Great Jones Street (Contemporary American Fiction) Read online

  “If you know this much about it, why can’t you get started?”

  “I know too much about it,” he said.

  “No room for discovery.”

  “No room for discovery and I spent too much time making and taking notes. My energy is pretty much sapped. But the theme lives in my mind. The central motivating force is there. The thrust is a genuine thrust. Little kids sucking and being sucked, fucking and being fucked. No grownups anywhere in sight. Kids obsessed by their magical abilities and appetites. Kids and only kids. Without grownups there’s a purity, I feel. The thing is kept pure. Tremendous sadism in evidence. Really vicious stuff. All rendered in terms of the classical forms of reversal, recognition and the tragic experience. But I’ll tell you what the clincher is.”

  “Okay.”

  “Their organs are extremely sensitive. Small maybe but developed way beyond our own spigots and drains. I plan to hint that this sensitivity is present in all children. A freshness. An innocence. Kaleidoscopic sex organs. Capable of wild fiery pleasure. What we’d all be capable of if we were as pure and sex-obsessed as these children of mine. They’re obsessed beyond belief. I can’t wait to start writing. But that’s not the real clincher. The real clincher lies in another direction.”

  “Which direction?”

  “I’m trying to remember,” he said. “All this coffee I’ve been drinking is beginning to affect my concentration. We’re all junkie dope fiends one way or another. I’m firmly convinced of that. With me it’s caffeine. But I don’t use instant. I never use instant. I wouldn’t drink that stuff for anything. I’d drink tea first and I hate tea. But the clincher is the writing style itself. That’s it, that’s it. I’m doing it like I’d do a second-grade reader. Simplest style imaginable. Easily understood by any seven-year-old kid. In other words I’m not just writing pornography about kids. I’m writing pornography for kids. A fantastic concept in my opinion. I have no doubt there’s enough marginally weird people who’ll buy books like this for their own kids. Most people will get the books for themselves, for their cataleptic wives and so on. But there’s that book-buying minority that’s just weird enough to give their kids pornography for Christmas. I have no doubt of this. I think the son of a bitch’ll sell. It’s my genre and all I have to do is get it down on paper and I pre-empt a comer of the market. I’d like to bang out five quick genre pieces and market them right away. Then I’ll get to work on a novella-length piece. Then I’ll start a novel. After that I’ve got a one-acter I want to do about a stockbroker who moonlights as a pimp. Some writers presume to be men of letters. I’m a man of numbers.”

  “The boy’s dreaming again,” I said.

  Alone now I listened to the sound from below. It lasted more than a moment this time, part of the room’s ambient noise, microlife humming in floor cracks, in the air itself. Maybe nature had become imbecilic here, forcing its pain to find a voice, this moan of interrupted gestation. I had never heard a sound so primal. It expressed the secret feculent menace of a forest or swamp, or of a simple plant arching in kitchen sunlight. There seems a fundamental terror inside things that grow, things that trade chemicals with the air, and this is what the boy’s oppressive dreams brought reeking to the surface, the beauty and horror of wordless things. I could almost feel the sound under my feet. In the stillness it seemed extremely near, within the room, a dewclaw’s mossy flesh touching my ankle. I put on my lumber jacket (symbol of all that’s old and wholesome) and ran some tap water, whatever was available, just to hear another noise. Finally everything was quiet and I went to bed. Fenig began pacing then, three steps east, three west, river to river. I slept for a while, very lightly, my surroundings part of the sleep, shaping it in mounds and squares. With my eyes open now I concentrated on various objects within my field of vision. I could barely make out the two candles standing over the sink. The indistinctness of these objects made them seem denser; they were more forcefully present in the near darkness. I slept deeply then, apprehending only myself as object. It was slightly less dark when I woke up, perhaps four in the morning, the room seeming to tremble in the malarial light of that hour. There was no longer any sound of pacing. I turned on my side. Opel was standing in a corner of the room, barefoot, removing her clothes. I lay there watching her, putting her together in my mind as she performed the small acts my eyes could only serialize. I nearly laughed at the way she lost interest in each item of clothing as she took it off, tossing it on the floor or against the legs of a chair, never watching it go, her hands already engaged in the next expert rejection. Her hair was longer now, scattered over one shoulder and deflected at the point of her breast. She had tanned unevenly and her skin was a mass of rash borders and overlapping seasons. No motion she made seemed less than perfect or other than the only motion possible and I wondered at women in their nakedness, how unpreoccupied they are with it, while men either cringe or trumpet. Sniffling she took a handful of tissues from a suitcase and approached on her toes over the cold floor. I moved back in the little bed, making some room, and raised the covers high for her entrance.

  “Dramatic,” she said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here, creepo.”

  “But it’s cold, Opel. Dead of winter. I was sure you’d sit out the winter in some timeless land.”

  “I’ve got business,” she said.

  9

  “THERE’S NOTHING more boring than a well-traveled person.”

  The old tub was mounted on the bruised feet of an ambiguous creature, possibly an imperialistic lion. Opel batted some suds off her nose. She wallowed in the hour-old foam, occasionally adding hot water, sinking quickly to her neck whenever she felt a chill in the room.

  “So you’ve got nothing to tell me,” I said.

  “It’s boring. Who cares? People who travel a great deal lose their souls at some point. All these lost souls are up there in the ozone. They get emitted from jet aircraft along with the well-known noxious chemicals. There’s a soul belt up there. People who travel talk about nothing but travel. Before, during and after. This is the world’s worst soap, Bucky. Shit, you come into my apartment and live here and go out shopping and bring back absolute crap in the way of amenities for the body. How’s a girl supposed to stay pretty? Least you can do is come rub my back. There’s a tremendous inner sort of destructiveness to travel talk in the midst of travel. Also too much travel simply isolates people. It narrows them. It makes them boring.”

  I decided to walk into the tub, not bothering to take off my clothes. We splashed around for a while. That sort of thing isn’t fun for long. Opel stepped out of the tub, dried herself and got into bed. I changed clothes and followed. It was probably late afternoon. I was never sure of time while she was there. Alone I lived in the emergency of minutes, in phases of dim compliance with the mind’s turning hand. The room had seasons and I responded to these; it was the only way to evade chaos. I knew the phases. I did not fear the crisis inherent in time because I borrowed order from it, shifting with the systematic light, sitting still in darkness. Now none of this mattered. There was a mind besides my own, closing over the room. All need for phases soon vanished, as did all hope of order. We remained in bed a long time, getting up only when necessary. The bed became a shelter within the room. We saw no reason to undress when getting in or to dress when getting out. No one thing kept us there. We immersed ourselves in love and conversation, favoring the latter, ready to settle for the pastels of sex, these milder pleasures being all we could hope to know in our combined quiescence. We lived in bed as old couples rock on porches, without hurry or need, content to blend into benevolent materials, to become, for instance, wood. Even the weather seemed distant, that hard winter pressing less insistently on the window. Opel talked a great deal, delivering herself of observations, conceits and verities. Her more complex monologues were spiral staircases with no ultimate step, just an attractive patch of surreal sky. Other times she inhabited moods of bottomless gloom. My own ta
lk was spare, consisting mainly of background noise. Each day passed, detached from time, linked to no causal nexus, an accident of form and consolidation. The room was striped in transitional light. Through morning’s polar tones we huddled under blankets, opening our bodies only to the dark, babbling all the time, eating limp sandwiches and swilling tea. The bed grew in splendor and it began to seem imperative that we remain there. I chose this moment to leave.

  “Dip up some ice cream, will you, Bucky?”

  “I’ve been managing without the refrigerator. But I’ll go out and get some if you want.”

  “What are you doing in that chair?”

  “Change of scene.”

  “Not that it’s not good riddance. This bed isn’t meant for more than one, unless it’s wee folk we’re talking about, and even then they’d better lie still.”

  “Do you need a doctor?” I said.

  “What for?”

  “Nausea and vomiting. Cramps. Back pains. Body tremors. Fevers. Headaches. Coughing spasms. Severe depression.”

  “That sounds more like you than me. You’re the one who looks on the verge. I take medication for my inner organs, to show them I care whether or not they function. I take medication, Bucky. What do you take? You look on the absolute brink. You’re functioning day to day on leftover nervous energy. I take medication. Except when I forget.”

  “Do you want me to go out for some?”

  “Some what?” she said.

  “Ice cream.”

  “Some basic weed to suck up might be nice.”

  “I’d have to get in touch with Hanes. He’d probably have access to just about anything.”

  “Not Hanes for now. All the fun’s gone out of sexual ambiguity. Hanes was never one of my favorite people anyway. Remember how he was always underfoot? A very snaky boy. Sheer snake. Heavy-lidded reptile eyes. But the real reason I don’t like him is because he’s hard to forget. Every so often I find myself thinking of Hanes. I hate people I don’t like who are hard to forget.”

  “And you’re jealous of his heavy-lidded eyes,” I said.

  “True.”

  “You’ve always wanted heavy-lidded eyes.”

  “Too true.”

  “Why did you come back? What kind of business? It’s cold here, Opel. You’re never happy when it’s cold.”

  “I need money, Bucky. Some people offered me an assignment. I’m taking them up on it.”

  “Maybe I can arrange for you to have some money. Whatever you need for now.”

  “No, this is business. I’m here to deal. What I make is mine. There’s a package here, right?”

  “In that trunk.”

  “Have you peeked inside?”

  “I assume it’s dope.”

  “The package contains a raw sampling of what was described to me as the ultimate drug,” she said. “Happy Valley Farm Commune stole this stuff from a research installation out on Long Island. The stuff is new, just been developed, has no trade name. They think it’s some kind of massive-strength product. But really massive. A colossal downer. They’ll know for sure once they get it tested. Happy Valley’s anxious to market the stuff but this is their first dope venture on a large scale and they want to be sure not to fuck things up. They don’t want to operate out front either. They prefer to work through intermediaries and cover people and so on. I don’t want to sound like a gossip columnist of the underground but people have been whispering about this event for weeks now. The dope was taken from a top-secret installation. U.S. Guv. So people figure it’s something vicious, mean and nasty. Something U.S. Guv has been putting together to brainwash gooks or radicals. People are anxious to try it and see. People are agog. They’re convening in out-of-the-way places and whispering to each other. They’re stopping cars on the street and passing the word. Everybody’s anxious to get off on this stuff. If U.S. Guv is involved, the stuff is bound to be a real mind-crusher. Anyway that’s the consensus. People are agog. It’s the dawning of the age of God knows what.”

  “Your job is to put the stuff in hollowed-out chocolate bunnies and take a plane to Miami.”

  “I’ve advanced,” she said. “I’m bargaining agent for Happy Valley. I have bargaining powers. I wheel and deal. I don’t just hang around the principal parties trying to win Brownie points. There’ll be a courier all right but it won’t be me. What happens is we’ll take the stuff to wherever Dr. Pepper is located these days. Latest word is Dr. Pepper doesn’t travel anymore. There’s an obvious risk in going to a registered lab so we go to Pepper. Then I haggle for his services. He tells me what the product’s chemical capacities are, whether he can manufacture it in sufficient quantities, how much street value it has. So on, so on, so on. Eventually Happy Valley wants to set up a network of wholesalers, retailers and distributors. But for right now what they need is a technical consultant.”

  “I’ve been hearing about Dr. Pepper for years,” I said. “But never set eyes on the man.”

  “Some men are legends in their own time. Dr. Pepper is merely a rumor. He’s without a doubt the scientific genius of the underground. But very elusive and very crazy and even wears disguises of various kinds. Happy Valley is almost sure they know where he is. Once the location is verified they’ll assign a man to me and he’ll come walking up the stairs in order to knock on this very door. I will hand him the product and off we’ll go to grandmother’s house. When the job’s all done I will prepare and submit an expense voucher. This is known as finalizing the details of remuneration. Just so you don’t think it’s all so smooth, I might mention there are two distinct factions at Happy Valley, Certain amount of dissension. That’s one of the reasons the product ended up here. The one thing they agree on is your integrity. The true blue example of your life and work, ha ha. They refuse to come in direct contact with you. They consider it an infringement of the worst sort. They’re believe it or not very apologetic about involving you in this thing and only did it as a gesture of homage. They have a quaint sense of theater, like all barbarians.”

  “Time being you just sit and wait, is that it?”

  “I don’t speak till I’m spoken to,” she said. “I just sprawl out in bed and wait for events to take shape.”

  “In other words you don’t initiate.”

  “I maintain.”

  “You maintain while others initiate.”

  “The operative is the one who initiates.”

  “And eventually there’ll be a transaction.”

  “It depends on the operative. The operative is also the intermediary. Both of them get their instructions from the comptroller. I just sit here until somebody turns up at the door. A tall laconic man with a scar. No, a hip black business-type, that’s what I want. One of those purple Cadillac freaks. Stoned behind the wheel of a bulletproof limousine with silver and gold brocade upholstery. A slow-motion sprinter, that’s what I want, neatly spaced on your better-grade euphoriants. I want to carry a Mark Cross briefcase and travel in a purple Caddy.”

  “Would Happy Valley have blacks working for them?”

  “The boundaries are getting indistinct. You never know. Where you’ve got profit motive the possibilities are endless. But in other ways the lines are getting thicker and straighter. So you never know.”

  “This business about privacy. What do you know about that?”

  Opel took a long breath, obviously bored by the prospect of delivering an interpretation.

  “Happy Valley thinks privacy is the essential freedom this nation, country or republic offered in the beginning. They think you exemplify some old idea of men alone with the land. You stepped out of your legend to pursue personal freedom. There is no freedom, according to them, without privacy. The return of the private man, according to them, is the only way to destroy the notion of mass man. Mass man ruined our freedoms for us. Turning inward will get them back. Revolutionary solitude. Turn inward one and all. Isolate yourself mentally, spiritually and physically, on and on, world without end. Sustain your privacy wi
th aggressive self-defense.”

  “Killer,” I said. “Killer ideas. Heavier than cotton candy. Puts me in the mood to read something. About time I read something. What do you have in the house that I can read?”

  “What do you want to read about? People, places or things?”

  “Things,” I said.

  “Why not people, creepo?”

  “I’m not very interested in human relationships.”

  “Get behind some coke, Bucky. Shit, if you’re interested in reading about things, you might as well take a little sniffy now and again. In the long run that’s where thingness lies. I met a track star in Dakar. Australian. There to compete in the games. I don’t know what games he meant. He kept saying the games. Here for the games. Compete in the games. He gave me some nothing dope. Whatever athletes use. Zero effect. Stepped on about forty times. This is funny. Let me tell you this. I’m sitting in his room waiting and waiting. The games. Here for the games. Compete in the games. Outside the streets are full of lepers. I’m waiting and waiting and waiting.”

  She went on with the story. It seemed to take hours. I sat in my chair and Fenig paced his floor. This was a perfectly acceptable sonic environment. It was as though tapes of remixed sounds had been run through a computer to extend their frequency range. There was a consoling remoteness to sound now. It lapped across the room in wave-shaped bands, touching nothing. What was said existed on a plane behind the words themselves. Opel was a lump in the bed. I drifted around the room, returning eventually to the circular chair, happy to dwell in the syntonic dome of well-engineered voices.