Great Jones Street

4

Again I had a visitor, four days into unbroken solitude, a reporter this time, flamboyantly bald and somewhat dwarfish, dressed in sagging khaki, drifts of hair from outlying parts of his head adorning the frames of his silver-tinted glasses, an emblem on the sleeve of his battle jacket – running dog news service.

"Where do you want to sit?"

"Your manager told us you were approachable," he said. "We've known for seventy-two hours where you were located but we didn't want to make a move until we got ahold of Globke. We don't operate mass-media-crash-style. We wanted Globke's version of your frame of mind in terms of were you or were you not approachable. Ill take this chair and we can put the tape recorder right here."

"No tape," I said.

"That's what we anticipated."

"No notes either."

"No notes?"

"Note-taking's out."

"You want some kind of accuracy, don't you?"

"No," I said.

"Then what do you want?"

"Make it all up. Go home and write whatever you want and then send it out on the wires. Make it up. Whatever you write will be true."

"We know it's asking a lot to expect an interview, even a brief one, which is what we assure you is what we want, but maybe a statement will have to do. Will you give us a statement?"

"A statement about what?"

"Anything at all," he said. "Just absolutely anything. For instance the rumors. What about the rumors?"

"They're all true."

"Okay, but what about authorities in Belgium?"

"Does Globke have Belgium under contract? If Globke doesn't have it under contract, whatever it is, I'd be guilty of malfeasance in discussing it publicly."

"Authorities in Belgium want to question you about your alleged financial involvement in a planeload of arms confiscated in Brussels that was supposedly on its way to either this or that trouble-spot, depending on which rumor you believe."

"Do you know what the word malfeasance means? This is a word that carries tremendous weight in a court of law. Much more weight than misfeasance or non-feasance."

"Okay, but what about the damage to your vocal chords from the continuous strain and the story that you'll never perform in public again?"

"You decide, "I said. "Whatever you write will be true. I'll confirm every word."

"Okay, but what about Azarian? Azarian says he's reorganizing the group along less radical musical lines. Will you make a statement about that?"

"Yes," I said.

"What's your statement?"

"Azarian has been horribly disfigured in a gruesome accident. His face is being reconstructed with skin and bone taken from the faces of volunteers. His voice is not his voice. It belongs to a donor. What Azarian seems to be saying is really being said by another person's vocal chords."

"That's the other thing. An accident. You were in an accident and you're hidden away in some rich private clinic in south central Maryland. The accident thing was interesting to us, ideologically. An accident for somebody like you is the equivalent of prison for a revolutionary. We were kind of rooting for an accident. Which is, wow, really weird. But that's what happens. You get into guerrilla ideology, you find yourself trying to handle some pretty unwholesome thoughts."

"There's no such region as south central Maryland."

"Okay, but listen to this on the subject of accidents. We got a tip from I won't say what source that your manager was about to leak word of an accident. We figure he wanted to co-opt all the other accidents. He wanted exclusive rights to your accident. Anyway his story had you half-dead when a schooner piled into some rocks during a storm off the coast of Peru. First you're missing and presumed drowned. Then you're half-dead aboard a rescue vessel. And Peru does have a coast because I was there two years ago Christmas. But he dropped the idea for whatever reason. This is pretty sophisticated stuff, Bucky. I mean there's rumor, there's counter-rumor, there's manipulation, and there's, you know, this ultra-morbid promotional activity. What's it all mean?"

"The plain man of business is gone from the earth."

"Before I forget," he said, "we'd like to add your name to a list of sponsors that we use on all correspondence pertaining to the black captive insurrection fund. The other names are on this sheet. Should I leave it and you can get back to us or do you want to look at it now? It's up to you.whatever you want me to do with it."

"Tear it in four equal pieces," I said.

"Okay, can we get on to some more statements now?"

"I don't think so, no."

"We'd like a short statement about your present whereabouts."

I'm wherever you want me to be."

"We know where you are at this point. We want to know what you're doing here."

"Nothing."

"But why here?" he said. "Will you make a statement about that?"

"You know where you are in New York. You're in New York. It's New York. This fact is inescapable. In other places I didn't always know where I was. What is this, Ohio or Japan? I wanted to be in one place. An identifiable place."

"Okay, but you've got a studio-equipped house in the mountains and it's almost inaccessible to anybody who doesn't have a detailed map. We still don't see why you're here rather than there. You've lived there. It must be identifiable."

"How tall are you?" I said.

"Six feet even."

"Incredible."

"It's the way I hunch."

"You're a six-foot dwarf."

"I hunch. I can't help it. I've always hunched."

"It's really a studio-equipped mountain," I said. "There is no house as such. There's the facsimile of a house. There's the pictorial mode of a house. Exactly what my house in the mountains would look like if I had a house and there were mountains. My present state of mind doesn't accommodate the existence of mountains. I am in a plains mood."

"Can we discuss your personal life?" he said.

"Sure we can. I won't be here while we're discussing it because I'm going out now. But you go right ahead. Everything you report will be true. I'll personally vouch for every syllable."

"Your manager told us you were approachable."

"That wasn't Globke you talked to. That was the facsimile of Globke. Transparanoia markets facsimiles. Everybody under contract has his or her facsimile. It's one of the terms in the standard contract. Once you sign the contract, you're obliged to live up to the terms. This is basic to a sound contractual relationship. At this precise moment in duplicate time, Bucky Wunderlick is having his toenails clipped in the Waldorf Towers. You've been conducting an interview with his facsimile."

I could see myself reflected in his glasses as I rose from my bowl-shaped chair and moved slowly backward toward the door. He raised an arm in shaggy homage.

"Peace."

"War."