace, sputtering up at times, never quite still. When fog worked in from the bay it seemed to suggest some basic change in the state of information. The dampness in foul weather was penetrating. Birds flew into the huge glass windows, seeing forest within, and were stunned or killed.

They watched Ethan step out of the dinghy and pull it onto the stony beach, up over the tide line. He came up the makeshift steps and along a bending path, disappearing in the trees once or twice, head down when he emerged, trudging. Pammy went inside to find a shirt.

3

Lyle watched television, sitting up close, his hand on the channel selector. Near midnight he got a call from J. Kinnear. He imagined Kinnear looking out the window as he spoke, down at the dark yard.

'Where will you be Tuesday, eleven-thirty, night?”

'Happening fast.”

'If I were an intelligence officer putting you through a prerecruitment phase, I'd be inclined to move very slowly. I'd be inclined, I think, to let you discover your limit of involvement at a much more reasonable pace.”

'How far I'd go.”

'Correct.”

'My clandestine potential.”

'Be at night court, Centre Street. I may want you to meet someone.”

'Any idea how I can reach Rosemary?”

'None,' J. said.

Two days later, after the close, he saw the green VW turn into Wall from Broadway. Marina pulled over and he got in. She drove out to the gray frame house. Kinnear was sitting out back, legs crossed, writing on a legal pad. From the small porch Lyle looked back in for Marina, seeing her through a series of doorways as she passed the entrance to the basement, near the front of the house, apparently talking to someone. Kinnear approached Lyle, gripping his upper arm as they shook hands and flashing that quick wink, an expression that said 'trust, solidarity, purpose.”

'Lyle in his work duds.”

'Best tie too.”

'Big-time trading duds.”

'She forgot the Cheerios.”

Memory stirring in J.'s eyes.

'Yes-yes, she did, matter of fact. The Cheerios. Ruined two breakfasts.”

J. went back to his chair, his right hand trailing a sense of their recent handshake, and Lyle sat on the porch steps.

'How are you?”