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This is what Iris Murdoch's earlier fiction was working towards -- a synthesis of the traditional and the revolutionary. Under the Net, her first, looked like an anti-novel, and The Flight from the Enchanter was highly systematized and somewhat artificial. The Sandcastle, despite its overlays of symbolism, read much more like a conventional novel. The Bell is thoroughly realistic and yet crammed with symbols which sit easily within the plot. The most potent of these is the bell of the title. This is named for the Archangel Gabriel and it is inscribed Ego Vox Sum Amoris; it lies drowned in a lake in the grounds of a convent, the legend being that it got there miraculously. It is the still centre of a complex of human problems, the chief of which is summed up in the character of Michael Meade, the founder of a lay religious community on the family estate, where the convent also is situated. Meade has suffered a conflict between his homosexual tendencies and his desire to become a priest; the community he has founded is intended to be a way out of the conflict, a compromise and a compensation, but he learns the truth of the maxim: "to leave the world is not to leave the temptations of the world." There are other characters, all faced with the need to probe the limits of personal morality, to ponder the best means of ordering one's life -- by abiding by essential rules or following the Under the Net way of existential living, so that one is ruled by "the situation itself". Dora and Toby, intruders into the community, are impelled to drag the bell out of the lake and then to ring it: it is the voice of love, but it is also the cast metal of self-realisation. It is more besides, since it is not in the nature of a poetic symbol to be capable of easy interpretation: there are levels of unconscious myth and magic to which it appeals. This is an intensely poetic novel and beautifully organized.

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Mannix looked up from his shoe and at the Colonel. "You're goddam right, Jack, we're going to make it," he said. "My company's going to make it if I have to drag in their bodies." There was a tone in his voice that Culver had never heard before.Suddenly the Colonel's flat voice broke through the stillness: "All right, Billy, let's saddle up."'"Tallion saddle up!" The Major's words were eager and shrill, became multiplied down the long mile. "Smoking lamp's out!" The blue cloud dissolved on the air, the gnats descended in a swarm and the voices passed on—Saddle up, saddle up—while the battalion rose to its feet, not all at once but in a steady gradual surge, like rows of corn snapping back erect after the passing of a wind. Mannix got to his feet, began to sideslip in a cloud of dust down the embankment toward his company directly below. It was at the head of the column, right behind the command group. Culver, moving himself now down the hill, heard Mannix's shout. It rang out in the dusk with deliberate authority, hoarse blunt command: "All right, H & S Company, saddle up, saddle up! You people get off your asses and straighten up!" Culver passed by him on his way to the command group: he stood surrounded by a cloud of gnats, hulking enormously above the company, hands balanced lightly on his hips, poised forward badgering the men like some obsessed, rakehell Civil War general before a battle: "All right, you people, we're gonna walk thirty-six miles tonight and I mean walk! First man I see drop out's gonna get police duty for two weeks, and that goes for everybody. You think I'm kidding you wait and see. There's gonna be trucks going in for those that can't make it but I don't want to see anyone from H & S Company climbing on! If an old man with as much flab as I've got can make it you people can too . . ." There was a note, almost, of desperation in his voice. Culver, passing along the line of bedraggled, mournful-looking men, so few of whom looked like fabled marines, heard the voice rise to a taut pitch close to frenzy; it was too loud, it worried Culver, and he wished to caution him: no longer just admonishing the men to a simple duty, it was the voice of a man wildly fanatic with one idea: to last. "I want to hear no bitching out of you people! Take it easy on the water. You get shinsplints or blisters you see the corps-man, don't come crying to me. When we get in I want to see all of you people . . ." Not because the hike was good or even sensible, Culver thought, but out of hope of triumph, like a chain-gang convict who endures a flogging without the slightest whimper, only to spite the flogger. Culver joined the command group, heard the Colonel say to the Major: "Looks like H & S Company's going to make it en masse, Billy." It was just as Culver feared, for although his words were pleasant enough, his face, regarding Mannix for a brief moment, had a look of narrow scrutiny, as if he, too, had detected in the Captain's tone that note of proud and willful submission, rebellion in reverse. But there was no emotion in his voice as he turned quickly, with a glance at his watch, and said, "Let's move out, Billy."They started out without delay. A jeep, its headlamps lit, preceded them. The Colonel, in the lead, abreast of the Major and just ahead of Culver, plunged off into the deep dust of the road. He walked with a slinky-hipped, athletic stride, head down between his shoulders and slightly forward, arms bent and moving methodically; nothing broke the rhythm of his steps—ruts in the road or the deeply grooved tire tracks—and Culver became quickly amazed, and rather appalled, at the pace he was setting. It was the pace of a trained hiker—determined, unhesitant, much closer to a trot now than a walk—and only a few minutes passed before Culver was gasping for breath. Sand lay thick in the road, hindering a natural step. They had not gone more than a couple of hundred yards; already he felt sweat trickling down his forehead and beneath his arms. For a moment fear surged up in him unnaturally, and a crazy panic. He had been afraid of the march before, but his fear had been abstract and hazy; now so quickly fatigued, in what seemed a matter of seconds, he felt surely (as Mannix had predicted) that he'd be unable to last the first hour. A panicky wash of blood came to his face and he struggled for breath, wanting to cry out—it passed. His mind groped for reason and the terror receded: once he adjusted to the shock of this pace, he realized, he'd be all right. Then the panic went away; as it did so, he found himself breathing easier, freed of that irrational fright. The Colonel pushed ahead in front of him with the absolute mechanical confidence of a wound-up, strutting tin soldier on a table top. Culver, panting a bit, heard his voice, as calm and unwinded as if he were sitting at a desk somewhere, addressed to the Major: "We shoved off at nine on the dot, Billy. We should make the main road at ten and have a break." "Yes, sir," he heard the Major say, "we'll be ahead of the game." Culver made a calculation then; by the operations map, which he knew so well, that was three and a half miles—a mile farther than the regulation distance for an hour's march. It was, indeed, like running. Pushing on through the sand, he felt a wave of hopelessness so giddy and so incomprehensible that it was almost like exhilaration —and he heard a noise—half-chuckle, half-groan—escape between his labored breaths. Three and a half miles: the distance from Greenwich Village almost to Harlem. In his mind he measured that giddy parade of city blocks, an exhausting voyage even on wheels. It was like twisting a knife in his side but he went on with the mental yardstick—to imagine himself plodding that stretch up the sandless, comfortably receptive pavements of Fifth Avenue, past Fourteenth Street and the bleak vistas of the Twenties and the Thirties, hurrying onward north by the Library, twenty blocks more to the Plaza, and pressing still onward along the green acres of the Park . . . his thoughts recoiled. Three and a half miles. In an hour. With more than thirty-two still to go. A vision of Mannix came swimming back; Culver stumbled along after the dauntless Colonel, thinking, Christ on a crutch.

Malamud is a remarkably consistent writer who has never produced a mediocre novel. I hesitated between The Fixer and God's Grace in making my choice of his best work, but The Fixer is close to pastiche -- it reads like some nineteenth-century Russian novel by an unknown master, superbly translated -- and God's Grace, with its vision of the end of things in a nuclear war, its talking chimpanzees and the Voice of God, is more of a fable than a novel. Malamud never forgets that he is an American Jew, and he is at his best when posing the situation of the Jew in urban American society. Like Isaac Bashevis Singer, who writes in Yiddish, he is drawn to the older Yiddish literature, in which, without surprise, we see the supernatural -- sometimes disguised as surrealism -- closing in, the world of objects dissolving, the very identities of people becoming unsure. In The Assistant we seem to be assisting at a miraculous conversion. The setting is a New York slum full of very poor Jews. A goy hoodlum beats up a grocer, Morris Sober, but is touched by remorse when Bober's injuries prevent his carrying on his business. The remorse is minimal and does not lead to a positive desire to become a good man. He backslides, he remains himself, but somehow the workings of what we can only call divine grace leads him to a new life signalized by his becoming an orthodox Jew, complete with circumcision. The new life, the road to a kind of sainthood, is approached, as always in Malamud, in terms of irony and naturalism: this writer is devoid of either conventional piety or sentimentality. He is always profoundly convincing. "http://www.shoptoryburch.org/tory-burch-flip-flops-c-3.html">Tory Burch Flip Flops it is sure to be the best.You can carry or using a mobile walked in the street. Tory Burch Flats Sale all the characteristics of this shoes.Tory Burch Flats Sale bring you a new feeling about the famous brand Cheap Tory Burch Wedges,this shoes will be your favourite once owning it.Rubber sole.Breezy, abundantly styled thong,these Tory Burch Ballet Flats are a affectionate of summertime or leisure time essential. the beloved Tory Burch Heels are on hot sale now. Black colored thong sandals. You may be attracted by its innotative style and its comfort.five fingers bikila the bright camo blue is very popular among the more out going individuals!Generally coined with the byword preppy-boho, the bland includes chichi and beautiful versions of sandals, flip-flops, wedges, heels, flats, and tory burch bootieA Cheap Tory Burch Boots basic, the rubber flip flop comes in our signature 3T print and logo detail on thong.Simple and fashion!You can carry or using a mobile walked in the street. Keep in mind that this is one of the things that most of the women dream of.Tory Burch is an attainable, luxury, lifestyle brand defined by classic American sportswear with an eclectic sensibility, which embodies the personal style and spirit of its co-founder and creative director.Tory Burch Reva Flats is a brand that does not carry shoes only, but also other products like Tory Burch, and others. Keep in mind that this is one of the things that most of the women dream of.You would love them very much.Tory Burch Sandals is a brand that does not carry shoes only, but also other products like apparel, bags, and others.

 

That evening at twilight, just before the beginning of the march, Mannix found a nail in his shoe. "Look at it," he said to Culver, "what lousy luck." They were sitting on an embankment bordering the road. The blue dusk was already scattered with stars, but evening had brought no relief to the heat of the day. It clung to them still, damp and stifling, enveloping them like an overcoat. The battalion, over a thousand men, was ready for the march. It stretched out in two files on either side of the road below them for more than a mile. Culver turned and looked down into Mannix's shoe: sure enough, a nail-end had penetrated the lining at the base of the heel, a sharp pinpoint of torture. Mannix inspected the bottom of his big dirty foot. He pulled off a flake of skin which the nail had already worn away. "Of all the lousy luck," he said, "gimme a band-aid.""It'll wear right through, Al," Culver said, "you'd better get another pair of shoes. Try flattening it out with the end of your bayonet."Mannix hammered for a moment at the nail and then looked up in exasperation. "It won't go all the way. Gimme that band-aid." A rusty spatter of blood he had picked up at noon was still on the sleeve of his dungarees. He had become nervous and touchy. All that afternoon, after they had come back, he had seemed, like Culver, still shaken by the slaughter, still awed, and rather despondent. Finally, he had alternated moments of remote abstraction with quick outbursts of temper. The shock of the explosion seemed to have set something off in him. His mood had become vague and unpredictable, and he was able to shift from sour, uncommunicative gloom to violent anger in an instant. Culver had never seen him quite so cranky before, nor had he ever seen him so testily at odds with his men, to whom he usually had shown the breeziest good will. All afternoon he'd been after them, nagging, bellowing orders—only to fall suddenly into a profound and brooding silence. As he squatted in the weeds eating his evening meal two hours before, he had hardly said a word, except to murmur—irrelevantly, Culver thought—that his company "had better goddam well shape up." It puzzled Culver; the explosion seemed to have stripped off layers of skin from the Captain, leaving only raw nerves exposed.Now he had become fretful again, touchily alert, and his voice was heavy with impatience. He mumbled as he plastered the band-aid on his foot. "I wish they'd get this show on the road. That's the trouble with the Marine Corps, you always stand frigging around for half the night while they think up some grandiose doctrine. I wish to Christ I'd joined the Army. Man, if I'd have known what I was getting in for when I went down to that recruiting office in 1941, I'd have run off at the door." He looked up from his foot and down toward the command group nearly at the head of the column. Three or four officers were clustered together on the road. The Colonel was among them, neat, almost jaunty, in new dungarees and boots. On his head there was a freshly clean utility cap with a spruce uptilted bill and a shiny little silver leaf. At his side he wore 8 pearl-handled .38 revolver, glistening with silver inlay. It was, as usual, loaded, though no one knew why, for he was never known to shoot it; the general feeling seemed to be that it was his emblematic prerogative, no more an affectation, certainly, than a visored hat encrusted with gilt, or grenades worn at the shoulder. The pistol—like the swagger stick; the nickname; the quizzical, almost tenderly contemplative air of authority—was part of the act, and to be sure, Culver reflected, the act was less offensive, less imperious than it might be. One simply learned soon to believe that the pistol "belonged," just as the name "Old Rocky" belonged; if such an act finally did no harm, if it only flattered his vanity, was the Colonel to be blamed, Culver asked himself, if he did nothing to mitigate the total impression?Mannix watched him, too, watched the Colonel toe at the sand, thumbs hooked rak-ishly in his belt, a thin gentle smile on his face, adumbrated by the fading light: he looked youthful and fresh, nonchalant, displaying the studied casualness of an athlete before the stadium throng, confident of his own victory long before the race begins. Mannix gnawed at the end of a cigar, spat it out viciously. "Look at the little jerk. He thinks he's gonna have us pooped out at the halfway mark—"Culver put in, "Look Al, why don't you do something about that nail? If you told the Colonel he'd let you ride in—" Mannix went fiercely on, in a husky whisper: "Well he's not. He's a little sadist, but he's not gonna have Al Mannix crapped out. I'll walk anywhere that son of a bitch goes and a mile further. He thinks H & S Company's been doping off. Well, I'll show him. I wouldn't ask him to ride in if I'd been walking over broken glass. I'll—"He paused. Culver turned and looked at him. They were both silent, staring at each other, embarrassed by the common understanding of their gaze. Each turned away; Mannix murmured something and began to tie his shoe. "You're right, Al," Culver heard himself saying. It seemed it was almost more than he could bear. Night was coming on. As in a stupor, he looked down the road at the battalion, the men lounging along the embankments with their rifles, smoking and talking in tired, subdued voices, smoke rising in giant blue clouds through the dusk, where swarms of gnats rose and fell in vivacious, panicky flight. In the swamp, frogs had begun a brainless chorale; their noise seemed perfectly suited to his sense of complete and final frustration. It was almost more than he could bear. So Mannix had felt it, too: not simply fear of suffering, nor exhaustion, nor the lingering horror, which gripped both of them, of that bloody wasteland in the noonday heat. But the other: the old atavism that clutched them, the voice that commanded, once again, you will. How stupid to think they had ever made their own philosophy; it was as puny as a house of straw, and at this moment—by the noise in their brains of those words, you will—it was being blasted to the winds like dust. They were as helpless as children. Another war, and years beyond reckoning, had violated their minds irrevocably. For six years they had slept a cataleptic sleep, dreaming blissfully of peace, awakened in horror to find that, after all, they were only marines, responding anew to the old commands. They were marines. Even if they were old. Bank clerks and salesmen and lawyers. Even if, right now, they were unutterably tired. They could no more not be determined to walk the thirty-six miles than they could, in the blink of an eye, turn themselves into beautiful nymphs. Culver was afraid he wasn't going to make it, and now he knew Mannix was afraid, and he didn't know what to feel—resentment or disgust—over the fact that his fear was mingled with a faint, fugitive pride.

Hector frowned, trying to figure that out. "This ain't on the books — that what you think? Naw — families belong together, is all. Just 'cause I couldn't save my own marriage don't mean I can't try to help, does it?" Under the influence of, by then, quarts of a house specialty known as Battista's Revenge, Hector went off mooning about his ex-wife Debbi, who during the divorce proceedings, on the advice of some drug-taking longhair crank attorney, had named the television set, a 19-inch French Provincial floor model, as corespondent, arguing that the Tube was a member of the household, enjoying its own space, fed out of the house budget with all the electricity it needed, addressed and indeed chatted with at length by other family members, certainly as able to steal affection as any cheap floozy Hector might have met on the job. As long as she'd happened, moreover, to've destroyed this particular set with a frozen pot roast right in the middle of a "Green Acres" rerun that Hector had especially looked forward to viewing, possibly thereby rendering moot her suit, he decided in the heat of his own emotions to make a citizen's arrest, charging Debbi with Tubal homicide, since she'd already admitted it was human. In the movie of his life story, with Marie Osmond as Debbi and no one but Ricardo Montalban as Hector, it would be one of those epic courtroom battles over deep philosophical issues. Is the Tube human? Semihuman? Well, uh, how human's that, so forth. Are TV sets brought alive by broadcast signals, like the clay bodies of men and women animated by the spirit of God's love? There'd be this parade of expert witnesses, professors, rabbis, scientists, with Eddie Albert in an Emmy-nominated cameo as the Pope. ... All just dreams of what might have been — in non-Tubal "reality," both actions were thrown out as frivolous, and they got a simple no-fault divorce, on the condition that Hector immediately enter a Tubal Detoxification program.

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Deeply tanned customers in dimly white tropical suits, with straw hats on the back of their heads, danced lewdly with hot-eyed packages in spike heels and tight bright flowered dresses, while beyond the seething blur of flame and parrot colors, sinister creatures, wrapped objects of unusual shape passing among them, bargained in the shadows. They were all yuppies on a theme tour, from places like Torrance and Reseda.She recognized Hector right away, even after all the years, but the sight didn't raise her spirits. He looked like shit — run-down, congested in every system of circulation, appearing to her as at the edge of a circle of light, out of the frozen dark of years in service, of making deals and breaking them, betrayed himself, tortured, torturing back . . . long-term ravages . . . He ought to've broken by now — what kept him going? Somebody he loved, some drug habit, simple stubborn denial? She breathed his tobacco aura, withstood his crooked jovial born-to-lose laugh. So this was who he'd become — who, at least through her lack of surprise or any but reflex sorrow, she, down at her own modest level, must have become as well.Just to get it done, she asked, "Is this official? Do you have any backup from DEA or Justice on any of this, or are you working some private angle?"Hector began to pop and roll his eyes, as if working up to a full-scale freakout. Back at the Tubaldetox he'd had women talking to him like this all the time, another reason to escape, obliged never to scream back at them, as this earned him demerits that would even further postpone his release date. How he would have preferred violent body contact, shock, the recoil of a weapon, some scream of aggro, some chance just to drum his heels on something, but his options these days didn't even include teethgrinding. Once suave and master of himself, the fed was now having some trouble "trying," as Marty Robbins once put it in a different context, "to stay in the saddle."Frenesi felt a little anxious for him. "Hector, you ever just think about beaming up, getting yourself out of this?""Not till I've got you and Brock Vond in a two-shot, smiling.""Oh dear. No — Hector, it isn't 'This Is Your Life' here, in fact it could turn out the opposite.. . . Don't you know anymore what Brock is? Those quacks at the Tubaldetox have got you so Tubed out you can't even think straight.""Listen to me!" screaming through his lower teeth like a lounge comic doing Kirk Douglas. She foresaw his attempt to grab her by the lapels and slipped in ahead of his, yes definitely looser reflexes, on her feet, turned and planted, telling herself I'm ready. Here she was with a homicidal narc having a midlife breakdown, without, fool, having remembered to bring anything tonight more threatening than a purse-size can of hair spray. But Hector, exhausted, folded back into the rattan chair, squeaking and creaking."You're an honest soldier, Frenesi, and we been out on so many of the same type calls over the years. . . ." Here came some sentimental pitch, delivered deadpan — cop solidarity, his problems with racism in the Agency, her 59￠ on the male dollar, maybe a little "Hill Street Blues" thrown in, plus who knew what other licks from all that Tube, though she thought she recognized Raymond Burr's "Robert Ironside" character and a little of "The Captain" from "Mod Squad." It was disheartening to see how much he depended on these Tubal fantasies about his profession, relentlessly pushing their propaganda message of cops-are-only-human-got-to-do-their-job, turning agents of government repression into sympathetic heroes. Nobody thought it was peculiar anymore, no more than the routine violations of constitutional rights these characters performed week after week, now absorbed into the vernacular of American expectations. Cop shows were in a genre right-wing weekly TV Guide called Crime Drama, and numbered among their zealous fans working cops like Hector who should have known better. And now he was asking her to direct, maybe write, basically yet another one? Her life "underground," with a heavy antidrug spiel. Wonderful."Your story could be an example to others," Hector was purring, trying for a Latin Heartthrob effect, "an inspiration.""Get them off drugs, right? Hector, Hector. I grew up hearing too much of this all the time, one movie pitch after another, my mother was a reader, then a story editor, even a writer, at first I thought they were all real, all I had to do was wait a little and I'd get to see every one of them on a screen someday." Sasha had finally wised her up, likening it to one sperm cell out of millions reaching and fertilizing an egg, a comparison by then that Frenesi could relate to, though she felt the same shock and depression as when she'd found out that babies come not from Heaven but from Earth. Things now, for a moment, went likewise a little hollow. She'd brought to this rendezvous some wispy 2 or 3 percent hope that Hector might not be crazy. Though he and Brock both nominally worked for the Meese Police, just handicapping personalities, playing percentages, she'd have been willing to bet on some support from the DEA man — but now, outside again after all these years, back with the rest of the American Vulnerability, she could see, desolate, how anytime soon, in the cold presence of trouble already on the tracks, better she keep her change in her mitten than molest herself calling Hector for any help. He reminded her of herself when she was in 24fps, inside some wraparound fantasy that she was offering her sacrifice at the altar of Art, and worse, believing that Art gave a shit — here was Hector with so many of the same delusions, just as hopelessly insulated, giving up what seemed already too much for something just as cheesy and worthless.

What Hector thought was his edge came about courtesy of an old colleague in the arts of foot-assisted entry, Roy Ibble, now a GS-16 with a yen for regional directorship, who called in from Las Vegas with word that Frenesi and Flash had shown up in town. Without even thinking about it Hector obtained a confiscated Toronado and went ripping all night across the Mojave toward the heavenly city, denial of desert, realm of excess. In the movie it would be a Ferrari, and Hector would be wearing a carefully distressed Nino Cerruti suit and some hyper-cherry A.T.M. Stacey Adams zapos. Liftoff and Triggerman would see to that. Yeah, those guys would get him just about anything these days. He cackled out loud. These days it was Hector who wasn't answering no phone calls, ése.For according to a rumor sweeping the film community, a federal grand jury was convening to inquire into drug abuse in the picture business. A sudden monster surge of toilet flushing threatened water pressure in the city mains, and a great bloom of cold air spread over Hollywood as others ran to open their refrigerator doors more or less all at once, producing this gigantic fog bank in which traffic feared even to creep and pedestrians went walking into the sides of various buildings. Hector assumed parallels were being drawn to back in '51, when HUAC came to town, and the years of blacklist and the long games of spiritual Monopoly that had followed. Did he give a shit? Communists then, dopers now, tomorrow, who knew, maybe the faggots, so what, it was all the same beef, wasn't it? Anybody looking like a normal American but living a secret life was always good for a pop if times got slow — easy and cost-effective, that was simple Law Enforcement 101. But why right now? What did it have to do with Brock Vond running around Vineland like he was? and all these other weird vibrations in the air lately, like even some non-born-agains showing up at work with these little crosses, these red Christer pins, in their lapels, and long lines of civilians at the gun shops too, and the pawnshops, and all the military traffic on the freeways, more than Hector could ever remember, headlights on in the daytime, troops in full battle gear, and that queer moment the other night around 3:00 or 4:00 A.M., right in the middle of watching Sean Connery in The G. Gordon Liddy Story, when he saw the screen go blank, bright and prickly, and then heard voices hard, flat, echoing."But we don't actually have the orders yet," somebody said.

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After a lifetime of kicking other people around, Hector was suddenly here put down among the administered, judged as impaired, sick, and so, somehow, expendable. Time was he'd have blown people away for frustrating him less than this. What was happening to him? He had to believe that he was different, even as months began to creep by — that his release really was in the pipeline, that he really wouldn't be inside for the rest of his life, here along these ever-lengthening, newly branching corridors, with progressively obsolete wall maps of the traffic system posted beneath lights he knew, though staff never admitted it, were being replaced each time with lower-wattage bulbs. As his program went on and his need for video images only deepened, he gathered a charge of anxiety that one day, as he looked in the mirror, discharged in a timeless crystalline episode in which both man and image understood that the only thing in the pipeline anymore was Hector — heading straight down it with only the one, call it less than one, degree of freedom, and no way to get out. But headed where? What kind of "outside world" could they be rehabilitating him for? "You'll like it, Hector," they kept assuring him, even when he didn't ask. Every evening before they got to sit down and eat supper, everybody, holding their mess trays, had to sing the house hymn.All he had for hope — how he fingered it, obsessively, like a Miraculous Medal — was a typed copy, signed by Hector, Ernie Triggerman, and his partner, Sid Liftoff, of an agreement on this movie deal, or, as Ernie liked to say, film project, now stained with coffee and burger grease and withered from handling. Despite his personal savagery, which no one at the 'Tox chose to acknowledge, let alone touch, Hector in these show-biz matters registered as fatally innocent, just a guy from the wrong side of the box office, offering Ernie and Sid and their friends a million cues he wasn't even aware of, terms used wrong, references uncaught, details of haircut or necktie that condemned him irrevocably to viewer, that is, brain-defective, status. Could he, with all the Tube he did, even help himself? Sitting in those breezy, easygoing offices up in Laurel Canyon with the hanging plants and palm-filtered light, everybody smiling, long-legged little bizcochos in leather miniskirts coming in and out with coffee and beers and joints that they lit for you, and coke that they held the spoon for you and shit? was he supposed to sit there like some Florsheim-shoed street narc, taking names down in a daybook? Why not join in the fun?The deal was that Sid Liftoff in his vintage T-Bird had been stopped one recent night on Sunset out west of Doheny, where the cops lurk up the canyon roads waiting to swoop down on targets selected from all the promising machinery exceeding the posted limits below, only to be found, aha! with a lizard-skin etui stuffed with nasal goods under the seat on the passenger side, which to this day he swore had been planted there, probably by an agent of one of his ex-wives. Lawyers arranged for Sid to work off the beef with community service, namely by using his great talents and influence to make an antidrug movie, preferably full-length and for theatrical release. Hector, then attached to the Regional Intelligence Unit of the DEA office in Los Angeles, was assigned as liaison, though RIU work was understood to be punishment for 1811's with dappled histories, and this Hollywood posting, Hector was required to appreciate, was a favor, to be returned one of these nights and in a manner unspecified.But soon enough, Hector's thoughts grew vertiginous, and he began to believe he'd been duked in to some deal, less and less willing to say when, or whether, he acted at the behest of DEA and when not, and neither Ernie nor Sid could quite decide how to ask. "The fucker," Sid told Ernie, at poolside, in confidence, "wants to be the Popeye Doyle of the eighties. Not just the movie, but Hector II, then the network series.""Who, Hector? Nah, just a kid at the video arcade." They discussed the degree of Hector's purity, as then defined in the business, and ended up making a small wager, dinner at Ma Mai-son. Ernie lost. Sid started with the duck-liver paté.

It was a close call, you could see he was torn between coming after me and tryin' to save that bourbon — last I saw as I was running out he was down tryin' to suck what he could up off of the floor, had to keep spittin' out little slivers of Elvis's head — but he looked up at me, and his face was just full of murder, you know that look?"Prairie realized she didn't. . . and then, with a stab of sadness, that Ché did. "So what the fuck," Ché asked softly, "am I supposed to do ? I keep getting these business offers from gentlemen in mega-stretch limos, and some of 'm I think seriously about."The girls had moved along to Macy's, where Ché, smooth and sweatless, was working through the lingerie department with fingers spider-light while Prairie fronted, blocking her from what store cameras they'd managed to locate, keeping up a dizzy teen monologue, boys, recording stars, girlfriends, girl enemies, grabbing items at random, holding them up going "What do you think?" getting salespeople involved in long exchanges about discontinued styles as Ché blithely went on filching and stashing everything in her size that was black or red or both, so invisibly that not even Prairie after all these years could ever see the exact instant of the crime. Meantime, with a special tool swiped from another store, Ché was deftly unclipping the little plastic alarm devices on the garments and hiding them deep in the other merchandise — all at a fairly easy what Brent Musberger might've called level of play, a routine long perfected and usually just for getting warmed up with. But today, instead, they felt already nostalgic, shivery with autumnal chances for separate ways, so that each came to be performing for the other, as a kind of farewell gift, two grizzled pros, one last caper for old times' sake before moving on. .. .Soon as she was old enough to see out the windshield, Ché had learned to drive, didn't give a shit really about ever being street-legal, not even if she lived to be that old, which it was part of her bad young image to doubt. Times she liked to flirt, times she was out to hurt, it depended. On the freeway she liked to cruise at around 80, weaving and tailgating to maintain her speed. "We are children of the freeway," she sang, fingertips on the wheel, boot on the gas,

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Whenever Ché and Prairie met, it was by way of zigzag and trick routes, almost like they were having an affair, slipping away from PO's or caseworkers, or only steps ahead of the bright attentions of Child Protective Services, not to mention, these days, the FBI. Ché arrived at Noir Center all out of breath, dressed in leather, denim, metal, and calico, with a bazooka rocket bag slung over one wide precise shoulder and her hair today Tenaxed up into this amazing feathery crest, in a blond shade soured to citric."You're all gussied up, girl.""All for you, my little Prairie Flower."Prairie went shivering in with her hands under her friend's arm, while around them, in the uniform commercial twilight, plastic flowed, ones and zeros seethed, legends of agoramania continued. They stopped at a House of Cones, where they eyeballed each other, politely but without mercy, for changes in fat distribution while sucking, with more and less metaphoric attention, on the ice cream in their cones. Back when they were girls, all it ever took was eye contact to topple them into laughter that might go on all day. But Ché's much-valued smiles today were only tight quick Polaroids of themselves.It was her mom's boyfriend again. "At least you have the whole set, you're not a semiperson," Prairie used to mumble."A mom who watches MTV all day and her boyfriend who transforms into Asshole of the Universe anytime he gets to see a inch of teen skin, family of the year for sure, you want it, I can fix you up with Lucky, no prob, just remember to wear somethin' short." And that was back when he was only harassing her, before they'd started fucking. Which when her mom found out about it she never brought up to Lucky's face, turning on Ché instead and blaming her for everything. "Callin' me all this shit, sayin' she wished she never had me . . . ," keenly watching to see how it went over, but Prairie was all sympathy and calming touch. For years they'd had this ongoing seminar on the topic of Moms, a category to which Ché's mother, Dwayna, was not much credit. The tension in the house would rise to an explosive level, with Ché coming on to Lucky, whom she couldn't stand, right in front of her mom just to piss her off, then the uproar would go on all night, with Ché stomping out each time swearing that was it, staying on the loose for weeks, turning for money to more and more desperate shit and the company of some odd young gentlemen, some with runny noses, some with money in their hand, some fresh from the schoolyard and some that played in a band, often in situations hazardous to her health, till the only choice left her was to get popped so Dwayna would come down again and get her out, which she didn't have to but always did. Hugs and tears at the sergeant's desk, cries of "My baby" and "I love you, Mom," Ché would go home, Lucky would leer hello, and the whole cycle would start over, her rap sheet each time picking up new pages."Sure is a good thing you're beautiful," Prairie, the adoring sidekick, mooned.

you're rilly evil?" It didn't help that inside, Prairie liked to imagine herself as just such a figure of luck and grace, no matter what hair, zit, or weight problems might be accumulating in the nonfantasy world. On the Tube she saw them all the time, these junior-high gymnasts in leotards, teenagers in sitcoms, girls in commercials learning from their moms about how to cook and dress and deal with their dads, all these remote and well-off little cookies going "Mm! this rilly is good!" or the ever-reliable "Thanks, Mom," Prairie feeling each time this mixture of annoyance and familiarity, knowing like exiled royalty that that's who she was supposed to be, could even turn herself into through some piece of negligible magic she must've known once but in the difficult years marooned down on this out-of-the-way planet had come to have trouble remembering anymore. When she told Ché about it, as she told her everything, her friend's eyebrows went up in concern."Best forget it, Prair. All looks better 'n it is. Ain't one of these li'l spoiled brats'd even make it through one night at Juvenile Hall.""Just it," Prairie had pointed out, "nobody'll ever send her to no Juvenile Hall, she's gonna live her whole life on the outside."

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THE pasture, just before dawn, saw the first impatient kids already out barefoot in the dew, field dogs thinking about rabbits, house dogs more with running on their minds, cats in off of their night shifts edging, arching and flattening to fit inside the shadows they found. The woodland creatures, predators and prey, while not exactly gazing Bambilike at the intrusions, did remain as aware as they would have to be, moment to moment, that there were sure a lot of Traverses and Beckers in the close neighborhood.Some had chosen to sleep inside their recreational vehicles, others lay out on mattresses in the beds of pickup trucks, a few had packed on further into the woods, and many had pitched tents in the meadows. Presently, as the light came up and birds started in, clock-radio alarms began to kick on in a thickening radio fugue of rock and roll till dawn, Bible interpretation, telephone voices still complaining about yesterday's news. Behind the mountains that climbed from here inland, morning-glory-blue light grew in the sky. Soon toasters and toaster ovens, wood fires, RV kitchen microwaves, gong-size skillets over propane flames, all working on bacon, links, eggs, flapjacks, waffles, hash browns, French toast, and hush puppies, were sending out branching invisible fractals of smell, reaching all over the place, fat smoke, charring spices, toasted bread, just-made coffee. People who'd slept overnight in the woods began to wander in. Blue jays appeared on foraging patrols, shrieking, bullying, scavenging, seagulls of the redwoods. Radio weather reports called for a real scorcher, even down in Vineland after the fog burned off. Younger cousins looked at the sky and into one another's backpacks. Fishermen set off along the creek bed to see what might be up and feeding, and golfers tried to scheme ways to slip off for a quick eighteen holes down at Las Sombras, a genuine links beside the fog-hung coast of Vineland. The marathon crazy eights game in a battered but shined-up Becker Airstream proceeded ageless as generation begetting generation, like a pot-au-feu of nickels, dimes, chips, greenbacks, and nuggets that might have been simmering continuously here since the times of the Little Gold Rush. Elsewhere in camp there were other games, poker, pinochle, dominoes, dice — but it was the Octomaniacs, as they thought of themselves, who as a crowd carried a more coherent look, as if they ought to be wearing matching T-shirts, while among the assortment of semi-strangers in and out of the other games, talent and judgment might vary by orders of magnitude, causing delays, astonishment, and episodes of consanguineous discombobulation.Some were waking up hungry, bottomless-pit, how-come-it's-not-on-the-table-yet style, while others had only to think of a frying egg to feel nauseated till noon. Some needed to take in columns of print from morning papers that weren't there, others coffee from any container that didn't leak, at least not too fast. Many who woke with eye more than stomach hunger stayed as long as they could in sleeping bags or back in camper shells with portable TV sets bootlegged onto the cable out on the highway by ingenious pole-climbing teenagers. Somewhere beyond earshot was the wash of morning traffic down along the freeway they'd come in on, as the workweek began to roll to another finale, though everybody here had taken off early, sometimes weeks early. While some of the bigger kids were dollying in different-sized refrigerators and tunning electric lines back to the nearest outlets, luckier ones got drafted to ride on up into Thanatoid Village to help pack in last-minute supplies as well as have a look at what there might be in the way of mall thrills among this community of the insomniac unavenged.In fact, out of a long memory of strange dawns, this morning in the Shade Creek—Thanatoid Village area would stand forth as an exception. Not only had the entire population actually slept the night before, but they were also now wakening, in reply to a piping, chiming music, synchronized, coming out of wristwatches, timers, and personal computers, engraved long ago, as if for this moment, on sound chips dumped once in an obscure skirmish of the silicon market wars, expedited in fact by Takeshi Fumimota, as part of a settlement with the ever-questionable trading company of Tokkata & Fuji, all playing together now, and in four-part harmony, the opening of J. S. Bach's "Wachet Auf." And not the usual electronic stuff — this had soul, a quantity these troubled folks could recognize. They blinked, they began to turn, their eyes, often for the first time, sought contact with the eyes of other Thanatoids. This was unprecedented. This was like a class-action lawsuit suddenly resolved after generations in the courts. Who remembered? Say, who didn't? What was a Thanatoid, at the end of the long dread day, but memory? So, to one of the best tunes ever to come out of Europe, even with its timing adapted to the rigors of a disco percussion track able to make the bluest Thanatoid believe, however briefly, in resurrection, they woke, the Thanatoids woke.