And there the fantasy would fall apart, not because he’d reached satisfaction but because of his own embarrassment. How could he play this game when he should have been mourning his boy? How could he miss her when the boy was gone forever? Defeated by his own spinelessness, he’d leave and walk south to Cinema West.
The Conversation. You don’t know who you’re tangling with! the guy with the mustache was yelling. Harry Caul. That was Hackman’s name in this one. John chewed on the stem of his pipe while he watched. He crossed his legs the way he pleased, in the manner of the French café patron, the way a schoolboy never should because it was how women sat, and in defying his father’s ancient instructions he felt a bit more like an adult. The soundtrack crackled at the high end, and echoed eerily, as most of the chairs were empty. There were voices in the stairwell, beyond the vestibule, loud enough to gain the interest of one of the moviegoers sitting nearest John. His chair creaked when he looked back into the dark. Outside, the wind was howling.
In the sublet John would watch Hawaii Five-O and Archie Bunker reruns on channel 11 until the station sign-off, and then he’d twist the UHF knob until he found a movie to watch while he tried to masturbate. He barely slept, and when he did, it was the sleep of an animal on the jungle floor. Too exhausted to make use of his sleeplessness, he lay in the white glow of the TV and felt shitty. There was a telephone that never rang. He had begun to go bald.
There were voices outside the library, odd because no one who wanted to be allowed in would dare speak above a whisper.
He relit his pipe, the wheel rasping against the flint, sparking, the flame bowing down to worship the bowl when he drew. This conceit in movies that every gesture, every word had power and meaning, this absurd convention of moments, moments that changed lives, moments in which irreversible decisions were made, ultimatums delivered and enforced. Anyone who lived that way would die of exhaustion. He only wanted peace from the never-ending skid of emotional engagement. When life becomes a series of interconnected dramatic events, you can’t think straight, and that was his whole problem. He couldn’t eat an orange without thinking of their last trip to Florida, or of standing beside her at the kitchen counter, cutting an orange with the red plastic-handled knife she’d bought on Bowery, without the voice of his father commenting on the weakness of remembering those things. Buy a box of macaroni and he was at their last Christmas dinner, when they’d been fighting, burned the bird to a crisp and had to make do with what was in the cabinet. Every graffiti-tagged wall was an illuminated manuscript, a record of their every trip down the sidewalk together. The city was two filmstrips that had been laid atop one another, present and past, both projected onto the screen simultaneously. And in every shot, the little boy.
He’d given Bronwyn’s well-being more consideration in the time since they’d split up than he ever did while they were together. Her friends had turned against him, and he had flipped the switch that allowed him to hate them back. They had no idea what she was like.
Months after he’d moved out, months after he’d last seen her, he would put on a shirt that had been laundered ten times since, and there on the cuff, tickling his hand, a long blond hair, hers. Undoubtedly hers. Off to the bathroom to puke in the sink. He could not imagine her without imagining the boy. So there were three filmstrips. Past, present, and the boy.
The voices outside were actually only one voice, a spice importer named Bonny Patel who rented some upstairs office space from Sal, and who sometimes drifted down to chat with his landlord in quiet British English, hanging around if an old black-and-white was on the bill. He was a Cary Grant fan. There was a gentleness about Bonny, an insistence on ascertaining the well-being of whoever he was speaking to. He had so perfected the art of concealing himself behind questions that invariably his conversant was left feeling invigorated by Bonny’s attentions, but wondering who, exactly, he’d divulged himself to.
Usually he wore a double-breasted suit open to allow his not-insubstantial belly to breathe, his shirt open at the collar, a pair of English monk straps. When he spoke, he did so with his hands, moving them in a deliberate, artful fashion that irritated Sal, who, to be fair, would have been equally irritated had Bonny stood with his hands in his pockets or had he lacked hands entirely. Sal’s end of the conversation usually consisted of dry air punctured by throat-clearings.
In the hallway Bonny was calling Sal’s name. He didn’t stop calling when he entered the library, feeling his way toward the spiral stairs. Sal’s head popped out of the booth.
Bonny, what the hell? he said in a whisper that was itself an act of violence.
Where is Vikram? Bonny said.
How should I know? Sal said.
You have not seen him?
No!
Bonny climbed the iron stairs that led to the mezzanine, a clanging, squealing ascent, and once he’d cleared the top his heavy footfall shook the floorboards as he hurried around to the projector booth.
Something has happened to him, Bonny said. He left hours ago. I’m sure something has happened to him. He’s been robbed, beaten by one of these gangs.
The man sitting in front of John leaned back and said, See there? I knew it was about money.
I haven’t seen him, Sal said.
Please, we must search for him. Please, the lights, Bonny said.
Be quiet, Sal said. He slipped through the booth’s door. Sal was, on a good day, a jagged personality, one of those raw, vibrating nerves who took over
