Jack?'
'I don't know.'
'A ski mask. She is the woman in the ski mask. When the others find out about Mink's latest caper, there is a period of prolonged controversy, animosity, litigation and disgrace. Pharmaceutical giants have their code of ethics, just like you and me. The project manager is kicked out, the project goes on without him.'
'Did the article say what happened to him?'
'The reporter tracked him down. He is living in the same motel where all the controversy took place.'
'Where is the motel?'
'In Germantown.'
'Where's that?' I said.
'Iron City. It's the old German section. Behind the foundry.'
'I didn't know there was a section in Iron City called Germantown.'
'The Germans are gone, of course.'
I went straight home. Denise was making check marks in a paperback book called
'I don't mind running clothes as such,' I said. 'A sweatsuit is a practical thing to wear at times. But I wish you wouldn't wear it when you read bedtime stories to Wilder or braid Steffie's hair. There's something touching about such moments that is jeopardized by running clothes.'
'Maybe I'm wearing running clothes for a reason.' 'Like what?'
'I'm going running,' she said. 'Is that a good idea? At night?'
'What is night? It happens seven times a week. Where is the uniqueness in this?' 'It's dark, it's wet.'
'Do we live in a blinding desert glare? What is wet? We live with wet.'
'Babette doesn't speak like this.'
'Does life have to stop because our half of the earth is dark? Is there something about the night that physically resists a runner? I need to pant and gasp. What is dark? It's just another name for light.'
'No one will convince me that the person I know as Babette actually wants to run up the stadium steps at ten o'clock at night.'
'It's not what I want, it's what I need. My life is no longer in the realm of want. I do what I have to do. I pant, I gasp. Every runner understands the need for this.'
'Why do you have to run up steps? You're not a professional athlete trying to rebuild a shattered knee. Run on plain land. Don't make a major involvement out of it. Everything is a major involvement today.'
'It's my life. I tend to be involved.' 'It's not your life. It's only exercise.'
'A runner needs,' she said.
'I also need and tonight I need the car. Don't wait up for me. Who knows when I'll be back.'
I waited for her to ask what mysterious mission would require me to get in the car and drive through the rain- streaked night, time of return unknown.
She said, 'I can't walk to the stadium, run up the steps five or six times and then walk all the way back home. You can drive me there, wait for me, drive me back. The car is then yours.'
'I don't want it. What do you think of that? You want the car. you take it. The streets are slippery. You know what that means, don't you?'
'What does it mean?'
'Fasten your seat belt. There's also a chill in the air. You know what a chill in the air means.'
'What does it mean?'
'Wear your ski mask,' I told her.
The thermostat began to buzz.
I put on a jacket and went outside. Ever since the airborne toxic event, our neighbors, the Stovers, had been keeping their car in the driveway instead of the garage, keeping it facing the street, keeping the key in the ignition. I walked up the driveway and got in the car. There were trash caddies fixed to the dashboard and seat-backs, dangling plastic bags full of gum wrappers, ticket stubs, lipstick-smeared tissues, crumpled soda cans, crumpled circulars and receipts, ashtray debris, popsicle sticks and french fries, crumpled coupons and paper napkins, pocket combs with missing teeth. Thus familiarized, I started up the engine, turned on the lights and drove off.
I ran a red light when I crossed Middlebrook. Reaching the end of the expressway ramp, I did not yield. All the way to Iron City, I felt a sense of dreaminess, release, unreality. I slowed down at the toll gate but did not bother tossing a quarter into the basket. An alarm went off but no one pursued. What's another quarter to a state that is billions in debt? What's twenty-five cents when we are talking about a nine-thousand-dollar stolen car? This must be how people escape the pull of the earth, the gravitational leaf-flutter that brings us hourly closer to dying. Simply stop obeying. Steal instead of buy, shoot instead of talk. I ran two more lights on the rainy approach roads to Iron City. The outlying buildings were long and low, fish and produce markets, meat terminals with old wooden canopies. I entered the city and turned on the radio, needing company not on the lonely highway but here on the cobbled streets, in the sodium vapor lights, where the emptiness clings. Every city has its districts. I drove past the abandoned car district, the uncollected garbage district, the sniper-fire district, the districts of smoldering sofas and broken glass. Ground glass crunched under the tires. I headed toward the foundry.
Random Access Memory, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Mutual Assured Destruction.
I still felt extraordinarily light-lighter than air, colorless, odorless, invisible. But around the lightness and dreaminess, something else was building, an emotion of a different order. A surge, a will, an agitation of the passions. I reached into my pocket, rubbed my knuckles across the grainy stainless steel of the Zumwalt barrel. The man on the radio said: 'Void where prohibited.'
39
I drove twice around the foundry, looking for signs of some erstwhile German presence. I drove past the row houses. They were set on a steep hill, narrow-fronted frame houses, a climbing line of pitched roofs. I drove past the bus terminal, through the beating rain. It took a while to find the motel, a one-story building set against the concrete pier of an elevated roadway. It was called the Roadway Motel.
Transient pleasures, drastic measures.
The area was deserted, a spray-painted district of warehouses and light industry. The motel had nine or ten rooms, all dark, no cars out front. I drove past three times, studying the scene, and parked half a block away, in the rubble under the roadway. Then I walked back to the motel. Those were the first three elements in my plan.
Here is my plan. Drive past the scene several times, park some distance from the scene, go back on foot, locate Mr. Gray under his real name or an alias, shoot him three times in the viscera for maximum pain, clear the weapon of prints, place the weapon in the victim's staticky hand, find a crayon or lipstick tube and scrawl a cryptic suicide note on the full-length mirror, take the victim's supply of Dylar tablets, slip back to the car, proceed to the expressway entrance, head east toward Blacksmith, get off at the old river road, park Stover's car in Old Man Treadwell's garage, shut the garage door, walk home in the rain and the fog.
Elegant. My airy mood returned. I was advancing in consciousness. I watched myself take each separate step. With each separate step, I became aware of processes, components, things relating to other things. Water fell to earth in drops. I saw things new.
There was an aluminum awning over the office door. On the door itself were little plastic letters arranged in slots to spell out a message. The message was: NU MISH BOOT ZUP KO.
Gibberish but high-quality gibberish. I made my way along the wall, looking through the windows. My plan was this. Stand at the edges of windows with my back to the wall, swivel my head to look peripherally into rooms. Some windows were bare, some had blinds or dusty shades. I could make out the rough outlines of chairs or beds in the dark rooms. Trucks rumbled overhead. In the next to last unit, there was the scantest flicker of light. I stood at the edge of the window, listening. I swiveled my head, looked into the room out of the corner of my right eye. A figure sat in a low armchair looking up at the flickering light. I sensed I was part of a network of structures and channels. I knew the precise nature of events. I was moving closer to things in their actual state as I approached a violence, a smashing intensity. Water fell in drops, surfaces gleamed.
