Libra - Don Delillo [43]
Why were they shipping him out, now, of all times, when things were going well for a change, when he had things to look forward to, a woman, now and then, to crawl into bed with, people to talk to who did not see him as a figure in the shadows?
They went to the flat near the river. Konno paced the room, tugging at the ends of his silk scarf. He hinted there were others who knew about Pfc. Oswald and admired his political maturity. He said there were things that could be accomplished by people with similar ideas on world affairs, people situated in certain places, within easy reach of each other. He gave Lee a pistol, small and silver-plated, a derringer, a gift, modest, two-shot, and asked him to pick up some Luckies back at the base.
Reitmeyer tried to pick him up and turn him upside down, grabbing from behind, at the crotch and the shirt collar, basic aimless ballbreaking fun, but he messed it all up, ending with one hand gripping Ozzie’s side pocket and the other in an armpit, with the victim more or less parallel to the ground, flailing for a door jamb. At first Ozzie reacted with good-natured yelping surprise, out for a midair swim; then, as Reitmeyer manhandled and yanked, refusing to see it wouldn’t work, trying to cartwheel him halfway around, he complained in fierce whispers, with ultimatums and unfinished threats; then struggled hard to free himself, close to bursting into frustrated tears, a snared and wriggling kid, pink with rage; then, finally, and this brought forth a certain lurking satisfaction, familiar, falsehearted, awful, he went completely limp.
One night he wandered into a Tokyo bar that was either a queer hangout or some kind of kabuki show or maybe a little of both. The customers were all male and the hosts or hostesses—they looked increasingly like men as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark—wore bright kimonos and high swirling wigs, their mouths precisely painted, faces layered in chalk. Educational. Someone rustled nearby, a costumed man waiting to lead him to a table, but Ozzie walked quietly to the door, feeling watched, odd, peculiar, quaint. When he opened the door he saw a familiar figure in the street. It was a Marine from his unit, Heindel, just walking on by. Ozzie had a moment of small panic. He didn’t want to be seen coming out of a place like this. They’d mop the barracks with him if word got out. They’d have a hog-wallow of gruesome fun. The oddball loner caught sneaking out of a swishy bar. He moved back into the dimness and ordered a beer, keeping an eye to the street. Hidell in a dark jacket with a pouncing tiger on the back. Ozzie drank his beer and got his bearings. The darkness was creepy. Whining music came from the walls.
He found a taxi and headed out to Konno’s district. Chemical smoke pouring off the shipyards and factories. Skinhead kids on bikes shooting out of alleys, coming at a racing slant over the pot-holed streets.
Hidell means don’t tell.
No one was home. He walked for miles, lost, before he found another cab. He went to the Queen Bee, greeted by a hostess whose sole duty was to bow to entering guests. Konno was alone at a table near the rear. They talked a long time. Girls in swimsuits passed across the stage, each throwing a hip toward the audience of businessmen and U.S. brass. It was a vast place, a noisy crowd. Konno was tired and hoarse, coming down with something. A silence at the table. Then Lee let it be known that he’d seen something interesting in Atsugi one day, a plane called a U-2.
He paused, measuring how he felt. Inside the bouncy music and applause, he occupied a pocket of calm. He was not connected to anything here and not quite connected to himself and he spoke less to Konno than to the person Konno would report to, someone out there, in the floating world, a collector of loose talk, a specialist who lived in the dark like the men with bright lips and spun-silk wigs.
He pointed out that the plane climbed right off the radarscopes. He said it reached an altitude almost five miles above