Americana by Don DeLillo Page A

said.
    The meeting droned on. I watched Warburton’s face. No, I could not have mistaken the flicker of mirth that worked at the corners of his mouth. I settled into the twilight, the lagoon, the mineshaft. A pigeon crossed the window ledge, nodding insanely, a fat prim spinster out for a stroll in Providence, Rhode Island, and then a distant boom of demolition sent it cracking into the air. I felt a tremor of pain at my temple. I tried to think of the Christmas shopping I still had to do. I would spend all day Saturday shopping for gifts and wrapping packages. I would buy something for Meredith and her parents;for my father; for Sullivan; for Binky; for my sister Jane and her children in Jacksonville; for three girls I had been seeing on and off; not for B. G. Haines; not for my sister Mary unseen and unheard from in years. I would take extra time and care wrapping the packages intended for Merry’s parents and for Jane and her children. (The concept of distances has always stunned me—meridians, latitudes, international datelines; swinging with the arc of the earth, while I am forever stationary, all distant places seem elusive to me, sliding away and under, hard to get mail to. For this reason I have always tended to be over-reverent toward parcels which are destined to travel hundreds or thousands of miles, as if they were carrier pigeons taking secret messages to the plucky guerrillas in the hills.) Then I had a mental picture of my sister Mary. She is sitting in a laundromat in Topeka, Kansas. She is smoking a kingsize filtertip cigarette and waiting for the clothes to dry. She is wearing a gray cotton dress. There was no reason for me to think of her in that particular city or state or place of business, in that gray and whitewashed hell, clothes spiraling like mechanical embryos in experimental bellies, and yet I felt it was a true vision broadcast to me in some extrasensory way. It made me unaccountably sad. The entire left side of my head was radiating with pain. There was another explosion several blocks away. The voices buzzed in and out of dark hives. I looked at his face again. Then, suddenly, it struck me, with all the mindblazing beauty of a brilliant astronomical calculation. Warburton was Trotsky.
    “I believe that covers everything,” Weede Denney said. “I’m taking a big silver bird to the Coast this afternoon. I should be back Wednesday. Any problems, Mrs. Kling knows how to reach me. Have a nice weekend and a pleasant Christmas.”
    “Officially sanctioned,” somebody said as a footnote to something.
    Weede went into the private toilet adjoining his office. We picked up the paper cups, moved the chairs to their originalpositions and tidied up in general, reluctant to leave these small tasks to Mrs. Kling, who over the years had managed to become one of the most feared individuals in the company. On the way to my office I stopped by Hallie Lewin’s desk and massaged her neck. She was typing a memo marked confidential. I could see that my name was not on the routing list.
    “How was the meeting, David?”
    “Ended in the usual fistfight. What do you want for Christmas, Hallie?”
    “An abortion,” she said.
    “What’s that you’re typing?”
    “Get away. You’re not supposed to look at that.”
    “Is it about me?” I said, moving my hands down her back.
    “You’re the last person around here who has anything to worry about. Really. I’ve been hearing good things about you, David.”
    I followed Quincy Willet and Jones Perkins down the corridor, snapping my fingers lightly and bouncing on my toes. Quincy needed a haircut.
    “Did you hear?” Jones said. “Merrill hired a Negro. Blaisdell met him yesterday. Said he seems like a nice clean-cut guy.”
    “Let’s go look at him,” Quincy said.
    I went around to my office. Binky followed me in. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere, I noticed. She skipped over to the sofa and bounced on it a few times before settling down. She always let