twenty years. He'd functioned simultaneously on two levels. Counterpoise. His life was based on forces tending to produce equilibrium. Everything had a delayed effect. He could not act without considering entire sets of implications. Ended now. Collapsed inward. Possibly he'd worked it that close to the edge intentionally.
'Is J. homosexual?”
She didn't know.
'Is he likely to turn completely, sign on the dotted line?”
Gesture of indifference.
'Will he be killed, if and when?”
'Forget all doubts.”
'Yes, he will be killed.”
'It's not an urgent matter,' she said. 'We have other things to occupy us.”
She moved back from the steering wheel and toward Lyle, awkwardly, her right leg somehow in the way, preventing the effect she sought, a forceful intimacy, the exchange of intense commitments. Finally she put both hands to his face. The contact was such that it produced a cross-channeling, a lane of immediate reciprocity. Her eyes were fixed, a little mad-the wrong effect again. It was interesting, always, being touched by a woman, the first time, whose mind you know runs on different lines from your own, who lives by another map, entirely.
'Are we close to something?”
'Getting there,' she said.
'Do we have a Vilar?”
'We have someone willing.”
'Is it possible he can get instructions from your brother?”
'You mean to prepare.”
'Because I'd hate for anything to detonate before it was supposed to.”
'Vilar is in total closed confinement. He tried to kill himself several times. They have him under twenty-four- hour surveillance. Vilar will kill himself rather than remain in prison. It's a matter of time, nothing else. It's the act he has rehearsed all his life. Death before pig justice. This is the destiny of one's class.”
She returned to her part of the front seat and looked out the side window at the rubble across the street. Three more bottles struck the pavement, about half a block away, again at ten-second intervals.
'But you have someone.”
'Definitely.”
'He does bombs?”
'He does passports,' she said.
It was dark. A group of men and boys stood down at the far corner, laughing. Three of them disengaged and headed up toward the car, teenagers, one holding a bottle between his legs, duck-walking.
'So then I wait.”
'Very soon, Lyle.”
'We do it the same way, is that it? I let your man come onto the floor as my guest. He leaves the thing. Middle of the night, it goes.”
'You two will talk.”
'Who is he?”
'Not yet,' she said.
'Did you ever dream you'd find another George so easily?”
'It's a quality of Americans.”
'What is?”
'Just as Englishmen never cease being schoolboys, Americans are doomed to perform heroic deeds.”
'An ironic saying, he interjected,' Lyle said.
'Which illness is worse I leave for you to decide.”
She was smiling. The three boys passed in front of the car, looking in, and crossed over to the empty lot. She seemed to be waiting for Lyle to get out of the car. A man wearing outsized pants and a T-shirt full of holes approached the car on the driver's side. Marina said something in Spanish. Then she looked at Lyle. The man had recently vomited. Not taking her eyes off Lyle, she said something else and the man walked off.
'The bottle is the target,' Lyle said. 'I keep telling myself, as a soothing reminder.”
'We'll talk soon.”
'I'm getting out, is that it?”
'Yes.”
'And walking.”
'One foot, then the other.”
'Maybe you can drop me at Canal Street, if you're going that way, or anywhere near Lower Broadway.”
'This is better, right here.”
'Or Chinatown,' he said. 'Maybe you haven't been there lately. Interesting part of the city.”
When he got home he emptied the contents of his pockets onto the dresser. Wallet, keys, ballpoint pen, memo pad. Transit tokens on the right side of the dresser. Pennies and other change on the left. He ate a sandwich and took a drink up to the roof. Four elderly people sat at one of the tables. Lyle went over to the parapet. Noise from the streets rose uncertainly tonight, muffled, an underwater density. Air conditioners, buses, taxicabs. Beyond that, something obscure: the nonconnotative tone that appeared to seep out of the streets themselves, that was present even when no traffic moved, the quietest sunups. It was some innate disturbance of low frequency in the grain of the physical city, a ghostly roar. He held his glass out over the edge of the low protective wall. The other people had been silent since he'd appeared on the roof. He dropped the glass from right hand to left. There was that soft fraction of a second when neither hand touched glass. He resolved to do it five more times, extending the distance between hands each time, before allowing himself to go back downstairs.
He was in bed when Kinnear called.
'This has to be brief, Lyle.”
'I'm awake, but barely.”
'What's your situation?”
'Marina is more or less set on locating you. I don't think she has a clue at the moment as to where you might be, at least that I'm aware of. She still wants to do the Exchange.”
'What's your situation, dollars and cents?”
'You need?”
'I'm looking ahead.”
'What do you need?”
'Don't know for sure. There are several variables. Just want to determine if you'd be willing to aid and abet.”
'I should, what, draw out something now and wait to hear?”
'Draw out fifteen hundred now, good idea, in case the whole thing materializes over the weekend, which could mean trouble getting funds.”
'What, U.S. dollars?”
'Good point.”
'There's an exchange place near my bank.”
'No, stick to U.S.”
'Will you be able to change over easily?”
'U.S. will be fine, Lyle.”
'Are you in how much of a hurry?”
'Like now, zip.”
The next day Lyle was paged on the trading floor and given a telegram, originating locally, with three words on it-nine one five-and the teletyped name disinfo.
The day after that he experienced what at first he thought might be some variation of deja vu. He'd finished lunch and stood at the door of a corner restaurant, able to see, at a severe angle, the lean elderly man who frequently appeared outside Federal Hall holding a hand-lettered political placard over his head for the benefit of those gathered on the steps. He, Lyle, was cleaning his fingernails, surreptitiously, using a toothpick he'd taken
