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this?”
    “APE.”
    “You’re in the wrong business,” he said. “You ought to be promoting, merchandising.”
    “My father was an advertising immortal.”
    “It shows.”
    “You mean the apartment. Really, I’m not all that consumer-oriented or brand-conscious. It’s just a phase I went through about a year ago. I bought a lot of shiny stuff and maybe I regret it. But my father, getting back to that, he did the midget campaign for Maytag. It made him an immortal.”
    “I guess I missed it.”
    “Wash a midget in your Maytag.”
    “I did miss it.”
    “We used to argue all the time. It was awful. I thought he was the absolute lowest form of toad in the whole sick society. I was living with Penner then. And I’d see my fathertwice a year and we’d have these all-out screaming fights about the consumer society and revolution and all the rest of it. I remember seeing
Zabriskie Point
about then and that scene at the end when the house blows up and all those brightly colored products go exploding through the air in slow motion. God, that made my whole year. That was the high point of whatever year that was. And I tried to get old Ted Robbins to go see it, just out of spite, out of petty malice, all those packages of detergent and powdered soup and Q-tips and eye liner and that whole big house, boom.”
    “Who’s Penner?”
    “Remember Gary Penner? The demolitions expert who traveled all over the country blowing up things. Dial-a-Bomb.”
    “Yes,” Selvy said.
    “Feared coast to coast. FBI wanted him badly. He was J. Edgar’s secret obsession. I lived with Penner for seven months.
Running Dog
was in its prime then. We used to run statements from Penner about once a month hinting at what bank or whatever target in what city was due to get it next. I actually wrote the statements. Oh, it was a weird time. Weird times were upon us. Penner was
the
strangest son of a bitch. I mean he was wrapped up in explosives beyond human comprehension. He was also the meanest bastard you’d ever want to come across.”
    “But you like mean bastards.”
    “Fortunately I like mean bastards.”
    “He got it how?”
    “Some woman shot him, finally. Motel in Arizona. About a year after we split up.
Running Dog
did an obit with a black border.”
    Feeling a sneeze coming on, Selvy got up, moved away from the food on the table, whipped the towel off his waist and got it up to his nose just in time. Then he tossed the towel in the direction of the open bathroom door. They looked ateach other. She downed all but a few drops of bourbon. Then she put her thumb under the elastic band of the long johns, pulled it away from her belly and poured the last of the liquor down into the opening. She watched Selvy react interestingly and involuntarily. She got up, put the glass on the table and walked toward the bedroom, touching him lightly as she passed.
    When Moll woke up later it was early evening. A soft rain was falling. It seemed to hang out there rather than actually descend. She felt a chill and reached down to the floor for the sheets and bedspread. She started to place them carefully over Selvy’s body, in order not to wake him, when she realized he was watching her. She bit his shoulder and licked at his nipples. He moved, resettling himself, eyes closed now, as she kissed his lids and brows and moved the tips of her fingers across his chest.
    “I know whose limousine that was,” she said.
    He faced the ceiling, eyes closed.
    “Senator Percival, wasn’t it?”
    With her finger she traced a hank of hair around his left ear.
    “I know you work for him, Glen. He’s an avid collector of explicit art. You scout for him and do his buying.”
    Her hand on his chest rose and fell with the beat of his even breathing.
    “He can’t do it himself, obviously. You do it for him, following his instructions, presumably, and using administrative cover. Look, we may or may not end up using Percival in the series I’m doing but if you can