The Moviegoer

you ever tasted better food at Galatoire’s?” “No, it’s very good, Walter.” “Give me your honest opinion, Binx.” “It’s very good.” He got Jake the caretaker out of trouble once and liked having him around. Jake would sit in close to the poker game. “Jake, what do you think of that fellow over there?” Walter would ask him, nodding toward me or one of the others. He liked to think that Negroes have a sixth sense and that his Negro had an extra good one. Jake would cock his head as if he were fathoming me with his sixth sense. “You got to watch him! That Mister Binx is all right now!” And in some fashion, more extraordinary than a sixth sense, Jake would manage to oblige Walter without disobliging me. The houseboat seemed like a good idea, but as it worked out I became depressed. To tell the truth I like women better. All I could think about in that swamp was how much I’d like to have my hands on Marcia or Linda and be spinning along the Gulf Coast.
    To tell the absolute truth, I’ve always been slightly embarrassed in Walter’s company. Whenever I’m with him, I feel the stretch of the old tightrope, the necessity of living up to the friendship of friendships, of cultivating an intimacy beyond words. The fact is we have little to say to each other. There is only this thick sympathetic silence between us. We are comrades, true, but somewhat embarrassed comrades. It is probably my fault. For years now I have had no friends. I spend my entire time working, making money, going to movies and seeking the company of women.
    The last time I had friends was eight years ago. When I returned from the Orient and recovered from my wound, I took up with two fellows I thought I should like. I did like them. They were good fellows both. One was an ex-Lieutenant like me, a University of Cal man, a skinny impoverished fellow who liked poetry and roaming around the countryside. The other was a mad eccentric from Valdosta, a regular young Burl Ives with beard and guitar. We thought it would be a good thing to do some hiking, so we struck out from Gatlinburg in the Smokies, headed for Maine on the Appalachian Trail. We were all pretty good drinkers and talkers and we could spiel about women and poetry and Eastern religion in pretty good style. It seemed like a fine idea, sleeping in shelters or under the stars in the cool evergreens, and later hopping freights. In fact this was what I was sure I wanted to do. But in no time at all I became depressed. The times we did have fun, like sitting around a fire or having a time with some girls, I had the feeling they were saying to me: “How about this, Binx? This is really it, isn’t it, boy?”, that they were practically looking up from their girls to say this. For some reason I sank into a deep melancholy. What good fellows they were, I thought, and how much they deserved to be happy. If only I could make them happy. But the beauty of the smoky blue valleys, instead of giving us joy, became heartbreaking. “What’s the matter with you, Binx?” they said at last. “My dear friends,” I said to them. “I will say good-by and wish you well. I think I will go back to New Orleans and live in Gentilly.” And there I have lived ever since, solitary and in wonder, wondering day and night, never a moment without wonder. Now and then my friends stop by, all gotten up as young eccentrics with their beards and bicycles, and down they go into the Quarter to hear some music and find some whores and still I wish them well. As for me, I stay home with Mrs Schexnaydre and turn on TV. Not that I like TV so much, but it doesn’t distract me from the wonder. That is why I can’t go to the trouble they go to. It is distracting, and not for five minutes will I be distracted from the wonder.
    4
    WALTER OFFERS TO DRIVE Uncle Jules to town. Through the living-room doors I can see my aunt sitting by the fire, temple propped on her fingers. The white light from the sky pours into her upturned face. She opens her eyes and, seeing me, forms a soundless word with her lips.
    I find Kate in the ground-level basement, rubbing an iron fireplace. Since Christmas she and Walter have taken to cleaning things, removing a hundred years’ accumulation of paint from old walls and cupboards to expose the cypress and brick underneath. As if to emphasize her sallowness and thinness, she has changed