Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem Page A

obedience.
    “Hello.”
    Oona stared at me with her crooked smile. I wasn’t totally unfamiliar with the starstruck gaze, but Manhattanites usually did a better job of concealing it, especially those dressed in black.
    “Sorry,” she said. Instead of offering a hand, she crossed her arms, fitting plumlike breasts over her forearms. “I’ve always sort of wanted to meet you. But then again, sort of wanted not to, at all.”
    “Okay,” I said, as generous as I could manage under the circumstances. People might dialogue in their own heads with famous or semi-famous strangers. I preferred to think it a fundamental minimum standard that they keep it to themselves. Nothing in Oona Laszlo’s manner suggested any self-reproach. She examined me like a portrait painter seeking a better grasp of the play of light over my facial planes.
    “You’re from somewhere really weird, aren’t you?” said Oona Laszlo. Before I could answer she supplied it herself: “Indiana.”
    “Yes.” If I didn’t think of it I often forgot. My home was far away, if it was my home.
    Perkus had plunked back into his chair. He relit the joint, and scrabbled in a pile of loose CDs, then shoved one into the boom box. “So,” he said. Slumping beneath the bridge of his own templed hands, he drew on the joint centered in his lips so that it crackled, then pinched it from his mouth and waved it free. “I got sent a dub of Gillo Pontecorvo’s Burn , it’s eighteen minutes longer than the release cut, some kind of early assembly, maybe we should watch it—” Perkus spoke as if to one of us alone, only I was unsure which. Was he resuming a conversation with Oona or beginning one with me? All talk was a resumption. I couldn’t remember who Pontecorvo was, though I knew I was supposed to.
    Perkus pounced, as ever, on my hesitation. “Pontecorvo. He did The Battle of Algiers . You know, Burn , with Brando.”
    “Oh, sure.”
    “Yeah, this is pretty much how I pictured it,” said Oona Laszlo. She gathered up a sweater, also black, from the back of her chair. “You guys are pretty sweet, and I’m going to go now.”
    “Sweet how?” I asked. “What’s so sweet about us?”
    “Just, you know, watching old Brando movies together in the afternoon, then deconstructing the universe for dessert. It’s like you’re helping Perkus with his homework.”
    “See you later,” said Perkus. He was, I understood, very eager to have Oona leave, to avoid having us here together. Which made me eager for the opposite. Oona Laszlo’s little jibe at Perkus made me understand that they weren’t lovers, at least not anymore. She and I shared a protective impulse toward him. Also, an unrelated insight, I’d begun to find Oona beguiling, despite her pointed gawking. It was a little boyish around here, now that she’d pointed it out. She could be the cure.
    “Why don’t you stay and watch with us?” I said.
    “I would, but I just saw that movie, and Perkus hates it when I shout out the dialogue just before the actors say it.”
    “Oh?”
    “That was a joke. Forgive me. There’s something about running into you here that’s making me babble.”
    “You don’t have to be so self-conscious.”
    “No, actually, I do. I’m one of those subtext-on-the-outside people, which is why I should really go.”
    She then surprised me by gathering up one of the Lucite boxes of White Rhino and shoveling it into her purse. And then was gone. Perkus barely glanced after her.
    “She took your pot.”
    “It was hers,” he said, not glancing at the table either. “I scored it for her, as a favor. She doesn’t like to deal with Watt.” He inventedtasks for himself, sweeping imaginary crumbs into his cupped palm, fiddling with the volume, jumping up to rinse a glass, seeking, with his whole being, to exorcise the obvious subject. I didn’t allow him.
    “An old girlfriend?”
    Perkus shook his head. “Just a friend.”
    “She’s a funny one. How’d you meet