Libra - Don Delillo [153]
At the Trailways terminal he headed for the window to buy a ticket to Houston, which was the first stage of the journey to Mexico City. David Ferrie was standing by the window. He wore a rumpled plaid sport jacket with a newspaper sticking out of one pocket. He looked like a horseplayer with two days to live.
“Where to, Mexico? To pick up a visa for little Cuba?”
“That’s right,” Lee said.
“Without a word to Cap’n Dave? I don’t like this, Leon.”
“You won’t tell me what it is they want me to do. I have to make my plans best I can.”
“They knew you were going. They’ve been watching extra close. I am personally put out about this. Cuba now, Leon? We haven’t done our work yet.”
“I’m planning I might come back.”
“You’ll come back all right. You know why? They don’t give visas to Americans so easy. Plus you want to come back. You want to finish our work.”
“What do they want me to do?”
“We both know the answer to that by now.”
“You know. I don’t.”
“You’ve known almost all along. I think you knew before I did. You came to the swamps to shoot your Man-Licker. You know what side we’re on. You know we’re not about to choose a target suited to your tastes. But you wanted to come. I think you picked it out of the air. I honestly believe you beat me to it.”
A Negro in hip boots wandered through the terminal selling yo-yos that lit up in the dark.
Ferrie talked Lee into having a meal together. Raymo would drive him to Houston tomorrow if that’s what he wanted. Save the bus fare. Enjoy the comfort of the family car.
They ate scrambled eggs in Ferrie’s apartment. There were explosives stored under the kitchen table. Ferrie kept his jacket on, wagged the fork as he spoke.
“I’ve seen the Fair Play material you keep at 544,” he said. “I’ve noticed something you haven’t noticed. Librans never notice references to themselves. The official symbol of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee is a man’s hand holding aloft a pair of scales. Two weighing pans hanging from a rigid beam. Everywhere you go. It’s all around you. Which way will Leon tilt?”
“I don’t know what they want me to do.”
“Of course you know.”
“Tell me where it happens.”
“Miami.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“You’ve known for weeks.”
“What happens in Miami?”
Ferrie took a while to finish chewing his food.
“Think of two parallel lines,” he said. “One is the life of Lee H. Oswald. One is the conspiracy to kill the President. What bridges the space between them? What makes a connection inevitable? There is a third line. It comes out of dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self. It’s not generated by cause and effect like the other two lines. It’s a line that cuts across causality, cuts across time. It has no history that we can recognize or understand. But it forces a connection. It puts a man on the path of his destiny.”
25 September
Lee woke up on the sofa some time after midnight. He was wide awake almost at once. The TV was on a bookshelf, picture flipping, no sound. He heard Ferrie gargling in the bathroom. The smell of hashish stuck to everything, to Lee’s hair and clothes, the fabric on the sofa.
He watched Ferrie walk into the room naked. His eyebrows and toupee were gone. He was sad and pasty, decolored, moving out of the background glow into the stutter light of TV. He resembled someone in the land of nudo, a shaved nude in a booth in Tokyo, a nude monk you pay to photograph, some endless variation on the factual nude, a satire for tourists. He looked unclear, half erased. Could he tell Lee’s eyes were open?
He stood a moment among the books and pole lamps as if he’d forgotten something. What could he forget, naked? Lee shifted around so that his back was to the room. He shifted like someone asleep, just rolling over. He closed his eyes. He groaned like someone deep in sleep.
Ferrie sat on the edge of the sofa, reaching around to put a hand on Lee’s belly over the shirt, a hand on Hidell, leaning closer now, his breath sharp with mouthwash.
“People have to be nice to