Players

Near the foot of John Street was the toy skyscraper where his firm had offices. The benches outside were painted in primary colors, as were various decorations on the lower facade. He thought of building blocks and games with flashing lights. There were whimsical phone booths and a superdigital clock. To get to the elevator bank he went through a blue neon tunnel. He got off the elevator and was stopped by Teddy Mackel, a middle-aged man in charge of the mail room.

'I think you ought to walk by Zeltner's room, Lyle.”

'I heard.”

'Makes me want to take back my chastity vow that I took when I was with the Marist Brothers earlier in this century, Lyle, Jesus.”

'We need it around here, something, for morale”

'Tall, I like that about a woman. Tall, nice.”

'More there.”

'Never end a sentence with a preposition,' Mackel said. 'That's the other thing I learned when I was with the Marists. They're a teaching order. Those were the two things they taught us. Chastity and how to end sentences. Which one did me less good I bet you can guess.”

'Neck to neck, I judge it.”

'Tell me confidentially, will we survive, Lyle? My kids are worried. They want to finish college. You're down there in the dust of battle. Say some words to our viewing audience.”

There was an alcove outside Zeltner's office. She was at the desk there, reading a paperback book, her shoulders hunched in a way that indicated a special depth of solitude, he thought, like a figure in a Hopper painting. He came back the other way now, having stopped at the water cooler. Fairly long blond hair. That was about all that registered. He stopped at the end of the hall, wondering what to do next. There were two or three people he could visit, more or less plausibly, in their offices. He didn't feel like doing that but didn't want to leave either. Leaving presented a void. He heard the elevator door open and decided he couldn't stand around any longer. He went back to the alcove. He leaned over, tapping his index finger on the surface of the desk.

'Where is he? Is he around somewhere?”

'He didn't say.”

'Nothing's moving in there.”

'I don't know where he is.”

'The elusive Zeltner.”

'He forgets to tell me.”

'That's right, I forgot that about him.”

'Who should I say was asking?”

'Not important, really, I'll come back.”

Blond hair, little or no makeup, blank sort of face with nice enough features. Teeth and nails on the drab side. Blondness and probably great figure would account for local acclaim. Must be seen in motion no doubt.

Pammy on the eighty-third floor of the north tower contrived to pass the time by devising a question for Ethan Segal. If the elevators in the World Trade Center were places, as she believed them to be, and if the lobbies were spaces, as she further believed, what then was the World Trade Center itself? Was it a condition, an occurrence, a physical event, an existing circumstance, a presence, a state, a set of invariables? Ethan didn't respond and she changed the subject, watching him type figures into little boxes on a long form, folded over his machine, crowding down on it, only his fingers moving.

'We have nothing planned,' she said. 'Lyle doesn't think he'll be able to get away. It's very hair-raising right now, I gather. He's talking about not before October.”

'That's a nice time, really.”

'I think it would be specially nice if we did something together.”

'Where?”

'Wherever.”

'Vales of time and space.”

'I think it would work very well, Ethan. It can be wearing, just two. We all get along.”

'Lyle's not available, so.”

'You wouldn't consider October as soon enough, I don't imagine.”

'I'd never last it out, Pam.”

'This city.”

'July, August.”

'I'm thinking about tap-dancing lessons,' she said.

'Let me type.”

'No comment?”

'Let me type awhile,' he said. 'I like filling these little boxes with numbers. Numbers are indispensable to my world view at present. I don't believe I'm doing this. This is some toad's chore. But I genuinely enjoy it. It's so anally satisfying. Contentment at last.”

Late one afternoon Lyle waited outside the building on John Street. When she came out, in a crowd, he realized it would be awkward, physically and otherwise, to try to isolate her from the others. She might not recognize him. Someone from the office might see them and come over to join the conversation. He followed her half a block, not yet trying to catch up. At the corner she got into a waiting car, which moved off quickly. He felt resentful, as if he'd been supplanted by another man. It was a green VW, California plates 180 boa.

He sat on a bench in a plaza overlooking the river. He felt lessened somehow. Freighter cranes slanted across the tops of sheds in the Brooklyn dock area. It was the city, the heat, an endless sense of repetition. The district repeated itself in blocks of monochromatic stone. He was present in things. There was more of him here through the idle nights than he took home with him to vent and liberate. He thought about the nights. He imagined the district never visited, empty of human transaction, and how buildings such as these would seem to hold untouchable matter, enormous codifications of organic decay. He tried to examine the immense complexity of going home.

The next afternoon he managed to reach her before she joined the flow into the streets. He spoke through a reassuring smile. He concentrated on this expression to the degree that he could visualize his own lips moving. It was a moment of utter disengagement. He didn't know what he was saying and with people swarming around them and traffic building nearby he could barely hear her voice when she replied, as she did once or twice, briefly, in phrases as translucent as his own. He guided her unobtrusively toward a quieter part of the arcade, trying to reconstruct the first stages of their conversation even as he continued to babble and gleam. He wasn't yet certain she recognized him.

'The floor,' he said.

Her reply made no sense. It went right through him, suffused with light. He leaned closer and renewed his smile, warmly. This would keep him from blinking. He blinked only with tight smiles, for emphasis.

'The Exchange,' he said. 'You've seen me outside Zelt-ner's office. I know, people you've seen just once, hard to place, I realize. Is there the subway? I'll walk along. Where do you live? Queens, I'll wager. I like it out there, despite people saying Queens, what, where, my God. It's metaphysical.”

'I usually get a ride.”

'I understand there's a certain insecurity in the Zeltner power alley. You've been up there how long now? Let's stand over in the shade. Queens is endless. This endless something about it. It's like a maze without the interconnections. A bland maze. I have a theory about where people live in New York.”

She wore a white blouse, pleated blue skirt and white shoes. As he talked and then listened he tested himself by recalling the VW's license number. It completed a mental set. They walked slowly to the corner where she'd been picked up the day before.

'This is where my ride should come.”

'Is it all right if I wait?”

'I guess.”

'What's your name?”

'Rosemary Moore.”

'I have to be up there tomorrow after the close. Maybe I'll stop by if you're not busy. We can stop off after