"He's in the subways. That's all I know. He's got the product with him. I told him I wasn't interested in taking it off his hands. I've got other things. I told him to keep it."
"You amaze me, Buck. It's a street-wise gent you're talking to. An old politico of the back rooms. Do you realize what you're telling me? You're saying you came within arm's length of the product and you didn't make a grab. That story has no hair on it. I thought we were partners. I thought sure we'd be able to function in an atmosphere of mutual trust. Guess I'm losing my judgment. Getting all mellowed out. This grieves me, Buck. Dog-boys are running wild. U.S. Guv is sniffing at my laundry. I thought sure I had one ally in this whole sorry league of misfits. Hell of a note. Deeply disappointing. Face to face with Hanes. The product within arm's length. I assume that to be the case. Is arm's length an accurate term of measurement to the best of your recollection?"
"We shared a subway seat. We walked through tunnels together. At times our cuffs touched."
"And I'm to believe you didn't talk him off the product? I'm to believe you don't have possession of said product? If not possession of, then access to. I'm to believe you and Hanes didn't make a deal? I'm to believe all this? Oink-oink. That's all, folks."
"Sorry."
"Well now," he said. "You grant me no leeway, friend. None at all. I'm forced to bring pressure to bear. Not by choice. Not by inclination. It's a matter of balance and edge. Circumstances weigh against me. Old alliances have fallen on evil days. I'm left with no cards but the last nasty trump. According to my sources you're going back out on tour. I was apprised on that fact no more than two hours ago. So take the following proposal home and mull it over. It's simple, Buck. Either get the product to me or I make arrangements to extend your sabbatical. You won't leave that room is what I'm saying. That room will become your past, present and future. Four walls and a flush toilet. Don't doubt I can make such arrangements. It won't be easy, I grant you that. It'll take maneuvering of the riskiest kind. Arf-arf. Ill have to cut my drinking water with a splash of Wild Turkey. Oh, I'll have to be right on edge, spit-shined, cold as a witch's tit. Your decision to make. Forty-eight hours. A generous allowance by anyone's reckoning. Ill be in touch soon after. Get the product to me, Buck. For the sake of both our souls. I've got to have it, son. It's the making of a legend."
It was Menefee's duty to escort me back to Great Jones Street. It had stopped raining but he kept the umbrella close to our heads, bringing it down into my face every time a car passed. Our outing was less roundabout this time, a feint to the east, a shallow probe north, then straight down Lafayette past the warehouses. Two women with aerosol cans were spraying insect repellent into a heap of abandoned furniture. When they were finished, they dislodged the frame of an old sofa and dragged it off.
"He was wearing perforated shoes."
"I know," Menefee said. "I tried to talk him out of it, the rain and all, but I guess he thought perforated shoes were called for. He's had them twenty years, he said. The man's uncanny. He's a master of apparel, a master of vocal dynamics, a master of the odd fact. He's got style, he's got guile. Good thing he came along is all I can say in terms of my own development as a human thought module. I was being systematically depersonalized by the whole educational apparatus at the University of California at Santa Barbara and all I heard from my parents day after day in letters, phone calls and telegrams was that I should transfer to the University of California at Santa Cruz, which they wanted me to do for their own selfish grabby reasons, probably tinged with incest. So I got myself apprenticed to Dr. Pepper and since then I've developed unbelievably in terms of seeing myself as a full-service container with access outlets. So there we were traveling all around. So my parents said where are you? So I said I'm back in school. University of California at Pittsfield, Massachusetts."
Menefee closed the great umbrella and walked up the stairs with me. He checked the apartment before allowing me to enter. Then he left like a mythological bird returning to its jeweled nest. There was no heat. I ran the bath water and undressed. The water turned cold almost immediately but I let it run until the tub was nearly full. Then I took a bath, scrubbing my body with a hairbrush, outlasting the series of deep quakes that passed through me. When I stepped out finally, I was colder than the room.
23
"I have a terminal fantasy," Fenig said. "It comes to me more and more often, a recurring obsessive thing, and I add little details every time. Funny how I never get tired of this fantasy. I never get tired of it and I never feel the need to purge myself of it. Here it is, word for word as it comes to me, or as I come to it, whichever happens to be the case. Listen and tell me what you think. Terminal fantasy. I'm living all alone in this building. Outside the dog-boys are pursuing their life-style of constant prowling. They roam the empty streets, picking a building at random and then crashing right in to execute their punches and kicks, breaking down doors, charging up stairs, loping through the hallways. I'm living here all alone. During the day I write and think. I make tomato soup on my little table stove. I spread butter on the saltines. I pour a glass of Budweiser, the king of beers. This is my basic meal which I have almost every day between my two basic sessions at the typewriter, provided the juices are flowing. The heart of the terminal fantasy is what happens at night. At night I do some prowling of my own. I prowl this very building. With me, fore and aft, are two vicious German shepherds. I carry a pump-action shotgun snug against my belly. Floating at my right hip is a giant machete, lodged in a special customized cartridge belt. I go up and down the stairs virtually all night, me and the dogs. I look in every dark corner. I peer into the end of the darkest hallway. I check under the steps on the first floor. I conduct a thorough surveillance of your former apartment and Mickle-white's former apartment. All around me the buildings are being invaded and I'm just waiting for them to reach here, to come loping in with their gangly strides. All day I write fantastic terminal fiction. At night I prowl the building. Finally they come, eight of them, armed with tiny knives and little wooden clappers like castanets which they clap near the ears of their victims in a ritual of childish Zenlike spite. I don't panic in the slightest when I see them. This is what I've been waiting for all the while. Casually I pump out round after round. The shotgun is magical, never needs reloading, makes a throaty noise that comes out in slow motion. Booo-ooo-ooom. I set the dogs on them and follow on a two-count, wading in with the machete to slash and chop. The whole thing is like choreographed movie violence, lovely blood, happening so slowly, the dogs leaping at the dog-boys' throats, the gray blade slashing, the ripe red blood flowing everywhere, lovely, so slow, slower than milk being lapped from a mama's breast. But the blood and violence please me less than the simple fact that it's all so terminal. Stark days and nights. No one in the streets. Whole building to myself. Dogs and dog-boys. I defend one thing. I am here not to defend my land or my art. I am here to defend my privacy.
I slaughter whoever breaches the stillness of this building. Guard duty through the night. Feeding raw meat to my dogs. Dragging the dead and wounded down the stairs and placing them along the street at intervals of ten yards. Pouring gasoline. Lighting the bodies. Bonfires of the dead and dying. It's frankly a gorgeous sight. Tomato soup and fiction through the day. Guard duty all the night. Why are terminal events so pleasing, I wonder?"
Fenig was seated on the large trunk that contained his manuscripts. He bumped the heels of his sneakered feet in elusive tempo against the front of the trunk. His clothes, freshly laundered, were the same as those he'd worn every other time we'd talked. Perhaps he bought items in fours and fives. It seemed possible this was everything he owned, five sweat shirts, five pairs of chinos, five pairs of tennis sneakers. Fenig and I intersected at curious places beneath the solvable plane. This made things simple, I thought. It's always easier to live with similarities because they provide the shadings needed for concealment. Op-posites tend eventually to corrode whatever democracy of feeling they made possible at the outset. In Fenig's closet were four more Fenigs, laced, hooded, neatly creased.