Falling Man_ A Novel - Don Delillo [44]
He compiled bonus miles on his credit cards and flew to cities chosen strictly for their distance from New York, just to use the miles. It satisfied some principle of emotional credit.
There were men in open-toed sandals, here and there, in the streets and parks, but Rumsey did not count their toes. So maybe it wasn’t just the counting that mattered. One had to factor in the women. He admitted this. He admitted everything.
The persistence of the man’s needs had a kind of crippled appeal. It opened Keith to dimmer things, at odder angles, to something crouched and uncorrectable in people but also capable of stirring a warm feeling in him, a rare tinge of affinity.
Baldness in Rumsey, as it progressed, was a gentle melancholy, the pensive regret of a failed boy.
They fought once, briefly, on the ice, teammates, by mistake, in a mass brawl, and Keith thought it was funny but Rumsey was angry, a little shrill with accusation, claiming that Keith threw a few additional punches after he realized who it was he was hitting, which wasn’t true, Keith said, but thought it might be, because once the thing starts, what recourse is there?
They walked toward the towers now, amid the sweep and crisscross of masses of people.
All right. But what if the digits don’t always total ten? You’re riding the subway, say, and you’re sitting eyes down, Keith said, and you’re absentmindedly scanning the aisle, and you see a pair of sandals, and you count and count again, and there are nine digits, or eleven.
Rumsey took this question with him up to his cubicle in the sky, where he went back to work on less arresting matters, on money and property, contracts and titles.
One day later he said, I would ask her to marry me.
And later still, Because I would understand that I was cured, like Lourdes, and could stop counting now.
Keith watched her across the table.
“When did it happen?”
“About an hour ago.”
“That dog,” he said.
“I know. It was a crazy thing to do.”
“What happens now? You’ll see her in the hall.”
“I don’t apologize. That’s what happens.”
He sat and nodded, watching her.
“Hate to say it but when I came up the stairs just now.”
“You don’t have to say it.”
“The music was playing,” he said.
“I guess that means she wins.”
“No louder, no softer.”
“She wins.”
He said, “Maybe she’s dead. Lying there.”
“Dead or alive, she wins.”
“That dog.”
“I know. It was totally crazy. I could hear myself speaking. My voice was like it was coming from somebody else.”
“I’ve seen that animal. The kid fears that animal. Won’t say it but does.”
“What is it?”
“A Newfoundland.”
“The whole province,” she said.
“You’re lucky.”
“Lucky and crazy. Marko.”
He said, “Forget the music.”
“He spells his name with a k.”
“So do I. Forget the music,” he said. “It’s not a message or a lesson.”
“But it’s still playing.”
“It’s still playing because she’s dead. Lying there. Being sniffed by big dog.”
“I need to get more sleep. That’s what I need,” she said.
“Big dog sniffing dead woman’s crotch.”
“I wake up at some point every night. Mind running nonstop. Can’t stop it.”
“Forget the music.”
“Thoughts I can’t identify, thoughts I can’t claim as mine.”
He kept watching her.
“Take something. Your mother knows about this. This is how people sleep.”
“I have a history with the things people take. They make me crazier. They make me stupid, make me forget.”
“Talk to your mother. She knows about this.”
“Can’t stop it, can’t go back to sleep. Takes forever. Then it’s morning,” she said.
The truth was mapped in slow and certain decline. Each member of the group lived in this knowledge. Lianne found it hardest to accept in the case of Carmen G. She appeared to be two women simultaneously, the one sitting here, less combative over time, less clearly defined, speech beginning to drag, and the younger and slimmer and wildly attractive one, as Lianne imagines her, a spirited woman in her reckless prime, funny and blunt, spinning on a dance floor.
Lianne herself, bearing her father