Americana Read Online Free PDF Page B

not.”
    “Hallie, you’ve got the sweetest little ass I’ve ever seen.”
    “Why thank you.”
    “Not a word about Reeves now.”
    “I promise,” she said.
    I went around toward Weede Denney’s office. On the way I saw Dickie Slater, the sixty-five-year-old mailboy, standing behind Jody Moore’s desk rubbing his groin. When he saw me he grinned, man to man, and kept rubbing. Jody was on the phone, speaking Portuguese for some reason. I turned a corner and saw James T. Rice running down a hallway at top speed. I had no idea what I wanted to say to Weede. I was upset about the series being dropped and I felt venomous. In similar situations I usually reacted as a child might react after he has been disappointed or rebuked, with a child’s petty genius for reprisal. I told bizarre and pointless lies. I broke my typewriter. I stole things from the office. I wrote snake-hissing memos to my subordinates. Once, after an idea of mine had been criticized by a senior vice-president named Livingston, I went back to my office, blew my nose severaltimes, and that night sneaked up to Livingston’s office and put the soiled handkerchief in the top drawer of his desk.
    Weede was standing in the middle of his office, deep in thought, one hand absently grooming his bald head. He looked at me carefully.
    “Can’t talk to you now, Dave; wires are burning up; see you first thing in the morning.”
    On the way back to my office I stopped at Binky’s desk to talk some more but she looked busy. I went inside and dialed Sullivan’s number again. She was there.
    “Utah,” I said.
    “Hello, David.”
    “Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona.”
    “I didn’t see you leave last night. You abandoned me to all those keening necrophiles.”
    “Steamboat Springs, the Sawtooth Mountains, Big Timber, Aztec, Durango, Spanish Fork, Monument Valley.”
    “I hear America singing,” she said, but not as if she meant it.
    “I know a guy with a camp trailer. He’s living in Maine somewhere. We can pick him up and then all head west in the camper.”
    “All I need is an hour’s notice.”
    “Blasting through New Mexico in the velvet dawn.”
    “I’m late for an appointment,” Sullivan said.
    I tried to get some work done. It was dark now and I went to the window. Looking south, from as high as we were, I could see the stacked lights extending almost the entire length of Manhattan, and that delicate gridiron tracery in the streets. I opened the window slightly. The whole city was roaring. In winter, when the darkness always comes before you expect it and all those lights begin to pinch through the stale mist, New York becomes a gigantic wedding cake. You board the singing elevator and drop an eighth of a mile in ten seconds flat. Your ears hum as you are decompressed. It is an almost frighteningly impersonal process and yet something of this kind seemsnecessary to translate you from the image to what is actually impaled on that dainty fork.
    I strolled around to Carter Hemmings’ office. He was at his desk, smelling the nicotine on his fingers. When he saw me he tried to neutralize the flow of panic by standing up, absurdly, and spreading his arms wide, an Argentinian beef baron welcoming a generalissimo to his villa.
    “Hey Dave,” he said. “What’s happening, buddy?”
    “I understand Mars Tyler got the sack,” I said.
    “No kidding. No kidding. Jesus.”
    “There’s a big purge on. The tumbrels are clattering through the streets.”
    “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll get Penny to order some coffee.”
    “Can’t spare the time, Carter. All the circuits are overloaded. How’s that laser beam project shaping up? They’re starting to put pressure.”
    “I’m trying to hammer it into workable form, Dave.”
    “Have a good time with B.G. last night?”
    “I didn’t know you knew her, Dave.”
    “Slightly,” I said.
    “Beautiful girl. But we didn’t really hit it off. Dinner. Then I took her home.”
    “Weede was talking