The Moviegoer

Joyce. “But why don’t you come over Saturday night. Some of the kids will be there. Praps we could all go to Pat O’Brien’s.” Joyce makes herself out to be a big girl child, one of the kids, and all set for high jinks.
    â€œNo praps about it.”
    A watery sunlight breaks through the smoke of the Chef and turns the sky yellow. Elysian Fields glistens like a vat of sulfur; the playground looks as if it alone had survived the end of the world. At last I spy Kate; her stiff little Plymouth comes nosing into my bus stop. There she sits like a bomber pilot, resting on her wheel and looking sideways at the children and not seeing, and she could be I myself, sooty eyed and nowhere.
    Is it possible that—For a long time I have secretly hoped for the end of the world and believed with Kate and my aunt and Sam Yerger and many other people that only after the end could the few who survive creep out of their holes and discover themselves to be themselves and live as merrily as children among the viny ruins. Is it possible that—it is not too late?
    Iii-oorrr goes the ocean wave, its struts twinkling in the golden light, its skirt swaying to and fro like a young dancing girl.
    â€œI’d like to very much, Joyce. May I bring along my own fiancée, Kate Cutrer? I want you and Sharon to meet her.”
    â€œWhy shore, why shore,” says Joyce in a peculiar Midwest take-off of her roommate Sharon and sounding somewhat relieved, to tell the truth.
    The playground is deserted. I notice that the school itself is locked and empty. Traffic goes hissing along Elysian Fields and the jaybirds jeer in the camphor trees. People turn in now and then at the school gate but they make for the church next door. At first I suppose it is a wedding or a funeral, but they leave by twos and threes and more arrive. Then, as a pair of youths come ambling along the sidewalk, I catch sight of the smudge at the hair roots. Of course. It is Ash Wednesday. Sharon has not quit me. All Cutrer branch offices close on Ash Wednesday.
    We sit in Kate’s car, a 1951 Plymouth which, with all her ups and downs, Kate has ever cared for faithfully. It is a tall gray coupe and it runs with a light gaseous sound. When she drives, head ducked down, hands placed symmetrically on the wheel, the pale underflesh of her arms trembling slightly, her paraphernalia—straw seat, Kleenex dispenser, magnetic tray for cigarettes—all set in order about her, it is easy to believe that the light stiff little car has become gradually transformed by its owner until it is hers herself in its every nut and bolt. When it comes fresh from the service station, its narrow tires still black and wet, the very grease itself seems not the usual muck but the thrifty amber sap of the slender axle tree.
    â€œWhy didn’t you tell her about our plans?” Kate still holds the steering wheel and surveys the street. “I was in the library and heard every word. You idiot.”
    Kate is pleased. She is certain that I have carried off a grand stoic gesture, like a magazine hero.
    â€œDid you tell her?” I ask.
    â€œI told her we are to be married.”
    â€œAre we?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat did she say to that?”
    â€œShe didn’t. She only hoped that you might come to see her this afternoon.”
    â€œI have to anyway.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI promised her one week ago I would tell her what I planned to do.”
    â€œWhat do you plan to do?”
    I shrug. There is only one thing I can do: listen to people, see how they stick themselves into the world, hand them along a ways in their dark journey and be handed along, and for good and selfish reasons. It only remains to decide whether this vocation is best pursued in a service station or—
    â€œAre you going to medical school?”
    â€œIf she wants me to.”
    â€œDoes that mean you can’t marry me now?”
    â€œNo. You have plenty of money.”
    â€œThen let us understand each other.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œI don’t know whether I can succeed.”
    â€œI know you don’t.”
    â€œIt seems the wildest sort of thing to do.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWe had better make it fast.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œI am so afraid.”
    Kate’s forefinger begins to explore the adjacent thumb, testing the individual spikes of the feathered flesh. A florid new Mercury pulls up behind us