Page 82 of Shadow Ticket

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 houseis 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 readingMozik. 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.