Players

'Sometimes you see something, you know, interesting in another sense. I don't know.”

'What other sense?”

'I don't know.”

'I totally cannot believe. What goes on. Right there on TV.”

'What are you doing these days, Jack?”

'I'm thinking of getting a scheme together.”

'What kind?”

'I know where I can get microfilmed mailing lists of two hundred thousand subscribers to these eight or nine health publications. I think it's A to M.”

'You'll, what, sell them?”

'Sell them.”

'What else, of course.”

'Sell them, what else?”

They watched and listened for ten minutes as two announcers tried to fill time during a rain delay at a ball game.

'We have two sets,' Jack said.

'I'm thinking of that.”

'I made him get an extra.”

He laughed lightly, ending on a note of apprehension, and went back inside. Pammy was sitting on the floor. With her index finger she kept tapping an ice cube in her glass, watching it plunge briefly, then surge.

'You know what I don't think?' she said. 'I don't think I can stand the idea of tomorrow.”

She looked at Ethan, who stared into the carpet.

'I really, it seems, I don't think.”

'It's that time of night,' Jack said.

'It's just that I can't accommodate any more time than what's right here. It's, where we go, your friend here, together with me. Choose precisely the word, for this is important. Not place, which is the elevator's word. Not office or building, which are too common and apply anywhere.”

'Environment.”

'Thank you, Jack.”

'Should I make coffee?”

'No, no, this isn't a coffee conversation. This is a gut topic. Wait a minute now, I'll get to it. Don't think I don't know that your friend here has not in the longest time made the slightest remark to his job. Why? Because you know as well as I do, Jack, what happens to people. Your friend here used to joke. You recall it, Jack, as well as I do. We both heard this man. He'd be so funny about his job and those people in the field. The stories. Do you believe? Per diem rates for terminal-illness counseling? So if it drags on, forget it, we got you by the balls? And the woman in Syracuse? With the grief-stricken pet, what was it, canary, in Syracuse, that the other one died -not canary, what, shit, I'm screwing this up. But that's okay. You're dear friends. We're dear friends here. But he no longer does it. That's the point and he thinks I don't notice. Because it's so stupid. It's so modern-stupid. It's this thing that people are robots that scares me. And the environment, Jack, thank you.”

'I never heard about the grief-stricken canary.”

'Jack, you heard. We all did.' She pointed toward the bedroom. 'He still talks about it. Just say Syracuse to Lyle, blink-blink-blink, the way he laughs, right, with the eyelids.”

Ethan made a sweeping movement with his arm, a gesture of cancellation. His cravat, an ironic adornment to begin with, had slipped over the front of his shirt so that he appeared to be wearing a child's scarf.

'The thing is,' he said.

They waited.

'To forge a change that you may be reluctant to forge, that may be problematical for this or that reason, you have to tell people. You have to talk and tell people. Jack sees what I'm getting at. You have to bring it out. Even if you have no intention at the time of doing it out of whatever fear or trembling, you still must make it begin to come true by articulating it. This changes the path of your life. Just telling people makes the change begin to happen. If, in the end, you choose to keep going with whatever you've been doing that's been this problematical thing in your life, well and good, it's up to you. But if you need to feel you're on the verge of a wonderful change, whether you are or not, the thing to do is tell people. 'I am on the verge of a wonderful change. I am about to do something electrifying. The very fibers of your being will be electrified, sir, when I tell you what it is I propose to do.' To speak it in words is to see the possibility emerge. Doesn't matter what. Don't bother your head over what. For the purposes of this discussion it could be mountain-climbing we're talking about or this friend of Jack, the oft- mentioned scaly chap who plans to swim the North Sea left-handed. Our lives are enriched by these little blurbs we send each other. These things are necessary to do. 'I am going back to school to learn Arabic, whatever.' Say it to people for six months. 'I am going to live in Maine or else.' Jack sees my point. Tell people, tell them. Make something up. The important thing is to seem to be on the verge. Then it begins to come true, a little bit. I don't know, maybe talking is enough. Maybe you don't want to forge the change. Maybe telling people is the change. How should I know? Why ask me? Lyle, where is Lyle? Say good night to Lyle.”

'I think I know what you mean,' Pammy said.

'Do you see a glimmer?”

'I think I see a glimmer.”

'We'll hail a cab, Jack. Our bottle of wine will be in the back seat. It will complete the circle. I believe in circles.”

'Jack, really, happy birthday, I mean it.”

'I tried to get drunk.”

'Needn't apologize,' she said. 'Tell your friend here I think I see what he means.”

'Well I don't,' Jack said.

In the bedroom Lyle watched television. Pammy came in, sat at the end of the bed, where earlier she'd dressed, and undressed. It made little or no sense, all this undressing, dressing. If you calculated the time. Hours spent. After a while she stood up, nude, and walked to Lyle, who sat in a director's chair, his back to her. She put her hands on his shoulders. The volume on the TV set was turned way down. She heard cars outside, the sound of tires on a wet street, whispered s's. Her face had Nordic contours and looked flawless in this light. He extended one arm across his chest and gripped her hand in his.

4

After the close Lyle walked north on Pearl. Currents of humid air swept through the streets. As he waited for a light to change he became aware of a figure nearby, a furtive woman, literally inching toward him. He turned slightly, nearly facing her. She stopped then and spoke, although not directly to Lyle, her head averted somewhat.

'She's a man's toilet, a whore. He's legally disabled meanwhile. He sits with his clocks and watches, knowing she's out of his sight, being a toilet for men. Three in the morning. Four in the morning. Please, who needs it? For him, special, she'll drop dead. I'm expecting it shortly.”

Lyle noted that she was in her fifties, stunted somewhat, normally dressed, probably not Jewish despite the faint lilt to her voice. He went east on John Street, enumerating these facts as though he were conversing with someone who sought a description of the woman. This was something he did only on buses as a rule. His attention would wander to someone across the aisle and he'd find himself putting together a physical description of the man or woman-almost always a man. The notion of police interrogation was part of the mental concept. He was a witness identifying a suspect. These interludes developed without planning; he simply found himself relating (to someone) the color of a particular man's shoes, trousers and jacket, his estimated height and weight, black man, white man, so forth. When he realized he was doing it, he stopped, telling himself to shut up. Sometimes, walking, he memorized the numbers on license plates of certain cars. Hours later he'd repeat the number to make sure he still knew it. The testing of a perennial witness.