Ambient (3 page)

"We'll shortterm," he said. He strode toward the store as he
always had-briskfooted, as if toward something only he cared
to see. But now he moved-when he moved-by snap of nerve's
impulse and the rush of vituperation. The bookstore's building
was one hundred years old. The store had a vaulted interior, a
glass front, wrought-iron balconies, and spiral staircases; a grand
marble stairway in the rear and polished brass lamps. To enter
the store led even the average owner to imagine that he, too,
could read. Avalon preceded me, the muscles in her legs and hips
drawing tight, slackening and regrouping as she walked. The Dryco
logo, a smirker (in past incarnation, I'm told, known as a "happy
face") was tattooed on her right buttock; I imagined it all agloat
as I returned its stare. The store manager, honoring our appointment, approached as the doorman unlocked the steel gates.

"Mister Dryden," he said, "Marvelous to see you after so
long. "

We'd last been there the week before. Mister Dryden bought
about sixty books a month. He thumbed them and threw them,
having-his phrasing, tapping his forehead-filed them in the
software bank. I was no longer sure if he remembered what he
read even as he read it.

"Searching particulars?" the manager asked.

"No," said Mister Dryden, eyeing the heights of the store for
crawlers attempting a sneak; I'd already cleared. "Clerk me."

"Yes, sir," said the manager, clapping his hands, speaking to
his assistant. "Clerk, please!"

"Clerk!" snapped the assistant. A fellow with glasses approached and stood before us. I was a foot taller and forty years
younger.

"Clerk here," he said.

"New?"

"I've been here sixteen years, sir."

Mister Dryden put his hands on the clerk's shoulders and spat
in his face. His temperament had been uneven, of late.

"Then hop."

"Yes, sir."

We went to the businessing section. As Mister Dryden strolled
the aisles, he selected his books, throwing them at the clerk, who
caught them with the ease that comes with inborn talent. I wandered ahead.

Mister Dryden doubled back-inadvertently, I suspect-coming up to an elderly lady wearing a veiled hat. He coughed several times as if clearing his throat. Neither she nor her bodyguard
moved. He nodded to me. I walked over and stood before them.

"Trouble you want?" asked her bodyguard, leaning against
the carrel, biographies of Proust and of Reagan on the shelves
behind him. "Tu concedar, chocha?"

Mine is a peaceful soul, after all, and this appeared at once as
a bluff Bitch, long on theory and short on practice. I looked to
Mister Dryden, awaiting another nod. The bodyguard scratched
his chin, staring and sizing. He looked me over like a plum for
the picking; I was prepped to be plucked. To lure the rash and
feckless, I wear earrings-black onyx inverted crucifixes on gold
hoops. Were he to grab one he would find that my plastic ears
were velcroed on. The Health Service removed my originals years
before, when Enid-my sister, an Ambient-suggested this ploy.
The Ambient way is to bluff, then to fool-then, if need calls, to
term. In this, my way and theirs washed similar streams, though
at the time I felt convinced that the Ambient life could not be
mine.

Mister Dryden, who seemed-as always, now-preoccupied,
shook his head. The bodyguard and I bowed slightly toward each
other and then we moved along to different aisles. Mister Dryden
and Avalon made for the art department, and I followed.

No one else was in there; I could let slip my clutch and viz the
prints on the wall. There were gorgeous reproductions of Bacon's
screaming popes; many of Goya's Los Caprichos in hologram;
some Chester Gould panels involving Flattop. Schonberg's Pierrot Lunaire suffused the department's air. Avalon flipped through
a book of black and white photos of nude women bodybuilders
in select attitudes-sinking and drowning in thick mud, being
buggered by rude savages, torched like the martyrs of Smithfield,
wheelbent like St. Catherine, skinstripped as was St. Bartholomew, piercearrowed in the style of St. Sebastian-the photog
was wild with cunning invention. Mister Dryden tossed over a
volume of Arbus; the clerk groaned, snaring it. The morning light,
pale and gray, washed over Avalon's face as she studied the photos, her dark eyes ashine; I thought how brown and soft she looked,
where she wasn't black and leathery. I wished we could hug until
we'd crushed each other's bones. She weightlifted, too; enough
to stay fit for conferences.

She sidled over, rolling her tongue across her lips as if checking for flaws, showing me a print from a different book, pegged
Auto Fatality 17; the artist possessed a keen sense of color but
no eye for form. She grinned, tossing it onto the floor. Her leather
moved as she did; I should have loved to skin her.

"Sonny better finish soon," she whispered to me, taking my
arm. "My feet kill me in these fuckin' heels."

I said nothing. I smiled; her eyes sparkled like shattered glass,
and in them I saw what she chose not yet to say. She twisted her
hips, seeking comfort from her outfit. The suit rode higher in.
Avalon, I knew, had come to appreciate Mister Dryden's affections-such as they were-less and less, but she had not known
him for so long as I had, and so was not as well attuned to his
quirks, which had, after all, become quirkier during the preceding year.

"New suit, Shameless?" she asked me. I wore a two-piece in corporate blue with faint pinstripes, not unlike Mister Dryden's.
While he preferred a certain elan in the garb of Avalon, he cared
little for what I wore so long as it was protective, and fit.

"Bought it last week," I said. It took me four weeks to receive
it from the time I placed the order; were I not working for Dryco
it would have taken ten months, and then more likely I would
have received delivery on whatever had been available, no matter
the size, color, or material-not always because of shortage, but
generally for reason of discare. It was best to take what was given
if you wanted anything at all, or so it was always said.

"You look good enough to beat," she said, winking. As she
stood near, brushing me, I felt my skin warm as if I were slowly
being cooked. "Cost much?"

"Fifteen dollars," I said.

"You never get blood on your suits, do you?" She rubbed the
lapels between her thumb and forefinger. Her knee slid against
mine, with purposeful caress.

I shook my head, attempting to think. Logic left my mind when
she drew close; her touch left my thoughts agibber.

"The amateur's mark," I said.

"I'd like to get blood on his suit."

"Think he's nearly done?"

"Can't be," she said. "Clerk's still alive."

But he was done, and motioned for us to move. We reached
the center desk; the store manager bounced over as if expecting
to be fed a treat.

"Did we have everything you needed, sir?"

"No," said Mister Dryden.

"Would you care to special any titles?"

"Timeshort," he said, slapping his hand loudly against the
counter, as if to demonstrate his existence to the skeptical. "I
shop, I see to be itemed with my wants. I'll do other if you absent
my wants."

"Sir-"

Avalon and I waited, yawning, while they went at it tong-andnail. We knew he would continue to shop there: it was the place
of the manager to be abused by an owner; the place of an owner
to abuse. Like the sunrise, you came to expect it. The clerk's
arms trembled beneath his load.

"-idiot," concluded Mister Dryden. I could not help but notice how his neck darkened as he spoke; his anger was such that
I felt that were he to have continued his screed the blood, rising,
would have filled and burst his head asunder, spraying forth a
foamy wave.

"House charge or Amex, sir?"

"House."

"Fine. Clerk!" The store manager clapped his hands. Mister
Dryden had accumulated an enormous stack of books; thirty dollars worth, I estimated. The clerk lifted them onto the counter.

"Look out-" said the manager's assistant, too late. One book
fell onto the floor; the clerk held onto the rest of the stack. The
book that fell was a leathered edition of Last Exit to Brooklyn. A
gift, I suspected, though for whom I wasn't sure; his son, whose
birthday was two days off, wasn't much for linear print.

"Durak.!" the store manager shouted; the assistant slapped the
clerk several times, as if attempting to wake him.

"Let's exam," said Mister Dryden, seemingly calm once
again-it was terribly hard to easily discern his fury, until it alit.
I handed him the book; he peered at it closely, as if deciphering
subtle code. He vizzed out the window for a moment, raising eye
to unjust Heaven and Godness therein. He glared at the store
manager; pushed the book into the manager's chest, a heartblow.

"Scratched," said Mister Dryden. I hoped he wouldn't take
this too far but suspected he would.

The store manager eyed the book a moment, at last pretending
that he had glimpsed an appropriate flaw. "Let me see whether
we might have another. "

"Fool," said Mister Dryden, rapping another book over the
manager's head; the book split and bent. "Thank me."

"Thank you."

Mister Dryden hit him with the book again. This wasn't a
professional's behavior, I thought, and-admittance-suddenly
felt embarrassed to be connected with him at all; felt disgusted
for having to feel such a way about him. But amateurs of any
sort draw my ire deep, and he behaved no better just then than
any amateur.

"Disirregardless," he said, "If this is how I'm serviced I'll
spurn. " He almost sounded as if he meant it.

"Please, sir-"

"I've decisioned."

"At least," said the store manager, holding his head as if quietly trying to rub the pain away, "I should let you deal with the
one responsible as you see."

Mister Dryden appeared so startled as I was; this was twisting
anew. When scenes such as this usually unwound, the store managers beat the clerks themselves before firing them. There was
but one thing to be done if this ploy was enforced.

"AO," said Mister Dryden, staring at the clerk.

"I'll be in the car," said Avalon, turning away. I wished to
take her and run, forever avoiding the unavoidable.

"Wait," said Mister Dryden, scratching at his arms; she stopped.
"Safety first. Don't alone streetways." He looked at me, and
nodded.

"For what reason?" I heard myself asking.

"He disturbed, O'Malley," he said, sounding calm again.
"Victimize."

"No sense doing what hasn't point," I said; he would have
agreed, once. "Let's-"

"O'Malley. "

He knew and I knew that it was this or the gutter, awash in the
millions, adrift with the chanceless, alone in the crowd.

"I don't feel that this is part of my job."

"He disturbed. Revenge me."

Freedom rings but no one answers; it was difficult to remain
ever optimistic. I sighed, turning, dreamlike, toward the clerk. A
job's a job, and I do my job; the work ethic, after all, made
America what it is and I always found my pride in honest work.
My father told me anyone could make it to the top; he was easily
led, and so often seduced by other's wiles, and for the loveliest
lies the deepest fondness grows. I feared, that day, that I was so
close to the top as I would get, if I did not find another way,
some way, somehow; a kid allowed to dust the candy in the big
window.

"O'Malley. "

Look your form in mirrors and run mad, Ambients say, and I
knew of what was told. As he sank, I sank, and I knew I could
sink no more. That morn I felt my mind shift, and at once made
ready to seek other-but there was no other, nor did it seem possible that there ever would be. Take the given or lose the all; that
was the way. There I stood, sans ears, sans love, sans soul; part
owner, part Ambient, each together less than each apart.

"O'Malley!"

I pondered which of my suit's accessories would be most appro: the batog, the chuks, the chain, or the trunch. I estimated
that my batog-two sharp sticks lashed together with heavy wirewould do. Never howitzer a housefly. Once more, I paused; my
limit neared. Mister Dryden spoke.

"Don't see, muchacho," he said, quivering as if being charged.
"Do."

I did.