The Moviegoer

arms around my chest, wrist in hand, and gives me a passionate kiss.
    Later, just as I knew it would, her precious beauty leaves her flat and she is frightened. Another trip to the washroom and now she stands swaying against me as Sieur Iberville rocks along through north Mississippi. We leave spring behind. The moon hangs westering and yellow over winter fields as blackened and ancient and haunted as battlegrounds.
    â€œOh oh oh,” Kate moans and clings to me. “I feel awful. Let’s go to your roomette.”
    â€œIt’s been made up.”
    â€œThen we’ll lie down.”
    We have to lie down: the door opens onto the bed. Feeling tender toward her, I embrace her and tell her that I love her.
    â€œOh no,” says Kate and takes hold of me coarsely. “None of that, bucko.”
    â€œNone of what?”
    â€œNo love, please.”
    I misunderstand her and pull away.
    â€œNo no. Don’t leave either,” she says, holding me and watching me still.
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œJust don’t speak to me of love, bucko.”
    â€œAll right, but don’t call me bucko.”
    Her black spiky eyes fall full upon me, but not quite seeing, I think. Propped on one hand, she bites her lip and lets the other fall on me heavily, as if I were an old buddy. “I’ll tell you something.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe other day I said to Merle.” Again the hand falls heavily and takes hold of me. “What would you say to me having a little fling? He misunderstood me and gave me the business about a mature and tender relation between adults etcetera etcetera—you know. I said, no no, Merle, you got it wrong. I’m talking about some plain old monkey business—” she gives me a shake, “—like a comic book one of your aunt’s maids showed me last week in which Tillie the Toiler and Mac—not the real Tillie, you understand, but a Frenchy version of Tillie—go to an office party and Tillie has a little set-to with Mac in the stockroom and gets caught by Whipple. I told Merle about it and said: that’s what I mean, Merle, how about that?”
    â€œWhat did Merle say?”
    Kate doesn’t seem to hear. She drums her fingers on the sill and gazes out at the rushing treetops.
    â€œSo—when all is said and done, that is the real thing, isn’t it? Admit it. You and the little Hondurian on the second floor with her little book, in the morning, in the mid-morning, and there in the linen closet with the mops and pails—”
    â€œIt is your Hondurian and your comic book—”
    â€œNow I’ll tell you what you can do, Whipple. You get out of here and come back in exactly five minutes. Oh you’re a big nasty Whipple and you’re only fit for one thing.”
    I’ll have to tell you the truth, Rory, painful though it is. Nothing would please me more than to say that I had done one of two things. Either that I did what you do: tuck Debbie in your bed and, with a show of virtue so victorious as to be ferocious, grab pillow and blanket and take to the living-room sofa, there to lie in the dark, hands clasped behind head, gaze at the ceiling and talk through the open door of your hopes and dreams. Or—do what a hero in a novel would do: he too is a seeker and a pilgrim of sorts and he is just in from Guanajuato or Sambuco where he has found the Real Right Thing or from the East where he apprenticed himself to a wise man and became proficient in the seventh path to the seventh happiness. Yet he does not disdain this world either and when it happens that a maid comes to his bed with a heart full of longing for him, he puts down his book in a good and cheerful spirit and gives her as merry a time as she could possibly wish for. Whereupon, with her dispatched into as sweet a sleep as ever Scarlett enjoyed the morning of Rhett’s return, he takes up his book again and is in an instant ten miles high and on the Way.
    No, Rory, I did neither. We did neither. We did very badly and almost did not do at all. Flesh poor flesh failed us. The burden was too great and flesh poor flesh, neither hallowed by sacrament nor despised by spirit (for despising is not the worst fate to overtake the flesh), but until this moment seen through and canceled, rendered null by the cold and fishy eye of the malaise—flesh poor flesh now at this moment summoned all at once to be all and everything, end all and be all,