The Moviegoer

tell the truth, pay too much attention to what she says. It is her voice that tells me how she is. Now she speaks in her “bold” tone and since she appears more composed, to the point of being cheerful, than her words might indicate, I am not seriously concerned about her.
    But the roomette soon becomes suffocating and, not feeling up to talking business with Sidney Gross, I head in the opposite direction, stop in the first vestibule and have a long drink from my Mardi Gras bottle. We must be pulling into Jackson. The train screeches slowly around a curve and through the back of town. Kate comes out and stands beside me without a word. She smells of soap and seems in vaulting good spirits.
    â€œHave a drink?”
    â€œDo you remember going up to Baton Rouge on the train to see the football games?”
    â€œSure.” Balancing there, her oval face aglow in the dark vestibule, hair combed flat on her head and down into the collar of her suit, she looks like a college girl. She drinks, pressing fingers to her throat. “Lord, how beautiful.”
    The train has stopped and our car stands high in the air, squarely above a city street. The nearly full moon swims through streaming ragtags of cloud and sheds a brilliant light on the Capitol dome and the spanking new glass-and-steel office buildings and the empty street with its glittering streetcar track. Not a soul is in sight. Far away, beyond the wings of the Capitol building stretch the dark tree-covered hills and the twinkling lights of the town. By some trick of moonlight the city seems white as snow and never-tenanted; it sleeps away on its hilltop like the holy city of Zion.
    Kate shakes her head slowly in the rapt way she got from her stepmother. I try to steer her away from beauty. Beauty is a whore.
    â€œYou see that building yonder? That’s Southern Life & Accident. If you had invested a hundred dollars in 1942, you’d now be worth twenty five thousand. Your father bought a good deal of the original stock.” Money is a better god than beauty.
    â€œYou don’t know what I mean,” she cries in the same soft rapture.
    I know what she means all right. But I know something she doesn’t know. Money is a good counterpoise to beauty. Beauty, the quest of beauty alone, is a whoredom. Ten years ago I pursued beauty and gave no thought to money. I listened to the lovely tunes of Mahler and felt a sickness in my very soul. Now I pursue money and on the whole feel better.
    â€œI see how I could live in a city!” Kate cries. She turns to face me and clasps her hands behind my waist.
    â€œHow?”
    â€œOnly one way. By your telling me what to do. It is as simple as that. Why didn’t I see it before?”
    â€œThat I should tell you what to do?”
    â€œYes. It may not be the noblest way of living, but it is one way. It is my way! Oh dear sweet old Binx, what a joy it is to discover at last what one is. It doesn’t matter what you are as long as you know!”
    â€œWhat are you?”
    â€œI’ll gladly tell you because I just found out and I never want to forget. Please don’t let me forget. I am a religious person.”
    â€œHow is that?”
    â€œDon’t you see? What I want is to believe in someone completely and then do what he wants me to do. If God were to tell me: Kate, here is what I want you to do; you get off this train right now and go over there to that corner by the Southern Life and Accident Insurance Company and stand there for the rest of your life and speak kindly to people—you think I would not do it? You think I would not be the happiest girl in Jackson, Mississippi? I would.”
    I have a drink and look at her corner. The moonlight seems palpable, a dense pure matrix in which is embedded curbstone and building alike.
    She takes the bottle. “Will you tell me what to do?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œYou can do it because you are not religious. God is not religious. You are the unmoved mover. You don’t need God or anyone else—no credit to you, unless it is a credit to be the most self-centered person alive. I don’t know whether I love you, but I believe in you and I will do what you tell me. Now if I marry you, will you tell me: Kate, this morning do such and such, and if we have to go to a party, will you tell me: Kate, stand right there and have three drinks and talk to so and so? Will you?”
    â€œSure.”
    Kate locks her