Cosmopolis Read Online Free Page B
Author: Don DeLillo
triacanthos. The honey locust.
He felt better now. He knew who he was and reached for his shirt, dressing in double time.
Torval was standing outside the door. Their eyes did not meet. They went to the elevator and rode to the lobby in silence. He let Torval exit first and check the area. He had to concede that the man did this well, in a soft choreography of tacking moves, disciplined and clean. Then they walked through the courtyard and out to the street.
They stood by the car. Torval indicated the haircut that waited in either direction, only yards away.
13/91
Don DeLillo
Cosmopolis
Then his eyes went cool and still. He was hearing a voice in his ear bud. There was a pitch to the moment, a sense of intent expectation.
"Threat condition blue," he said finally. "Man down."
The driver held open the door. Eric did not look at the driver. There were times when he thought he might look at the driver. But he had not done this yet.
The man down was Arthur Rapp, managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Arthur Rapp had just been assassinated in Nike North Korea. Happened only a minute ago. Eric watched it happen again, in obsessive replays, as the car crawled toward a choke point on Lexington Avenue. He hated Arthur Rapp. He'd hated him before he met him. It was a hatred with the purest bloodlines, orderly, based on differences of theory and interpretation. Then he met the man and hated him personally and chaotically, with sizable violence of heart.
He was killed live on the Money Channel. It was past midnight in Pyongyang and he was making final comments to an interviewer for the benefit of North American audiences after a historic day and night of ceremonies, receptions, dinners, speeches and toasts.
Eric watched him sign a document on one screen and prepare to die on another.
A man in a short-sleeve shirt came into camera range and began to stab Arthur Rapp in the face and neck. Arthur Rapp clutched the man and seemed to draw him nearer as if to share a confidence.
They tumbled together to the floor, tangled in the mike cord of the interviewer. She was dragged down with them, a willowy woman whose slit skirt ran up her thigh and became the pivotal point of observation.
Horns were blowing in the street.
There was a close-up on one of the screens. It was Arthur Rapp's pulpy face blowing outward in spasms of shock and pain. It resembled a mass of pressed vegetable matter. Eric wanted them to show it again. Show it again. They did this, of course, and he knew they would do it repeatedly into the night, our night, until the sensation drained out of it or everyone in the world had seen it, whichever came first, but he could see it again if he wished, any time, through scan retrieval, a technology that seemed already oppressively sluggish, or he could recover a slow-motion shot of the willowy woman and her hand mike being sucked into the terror and he could sit here for hours wanting to fuck her then and there in the bloodwhirl of knife and random limbs and slashed carotids, amid the staccato cries of the flailing assassin, cell phone clipped to his belt, and the gaseous bloated moans of the dying Arthur Rapp.
A tour bus blocked the route across the avenue. It was a double decker with smoke rolling from its underbelly and rows of woeful heads poking from the top tier, unstirring Swedes and Chinese, their fanny packs stuffed with currency.
Michael Chin was still in the jump seat, facing rearward. He'd listened to the audio account of the assassination but had not turned to look at the screens.
Eric watched him now, wondering whether the young man's restraint was a form of moral rigor or an apathy so deep it was not pierced by the muses, even, of sex and death.
"While you were away," Chin said. "Yes. Tell me."
"There was a report that consumer spending is weakening in Japan." He spoke in a newscaster's 14/91
Don DeLillo
Cosmopolis
voice. "Raising doubts about the country's economic strength."
"See.
He felt better now. He knew who he was and reached for his shirt, dressing in double time.
Torval was standing outside the door. Their eyes did not meet. They went to the elevator and rode to the lobby in silence. He let Torval exit first and check the area. He had to concede that the man did this well, in a soft choreography of tacking moves, disciplined and clean. Then they walked through the courtyard and out to the street.
They stood by the car. Torval indicated the haircut that waited in either direction, only yards away.
13/91
Don DeLillo
Cosmopolis
Then his eyes went cool and still. He was hearing a voice in his ear bud. There was a pitch to the moment, a sense of intent expectation.
"Threat condition blue," he said finally. "Man down."
The driver held open the door. Eric did not look at the driver. There were times when he thought he might look at the driver. But he had not done this yet.
The man down was Arthur Rapp, managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Arthur Rapp had just been assassinated in Nike North Korea. Happened only a minute ago. Eric watched it happen again, in obsessive replays, as the car crawled toward a choke point on Lexington Avenue. He hated Arthur Rapp. He'd hated him before he met him. It was a hatred with the purest bloodlines, orderly, based on differences of theory and interpretation. Then he met the man and hated him personally and chaotically, with sizable violence of heart.
He was killed live on the Money Channel. It was past midnight in Pyongyang and he was making final comments to an interviewer for the benefit of North American audiences after a historic day and night of ceremonies, receptions, dinners, speeches and toasts.
Eric watched him sign a document on one screen and prepare to die on another.
A man in a short-sleeve shirt came into camera range and began to stab Arthur Rapp in the face and neck. Arthur Rapp clutched the man and seemed to draw him nearer as if to share a confidence.
They tumbled together to the floor, tangled in the mike cord of the interviewer. She was dragged down with them, a willowy woman whose slit skirt ran up her thigh and became the pivotal point of observation.
Horns were blowing in the street.
There was a close-up on one of the screens. It was Arthur Rapp's pulpy face blowing outward in spasms of shock and pain. It resembled a mass of pressed vegetable matter. Eric wanted them to show it again. Show it again. They did this, of course, and he knew they would do it repeatedly into the night, our night, until the sensation drained out of it or everyone in the world had seen it, whichever came first, but he could see it again if he wished, any time, through scan retrieval, a technology that seemed already oppressively sluggish, or he could recover a slow-motion shot of the willowy woman and her hand mike being sucked into the terror and he could sit here for hours wanting to fuck her then and there in the bloodwhirl of knife and random limbs and slashed carotids, amid the staccato cries of the flailing assassin, cell phone clipped to his belt, and the gaseous bloated moans of the dying Arthur Rapp.
A tour bus blocked the route across the avenue. It was a double decker with smoke rolling from its underbelly and rows of woeful heads poking from the top tier, unstirring Swedes and Chinese, their fanny packs stuffed with currency.
Michael Chin was still in the jump seat, facing rearward. He'd listened to the audio account of the assassination but had not turned to look at the screens.
Eric watched him now, wondering whether the young man's restraint was a form of moral rigor or an apathy so deep it was not pierced by the muses, even, of sex and death.
"While you were away," Chin said. "Yes. Tell me."
"There was a report that consumer spending is weakening in Japan." He spoke in a newscaster's 14/91
Don DeLillo
Cosmopolis
voice. "Raising doubts about the country's economic strength."
"See.
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