The old man stood by the highway, jerking his arm in the hitchhiker’s signal. Car after car passed him. Drivers that didn’t think he was a scarecrow thought he was an outrageously hideous old man, and wouldn’t have touched him with your door. In the woods behind, a Catholic posse was beating the bushes. The best he could expect at their hands was a death whipping, and to be fondled unspeakably, as the Turks Lawrence. Above him on the electric wires perched the first crows of the year, arranged between the poles like abacus beads. His shoes sucked the water out of the mud like a pair of roots. There would be a mist of pain when he forgot this spring, as he must. The traffic was not heavy but it scorned him regularly with little explosions of air as the fenders snapped by. Suddenly, as the action freezing into a still on the movie screen, an Oldsmobile materialized out of the blur streaming past him. There was a beautiful girl behind the wheel, maybe a blond housewife. Her small hands, which hung lightly from the top of the wheel, were covered with elegant white gloves, and they drifted into her wrists like a pair of perfect bored acrobats. She drove the car effortlessly, like the pointer on a Ouija Board. She wore her hair loose, and she was used to fast cars.
– Climb in, she spoke only to the windshield. Try not to dirty things.
He shoveled himself into the leather seat beside her, having to shut the door several times in order to free his rags. Except for footwear, she was naked below the armrest, and she kept the map light on to be sure you noticed it. As the car pulled away it was pelted with stones and buckshot because the posse had reached the edge of the forest. At top speed he noticed that she had slanted the air ventilator to play on her pubic hair.
– Are you married? he asked.
– What if I am?
– I don’t know why I asked. I’m sorry. May I rest my head in your lap?
– They always ask me if I’m married. Marriage is only a symbol for a ceremony which can be exhausted as easily as it can be renewed.
– Spare me your philosophy, Miss.
– You filthy heap! Eat me!
– Gladly.
– Keep your ass off the accelerator.
– Is this right?
– Yah, yah, yah, yah.
– Come forward a little. The leather hurts my chin.
– Have you any idea who I am?
– Ubleubleubleuble – none – ubleubleubleuble.
– Guess! Guess! You thatch of shit!
– I’m not in the least interested.
–
– Foreigners bore me, Miss.
– Are you quite finished, you foul stump of rot? Yi! Yi! You do it wonderful!
– You ought to use one of those anti-sweat wood ladder seats. Then you wouldn’t be sitting in your juices in a draft all day.
– I’m very proud of you, darling. Now get out! Clean up!
– Are we downtown, already?
– We are. Good-by, darling.
– Good-by. Have a magnificent crash.
The old man climbed out of the slow-moving car just in front of the System Theatre. She rammed her moccasin down on the gas pedal and roared into the broadside of a traffic jam in Phillips Square. The old man paused for a moment under the marquee, eyeing the huddled vegetarians with two slight traces, one of nostalgia, one of pity. He forgot them as soon as he bought his ticket. He sat down in the darkness.
– When does the show start, pardon me, sir?
– Are you crazy? And get away from me, you smell terrible. He changed his seat three or four times waiting for the news–reel to begin. Finally he had the whole front row to himself.
– Usher! Usher!
– Shhh. Quiet!
– Usher! I’m not going to sit here all night. When does the show start?
– You’re disturbing the people, sir.
The old man wheeled around and he saw row after row of silent raised eyes, and the occasional mouth chewing mechanically, and the eyes shifted continuously, as if they were watching a small pingpong game. Sometimes, when all the eyes contained exactly the same image, like all the windows of a huge slot machine repeating bells, they made a noise in unison. It only happened when they all saw exactly the same thing, and the noise was called laughter, he remembered.
– The last feature is on, sir.
Now he understood as much as he needed. The movie was invisible to him. His eyes were blinking at the same rate as the shutter in the projector, times per second, and therefore the screen was merely black. It was automatic. Among the audience, one or two viewers, noting their unaccustomed renewal of pleasure during Richard Widmark’s maniac laugh in Kiss of Death, realized that they were probably in the presence of a Master of the Yoga of the Movie Position. No doubt these students applied themselves to their disciplines with replenished enthusiasm, striving to guarantee the intensity of the flashing story, never imagining that their exercises led, not to perpetual suspense, but to a black screen. For the first time in his life the old man relaxed totally.
– No, sir. You can’t change your seat again. Oops, where’s he gone? That’s funny. Hmmm.
The old man smiled as the flashlight beam went through him.
The hot dogs looked naked in the steam bath of the Main Shooting and Game Alley, an amusement arcade on St. Lawrence Boulevard. The Main Shooting and Game Alley wasn’t brand new, and it would never be modernized because only offices could satisfy the rising real estate. The Photomat was broken; it accepted quarters but returned neither flashes nor pictures. The Claw Machine had never obeyed an engineer, and a greasy dust covered the encased old chocolate bars and Japanese Ronsons. There were a few yellow pinball machines of ancient variety, models from before the introduction of flippers. Flippers, of course, have destroyed the sport by legalizing the
