The Mirror Thief(125)
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 f*cking 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.