The Mirror Thief (51 page)

So what’s the matter with theater? Stuart says. Poetry needs more theater! It needs more music! Get it off the page, man, and onto the stage! Get some red blood pumping in those paper veins!

Oh, christ, Bruce says, refilling his cup from a gallon jug on the floor. Here we go again with the jazz canto jive.

Across the room, Alex has an avuncular hand on Tony’s shoulder, a raised finger in his face. Tony isn’t talking anymore.

Poets and painters gotta quit shadowboxing each other, Stuart says, and start aping jazz. Free up the forms! Smash the phony barriers between art and life! That’s how we’ll reach people, man. It’s guerrilla warfare. Nowadays everybody’s an image junkie, everybody’s hypnotized. The frontal attack is no good. You gotta get in through the ear, you gotta communicate with the inner eye, the eye that won’t be tricked by some subliminal projection.

Charlie speaks up, his voice a little too loud in the small room. Whoa, Trigger! he says. Now you’ve got me confused. Are we talking about poetry or advertising?

Stuart and Bruce shoot glares at him, exasperated, at a loss, knocked off their rhythm. In the sudden quiet, Tony’s low voice comes through the room:
on top of being dope-peddling JDs
, he says,
they’re an illegal sex, to boot
.

Let me let you guys in on a little trade secret, Charlie says. This is my area of expertise, dig? You know what’s even better than subliminal projections for selling stuff?
Super
-liminal projections, man! Just put it out there! You guys talk about people like they’re sheep, like they can’t think for themselves, like if they weren’t all such saps they’d be right here at the oceanfront with us, painting pictures, writing poems, sleeping on the sand, living off horsemeat from the pet shop. Truth is, they
love
to be fooled. They want to be told what to do, what to want, what to like. They love their illusions. Just like us, right? But we think our illusions are
better
. If you guys want to change the world, start paying attention to your Starch Ratings. Just like we used to say around the office:
you can’t sell a man who isn’t listening!

A tide of grumbles wells up around Charlie; he’s smirking, pleased with himself. That’s a bunch of cynical crap, man, Milton says quietly.

C’mon, Charlie says. Just ’cause I don’t buy my own BS, that makes me a cynic? I’d love to be wrong about this, believe me. Am I wrong, Alex? What’s it that your left-wing deviationist friends say? Give people the choice between love and a garbage disposal, most of them choose the garbage disposal. Right?

Alex half-turns from Tony with a wan patronizing smile. I think you’ve made your point, Charlie, he says.

I’m not trying to make a
point
, Charlie says. Shrillness creeps into his voice, and he lifts his hands to his face: a little like Jack Benny, a little like a mortified child. His hands are trembling. I just want to know what I should
do
, he says. What I should
write
. I want to be honest, I want to renounce Moloch and all his works, I want to not make the world any worse. How do I go
about
that, Alex?

Alex leans against the wall, his arms crossed, his head cocked. Everybody looks at him except Claudio, who looks at Stanley. The people
here all treat Alex like he’s famous or something, Stanley realizes. Maybe he is.

When Alex speaks, it’s less to Charlie than to the rest of the room. The writer’s task, he says, is to make a record of his times. To stand apart, and to bear witness.

Oh!
Charlie says, snapping his fingers, then slapping his knees, rising to his feet. Well,
that
sure clears it up! Boy, do I feel like a dunce! All this time, I’ve been trying to
create
something. I guess I ought to take up painting if I want to do that. Huh, Stuart? Or maybe just go back to the ad firm. I could be
very
creative there. Hey, Alex, can I borrow my old john back for a minute? I need to take a crap.

I trust you remember where it is, Alex says. And how it works.

Charlie moves through the room, tiptoeing between orange-crates and the mugs of wine. I sure wish you’d caught that
Coastlines
thing, Charlie, Stuart says as he passes. That cat Ginsberg, he used to write ads too, y’know.

Ginsberg
still
writes ads, Charlie snaps. You guys are always talking down Larry Lipton for selling the Beat Generation like soap, but your real gripe is that he’s not
cool
enough about it.
The poet always stands naked before the world!
Great. Hey, Alex, I just took some Polaroids of my crotch. You think
Evergreen Review
’ll publish ’em?

Charlie steps through the bathroom door, shuts it, curses, opens it again to find the matchbox and the candle. I don’t know what the hell you want, Charlie, Bruce shouts.

I want a fucking drink, Charlie mumbles, and closes the door again.

Everybody stares into space, avoids eye contact. The room is starting to smell bad, like too many bodies and too few baths. It’s quiet except for the sound of Charlie pissing, and then it’s just quiet. Two hands reach for the wine-jug at once; both withdraw awkwardly. Somebody—Maurice? Bob?—moves toward the old Zenith, but Milton intercepts him with an upraised palm. Listen, he says. I think the rain stopped.

In a rush the men are on their feet, slipping into their jackets, passing the buckets around. Stanley and Claudio stick close together, drift with the pack back onto the street. A sticky mist still billows, everywhere at
once. The dense fast-moving clouds are lichen-green with moonlight, but Stanley can’t make out any moon.

Charlie catches up, still buttoning his pants, as Alex is closing the door. You didn’t erase the mirror! he says, clapping a hand on Alex’s shoulder. Then he runs ahead, his voice breaking with sounds like joy. Stuart! he shouts. He didn’t erase it! The thing that you wrote for me is still on the mirror!

They move to the boardwalk in a ragged column, two and three abreast, buckets swinging jauntily. Streetlamps and patches of sky flash around their feet from deep puddles in the potholed pavement. Stanley can see small bonfires on the beach, shadows passing between them.

He and Claudio walk in silence, bringing up the rear. Claudio has no clue what they’re doing. It’s not that he didn’t understand what Stanley told him; the kid follows well enough. He’s just dead set on being behind Stanley no matter what, never mind what the reasons are. Stanley should be grateful for that, he figures, but instead it annoys him a little.

So the pad was that of Alex, Claudio says after a while, but was once the pad of Charlie? Is that right?

Beats the hell outta me, kid.

They trudge along for a few more paces. The head of the line has reached the boardwalk, is crossing onto the sand.

Claudio tries again. Charlie was unhappy, he says. Do you know why?

He’s afraid he’s a joke and a phony, I guess.

But why is he afraid of that?

I dunno. Maybe ’cause he is one. Look, why don’t you run ahead and ask him?

He does not want to hurt the world, Claudio says. But how can a poem hurt the world? How can it do anything? I do not understand this.

The column loses shape when it hits the dark beach, jumbling like a dropped rope. People walk by: a woman and two younger guys, all three nude, on their way to the water. Nobody looks at them twice. In the ring of light cast by the farthest bonfire, a bare-chested man in sunglasses plays a pair of high-pitched Cuban drums, not very well. The drums look
and sound like toys. A rhythm rises against the crash of waves, then gutters, then starts up again.

Milton checks his watch. High tide in ten minutes, he says.

These knuckleheads better put out their lights, Stuart says, or else they’re gonna spook all the fish.

A motorcycle sputters along the Speedway, turning toward the traffic circle. From somewhere near the oilfield comes a series of loud pops that could be backfires, could be pistolshots.

Ten minutes, then? Alex says, digging through the pockets of his denim overalls. Anyone fancy a round of pinball before the arcades close?

Stanley grins; he feels like his mind’s been read. Lead the way, pal, he says. That’s my meat and potatoes.

They step onto the wooden planks again. Claudio and Charlie and one of the others—Jimmy? Saul?—break off to follow. Stuart calls to them as they go.
We’re headed south
, he says,
where it’s darker!
Alex lifts a hand in vague acknowledgment, doesn’t turn around. Charlie has vanished before they’ve crossed the boardwalk: off to find a bottle, Stanley figures.

The penny-arcade is an old Bridgo parlor, small and seedy and full of machines that look like they fell off a truck. The sign hung on the colonnade was new maybe ten years ago, which puts it ahead of the sign on the boarded-up building next door, which was new in maybe 1930. The interior is about a quarter whitewashed, like somebody stopped in mid-brushstroke partway along the left-hand wall when they ran out of paint and money, or maybe just realized that nobody cared. A shrill wash of noise spills from the windows and bounces off the bricks: bells and thumps, mechanical whistles, sickly celesta melodies.

It’s the usual crowd inside: soldiers, sailors, laborers, pachucos, thugs. A few sorry-looking hookers loiter at the door and windows, asking passersby for dimes. The Dogs are here too, though not in force: three of them, manhandling a Daisy May machine in the corner, their backs to the door, Whitey among them.

Stanley drops some coins into Claudio’s palm, parks him at an ancient wobbly Bingo Bango. Back in a minute, he says. Just sit tight.

He crosses the room and taps Whitey on the shoulder before anyone sees him coming. It isn’t hard. Stanley keeps his weight back, his stance open, in case somebody takes a swing.

Whitey turns, does a doubletake. For an instant, alarm flickers in his eyes; then he plasters on a hyena sneer. Well, whaddya know, he says. We may get some blowjobs tonight aft—

Can it, meathead. I’m looking for your boss.

Whitey squares his shoulders and juts his jaw, puffed up like a peacock, but his voice is clear, and he’s breathing through his nose: he’s not going to pull anything. For my
what
? he says.

You heard me. Where is he?

Probably still at the last job I quit, asshole. I ain’t got no boss.

Okay, smart guy. Then where’s the joker does your thinking for you? You know who I’m talking about. Don’t act like a putz.

It ain’t my week to watch him, nosebleed. You think I’m his secretary?

I don’t think about you at all, chum. When you see him, you tell him that me and my buddy are about to do some business on the waterfront. If he wants a cut, he better let me know pronto. I’m not gonna track him down.

Whitey’s sneer sags, like his face is getting tired; he sifts the contents of his brain for a sharp response. Stanley fades back slowly until Whitey open his mouth again. Then he spins on his heel and walks.

Claudio’s watching with panicked eyes; he steps forward, meets Stanley halfway. What are you doing? he whispers. Why do you go to the hoods?

You know why, kid, Stanley says. Look, we can’t talk about it now. I need you to hold onto something.

He pulls Alex’s wad of bills from his pocket and presses it into Claudio’s hand. Claudio’s eyes get wider; his jaw drops. Stop it, Stanley says. Look at me. If you see those punks make a move—I mean if they come over here, understand?—then you let me know right off. If anybody throws a punch, then you scram the hell outta here. I’ll meet you at the hideout.

Alex and his buddy are playing adjacent machines at the room’s far end, a Shoot The Moon and a Mercury, their mist-damp heads silhouetted
against the sleek painted rockets of the glowing backglasses. Alex is good: he tilts his machine with subtlety and skill, lecturing as he plays. Pinball’s true appeal, he’s saying, resides in its embodiment of the stiff social mechanisms that ensnare us. To play is to strike at them in effigy. Pinball and jazz are the two finest things your country has given the world, and they arise from the same spirit of opposition.

Stanley moves past them to an Arabian Nights machine. He drops a dime and the backglass lights up: a veiled bellydancer, a turbaned sultan ringed by busty harem girls. The sultan is smug, portly, reading aloud from a massive book; Stanley thinks of Welles and grins. He figures he doesn’t have much time, so he draws back the plunger, launches the first ball, and lets it drain. He does the same with the second, and the third. Then he starts to play for real, racking up points in a hurry, slowing down when he feels Alex loom behind him. Not bad, Alex tells him when the game ends.

Thanks. Not too shabby yourself.

I used to play quite a lot in Paris. I’ve rusted a bit, I’m afraid.

Stanley puts his hand in his pocket, comes out with another coin. Time for one more game? he says.

Why not? The fish will wait, I suspect.

You wanna win back some of your cash?

As Alex plays—warping the cabinet with the pressure of his knees and elbows, deforming the course of the little silver balls—Whitey and his hammerhead sidekicks exit, flipping Stanley the bird as they go. Claudio seems to relax a little. A light breeze filters through the windows, and Stanley can see moonlight on the waves; the rainclouds must be blowing through. The pinball cabinet groans against Alex’s weight. Score lights climb the backglass; the machine clunks and dings.

Soon it’s Stanley’s turn. He doesn’t even look at Alex’s score. Moments after he’s launched his first ball Alex begins to laugh; he takes a fin from his billfold, creases it down its middle, lays it across the lockdown bar. Ah, but you’re a good fucking con, Stanley, he says. Go as long as you can, now. It’s worth five just to see you play, you magnificent bugger.

Stanley never tilts; he’s never tried, isn’t really sure how. He touches nothing but the flipper-buttons. The left is a little tacky; sometimes he can see where the ball’s going but can’t do much about it, and that gets on his nerves. His eyes track the streak of silver as it ricochets between bumpers. The trapholes light; the machine vomits replays. Three million points. Four million. Five. Claudio, bored, taps out a mambo rhythm on the tin bucket with his fingertips. Stanley’s still on his first ball. Sweet christ, Alex whispers to Claudio. I’ve not seen anything like it.