"The dark night of the soul," Grace said.
"For what, or whom?"
"When the priests stop believing, what does it mean?"
"Of course it was Mudger. He was sitting in the back of an ordinary cab. I crawled out and walked over. Told him what I knew. He suggested I get in, which I did, and we drove off."
"Leaving the man with the bullet in his throat."
"That happens, Gracie."
"Don't call me Gracie."
"Do you want me to call you what Earl calls you?"
"What's that?"
"Never mind," he said.
"What does Earl call me?"
"Take off your top."
"Tough darts, bubie."
She drank from the flask and resettled herself.
"Do I go on?"
"You're in the cab," she said.
"Earl, anyway, tells me he's disillusioned. The whole thing's a mess. Let the families have the goddamn footage. He no longer wants it."
"What does he want?"
"He wants to start a zoo. He wants to buy a huge tract somewhere and build some kind of safariland. Animals running around, people with cameras, I don't know. Part zoo, part natural habitat. He wasn't clear on details. He'd only thought of it on the flight up from San Antonio. It's part of Earl's nostalgia for Vietnam. He had a zoo there."
"I wonder if I'd like him," Grace said. "Moll did and didn't."
"You don't like anyone. Who do you like?"
"She wrote an interesting piece. Uneven and loose as hell. But her best work really. I was genuinely upset."
"Earl calls you FCB."
"What does that mean?"
"It's a joke name. Doesn't mean anything. Earl made it up. Actually we both made it up."
"I don't think I'd like him."
"You wouldn't like the Senator either. You don't like anyone."
"I'm old and tired," she said.
"The Senator is also out of the running. On to something else. A touch more traditional."
"Who cares? Do I look as though I care?"
"You're still young," Lomax said. "I'm the one who's old. I feel old."
"You're younger than I am, Arthur, and I don't even care."
"I feel old. I'm the old one. Forget chronology. If I were a dog I'd be only six years old, chronologically, but I feel ready for the meat machine."
Grace removed her brassiere and lay facing the ceiling. Lomax put the flask on the small table by the bed. His radio pager started beeping. This was a small device he'd lately taken to carrying everywhere. It was in the closet right now, in his coat pocket. Unlike the pagers generally in use, this one operated within a radius of one thousand miles from the originating signal. Activated by computer, the device enabled Earl Mudger to contact Lomax wherever he was, whatever he was doing, within that radius. When the beeping started, Lomax was to call a certain number and receive whatever instructions had been prepared for him.
The noise stopped after fifteen long seconds. Grace looked over at him, waiting for some reaction.
"I'll tell you who I give credit to," Lomax said.
He clasped his hands behind his head.
"Who are the only ones who believe in what they're doing? The only ones who aren't constantly adjusting, constantly wavering-this way, that way. Being pressed. Being forced to adopt new stances."
"The families," she said.
"They're serious. They're totally committed. The only ones. They see clearly, _bullseye_, straight ahead. They know what they belong to. They don't question the premise."
"Are they still in the running then?"
"They _are_ the running," Lomax said. "There's just that old lunk, the art dealer, who's probably sitting on the film can himself, thinking all he has to do is arrange an auction."
"What does FCB mean?"
Lomax glanced over at her, a hint of small bitter amusement in his face.
"You're sure," he said.
"Tell me, yes, I'm curious."
He pulled his right hand out from behind his head and used the middle finger to groom first one sideburn, then the other.
"Flat-Chested Bitch," he said.
Her mouth went tight. Supine, she rolled rightward, swinging her left arm up and over to deliver a roundhouse blow to the area just above his right eye. He folded up, oddly, as though he'd been hit in the groin. Both hands covering his right eye, he turned away from her, his body compact, close to the edge of the bed.
"It's a joke name," he said.
The second blow, a hammerlike left, caught him behind the ear. The radio pager began beeping again.
"It doesn't mean anything," he said. "It's just the way we communicate, in abbreviations, in codes sometimes. We give everybody a different kind of name. Some are a lot worse than yours."
Grace lay back on the bed, listening to the paging device emit its programmed series of noises. Her mouth was still rigid but she was breathing normally, as though spasms of violence were common in her life.
Moll sat in the tub, trying to turn the pages of the early edition of the _Times_ without getting them wet.
Interesting item back near the obits.
Learned today that Senator Lloyd Percival was married last Thursday in Bethesda, Maryland, hours after his divorce became final.
Bride is Dayton (DeDe) Baker, 20, a specimen trainee at the Medical Museum of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C.
Funny but puzzling.
Ceremony performed in the meditation suite of the Stone Hollow Country Club by the Rev. Penny W. Parker, founder of the Humanist Missions.
Jesus.
The story, amid some typographical chaos, went on to quote the Senator, 6i, as saying today that he felt "reborn, revitalized-ready to attempt bold new ventures." He was interviewed with his wife before the couple left for the airport, en route to an undisclosed destination.
The next day at the office, on an impulse, Moll looked for the story in the late city edition. She found that a paragraph had been left out of the earlier version. She filled in the rest by walking down the ball and checking the magazine's files.
The bride's father was the late Freeman Reed Baker, a well-known authority on Persian art and culture. He was also the central figure in a scandal involving the disappearance, fifteen years earlier, of rare examples of ancient erotica- carpet-weavings, textiles, metalwork-from a legendary private collection in Isfahan.
I am beginning to understand.
At the time of the apparent theft, Dr. Baker had been special curator of the so-called Forbidden Rooms, a restricted area of the collection.
Very sexy stuff.
He died of natural causes three years ago in eastern Turkey, still under a cloud of suspicion. The treasures have not been recovered.
Back in her cubicle, Moll wondered if Lightborne had seen the story. If so, he'd be saying a mental farewell to Lloyd Precival. The Senator has clearly abandoned fortress Berlin, _Nazis in motion_, preferring the reassurances of desert stillness. The art of mystics and nomads. Old-fashioned contentments.
6
Selvy found a Sam Browne belt in someone's foot locker in the long barracks. He put it on. A decent enough fit. He liked the feel of the shoulder strap that extended diagonally across his chest. He thought he might figure out a way to attach the bolo somehow, knowing that the original belt had been designed, by a one-armed British general, to support a sword.