Read Online Running Dog by Don DeLillo - Free Book Online

doubts.”
    “Let me work on it.”
    “Knucklehead,” Delaney said.
    Her voice was husky and a little intimate and sometimes made insults sound like endearments. Often she purred obscenities. In her carefully tailored way, surrounded as she was by photos and layouts, by crushed paper cups, overflowingashtrays, cellophane mobiles, by books and scattered magazines, she managed to suggest the rigor that dwells at the heart of successful concealment. Moll watched her pour lotion on her wrists and over the backs of her hands and then slowly, dreamily even, begin rubbing it in. They knew about this even in Sunnyside. It was the way she dismissed people.
    It was late afternoon when Moll hailed a cab that took her past the Little Carnegie, where a special Chaplin program was playing. She found Selvy waiting in her apartment and decided not to ask how he’d gained entry. Bad taste, such questions. An insult to the ambivalence of their relations.
    Her sweater crackled as she pulled it over her head. Static cling. Current in the tips of her fingers. When he touched her, she jumped. They crashed together onto the bed. The mild shocks ceased as their bodies came to resemble a single intricate surface. She began tossing her head, free and clear of garments, straddling him, noting the blends and scents rising.
    Their eyes locked. A reconnoitering gaze. She sensed his control, his will, a nearly palpable thing, like a card player’s unswerving determination, the furious rightness of his victory.
    She ran a finger along his mouth. He lifted her then, driving with his hips, pounding, so high she tumbled forward, a hand on either side of his head for balance. They remained that way, reaching the end slowly, without further bursts and furies. On hands and knees she swayed above him, licking her lips to moisten them against the dry air.
    Propped on an elbow he watched her walk out of the room. When she came back she brought a can of beer, which they shared.
    “You have a third baseman’s Walk.”
    “I walk crouched,” she said.
    “Like you’ve been spending a whole career too close to home plate, expecting the hitter to bunt but always suspicious, ready to dart one way or the other.”
    “Suspicious of what?”
    “He might swing away.”
    “So that’s my walk. A third baseman. What about my body?”
    “Good hands,” he said. “Taut breasts. A second baseman’s.”
    “I just remembered something.”
    “Won’t get in your way when you pivot to make the double play.”
    “We’re going to the movies. I just realized. There’s a Chaplin program at the Little Carnegie and we’ve got four and a half minutes to get down there.”
    The dictator in uniform
.
    Each of his lapels bears the double-cross insignia. His hat is large, a visored cap, also with insignia. He wears knee-high boots
.
    The world’s most famous mustache
.
    The dictator addresses the multitudes. He speaks in strangulated tirades. A linguistic subfamily of German. The microphones recoil
.
    The story includes a little barber and a pretty girl
.
    An infant wets on the dictators hand. Storm troopers march and sing
.
    The dictator sits on his desk, holding a large globe in his left hand. A classic philosophical pose. His eyes have a faraway look. He senses the vast romance of acquisition and conquest
.
    The celebrated scene
.
    To a Lohengrin soundtrack, the dictator does an eerie ballet, bouncing the globe, a balloon, this way and that, tumbling happily on his back
.
    The dictator weeps, briefly
.
    The little barber, meanwhile, studies his image as it appears on the surface of a bald man’s head
.
    The dictator welcomes a rival tyrant to his country. The man arrives in a two-dimensional train. The leaders salute each other for many frames
.
    The prerogatives of dictatorship are easier to establish, they learn, when there is only one dictator
.
    There is a ball in the palace. The dictator and his rival eat strawberries and mustard. A treaty is signed. The two men