John the Englishman, who looked like Teddy Roosevelt, was talking with his mouth full as we entered. He was saying, I don’t see how you get from one to the other, I grant the first but how does the second follow?
Chad nodded to Dagger and me; he was careful, but he would smile and then forget to drop it; he wound his spaghetti on his fork slowly as if he were understanding something through it. He was about to answer before raising his neatly wrapped fork to his mouth, but John who had now swallowed continued in the same vein so you didn’t know what the subject was except that John was not going to be inhibited by us. Dagger said the light was going to be strange but OK with gray day outside and electric globes here. He had the camera on me as well as on the triumvirate while I placed the mike and brought the cable toward me and under the table and back toward the camera and our window, so the person nearest the cable coming out on the camera side of the table was Elizabeth’s boyfriend but he was a few feet to our left. Herma said I’m Herma, when she came in, and John finished his rapid-fire points about the perfect mechanism, the given, being subject to accidents which you may call solutions if you like, accidents, yes — and just before he said thermal accidents (which made Len turn his head abruptly to look at John), the Nagra began recording—thermal accidents you know, perturbations.
Chad said, But these accidents can be anticipated and built into the mechanism.
He looked up at the camera, then to his left to Herma and grinned sheepishly; he was perhaps twenty-five. She smiled back, and shrugged happily as if to say I haven’t a clue but it’s nice to be here and I’d be happy to fuck soon.
Herma’s sensational, said Dagger, who hadn’t shifted his aim from the triumvirate; she’s from Toledo and her father produces glass.
Oh, Daddy’s incredible, said Herma.
Len burst into a loud laugh, but John burst out with more words: Glass? What kind? You say he produces glass? I was in Toledo last spring when I had an appointment in Detroit, do you know Lambertville, I’ve a friend there who’s in the coal-shipping business in Toledo, what are they going to do about Lake Erie?
But Chad said, But if accidents happen to this perfect system you’re talking about, they’re a minor factor.
Randomness, said John (and the camera still had not moved, and Len pushed back his chair to rise), obviates a master plan, I don’t care if you’re talking about replicating molecules or gambling—
Len rose and asked Elizabeth if she’d like something to eat, and she said a glass of the wine, but I had the distinct impression Len had wanted to interrupt the ongoing John, who now said Stop gnashing your teeth, Len.
Chad said, We don’t disagree all that much, just about sequences.
I whispered to Dagger to shoot the painting, the pewter, the curious molding where the room’s corners rounded, the dartboard on our left oddly hung to the right of the kitchen door and beyond the left end of the sideboard; I suggested a shot through the kitchen (a mere distant brainstorm, the kitchen door wasn’t open and I only imagined a shot through the kitchen window above the sink to an ancient branching farm implement, its oak fittings standing low against the stony sky).
The randomness, Chad said, might be said to precede a plan, but the plan can forestall all kinds of accidents.
Randomness creates purposes, said John before lowering a helping of spaghetti into his mouth like some shredded, limp-blooming cephalapod. Dagger I am almost certain missed this, he had cut to Len pouring Chianti for Herma, Elizabeth, and the English boy, Dagger and I declining.
Far off, I heard the sea, it was a recording that had replaced the music. I had a physical sensation like being forced to breathe compressed air from a tank on my back — preternaturally abstract language getting out of hand. I asked what in particular was random, there was no such thing as randomness — but I think Dagger may have switched off for a second to pivot from the 15- to the 25-mm. lens, which isn’t all that close, but we wanted enough width to get a good stretch of table — and he had cut round to the hall door where Gene’s wife had appeared.