BOOK: Going deeper into the coffee shop with Eric, Elise, and Torval

Before action: I love that you can see the square of butter. lol

We had fun playing with the first official still and the novel so we thought let’s do it again with the new set photos. If you’re just catching up with us, take a look at our discussion group, The Discussion, archived under the menu bar, The Story.

Book excerpt after the cut *SPOILERS*

From Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis:

He sat with his back to the wall, watching Torval position himself near the front door,
where he had a broad view of the room. The place was crowded. He heard stray words in French and Somali seeping through the ambient noise. That was the disposition of this end of 47th Street. Dark women in ivory robes walking in the river wind toward the UN secretariat. Apartment towers called Mole and Octavia. There were Irish nannies pushing strollers in the parks. And Elise of course, Swiss or something, sitting across the table.

“What are we going to talk about?” she said.

He sat before a plate of pancakes and sausages, waiting for the square of butter to melt and run so he could use his fork to swirl it into the torpid syrup and then watch the marks made by the tines slowly fold into the soak. He realized her question was serious.

“We want a heliport on the roof. I’ve acquired air rights but still need to get a zoning variance. Don’t you want to eat?”

It seemed, the food, to make her draw back. Green tea and toast untouched before her.

“And a shooting range next to the elevator bank. Let’s talk about us.”

“You and I. We’re here. So might as well.”

“When are we going to have sex again?”

“We will. I promise,” she said.

“We haven’t in a while now.”

“When I work, you see. The energy is precious.”

“When you write.”

“Yes.”

“Where do you do this? I look for you, Elise.” He watched Torval move his lips thirty feet away. He was speaking into a mouthpiece concealed in his lapel. He wore an ear bud.

The handset of his cell phone was belted under his jacket not far from his voice-activated firearm, Czech-made, another emblem of the international tenor of the district.

“I curl up somewhere. I’ve always done this. My mother used to send people to find me,” she said. “Maids and gardeners combing the house and grounds. She thought I was dissolvable in water.”

“I like your mother. You have your mother’s breasts.”

“Her breasts.”

“Great stand-up tits,” he said.

He ate quickly, inhaling his food. Then he ate her food. He thought he could feel the
glucose entering his cells, fueling the body’s other appetites.

He nodded to the owner of the place, a Greek from Samos, who waved from the counter. He liked to come here because Torval did not want him to.

“Tell me this. Where will you go now?” she said. “To a meeting somewhere? To your office? Where is your office? What do you do exactly?”
She peered at him over bridged hands, her smile in hiding.

“You know things. I think this is what you do,” she said. “I think you’re dedicated to knowing. I think you acquire information and turn it into something stupendous and awful. You’re a dangerous person. Do you agree? A visionary.”

NOTE: I am not implanted in David Cronenberg’s brain. I don’t actually know which take is associated with the text. This is just fun and games. What do you guys think? How are you liking Eric, Elise, and Torval??

PHOTOS: Source