Page 42 of Shadow Ticket
Running on what’s left of her old international playgirl reflexes, which she still thinks of as nerve, Daphne has a look inside.
Each table here has a small circular cathode-ray tube or television screen set flush in the tabletop, throbbing more than flickering with shaggy images of about 100 lines’ resolution.
Viewers sometimes do not agree on the nature of the image.
Pareidolia is common. You look down into it, like a crystal gazer, and faces loom unbidden.
Numbered push-button switches allow you to connect to any other table in the place and watch each other as you chat.
“The future of flirtation…here they call it Gesichtsrohre, or ‘Face-Tube.’ ” He doesn’t look insane, but as Daphne has long come to understand, you never know.
He does keep on referring to a hydropathic which could easily be of the mental sort, “except for the nights.” Shivers dramatically.
“The fountains all night, same frequency range as human speech, soon enough you begin to hear the spoken words, which can drive you quickly as insane as any of the inmates, a yardful of head cases who scream all night in different languages and by the approach of dawn have become invisible. Miles outside of town in any case. Securely locked at nightfall. Better to stay here where the light is more forgiving, and pretend that outside this establishment waits only a long patch of darkness we must somehow make it through.”
“Someplace,” she lectures him, firm but friendly, “you must’ve picked up the notion that ladies of my vintage are automatic pushovers for tragic older types.
Do everybody a favor, old-timer, let it drop.
Nobody’s gazing into your eyes, if we’re watching anything it’s your feet and whatever it is those there are in, which in this case ain’t exactly John Lobbs. ”
“Damned if you don’t remind me of a daughter I used to have, talked just like that.”
“Heard that one too, easy to whistle, no more’n half an octave range.”
“And yet, can’t get her off my mind. Last I heard she was in some trouble and didn’t know it.”
“This’d be years ago, natch.”
“Some of us are still brooding about it.”
“Because you could have done something once to fix it, but you did nothing and now it’s too late.”
But for the moment a simple brush-off would somehow cost her more than she’s brought with her in her evening bag.
Curiously, this conversation seems to be following a different storyline than the usual Old Goat Looking to Get Laid.
Some payoff beyond that, some wild hope…
as slowly, untrembling as stage light brought up by a skilled hand at the rheostat, she recognizes that of course it’s been Bruno all along, as meantime he, maestro of timing, reverting to a Wisconsin dialect from years back, thoughtfully taking her hand…
“Of course,” some Viennese know-it-all who happens to be eavesdropping (did anybody ask?) will be sure to comment, “each knows perfectly well who the other is.”
In fact it seems the right moment for them to have a look eye-to-eye, dizzy and deep, except wouldn’t you know it, just about now a Russ Columbo–style crooner steps into the follow spot, starting off slow and expressive, with a zither backup—
Drinkin my way up, th’ Dan-ube,
missin that pep, in my shoe…
Can’t really blame me much, can you, b-
but then, what else,
was I s’posed, to do?
without you…
[speeding into jump tempo, rest of the band joining in]
Back here in Boo, hoo, hooo-dapest!
Yes!
Ever-since our love done, flew, th’ nest…
I’ve been out on the town,
wouldn’t say I was down, oh,
maybe-a touch of moo-di-ness…
Eatin’ so much past-er-y, mm!
Can’t even find the space to re-
-volve around on mah stool,
just a face-stuffin fool, the rule is
don’t-get, too-depressed—
[bridge]
Back on the Oktogon there,
the music playing so soft,
for the end of, me and you…
(Truckin’ off to Tim-buk-tu!)
what a chill in the air,
when we finally kissed it off—
Down, by, that, Dan, ube, so, blue!
No-way to
mis-con-strue th’ rest,
though who’d-a guessed we’d
con-clude th’ mess, in
Bu—da-pest?
But if that’s how it goes, well
lemme just blow my nose, ’n’ close
by wish-ing, you-the-best—
outa here, gotta fly,
No more tear in my eye,
Bye-bye, to Boo, hoo,
hoo-dapest!
Enough of a toe-tapper that Daphne doesn’t mind being hauled up for a brief spin around the crowded dance floor.
“You don’t look too different.”
“You do. I wouldn’t have known you.”
These days the Central European backwoods, Bruno explains, are full of “scientists,” elsewhere known as witch doctors, working miracle effects in chemical defiance of time—swift, smooth enough yet often purchased with long months of transfusions, injections, cell salts, and proprietary hormones at finely calculated phases of the moon.
“Anyplace east of Karlovy Vary seems like once a week there’s another damn new gland clinic opening for business.
” Ancient plutocrats who should be wrinkled and skeletal by now instead go bouncing around among us with a spring in their step and that same old itch in their BVDs, ill-behaved even in bright daylight as teenagers out after curfew.
“I was lucky to keep even this much maturity in my face. Had to shell out extra in fact.”
“Yeah, you could pass for somebody’s junior sidekick now.”
“Started off with just a simple Steinach, everybody was getting them, though I don’t suppose you—”
“Semi-vasectomy where they tie off one testicle so it starts producing male hormones instead of sperm cells. Hardly a night goes by I’m not hearing the details, thanks.”
“Pretty soon I was feeling twelve, thirteen again.”
“Up to you of course, many of us would rather not go through that a second time.”
As if Bruno can’t figure out how exactly to bring it up. “I keep waiting for the question.”
“Which one, there’s dozens.”
“Why did I skip out on you and your mother like that.”
“You mean without telling anybody. Just from a quick look through the paperwork you left behind, didn’t seem like you had much choice.”
“How much did you see? Who else saw it?”
“Nobody, I burned it. Lit a couple cigarettes. Toasted some marshmallows. Took the federals a while to show up anyway.”
“You saved me. How do I ever thank you?”
“Just another housekeeping chore, don’t mention it.”
“Have you been to the movies lately? We used to do that a lot. How about a date?”
“Sure, April 23rd, 1928, that good?”
“I mean it, today is Thanksgiving for me, and you’re the most precious pumpkin in the world.”
“Nemnemnem!” a bouncer in a hussar outfit goes muttering by, “it’s like eating your way through Gerbeaud’s around here, would you two mind going easy with the sentiment till I’m out of range, thanks, knew you’d understand.”
—
The movie house is in an underlit neighborhood of dilapidated saloons and bathhouses, solitary men with appetites open to question hugging what scraps of urban shadow they can find…
a neon marquee in the fog, radiant tubing hung in midair reading Mozik.
Inside they find a cozy hideaway below street level and the picture just about to start.
Streetcars roll overhead, after a while blending unnoticed with the soundtrack.
“Enjoying that popcorn, there,” Daphne observes, “and the lights aren’t hardly down yet.”
“Mighty unusual taste, besides the paprika, I mean, it’s not butter exactly—”
“It’s goose fat. Normally it’d be restaurant lard, but now and then, special movies call for special recipes.”
“Aahm-hmng!” through a mouthful of giant exploded kernels fiery with er?s paprika, drenched in goose grease, vanishing by the fistful till soon, shamelessly, Bruno has started grabbing at Daphne’s popcorn as well.
“Here now, none of that—” batting his hand away.
The feature they’re here tonight to see is Bigger Than Yer Stummick (1931), the latest hit starring child sensation Squeezita Thickly, which is about, well, eating, actually.
Back in the States, every showing of this movie, no matter where, has collapsed well before the second reel into civic disorder—screens across the nation presently inscribed with knife scars, fork tracks, spoon indentations as audiences, many of whom haven’t seen a square meal since the start of the Depression, sent into collective chuck horrors by giant images of turkeys, roasts, tenderloin steaks and birthday cakes, pots of soup big enough to swim in, go running up to physically assault the screen hoping in some magical way to forcibly enter the paradise of eats being so meanly denied them, only reluctantly pausing when Squeezita, adorable as always, comes marching into the shot with a determined twinkle in her eye, brandishing a sidearm, and swinging dimpled li’l fists back and forth, and singing in 3/4,
Ooohh,
Eat-ing, eat-ing!
My, what a thing, to do!
When it’s pea-nut but-ter and
jel-ly time?
Right, down-in-to-yer
Bel-ly time!
Who’d ev-ver wanna stop, eea-ting?
Pass that ba-na-na cream pi-i-ie—
Ooh my!
You don’t want conversation? well
nei(heehee)ther do I, when we’re
Ee-ea-ting!
A pot of soup, approached from overhead, now smoothly lap-dissolving into a giant swimming pool full of bathing beauties, bordered by palm trees and food pitches, offering an array of snacks from roast turkey drumsticks to deluxe hot dogs smothered in sport peppers and dripping green-blue pickle relish strangely aglow, even though the movie’s supposed to be in black-and-white, and gigantic Italian sandwiches quite a few feet long, and glutton-size ice-cream extravaganzas and oh well that sort of menu…