Mao II - Don Delillo [48]
9
Bill reminded himself to read the pavement signs before he crossed the street. It was so perfectly damn sensible they ought to make it the law in every city, long-lettered words in white paint that tell you which way to look if you want to live.
He wasn’t interested in seeing London. He’d seen it before. A glimpse of Trafalgar Square from a taxi, three routine seconds of memory, aura, repetition, the place unchanged despite construction fences and plastic sheeting—a dream locus, a double-ness that famous places share, making them seem remote and unreceptive but at the same time intimately familiar, an experience you’ve been carrying forever. The pavement signs were the only things he paid attention to. Look left. Look right. They seemed to speak to the whole vexed question of existence.
He hated these shoes. His ribs felt soft today. There was a slight seizing in his throat.
He wanted to get back to the hotel and sleep a while. He wasn’t staying at the place in Mayfair that Charlie had mentioned. He was in a middling gray relic and already beginning to grouse to himself about reimbursement.
In his room he took off his shirt and blew on the inside of the collar, getting rid of lint and hair, drying the light sweat. He had Lizzie’s overnight bag with his robe and pajamas and there were some socks, underwear and toilet articles he’d bought in Boston.
He didn’t know if he wanted to do this thing. It didn’t feel so right anymore. He had a foreboding, the little clinging tightness in the throat that he knew so well from his work, the times he was afraid and hemmed in by doubt, knowing there was something up ahead he didn’t want to face, a character, a life he thought he could not handle.
He called Charlie’s hotel.
“Where are you, Bill?”
“I can see a hospital from my window.”
“And you find this encouraging.”
“I look for one thing in a hotel. Proximity to the essential services.”
“You’re supposed to be at the Chesterfield.”
“The very name is incompatible with my price structure. It smells of figured velvet.”
“You’re not paying. We’re paying.”
“I understood about the plane fare.”
“And the hotel. It goes without saying. And the incidentals. Do you want me to see if the room’s still available?”
“I’m settled in here.”
“What’s the name of the place?”
“It’ll come to me in a minute. In the meantime tell me if we’re set for this evening.”
“We’re working on a change of site. We had a wonderful venue all set up, thanks to a well-connected colleague of mine. The library chamber at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Precisely the dignified setting I was hoping to find. Oak and stone carving, thousands of books. At noon today they began receiving phone calls. Anonymous.”
“Threats.”
“Bomb threats. We’re trying to keep it absolutely quiet. But the librarian did ask if we wouldn’t like to conduct our meeting elsewhere. We think we’ve got a secure site just about pinned down and we’re arranging a very discreet police presence. But it hurts, Bill. We had a gallery and vaulted ceiling. We had wood-block floors.”
“People who make phone calls don’t set off bombs. The real terrorists make their calls after the damage is done. If at all.”
“I know,” Charlie said, “but we still want to take every possible precaution. We’re cutting the number of press people invited. And we’re not revealing the location to anyone until the last possible moment. People will gather at a decoy location, then be driven to the real site in a chartered bus.”
“Remember literature, Charlie? It involved getting drunk and getting laid.”
“Come to the Chesterfield at seven. You’ll have some time to look at the poems you’re going to read. Then we’ll go