Americana

"What's new?"

"Too much," she said.

"What?"

"Reeves Chubb, Carter Hemmings, Mars Tyler, Quincy Willet, Paul Joyner, Chandler Bates and Walter Faye."

"Axed?" I said.

"Sandbagged, throttled and axed. Drawn and quartered. It's official."

"Jumping mother balls. A mass execution. The magnificent seven gu

"I think you're getting promoted," Binky said. "It's just a rumor at this point but Jody thinks it's on the level."

"Protect my interests, Bink, and I'll take you to the top with me. We'll be like Gary Grant and Roz Russell. Sipping martinis in my penthouse office. Has Weede begun hiring new people yet?"

"Just one so far."

"What's his name?"

"Harris Hodge."

"How old is he?" I said.

"I don't know, David. He won't be starting until next week. I haven't even seen him yet."

"Find out how old he is. I'll call you in a few days. Do you miss me?"

"I have to hang up now," she said.

I went into the bathroom, took off my shirt and began shaving my chest with an electric razor. It was a ritual cleansing of the body, a prelude to the sacred journey. The rain had stopped. I was happy. Through the bathroom window, as I shaved, I could see most of the town of Millsgate, white houses massed in a jest of i

A woman came down the steps of an old house. She wore a blue dress and carried pruning shears. I stopped shaving to watch her. She was close to forty, I guessed, fair-ski

They were waiting for me. Brand locked the house and we carried our suitcases to the garage and put them in the camper. Then I trotted down to my car and drove it to the garage. I transferred my movie camera and tape recorder to the camper. Brand backed the F-250 out as we stood on the sidewalk counting the dents and bruises. Then he came out to give it one final look, circling slowly with a thoughtful expression on his face. He adjusted his glasses, blinking rapidly into the sun.

"She's ready, Davy," he said. "The old plastic bitch is ready to roll. You're the captain. Which way are we going?"

"West," I said. "Aim her more or less to the west."

I put my car in the garage and Brand locked up. We flipped coins and it was determined that I would ride up front with him for the first fifty miles. We assumed our respective posts. The school bell began to ring. Brand put the camper into gear.

PART TWO

6

Men on small islands would do well to avoid the pursuit of philosophy. The island illusion, that solitude and wisdom invented each other, is a very convincing one. Day by day I seem to grow more profound. Often I feel I am on the verge of some great philosophical discovery. Man. War. Truth. Time. Fortunately I always return to myself. I look beyond the white lace of the surf to my own unassembled past and I decide to let others stitch together the systems. I enjoy the triteness of the situation, man and island, exile in the ultimate suburb. The surf is massing and rolling, uneven now, page after page of terrible wild words. All the colors borrow, sea from beach from sky, and after a while I follow my own footprints back to the house.

(The film is projected.)

There were many visions in the land, all fragments of the exploded dream, and some of the darkest of these visions were those processed in triplicate by our generals and industrialists-the manganese empires, the super-sophisticated gu

Old Holly was a suburb of New York only in the strict geographical sense; unlike the surrounding communities it was not an extension of the city's monoxide spirit, a point of mere arrival and departure. The town did not have the sheen of a manicurist's artistry about it. The houses were very old, most of them, and agreeably shabby, two or three stories with small shuttered windows, high ceilings, gabled roofs, porches which in some cases went entirely around the houses, repeating the eccentric angles sketched by the roof-edges. Through all the houses drifted some thin plasm of identity, stirring the senses of the casual visitor. One enters here and tastes clove or mellow tobacco in the air; the next house smells faintly of mint, varnish somewhere, the soft thick snuff of an old rug; one hears music elsewhere, no more than intimations from the keys of a lidded piano, no more than cutlery and voices, the indolent sermon of a saw on wood, no more than silence or the stagnant i