Fly Me Read online

  “I really think we can convince them,” Billy says, “to let you walk away, but not until after this last one.”

  “I don’t want to do it,” Suzy says.

  “It’s just…not really one of the options. They have this way of doing things, they’re not—”

  “Don’t say ‘they’ again.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve been talking about ‘them’ and ‘they’ for seven fucking months. I’m not working for ‘they’ anymore.”

  “One run.”

  “Do you get turned in, too? Is that why you’re so concerned?”

  “I will be turned in, almost certainly, but that’s more of an implicit threat. What is being said about you is less vague.”

  “I want to meet ‘they.’ I want to say things to ‘they’ in person.”

  “I don’t think that’s really possible.”

  “Of course it’s possible.”

  “It’s just not gonna happen. The whole point is to stay a couple layers removed. That’s the whole point of me.”

  “Well, that broke down tonight,” Suzy says. “‘They’ want something that only I can provide. If ‘they’ want it bad enough, tell them we’re gonna meet in person to discuss formally. I don’t want anyone coming after me. I don’t want any threats lingering over my head. If I agree to do this one, then I want to get an assurance from ‘they.’ I want to get on with things and never hear about it again. Everybody else gets something out of this, but I’m the only one really putting my ass on the line.”

  Billy’s body hasn’t moved, has it? Did they begin in the same physical relation to each other that they’re in right now—Suzy close to the kitchenette and Billy near the door? Or did they swap positions at some point? Suzy can hear the filament in the lightbulb buzzing like a low E string. Has it been ten minutes or an hour?

  “I’ll ask him,” Billy says, breaking the silence.

  “What?”

  “I said, I’ll ask him.”

  “Him?”

  “You said no more ‘they.’ And it’s just one guy. You know that.”

  “I most certainly don’t.”

  “I’ve told you all along.”

  “Seriously don’t patronize me. All along it’s been this army of drug spooks, hidden in plain sight. Don’t take the wrong breath, or, Suzy, they’ll…”

  “I think I can go to him with this. He might balk entirely, but I think he wants whatever it takes to get this one done. He’s mentioned maybe meeting you before anyway. Not as El Jefe, you know, but, like, as a normal person. Thought about taking one of your flights.”

  “One guy.”

  “Maybe he has taken your flights. Maybe he’s a regular. I wouldn’t know.”

  The movie plays in reverse—seven months of passengers’ faces in rewind. From that suited pair she thought she recognized from Sela, back to the man who dug his wedding ring into her hand on that return from the very first run. She’s been monitored this whole time, hasn’t she? Every step on every flight. Strangers watching her ass tock between the aisle seats. A South American drug lord keeping proximate tabs on his cargo.

  How is she not dead yet? That’s what Suzy’s thinking as Billy moves to the door. How—with all these men in the world ready to slit her throat, silent and solitary at the gas station convenience store and the foot of her apartment stairs—is she still breathing?

  “I’ll ask him tomorrow,” Billy says with his back turned to the room. And before the door snaps into the frame, he adds: “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  Suzy wakes up in darkness. It’s the next day or the day after. The same tar at the edges of the frame. She checks the clock and it’s not yet six. Since forcing her tears at home, she hasn’t been able to stop. A wet pillow and a gummy mouth. She lies there quaking until she detects the neon through the blinds, the first sign of the east’s faithful imposition on the west.

  It is so cold. Forty degrees at the beach, the thermometer on the landing says. Balmy by comparison with Schuyler, but somehow chillier in context, against expectation. She’s not flying today, but she’s up and anxious. She brews some coffee, swallows a handful of uncooked oatmeal. She notices a stack of books at the edge of the sofa, Mike’s books. Mike left Schuyler early because he’d heard Reverend Jones was supposed to make an appearance at the L.A. temple. Though Suzy and Mike haven’t made any plans to see each other, Suzy figures he should be around. She gathers up the books. Updike: Rabbit Redux. Stegner: Angle of Repose. Brautigan: The Abortion. She hasn’t cracked the latter pair, but she feels guilty about not having finished the Rabbit book. When is the last time she finished anything? Actually brought it over the line? Hers was a life of finish lines for so long, and then it wasn’t.

  She sits on the couch in the reflection of the foil-colored fog. The light attaches itself to objects in its immediate presence—the coffee table, the lamp, the stack of books. A blanket of light wrapping her up roundly like the orb of a perfume cloud. It’s enough light to read by, and she picks up Rabbit and thumbs open at the dog-ear. Skeeter. She remembers the name. Skeeter, Jill, Nelson, Rabbit. Sharing a home, Rabbit’s home. Skeeter, young black Vietnam vet; Jill, young white runaway; Rabbit, oafy former athlete whose wife, Janice, stepped out on him; Nelson, Rabbit’s middle schooler. Rabbit, who lets himself get caught up in it all, who lets the ’60s into his living room, literally. The four under one roof together—Rabbit sleeping with Jill, Jill sleeping with Skeeter. Why did Suzy put it down? It had grown soft in the middle. Overuse of the word cunt. It had all grown redundant. She finishes a second mug of coffee and promises herself she won’t lift her eyes until it’s through, until she finishes something. And then the house catches fire. The white girl gets burned alive, the black boy gets framed, Janice gets traded up on, comes back through again. A story at its end right where it started.

  Suzy feels happy to have turned over the last page, feels excitable, caffeine and proximity to someone else’s life. It is the fourth book she’s read of Updike’s—the earlier Rabbit; the mythical Centaur; the one that came with the Time cover, Couples—and she feels like she understands the basic rap: once-in-a-century stylist, convinced that fucking is the only point to life. She remembers the way Janice’s mouth was described in Rabbit, Run, a book she read as a junior in high school, too young really to form a stamped opinion, except toward a phrase she’s never forgotten: Janice’s mouth described as a “slot.” When she first read it, the word cooled the fluid in her spinal column, and it does so again now.

  What does Mike even mean when he recommends new books to her? What does he intend to say to her through them? She used to love opening a new book and racing through the pre-story pages behind the cover—the title page, the Library of Congress filing codes, the table of contents, and the dedication—and then accelerating through the first few paragraphs, playing like a skeptical book editor. Judging. Assessing, critically. Even if she hasn’t enjoyed reading as much lately, she’s at least enjoying having read this one. She considers the two other books but can’t muster the interest. She picks up her skateboard and rolls herself over to Mike’s.

  He’s home, she can tell by the lights. Because she’s walked in on Mike alone countless times, it doesn’t feel as impactful when only he comes to the door, when there’s all Mike and no Grace. He cracks the door and it catches on a chain.

  “Oh, hey, Suz, gimme a second.”

  As he opens the door, it’s made clear he’s wearing boxers and tube socks and no shirt, and she realizes she’s somehow seen him shirtless only on the beach. He’s moved the papers from his office out onto the living room table. The dishes are piled up in the sink, and there’s a pot of water on the stove top. He doesn’t act surprised to see her.

  “Heeyyy…,” she says, an elongated note, as she takes in the mess. “How have you been doing?”

  “Uh, okay. Okay. Listen to this. Listen to this from the Pynchon, the one I was telling you about a while ago, the one that was written here in Sela.
It’s rockets and probably a hundred characters so far, but he’s got a glassblower. How ’bout that.” He spends half a minute in silence, flipping, scanning, flipping, scanning. Suzy stands in the center of the room, and the whole thing takes long enough for her to become aware of her posture, aware of the force of gravity on her neck and shoulders.

  “Okay, the glassblower. ‘Darkness invades the dreams of the glassblower,’” he reads. “‘Of all the unpleasantries his dreams grab in out of the night air, an extinguished light is the worst. Light, in his dreams, was always hope: the basic, mortal hope. As the contacts break helically away, hope turns to darkness, and the glassblower wakes sharply tonight crying, “Who? Who?”’”

  “Hmm,” she says.

  “Right?”

  “I don’t totally follow, I guess, but that’s cool there’s glass stuff.”

  “Don’t go all Grace on me—you get it.”

  “Okay…” She stands taller. “What about your other things, then? How’s Jones?”

  “I, uh, I still haven’t found him. He didn’t show. But I’m gonna spend a bunch of time with his congregation in Bakersfield now. He might not be there still, but there are people who are closer to him than these folks in L.A. People who have been with him longer. It’ll be good for the story either way.”

  “Have they converted you yet?”

  “Some of it makes sense.”

  “Please.”

  “I just…need him for this thing. I’m…I’m out of time.”

  Suzy takes a couple cautious steps toward him.

  “You okay otherwise?” she says.

  “I mean, I guess I’m trying to stay busy. What have you got?” He gestures to the books under her arm.

  “Just returning these,” she says.

  “You like ’em?”

  “I only read the Updike.”

  “You can keep them as long as you want.”

  “Just…before I forget, I guess. Before I lose them or something.”

  “What’d you think?”

  “I liked it more than the first one, the first Rabbit one.”

  “Me too. He’s fast, man. He just gets it all down. Nails what it’s like to be living now. When was that set—summer and fall of ’69, right? And it’s out in ’71?”

  “What it’s like to be living now, as a man,” Suzy clarifies.

  “I guess. But everything else, too.”

  “Do you really relate to what’s in there?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I just mean, it doesn’t much resemble this here,” she says, a thumb over her shoulder to the ocean.

  “It’s high-order literature.”

  Slot, Suzy thinks. Janice, you dumb cunt with that stupid slot of a mouth.

  “He’s who Updike would’ve been if he hadn’t gone to Harvard,” Mike says.

  “Fat, sad, war hawk. Deserter of child and wife,” Suzy says.

  “He came home, and then she left him.”

  “Keeper of an underage concubine. Teenage runaway dies ’cause of him.”

  “Look, this is one of the best we’ve got. It’s only degrees of agreeing. There’s a hierarchy of taste, ya know? You don’t have to love it, but you have to recognize it’s genius, you have to…” Suzy stops listening. She actually kind of likes Rabbit. Soft spot, he’s so pathetic. Rabbit’s so far from right he can’t even find a full wrong, either. The more she thinks about it just now, the more she realizes she has no problem with the book. She pities Rabbit, but she’s growing to despise Mike. Mike and his stumbly, self-asserted “hierarchy of taste”; at least Rabbit lives in the lift of Updike’s language.

  “And besides,” Mike is still talking, “just trust me, he does get what it’s like to be a man.”

  She smiles and imagines Mike back in the Midwest. Working the Linotype. Falling in with a teenager. Who Mike would’ve been if he hadn’t gone to Columbia. That’s certainly what he’s getting at, isn’t it? You tragic man, she thinks. What was my sister doing?

  “Well, here are these, too.” She places the books on the table.

  “You really didn’t even read the Brautigan?”

  This is getting to be a waste of time.

  “No,” she says, “I’ve been a little busy. My dad got some good news, by the way.”

  “This book is basically made out of stuff you like. Books and libraries, a reasonably realistic affair.”

  “Cut the tumor right out, no sign of spread, at least nothing they can’t get with more chemo. Might even walk again one day.”

  “Know what just occurred to me? As I said that about books and libraries—know what’s different about books and libraries than any other kind of twentieth-century culture consumption? You put out a film, right? The only other films you’re competing with for business are the other films in the theater that night, right? The other films that opened that weekend, or that have been kicking around for the last month, or maybe that are showing at some special midnight thing. In a bookstore, though, you put out a new book, it has to compete with not just every other book that came out that week, and month, and year—but with every book that’s ever been published. It’s Updike versus Tolstoy. It’s Brautigan versus Kafka and Hemingway. I mean, those are stacked odds. I guess that’s why I try to be such a champion of these guys, why I find it so impressive. You can’t just be better than the other guy publishing this month, right? I think that’s what I like about Jones, too. He understands this idea. It’s him versus John the Baptist. It’s him versus Henry the Eighth. He’ll take the Bible and throw it on the floor. He’ll do it almost every time he preaches, he’ll say: ‘This black book has held down you people for two thousand years. It has no power.’ Men in the contemporary moment taking on the received wisdom of the ages. Asking of it whether this is as good as we can do. You dig?”

  “‘You dig?’”

  “You shoulda read The Abortion. It bums me out that you didn’t. You sure you don’t want to keep it?”

  “Haven’t read The Hunters yet, either.” She says it to be cruel.

  “Well, that’s a major bummer, too. Just read them both. Keep The Abortion.”

  “Feel like I can learn something from it?”

  “Can’t hurt to read another book. Can’t hurt to keep the education going. There’s a Tijuana abortion that’ll make anyone think twice about getting that kind of work done.”

  “TJ, huh?”

  “I can’t really believe girls your age—girls your age and younger—go down there sometimes. What a fucked-up business.”

  She wants him to say something. Just one more thing, one more push. She’s got the high swell in her throat, the other night with Billy all over again, but different, the room sucking in toward its principals, heating her cheeks, little bends that might lead to a break.

  “What?” he says. “Why are you looking at me like that? You never got one, did you?”

  She can’t believe he’s obliged her request. She can’t believe he’s taken it there.

  “It’s none of your business whether I have or haven’t, but I’m relieved that it’s an option.”

  “That’s some dangerous bullshit. I’d never let anyone come near my girl with a fucking coat hanger.”

  Slot, she thinks.

  “What if I told you—”

  “Don’t,” he says, plugging his fingers into his ears, “I actually don’t want to hear it, seriously.”

  “What if I told you I knew someone who went to Tijuana for an abortion within the last year? And that it worked out pretty all right for her.”

  He drops his hands to his hips. “Are you serious? With who?”

  “You think it’s me?”

  His eyes hold unblinking on her. Her view of him binoculars and she sees his face, really sees it, for the first time since the plane crash, broken and irretrievable. The whole thing has passed over him and slashed his face in half. It’s broken his cheekbones and his jaw, flattened his nose. His eyes fall out of his skull, attached only
to the vines of the optic nerves—that’s what it looks like to Suzy. It’s what it looked like when he found out Grace had been with J.P. Over the past month and a half his face has stitched back up, healed over, but it’s incapable of reconstructing itself back to where it was before the news. The lights in his eyes had gone out.

  A lump rides his throat from his collarbone to his chin. He still hasn’t blinked; he’s waiting for her to tell him about Grace.

  “With Billy,” she says. “I went with Billy.”

  “Oh, Suzy,” he says, his face soft with relief. “Did Grace go with you?”

  “No,” she says. “Grace knew but only Billy went with.”

  “She didn’t tell me. No offense, but I kind of can’t believe she didn’t tell me.”

  “Grace was good at keeping secrets,” Suzy says.

  The water’s boiling now and Mike moves to the kitchen to crack some pasta into the pot. Breakfast spaghetti. The world is happening again in the apartment. She hates Mike for making her lie, and for most of what’s come out of his mouth in the last five minutes.

  She moves to the door with an “All right” and doesn’t turn back at first to say anything else.

  “‘Our history,’” Mike says, “‘is an aggregate of last moments.’” Suzy stops at the door and looks over her shoulder. He has a wooden spoon in one hand and Gravity’s Rainbow in the other, book hand stretched to cradle the width of the reclining spine. He waves the novel at her. “That’s another one from in here.”

  Her feet carry her through the door. She doesn’t want to be read to anymore, doesn’t want to wonder about meaning in meaningless places. She should get home to wait by the phone anyway—to see if today’s the day of the meeting. She hates Billy for making her wait by the phone. She hates Billy for trapping her between another run and a prison sentence. She hates Grace for dying.