The Moviegoer

applied for the job, a drugstore-library copy which she held under her purse. Ever since, the bag has been heavy with it—I can tell by the swing of it. She reads it at her lunch in the A & G cafeteria. Her choice in literature I took to be a good omen at the time, but I have changed my mind. My Sharon should not read this kind of stuff.
    Her person has acquired a priceless value to me. For the first time I understand the conceits of the old poets: how I envy thee, little kidney-shaped cushion! Oh, to take thy place and press in thy stead against the sweet hollow of her back, etc. The other day Frank Hebert from Savings & Loan next door was complaining about his overhead: his rent was so much, his office girl such and such. To think of it: Sharon Kincaid as an item on a list, higher than the janitor, lower than the rent. Yet I dare not raise her salary, though before long I shall and with reason. She is a first-class secretary, quicker to learn than either Marcia or Linda. Only this much do I know from the interview: she comes from Barbour County, Alabama; she attended Birmingham Southern for two years; her mother and father left the farm and are divorced; her mother sells Real Silk hosiery and often visits Sharon but does not live with her. Sharon lives in a rooming house on Esplanade. Her roommate works for Alcoa. One night I drove by the house, a tall narrow pile with blue windows and a display of plumbing fixtures on the ground floor.
    Toward her I keep a Gregory Peckish sort of distance. I am a tall black-headed fellow and I know as well as he how to keep to myself, make my eyes fine and my cheeks spare, tuck my lip and say a word or two with a nod or two.
    It is just as well I keep my distance. Today it is louder than ever, this mistral whistling in my ears. I am nearly sick with it. Desire for her is like a sorrow in my heart. Ten minutes ago she rolled backwards in her little chair to hand me a letter and did not even touch me, but there singing about me was Rosenkavalier and here was the yellow-cotton smell of her and of the summer to come. Once she did touch my hand with the warm ventral flesh of her forearm: sparks flew past the corner of my eye and I actually became dizzy.
    Today I read Arabia Deserta enclosed in a Standard & Poor binder. She conceals Peyton Place; I conceal Arabia Deserta.
    Pleasant, as the fiery heat of the daylight is done, is our homely evening fire. The sun goes down upon a highland steppe of Arabia, whose common altitude is above three thousand feet, the thin dry air is presently refreshed, the sand is soon cold; wherein yet at three fingers’ depth is left the sunny warmth of the past day’s heat until the new sunrise. After a half hour it is the blue night, and a clear hoary starlight in which there shines the girdle of the milky way, with a marvellous clarity. As the sun is setting, the nomad housewife brings in a truss of sticks and dry bushes, which she has pulled or hoed with a mattock (a tool they have seldom) in the wilderness; she casts down this provision by our hearthside, for the sweet-smelling evening fire.
    There was a time when this was the last book on earth I’d have chosen to read. Until recent years, I read only “fundamental” books, that is, key books on key subjects, such as War and Peace, the novel of novels; A Study of History , the solution of the problem of time; Schroedinger’s What is Life? , Einstein’s The Universe as I See It , and such. During those years I stood outside the universe and sought to understand it. I lived in my room as an Anyone living Anywhere and read fundamental books and only for diversion took walks around the neighborhood and saw an occasional movie. Certainly it did not matter to me where I was when I read such a book as The Expanding Universe. The greatest success of this enterprise, which I call my vertical search, came one night when I sat in a hotel room in Birmingham and read a book called The Chemistry of Life. When I finished it, it seemed to me that the main goals of my search were reached or were in principle reachable, whereupon I went out and saw a movie called It Happened One Night which was itself very good. A memorable night. The only difficulty was that though the universe had been disposed of, I myself was left over. There I lay in my hotel room with my search over yet still obliged to draw one breath and then the next. But now I have undertaken a different kind of search, a