Great Jones Street

Inside he led me along a narrow hall to a large kitchen. A man and two young girls were painting the walls a gun-metal color, using pans and rollers. Bohack gave me a glass of water and told one of the girls to clean up the mess on the landing. I followed him through another room where two men with sledgehammers were knocking down a wall. They stood in su

Plants covered the floor around the perimeter of the room and were crowded together on shelves and grew in white plastic pots hung from the ceiling and in clay pots attached to the walls with metal clips. I noted many kinds, those huge and hooded and furled on long sticks, enclosing the springs of their own alertness, or drowsy and pouched, nocturnal orchids, vines and ivies, showering ferns, palms in their rectitude, or those murky and velvet, or redolent of the limpness of old summers, or pale as lizards. A small man entered the room. He said his name was Chess. He wore fla

"Plants are scary things," he said.

He carried an old briefcase. His hair was blondish, combed sideways almost ear to ear. He closed the door behind him, wincing at the sound of the sledgehammers.

"It's like a prison here," he said. "I don't know why they stay. People leave and then come back. Some leave twice and come back twice. You watch, I say to myself. So-and-so will leave for good next time. But they're all right here. Just like I'm right here. I'm in this room same as you. I'll tell you something about Bohack. He's not smart and he's not stupid. He doesn't have any special magnetism. His ideas just miss being interesting ideas. For a long time I couldn't figure out what made him so indispensable. Why him? What's so special? I finally figured it out. It's because he's so big. He's the biggest one. People respond to his bigness."

"Where is he?" I said.

"He's making the four o'clock check. He checks the whole floor three times a day. Tells people what to do and how to do it. Somebody has to give orders and he's the biggest. Let me ask you something. That bridge out there. Is that the Brooklyn or the Williamsburg? I've never been able to muster enough courage to ask anyone. But I feel comfortable somehow with you. There's a chemistry with you. Let me rub away some of this steam on the window and you can get a better look."

"It's the Manhattan."

"Scary," he said. "I didn't know there was a bridge called the Manhattan Bridge. All this time not knowing. Oh that's so scary. What do you think of my plants? People are usually surprised by the plants. People forget we started out as an earth-family in a completely rural and rustic environment. Interdependence of man, plant and animal. That idea still has beauty for me. So what do you think of my plants? It's dry out today so I've got the hot shower going to get some humidity in here. Plants need that. Usually I just turn on the humidifier but Spot keeps peeing in it so I've had to put it away until Bohack gets him re-toilet-trained. That's the power of names. People act in response to their names. There's a tiny sector of the human brain where the naming mechanism is located. Spot pees in my humidifier and Rex plays with a little rubber Santa Claus that goes squeak-squeak a mile a minute. Dog behavior and dog play. But don't worry, this room is sacrosanct. We don't have to be concerned about anybody coming in here who isn't authorized to do so. The orchid is a cuntlike plant. Don't you think? Menacing in its beauty. Some plants just stand there. The orchid lures a person. It draws a person inward. This room is a good room for meditation and inward thinking. It's the most inward room we have. That's as good a reason as any as to why you're here."

The door opened and Longboy stood there, left hand in his back pocket, all his weight on one leg, the left, his body slack against the door frame. Chess raised his eyebrows and Longboy responded with a series of gestures too complex to unravel. Then he backed out of the room, pulling the door closed. Chess took some clippings out of his briefcase. The window was fogged to the point of total opaqueness. I felt a sickly light sweat all over my body.

"Where's Bohack?" I said. "Is the package with him? I know you've got the damn thing."

"Pepper told us you were going on tour. Hanes told us where the record plant is."

"Hanes also turned over the product. You wouldn't have guaranteed his safety without that."

"Hanes turned over the product and Pepper agreed to test it for a straight fee. Hell probably never get paid but I doubt if he cares. He was overjoyed at this late date merely to find out what's been in that package these many weeks that's reduced us all to such deviant behavior. That begonia needs cutting back. Fu

I picked up the plant he'd indicated and threw it against the wall, using a windmill motion. Chess looked briefly at the cracked clay, leaves still embedded in lumps of earth. Then he leaned over in his chair and spread the newspaper clippings on the floor between his feet.

"Everybody's searching, you know. Everybody's trying to make the journey. But they're going about it wrong. They're seeking the wrong kind of privacy, the old privacy, never again to be found. Now here's an item about a seventy-year-old man who's sailing from Cape Hatteras to England in a skiff that's only nine feet long. It says he plans to practice yoga at sea. This one is about a Bloom-ington housewife who's flying from Mi

The will has to urge itself to this task. The mind has to level itself across a plane of solitude. We're painting this whole floor of the building a dark gray. Not the plant room. No, no. The plant room stays white. Everything else gets painted gray."

"I just had a thought."

"The concept of a captive lunatic fringe within an organization is mine alone, my concept alone, despite what you may have heard to the contrary. Irrationality can be managed to great effect. There's power and intimidation behind every event the dog-boys are made to stage."

"Are you Dr. Pepper?" I said. "You're not, are you?"

"I'm Chess and these are my plants. Pepper is at least four inches taller than I am. You know that. Voice aside. Color of eyes aside. The man is four inches taller than I am. Pepper's feats in the realm of disguise are well known and well documented but the man can't hide four inches of muscle, bone and tissue. I'm Fred Chess, ordinary American. I used to be a theatrical producer. I went into photo offset work after that Nothing seemed to be pa