The Moviegoer

mark on my seat arm with my thumbnail. Where, I wondered, will this particular piece of wood be twenty years from now, 543 years from now? Once as I was travelling through the Midwest ten years ago I had a layover of three hours in Cincinnati. There was time to go see Joseph Gotten in Holiday at a neighborhood theater called the Altamont—but not before I had struck up an acquaintance with the ticket seller, a lady named Mrs Clara James, and learned that she had seven grandchildren all living in Cincinnati. We still exchange Christmas cards. Mrs James is the only person I know in the entire state of Ohio.
    When I get back to my apartment, the first thing I see is a letter from my aunt stuck behind the aluminum seagull on the screen door. I know what it is. It is not a letter actually but a memo. Often when we have had one of our serious talks, she has second thoughts which she is anxious to communicate. Sometimes I get a memo out of a clear sky. She takes a great deal of trouble with me. I wish I were able to please her better.
    But before I can read the letter, Mrs Schexnaydre comes down and lends me her copy of Reader’s Digest.
    Mrs Schexnaydre is a vigorous pony-size blond who wears sneakers summer and winter. She is very good to me and sees to it that everything is kept spick-and-span. The poor woman is quite lonely; she knows no one except the painters and carpenters and electricians who are forever working on her house. She has lived in New Orleans all her life and knows no one. Sometimes I watch television with her and share a bottle of Jax and talk about her years at MacDonough No. 6 school, the happiest period of her life. It is possible to do this because her television will bring in channel 12 and mine won’t. She watches the quiz programs faithfully and actually feels she knows the contestants. Sometimes I even persuade her to go to the movies with me. Her one fear in life is of Negroes. Although one seldom sees Negroes in this part of Gentilly, our small yard is enclosed by a hurricane fence eight feet high; every window is barred. Over the years she has acquired three dogs, each for the reason that it had been reputed to harbor a special dislike for Negroes. I have no particular objection to this trait in a dog—for all I know, Mrs Schexnaydre’s fears may be quite justified. However, these are miserable curs and to make matters worse, they also dislike me. One I especially despise, an orange-colored brute with a spitz face and a plume of a tail which curves over his back exposing a large convoluted anus. I have come to call him old Rosebud. He is usually content to eye me and raise his lip, but one foggy night he slipped out of an azalea bush and sank his teeth in my leg. Now and then when I know Mrs Schexnaydre is out, I will give him a tremendous kick in the ribs and send him yowling.
    â€œI marked a real cute article for you,” she says briskly and makes a point of leaving immediately to show she is not one of those landladies who intrude upon their tenants.
    I am happy to have the magazine. The articles are indeed cute and heart-warming. People who are ordinarily understood to dislike each other or at least to be indifferent toward each other discover that they have much in common. I seem to recall an article about a subway breaking down in New York. The passengers who had their noses buried in newspapers began to talk to each other. They discovered that their fellow passengers were human beings much like themselves and with the same hopes and dreams; people are much the same the world over, even New Yorkers, the article concluded, and given the opportunity will find more to like than to dislike about each other. A lonely old man found himself talking excitedly to a young girl about his hobby of growing irises in a window box, she to him about her hopes and dreams for a career in art. I have to agree with Mrs Schexnaydre: such an episode is indeed heart-warming. On the other hand, it would make me nervous to be present at such a gathering. To tell the truth, if I were a young girl, I would have nothing to do with kindly old philosophers such as are portrayed by Thomas Mitchell in the movies. These birds look fishy to me.
    But I can’t read the article now. My aunt’s letter makes a stronger demand upon me. She thinks constantly of other people—she is actually unselfish, the only person I know who is. When she reads something or thinks of something which may