Again, Dangerous Visions Part 31

"I could. But you're fond of Rome and Paris clothes, if I didn't make the money to buy them you wouldn't like it. You don't approve of napalm but you're dressed with, in, and by, napalm." By way of footnotes, to record the minutiae that can get overlooked.

"And it burns," Mari Selander said.

"And it's self-applied, you dress yourself in the morning," Greg Selander said, still in the spirit of marginalia. "Mr. Arborow, wouldn't you say napalm in Vietnam's about the same situation as the bomb with Hiroshima? Saves more lives than it takes?"

"I'm told that," Blake said.

"I didn't ask what others tell you."

"It's tricky. I see the lives it takes and cripples, I don't see the ones it's said to save."

"But you allow for the possibility?"

"I listen to information officers' releases, and official briefings, and report what I hear. Along with what I see. Even when there's a gap between what's audible and what's visible. If you go along with McLuhan, the sights in our world are winning out over the sounds. That could mean we're being manipulated by eyes, our own."

"Not answering my question, Mr. Arborow."

"No, and I don't think I said it was."

"You could pa.s.s things along without necessarily believing or allowing for them yourself."

"I was more or less implying that."

"Mr. Arborow, are we using napalm to win a just war with the least human cost, or aren't we? You're a guest in my house and I'm trying to nail you down, for that I apologize, but with some matters we can drop amenities."

"As quick as we drop napalm," Mari Selander said.

"As quick as some throw stinkbombs," Greg Selander said.

The guests were absorbed. You can't know in advance what plays will be tried and what the final score will be. It could be speculated that collision games were nothing new in this apprentice castle, and did not always concern politics.

"I'm a reporter," Blake said. "That means my best trained parts are my eyes. I'm paid not for the opinions in my head but the pictures on my trained, 20-20 eyes. I've got a surplus. Many pictures piled up on my trained eyes my employers don't want. An a.s.sortment of my firsthand sights they don't care to see, and have other people see. Very manipulative sights."

Blake was just now collecting another sight The outrageously beautiful Bisk had wandered in and taken a seat alongside her mistress, all dripping grin under the hard-edged, archaic mask, ready to pull sleds for any who cared to travel out of gin disharmonies through whatever snowdrifts of rough games. Lady Lean had bent to whisper something in her ear Blake had heard, "Girl, sweet thing, want a bisquit?" The animal had collapsed insanely on the carpet, front paws urging, back paws validating, mouth at maximum curl to announce that anything offered was all right because catering love was the wide world's one stuff. Mari Selander was now leaning low over the dog, moving her incredibly elongated fingers up and down Bisk's two lines of nipples, whispering, "Oh, you tart, spread for all comers." Blake was trying not to see those furred legs abandoned to the air, Mari Selander's stalky legs exposed to the lap and flamboyantly parted too.

"You're still hinting rather than saying, Mr. Arborow," Greg Selander said.

"I'm saying, in stages. Five correspondents ducked this napalm a.s.signment before the network brought me back from Sinai. I wanted to duck it, too. We all know we've stored up more sights than the network cares to distribute. Not opinions about napalm, sights of napalm. In action. Carrying out its missions. On bodies. Bodies shouting and running. Eighty-year-olds and two-year-olds shout and run the same. Napalm is the answer to the generation gap. I've been in helicopters 100 feet from the burning, shouting bodies. Helicopters you probably made parts for. You make good parts, bring a man with trained eyes to within 100 feet of the napalmed, after dropping the napalm. I feel how jellied petroleum works on bodies, how they crisp up, speeding back and forth, their sound effects, is a vital part of the napalm story, which my eyes are equipped to tell, no opinions, just pictures. I was on the phone for an hour after I got back from UCLA this afternoon, telling my home office I have to go back to Vietnam to get close-up footage on the burning, running, loud bodies. They don't see it. They think that to show these diminishing, toasting bodies right now would be playing into the hands of the enemy, as footage of the 70,000 bodies in Hiroshima would have in 1945. You asked for my opinion. My opinion is, I've got informative information on the subject of napalm on my eyes, and it burns, and I want to shout, and I'm being ordered to withhold this information, which is against my training. My first opinion is that this information all over my eyeb.a.l.l.s isn't my private property. Your opinion and my opinion as to the privacy of some types of property may differ."

Bisk was still stretched out in total invitation, Mari Selander was still stroking her military columns of nipples.

"That's clear enough," Greg Selander said. "You claim you're a mindless transmitting belt, want to transmit everything unselectively. Meaning, you're with the rioters, ready to make things harder still for our boys dying overseas."

"You're a transmitting belt, you transmit helicopter parts mindlessly, unselectively."

"To save our boys, not kill them."

"You transmit slogans like a mindless belt, too."

"That's not slogan, that's fact."

"Not fact, press release. Look, if you defend your right to be an automaton, don't take a dim view of other automatons trying to do their job."

"Covers are off, Mr. Arborow. What's in sight is a man wants to give aid and comfort to his country's enemies."

Blake stood, feeling his drinks.

"Try stripping yourself," he said. "You know what might come in sight, to eyes trained by two minutes of history? One of the country's worst enemies, maybe. What aids and abets enemies like you is keeping back our rich footage on strategic cremating."

At this, Mari Selander did something peculiar. She'd been lost to the conversation, patting the dog as she went through two more Martinis. Now she jumped up to all her leggy, fragile height, long feet spread in challenge of everything and all.

"No more lies!" she said fever fast. "All automatons! So be it! Out from under the Balenciaga napalms! Everybody! I'll start!" She reached inside her dress with both hands, fumbled, brought the hands out again, each holding a rubber cup. "Cards on the table! All varieties of falsies! Strip, everybody! Out from under the covers! Automatons, right! All a la mode lies on the transmitting belt!" She tossed the rubber cups high in the air, a flower girl strewing modern formfast flowers. They were well aimed, they fell into the fireplace, into the fire big enough for pigs, and instantly were sprouting consequential blue flames. "Not a minute too soon! See! Blobs of lies on everybody! About to burn! Now who else's going to peel off his napalm!"

Greg Selander walked to her and said, "What are you suffering from, Mari? For once, can you say?"

Mari Selander said, "Body contact. From those I view dimly. Burns."

Blake set his gla.s.s down.

"You were right about one thing," he said to Greg Selander. "Not all wars are the same. Bodies can burn and run in ways I haven't seen. After this, attack your attackers, not strangers. And don't dress it up with politics. Thanks for the drinks and slogans."

The last picture on his eyes, breaking into him, pulling at him, was of Mistress Meager standing in the middle of the room, hands cradling sham-shorn b.r.e.a.s.t.s, legs planted wide in taunt more than invitation, and Bisk still on her back, legs still lax, staggered that when her dear one finally threw something it would not be tasty things to her.

Far from sleepy, Blake took a long drive, to Malibu and then on to Trancas. Twice he stopped at waterfront places for a drink, a third time to eat a hamburger. When he got back home it was well after midnight.

The light in the living room showed him objects on the floor that didn't belong there. A pair of flowered, belled slacks, woman's. Jacket, woman's. A blouse. A bra. Panties.

He heard a sound in the bedroom, more a.s.sault, beckoning.

He went there and flicked on the light to find Mari Selander stretched out on his bed, naked. No, not precisely stretched out, though precisely naked. When the light cracked on her hands elevated floppily to touch in the air over small, valiant b.r.e.a.s.t.s, legs bent as knees separated to the pelvis' limit of give. She waggled asking hands, stretched her mouth to make a dog's chugging sound.

"How's this for a body count."

"More casualties around here than meet the eye."

"Let's have a meeting of more than eyes, Mr. Arborow."

"Mine are meeting each other. You're an unexpected eagle in my bed."

"Know a better spread for it?"

"Spread any more and there'll be two of you."

"Animal kingdom's all botched. How come dogs are the ones to spread-eagle."

"How do other men's wives come to be doing it on my bed?"

"Easy, you've got a window in the back not nailed down."

It was a body not to be believed. Such a long, satiny stretch, no ma.s.sy bulges but, oh, yes, slimmed shadowings, subtler concavities, the potential of a greyhound speediness, the promise of twine in the never-ending legs. Such a gangly want and over-readiness.

"You've got a husband across the street not nailed down."

"Don't you worry about husbands. Don't you worry. Nights I go for drives, Greg goes to bed. I parked the car two streets over and sneaked back on foot over the firebreak. Know something? There's a firebreak ends in your backyard. I take that to mean we can bring our bodies together for as long as we want and not worry about danger of brush fires. Fires we don't make by our own brushing. You come here and give me all the best bisquits. I've been long without."

"What gave you the idea of breaking in here?"

"I was looking at Greg after the people went home, which was fast. When he's boiling he doesn't say anything, just sits with a red face. I was looking at that fat football face and a thought came, I wanted somebody inside me but not him, never him, you, decidedly you. Not because politics makes bedfellows. Because f.u.c.king makes bedfellows. Come inside me, you."

"I don't think this will get Greg Selander out of the helicopter business. I think, further, you don't give a s.h.i.t what business he's in."

"Who wants your opinions? You're no opinion man. You're the reporter. Report to your brain what's craving all over your eyes from all over your bed. Be my lavish bisquit man."

"Your war I haven't been to before. All in it casualties and all casualties wearing the same dogtag."

"Don't a.n.a.lyze it, you correspondent, cover it."

Which, feeling somewhat tampered with, somewhat hauled, he did. Those endless legs closed, on him, all urge, going like the legs of the napalmed.

She left he didn't know when. He thought for one minute about her climbing back up the firebreak, sleek legs, product of some strong generational taffy pull, cracking the dead spines of chaparral, then he was in the sleep of the drugged. When he opened his eyes it was after ten and he was in trouble. He shaved-showered fast, dressed without the morning swim, skipped breakfast except for a can of Snap-E-Tom b.l.o.o.d.y Mary Mix for the tang of the tomato.

Backing down his drive, he heard sounds of running and barking. In a moment Mari developed from the crowded birches across the way, Bisk all over her heels. She made a comic hitchhiker's sign, he pulled over.

"Sleep all right?" she said.

"You'll have to ask somebody who was there."

"See how good I am for you? I slept, too, oh, did I. Like a sack of sawdust. That's better than a log. Logs sleep better when they're pulverized. Oh, how you pulverized me-"

"I can't discuss insomnia and the lumber industry, I'm late-"

"Where you going, Blake?"

"Mojave, up past Palmdale. They're putting on a napalm show."

"Take me with you, Blake? Please?"

"You'd throw stinkbombs."

"Won't, honest, Blake. Please. I get migraines when I'm alone all day and Greg's gone to Vandenburg Base for three days. To talk with the bra.s.s about chopper parts. The man of helicopter parts. Let me come, Blake. One more in your crew won't be noticed."

"There'll be some Taybott men."

"They won't know me or I them. Greg's kept me away from Taybott people for fear I'd break out picket signs. Take me and I'll tell you all about your non-helicopter parts."

"You won't get on a soapbox?"

"Or my high horse, or a low horse, or even Bisk. Bisk? Where are you girl?"

Bisk came prancing back from the driveway. She'd retrieved Blake's morning paper and was carrying it proudly in her grin. Mari accepted the paper from her.

"Can Bisk come, Blake? Please? She gets migraines when I leave her alone all day."

He waved them in.

They talked not at all on the San Diego Freeway cutting across San Fernando Valley. At moments Mari even read the paper. This was all right with Blake. He didn't want to hear about what was, or wasn't, between this woman and her husband. As for what might or might not be between her and himself, he didn't want to get into that, either, it would be a tiny pendant from what was, or wasn't, with the husband. As his brushes with women generally were.

On the run you ran into married women who were attracted to the image of man with itinerary, man just pa.s.sing through, then felt martyred by the first signs of travel preparations.

As they cornered east out of Newhall, for Antelope Valley, Mari said from her paper, "VC's out to win with least human cost, too. Here's an item about their finishing off a village called Dakson, with flamethrowers."

"Cost accounting can't be the monopoly of one side."

"Double entry bookkeeping's the game on both sides. Listen. The simple Montagnards of Dakson had only recently learned how to use matches, and flamethrowers were beyond their imagination. Then, in one horrifying hour, flame throwers wielded by Communist troops wreaked death and destruction...'They threw fire at us' was how survivors described the attack...60 thatched-roof houses razed...Ashes Hew across carca.s.ses of water buffalo...Rows of bodies of women and children...Tiny brother and sister, still clinging to each other...63 bodies dragged from bunkers- The simple Montagnards of Dakson had only recently learned how to use matches, and flamethrowers were beyond their imagination. Then, in one horrifying hour, flame throwers wielded by Communist troops wreaked death and destruction...'They threw fire at us' was how survivors described the attack...60 thatched-roof houses razed...Ashes Hew across carca.s.ses of water buffalo...Rows of bodies of women and children...Tiny brother and sister, still clinging to each other...63 bodies dragged from bunkers-"

"You save lives any way you can. Don't read any more."

They were well into the desert when Mari left off scratching Bisk's unreservedly available neck to say thoughtfully, "They're not going to let you tell it like it is, not a chance."

"The Vietnam footage, you mean?"

"They won't let you put those shots in, will they, Blake?"

"How many close-ups of the skin and bone aftermath of Hiroshima have you seen, 23 years after?"

"If they hold you back, what'll you do?"

"Tell it as it isn't, or is only in propagandistically safe part, the bloodless, faceless, skinless part."

"That good enough?"

"No."

"Isn't there an alternative?"

"No."

"There's got to be."

"There's one, get a staff job on Hanoi Radio. I'd run into the same problems there, maybe worse. There's no place where they want the whole footage."