I
I
I
PARTISAN REVIEW
"You were daydreaming."
"No."
383
"It's always the same, isn't it? You want to perform, to open the
floodgates, move out of your quicksand. But when it comes to the
crunch, you haven't got one minute's concentration."
"I'm ready."
"If
it were up to me, this wouldn't be assigned to you."
"Why?"
"You haven't got the fluidity. Emergency washes over you like
a sandstorm . . . You cap the open end with a primer made with a
high powered rifle bullet, .30-06 preferably, with as small a lead
slug as possible. Now we cut off the slug right here where it joins the
shell casing. Then drill a hole in the pipe cap the exact size of the
bullet, then seat the bullet in the hole, leaving about one-third of
the bullet primer sticking out. Now we come to the fuse . . . You
c~n't
fake this one, babe. Why they've assigned you such an im–
portant event I don't know. Maybe they think you can handle it
'cause you don't know the fear of the game yet. But it's foolproof
if
you can muster the attention, the pride. Everything will be pre–
pared for you. It can only fail if you do. Understand?"
"No."
"Figure it out. You think you can handle this?"
"I said I was ready."
"Ready for what? Ready to understand, ready to go in, will–
ing to do this for us? The others seem to have confidence in you.
I don't think you'll ever make
it."
"Why not?"
"Because you're blocked. Between one end of this maneuver and
the other is an incredible momentum."
"And so?"
"Your rhythm's all wrong."
The ghosts are howling in the wind of her headache. He gunned,
slammed the cycle into gear and they were off along the furious cliffs.
Against the grain of the wind her wispy masses of hair danced out
over the canyon, wrenched from her temples and pulled violently
along her scalp. Down below she saw a multiplicity of possible deaths,
brains shattered about the perimeter in hairpin spins of the bike. Her
own corpse strewn about the valley in a thousand breakings. They
