The Moviegoer

the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upside-down: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me; only the haters seem alive.
    Down I plunk myself with a liberal weekly at one of the massive tables, read it from cover to cover, nodding to myself whenever the writer scores a point. Damn right, old son, I say, jerking my chair in approval. Pour it on them. Then up and over to the rack for a conservative monthly and down in a fresh cool chair to join the counter-attack. Oh ho, say I, and hold fast to the chair arm: that one did it: eviscerated! And then out and away into the sunlight, my neck prickling with satisfaction.
    Nell Lovell, I was saying, spotted me and over she comes brandishing a book. It seems she has just finished reading a celebrated novel which, I understand, takes a somewhat gloomy and pessimistic view of things. She is angry.
    â€œI don’t feel a bit gloomy!” she cries. “Now that Mark and Lance have grown up and flown the coop, I am having the time of my life. I’m taking philosophy courses in the morning and working nights at Le Petit Theatre. Eddie and I have re-examined our values and found them pretty darn enduring. To our utter amazement we discovered that we both have the same life-goal. Do you know what it is?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œTo make a contribution, however small, and leave the world just a little better off.”
    â€œThat’s very good,” I say somewhat uneasily and shift about on the library steps. I can talk to Nell as long as I don’t look at her. Looking into her eyes is an embarrassment.
    â€œâ€”we gave the television to the kids and last night we turned on the hi-fi and sat by the fire and read The Prophet aloud. I don’t find life gloomy!” she cries. “To me, books and people and things are endlessly fascinating. Don’t you think so?”
    â€œYes.” A rumble has commenced in my descending bowel, heralding a tremendous defecation.
    Nell goes on talking and there is nothing to do but shift around as best one can, take care not to fart, and watch her in a general sort of way: a forty-year-old woman with a good open American face and another forty years left in her; and eager, above all, eager, with that plaintive lost eagerness American college women get at a certain age. I get to thinking about her and old Eddie re-examining their values. Yes, true. Values. Very good. And then I can’t help wondering to myself: why does she talk as if she were dead? Another forty years to go and dead, dead, dead.
    â€œHow is Kate?” Nell asks.
    I jump and think hard, trying to escape death. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”
    â€œI am so devoted to her! What a grand person she is.”
    â€œI am too. She is.”
    â€œCome see us, Binx!”
    â€œI will!”
    We part laughing and dead.
    10
    AT FOUR O’CLOCK I decide it is not too early to set in motion my newest scheme conceived in the interests of money and love, my love for Sharon. Everything depends on a close cooperation between business and love. If ever my business should suffer because of my admiration for Sharon, then my admiration for Sharon would suffer too. Never never will I understand men who throw over everything for some woman. The trick, the joy of it, is to prosper on all fronts, enlist money in the service of love and love in the service of money. As long as I am getting rich, I feel that all is well. It is my Presbyterian blood.
    At four fifteen I sit on the edge of her desk, fold my arms and look troubled.
    â€œMiss Kincaid. I have a favor to ask of you.”
    â€œYes sir, Mr Bolling.”
    As she looks up at me, I think how little we know each other. She is really a stranger. Her yellow eyes are quite friendly and opaque. She is very nice and very anxious to be helpful. My heart sinks. Love, the very possibility of love, vanishes. Our sexes vanish. We are a regular little team.
    â€œDo you know what these names are?”
    â€œCustomers’ files.”
    â€œThey are also portfolios, individual listings of stocks and bonds and so forth. Now I tell you what we do every year about this time. In a few weeks income taxes must