Mao II - Don Delillo [47]
“You still don’t.”
“This is true, Bill.”
“You didn’t say anything about our London chat.”
“London is the last thing I’d tell anyone. But he’s not an easy fellow to pacify. I finally had to go down there and talk to him. First I convinced security to produce the guard who accompanies special guests. Then the guard convinced Scott that he took you up and he took you down and you weren’t lying dead in the elevator. Eternally riding. A warning to us all.”
They talked about arrangements.
Then Bill said, “He’ll call you. He’ll keep calling. Not a word.”
“I haven’t revealed a thing about you to a single soul in twenty-five years, Bill. I keep the faith.”
When Gail came back they played rummy for a while. The women wanted to go to sleep and Bill tried to keep them going with card tricks. The wine was gone. He read for an hour and made up the sofa, recalling how cramped it was. Then he found a scratch pad and a pencil and made notes for some revisions on his novel.
Scott came out of the bathroom with toothpaste on a brush. He looked at Karen, who was sitting up in bed watching TV. He stared, waiting for her to see him. There were times she became lost in the dusty light, observing some survivor of a national news disaster, there’s the lonely fuselage smoking in a field, and she was able to study the face and shade into it at the same time, even sneak a half second ahead, inferring the strange dazed grin or gesturing hand, which made her seem involved not just in the coverage but in the terror that came blowing through the fog.
He stared until she turned and saw him.
“Then where is he?” she said.
“I’ll figure it out. It’s been a long time since he was a step ahead of me. Bastard.”
“But where could he go?”
“Somewhere that makes sense only to him. But if it makes sense to him, I’ll eventually figure it out.”
“But how can you be sure he’s not sick or hurt?”
“I went in the building and talked to them. We had an actual scuffle, some bumping and pushing. They have security at the level of war is imminent. Anyway it’s clear to me he just walked out the door.”
“Well then I think he’s with Brita.”
Scott stood with the toothbrush held level across his chest.
“He’s not with Brita. Why is he with Brita?”
“Because why else would he stay in New York?”
“We don’t know he stayed there. We don’t even know for sure why he went there. He told me it was just a visit with Charles Everson. Everson told me they talked about the new book. No, he hasn’t been in touch with Brita or I’d know it. The phone bill came the other day. The calls would be itemized.”
“Maybe she called him.”
“No, he’s got something deeper. He’s down deeper somewhere. ”
“He’s running away from his book again.”
“The book is finished.”
“Not to him.”
“He never left without telling me where he was going. No, he’s down deeper this time.”
He went in and brushed his teeth. When he came out he stared at her until she realized he was looking.
“We need to do lists,” he said.
“But if he’s not here.”
“All the more reason. We need to give his workroom a good going-over. ”
“He doesn’t like us in there.”
“He doesn’t like me in there,” Scott said. “I believe there are times in the night when he definitely consents to your presence. In the night or in the late afternoon when I’m out buying the onions for the stew.”
“Or the cucumbers for the salad.”
“The workroom needs to be cleaned and organized. So when he gets back he can find things for a change.”
“He’ll call us in a day or two and we can ask him if it’s okay.”
“He won’t call.”
“I’m hopeful he’ll call.”
“If there was something he wanted to call us about, he’d still be here, living amongst us.”
He got into bed, turning up the collar of his pajama shirt.
“Let’s give him a chance to call,” she said. “That’s all I’m saying. ”
“He’s got some deep and dire plan and it doesn’t include us.”
“He loves us, Scott.”
She watched the set at the foot of the bed. There was a woman on an exercise bike and she wore a gleaming skintight suit and talked into the camera as she pedaled and there