be—stroll, sit, eat, chat, browse, play games, take simple pleasure in the rush of data and the presence of others — just like they used to do in the pedestrian arcades back in Europe. And look at where Victor’s vision has led. You could fit seven Yankee stadiums into this place. Seven. Shortly after that visit, Milo came to understand something else about himself: that, if he relaxed just right, loosened his hold on his thoughts, he was sometimes able to slip behind the foreheads of those who had recently opened themselves up to the prospect of diversion- a gift that has provided him with a consistent edge in his business. Right now, Milo is sliding into the cold hazy awareness of the old guy in the wheelchair at the far end of his row and apprehending that the sad, agitated ghost of his wife has just stopped by there for the last time, leaving behind a small residue of love, like a gold earring, before going away forever. The teenager in front of him is named Miguel Gonzalez, and Miguel Gonzalez is wondering why humans possess souls, if this is an example of what having one feels like. The girl beside him is feeling guilty Miguel paid so much money for a lousy afternoon with her. In row eleven, a cop named Sid Munsterberg scratches his burning toes through the scuffed-up leather of his cowboy boots, theorizing people go to movies because they feel they are actually buying the time to watch them. An unshaven young man in sunglasses touches his back pocket, all of a sudden aware his wallet is missing — but that’s all right, he figures, because he has made $27,987.53 on the New York Stock Exchange since entering here an hour ago. Vladislav Dovzhenko stealthily reaches up and cups his own left biceps as if cupping the breast of a teenage girl from San Diego. In row ten, an anorexic woman kisses Cary Grant through her surgical mask, and Cary Grant whispers gently into her ear that he prefers men, which she knows immediately is a lie. “We were just playing,” Fred Quock tells his shocked father, “honest,” to which his sister Leni adds hastily: “He made me do it, daddy. Freddy made me do it.” Claude Melies loves his wife almost undetectably more than he did four seconds earlier. Mouche sniffles beside him, her slight sinus cold having escalated into viral sloppiness, and thinks: halcyon. Vito Paluso assumes Mouche is sad, not sick, and feels sorry for the couple for the fight they just had. In row nine, Celan Solen resolves to drop in at Mona’s apartment after the film because she told him she was going to be busy doing exactly nothing special all day. Next to him, Betsi Bliss experiences another slight dilation around her, reality a gleaming pulse, and reaches up to massage the flesh between her shoulder blades, anxious to see what her body’s language has to say. Nadi Slone observes herself leaning uncomfortably against the window of a 747 thirty-eight thousand feet above a nighttime Atlantic, trying to sleep, and failing. Elmore Norman stands over his grill at Malaysian Madness, staring down at the veggies sauteing before him, mind blank as a burgled bank vault. Jerry Roemer leaps across his dewy backyard beneath a moonlit night like Baryshnikov in Swan Lake, fifty years younger and wearing nothing but pink socks and blue sneakers. Betty Roemer sits by her phone at 4:42 a.m. in her room at the Adoring Care Retirement Home in Sarasota, Florida, lamenting there is no one left alive in her solar system to call. In row eight, Moira Lovelace looks forward to introducing biquadratic polynomial expressions to her junior math class tomorrow. Leon Mopati coughs discreetly into his palm and on the spot loses the train of thought he has been riding for several minutes. Giuseppe Rosi taps the send icon on his handheld and his threatening message to Stuart Navidson blinks into the electromagnetic fields around him. Thirty feet above, the mouse skittering through the warm darkness of the ventilation system stops dead in its tracks, sensing the presence of a cat somewhere below, then hurries on its infinite way. The cat, having already forgotten the pain in its side, wanders beneath Garrett Keeter’s seat and eases onto its haunches, unaware as it licks its right paw that by crossing the highway in two hours and forty minutes it will force Garrett’s car into a deadly skid. Garrett sees Jaci’s and his silver BMW start gracefully and inexorably easing across the lanes into the sparkling lights of oncoming traffic, then jerks out of his doze, thinking: stupid dreams. Jaci smiles at nothing, catches herself, and stops. Ryan Moody the lesbian actor sits with a cold towel wrapped around her face in her dressing room in an alternate universe, crying lightly over her lover who just slammed the door behind her in a fit of hormonal pique. In row seven, Jeff Kotcheff crunches down on a handful of chips hard as he can, hoping to annoy the jewboy slumped in front of him. Josh Hartnett huffs to himself in unconditional anonymity and places slightly more weight on his left buttock than his right. Anderson Bates contemplates how, if you look across the Grand Canyon, you are really seeing the other side as it appeared about one ten-thousandth of a second earlier. In row six, Ida Jarboe devotes her full attention to a furuncular anomaly she has just discovered behind her left ear. Johnny Ray stands in the middle of a field of pot plants at night, waving at a bright triangle in the sky that grows smaller and smaller until it winks out of being, experiencing for the first time in his life what real loneliness feels like. Arnold Frankenheimer finds himself all at once unnerved, trying to remember whether or not he wiped that file of the college freshmen and the German shepherd from his hard drive before turning off his office lights and walking. Stuart Navidson stops counting backwards. Kenneth Jehovah falls in love with Julia Ward Howe’s astonishing intellect once again. Lying beside Christopher or Brian or David after making missionary love in the dark, Lara McLuhan says in her little girl’s voice: Tell me again, daddy. Tell it to me one more time. In row five, Lewis Smoodin surreptitiously slaps himself stingingly across the face and in a flush of shame prays no one noticed. In row four, Lily Grodal catches herself wondering briefly how big her neighbor Anderson Bates’s cock is, reddening in embarrassment, disbelief, and alert interest at the idea. Athena Fulay passes a stranger’s blood back and forth over her tastebuds while a gentle affection inflates inside her for the man seated before her. Ed Bergman attempts to restrain himself from reaching forward and fingering the rubbery fabric of the black mackintosh twenty-two inches away. Susie Carbonara strolls through Camp Snoopy, reveling in the cotton-candy snowdrifts and wishing she could be that creative. Juanita Chamorro decides she will begin her long hike back home tomorrow morning. In row three, Kate Frazey is a limp puppet piled on the side of a dark road. Pierre searches his shirt pocket for his package of Juicy Fruit gum only to recall he left it in his other pair of khakis. Rex Wigglie decides his next lyric will involve both a falcon and a fish, then grins at his lyrical acumen. In row two, Lakeesha Johnson runs out of things to say to the no one on the other end of her cell phone and brings to a close the conversation that never took place. Chantrelle Williams’s stomach burbles and she steals a glance over at Desria to see if she heard. Desria Brown stands with her hands in the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt, cold air leaking from her nose and mouth, watching a crumpled-up Starbucks coffee cup skip down the windy sidewalk in front of her, hop off the curb, and spin farther and farther up the vacant street. Milo Magnani glows with quiet pride, gives their thoughts back to these people, and, straightening his bowtie unnecessarily, rises to depart. Around him, throats clear, feet scrape, candy wrappers crinkle. The world grows brighter and brighter and brighter. Milo inhales and exhales. He waits. The film begins.