could be stolen from her in return for what would have to be surrendered to get at that private awareness. Besides I didn't know what she thought of me. Not knowing that, I couldn't know what form we'd take together. Then there was the fact that her eyes were closed.
'You seem tired,' I said.
'It's this weather, so full of life and sweet smells. It's a struggle to get through weather like this. I like to plot my existence on a fever chart in my head. In New York in the humid weather it used to rise and once in Montana at twenty below it nearly jumped off the chart and I thought I would die of too much life. I guess that sort of thing is mostly autosuggestion though. I can talk myself into almost anything. When I die I'll talk myself into another womb and start all over. That's what they do in Tibet-people who couldn't even get into Princeton entering fresh wombs like crazy.'
'Through a womb-door.'
'That's right,' she said. 'And there are good wombs and bad wombs.'
'I didn't know that.'
'Absolutely.'
'Are you hungry?' I said. 'I'm hungry. Let's get something to eat.'
'I have rehearsals to get to.'
'Do you have to leave right away?'
'I'm afraid yes, David.'
'We haven't had much of a chance to talk since the night of the summerhouse.'
'There's less and less for people to talk to when they talk to me. I hope diminishing existence isn't contagious.'
'Pandemic is more like it. I wish you'd open your eyes.'
'Is there anything to see?'
'Maybe not.'
'Even the bibles are white,' she said. 'We used to go over to the Gansevoort Street pier at sunset. Those humid evenings in that barren part of New York when I lived almost beyond living. And Roy said to me once now I know why New Jersey's where it is and not next to Alabama where it probably belongs. So the sun can go down over it.'
Drotty wore black silk and pale green corduroy. He was a dagger of a man, a small jagged bad mood glinting in a corner. Yet he smoked his cigarette almost tenderly, every movement of his hand a soft and highly deliberate piece of orchestration. I hadn't expected him to be so young. In fact I hadn't expected him to show up at all. But he seemed perfectly willing to go along with what must have seemed to him an incomparably casual, if not barbaric, form of theater. This script was not bound; this hotel room was not soundproof; this director had little to say; this tape recorder was a sociological curse; this movie was doomed. Drotty mentioned none of these; he merely smoked and moved softly now about the room in black Spanish boots, a certain shrewish violence attaching to every step. His face, his small face, worked hard at being blank.
'I guess Austin and Carol have told you they've been part of this thing since the beginning.'
'I don't mind if my people moonlight as long as it doesn't interfere with their work at the theater.'
'I hope it hasn't.'
'It hasn't,' he said. 'They seem intrigued by what you're doing. Perhaps I should be jealous.'
'They seem a lot more intrigued by what you're doing. They talk about you all the time.'
'They're getting bored. The regional theater bores everybody in the end. People come out of a sense of duty. We try to shock them but they've been in a state of shock for years. Do you know something? In five years the entire American theater including what's left of Broadway will be a government-subsidized semi-religious institution. Not unlike Yellowstone National Park. do not litter signs will be everywhere.'
'Cool boots,' I said.
'These were given me by a lady professor of romance languages whose only copy of her seventh unproduced play was burned in my fireplace by an Afro-American who said his name was Abdul Murad Bey. I dreaded telling her about it but when the moment arrived she seemed relieved and it wasn't too many weeks later that she presented me with these boots. Recently I heard that Abdul Murad Bey was partly responsible for the burning of Philadelphia, an unproduced play in its own right.'
He finished this anecdote by tightening his features and going even more blank than before. I didn't know whether I was supposed to laugh or not, so I merely sent some air down my nostrils, trying to make the sound a cheerful one. I realized that neither of us had yet called the other by name, first or last. This oversight haunted the beginning and end of every remark. Of course it wasn't just an oversight.
We discussed his lines. He placed the cigarette in an ashtray and walked slowly to the armchair and sat down. I had to put out the cigarette for him. Then we were ready to begin.
'Film must leave an emotional residue. The retentive aspect is the one true criterion. What do I take away from a film and of that what do I keep? Something more than underwear, I would hope. I think that what you've got to do at this point is stretch your aesthetic. My task is to help the more serious of my students develop some sort of cinematic lifestyle. I do admit to finding a marginal interest in your movie. It appeals to the child in me. I like silliness. I like silly ideas. Many great movies are basically silly and the movie hero is almost always a dope. Brando for example has portrayed dope after dope. So has Belmondo, so has O'Toole, so has Toshiro Mifune. It's all a question of levels. Preminger's vulgarity is postcollegiate; yours is still matriculating. Since this is our last meeting, I think total candor is in order. I dislike you very much. I've always disliked you. You have evinced little or no respect for me. Time and again, in the presence of female students, you have attempted to undermine my position as teacher and human being. You want very much to know about my relations with a certain young lady of our mutual acquaintance. You crave bad news, defeat, punishment. Defeat is always glorious on film. The loser is ennobled by suffering and death. No camera can resist the man going down to defeat. He commands every mechanism and the attention of every mind. Perhaps you see yourself as a wide-screen hero. I've totally forgotten what I'm supposed to say next.'
Glenn Yost's wife was a large friendly woman who probably started wearing a housecoat when she was three. She was a toucher and kidder, obviously well loved by the two Glenns, the kind of woman who excels at picnics- laughing and telling jokes, slapping men's backs, pinching the kids, matching bosoms with the ladies, a vast warm-weather front moving across the plains. I didn't like having her around.
I introduced Sullivan to the family, and then Mrs. Yost, Laura, told us they had been waiting dessert until we got there, peach pie and vanilla ice cream, and we all sat down to talk and eat. The Yosts kept telling funny stories about each other. There was something extraordinary in their love, something laughable about it in the best sense; each seemed a legend to the others, a comic masterpiece of blunders, conceits and disastrous hobbies. Laura did most of the storytelling, moving from dining room to kitchen in her yellow housecoat, pouring coffee over the edges of our cups. I was there to finish an unreal job, to complete the worst part of the crossing, and the reality of all this unaffected warmth did me no good. Also my camera was not interested in oral tradition. I looked at Sullivan. She was bisecting crumbs of pie with her thumbnail.
'Can we get right at it, Glenn?'
'The pantry's in there,' he said.
'Maybe Bud and Sully and I can go in right now and get it done. Take only a few minutes.'
'Won't it be too dark?' Laura said.
The pantry was just off the kitchen. Glenn turned on the light for me and got out of the way. Moving fast, I put one of the kitchen chairs against the far wall of the pantry. I instructed Sullivan to sit there. I watched her for a moment. Then I realized that Bud was standing next to me holding the camera. Quickly I took it from him, focused on Sullivan in the chair and began shooting. When this was done, five or six seconds later, I asked her to stand against the wall and I moved Bud into the pantry facing her, his back to the camera. Then I was standing in the doorway again. Glenn and Laura were right behind me. I had to get them out of there. They were just so much honey sticking to my fingers and it was vinegar I needed to taste, vinegar and the pant of hot steel on my tongue, if I was ever to get this done. I asked them to leave. I told them to get completely out of the kitchen. Then, with Sullivan and the boy standing, I shot twenty seconds more, my very own commercial, a life in the life. Then I cut again and asked her to get closer to him and to put her hands on his shoulders. He turned and stared at me, either
