Gilda's Dream
It seemed to happen in a foreign country in the south somewhere. Argentina maybe: Spanish was being spoken, also German, English, Italian, French, who knows what all, so perhaps it was some other place, or no real place at all. I was in the men's washroom, doing a kind of striptease. Apparently I was very good at it. What was odd about it, though (and, by the way, about that time the war had ended, as though to make the striptease possible, or even necessary), was that I had started from the bottom up, so to speak, planning to ease myself to the top, but my face remained completely covered. Except for my eyes, which stared out and somehow, at the same time, stared back at themselves: stared, that is, at their own staring. Well, it was a washroom, there were probably mirrors. "Put the blame on dames," I proposed, arousing a general disgust. The attendant, pointing at my oddly numbered testicles (I make my own luck), called me a "peasant." Perhaps he meant well, but hadn't I just saved his life? Or somebody's anyway, it was not clear (more like shadows on the wall). Nothing was clear except for the danger I was in. I was breaking into little pieces, and not all of them seemed to be my own. "You can't rule the world, Gilda, by passing the shoe." What? I felt haunted. Who was this man who frightened me so, the one hiding in the stall behind the louvered door? I knew he was watching me through the slats, because I could see myself through his eyes. From that perspective, I was both threatening and desirable, so I understood that the fear in the room belonged to the room itself and not to me. Suddenly I felt free, utterly free! I fired the washroom attendant! I shot the Germans! I tossed my head and removed a glove, overswept by the funniest feeling — I was back together again! But then I heard the click of the secret weapon, and realized that my surrender to him (this had already taken place, it was not completely decent) had disturbed the categories. I'd gambled and lost. My pride, my penis, my glove, my enigmatic beauty, my good name, everything. There would be no going home
Inside the Frame
Dry weeds tumble across a dusty tarred street, lined by low ramshackle wooden buildings. A loosely hinged screen door bangs repetitiously; nearby a sign creaks in the wind. A thin dog passes, sniffing idly at the borders of the street. More tumbleweeds. More dull banging. Finally, a bus pulls up, its windows opaqued with dust and grease. The creaking sign is heard now but not seen. Down the street, a young woman opens a door and peers out, framed by the darkness within. There is a furtive movement on a store roof, martial music in the distance. The door of the bus opens and two men step down. After a brief discussion, one of them shoots the other. Meanwhile, a matriarchal figure waits at the gate of her house like a mediating presence, somber yet hopeful. The sound of a cash register suggests a purchase. In the distance, a riderless horse can be seen, its flanks trembling and glistening with sweat. More martial music, steadily approaching. The figure on the roof is an Indian. A tall man is holding a limp woman in his arms before a window. A couple swirl past, arms linked, singing at the tops of their voices. There is something startling about this. The sky darkens as though before a storm. A richly dressed lady exits the bus, followed by her Negro servant. The Indian leaps, a knife between his teeth. Someone is crying. It is a man, seated at a dinner table with his family, seen through an open doorway. The martial music augments as a marching band comes down the street, trumpets blaring. The Negro servant lifts down several valises, trunks, and hatboxes. Watched by the gunslinger, four men stride vigorously out of one building, the door banging behind them, and enter another. Beneath the back wheel of the bus, the pinned dog lifts its head plaintively, as though searching for someone who is not present and perhaps could never be. A boy with a slingshot takes aim at an old man delivering an unheard graveside soliloquy. Before this, the distant horse was seen to neigh and shake its mane. And then the martial music abruptly ended. Now, the rich lady enters the dilapidated hotel, surrounded by attentive bellhops and followed by her Negro servant, struggling comically with the baggage. A card-player, angry, throws his cards in the dealer's face: trouble seems to be brewing. Somewhere a garbage lid rattles menacingly in an alleyway. All of this is surrounded by darkness. The singing couple swing past again, going the other way, dressed now in identical white tuxedos, crisply edged. Thunder and lightning. The surviving member of the marching band retrieves his battered trumpet and puts it defiantly to his crushed lips. The gunslinger turns to reboard the bus, but is held back by the grizzled old sheriff. What occurs between them is partly hidden behind six young women who, flouncing by, turn their backs in unison and flip their skirts over their heads as though to suggest in this display the terrible vulnerability of thresholds. Is there laughter in the brightly lit hotel lobby? Perhaps it's only the rain beating on tin roofs. The sheriff has shot the Indian. Or an Indian. The bus has departed and several of the doors along the street have closed. Behind one of them a tear glistens in an upturned eye. A strange-looking person walks woodenly past, crossing the rain-slicked tar, staring straight ahead, his arms held out stiffly before him. Down the street, the door opens again and a young woman peers out: the same door as before, the same dark space within, a reassurance that is not one. Beneath the creaking sign, visible once more, a man now pulls a hat brim over his eyes and steps provisionally down off a wooden porch. There is the sound somewhere of suddenly splintering glass, a piano playing. The dog with the broken back, its search forsaken, lowers its thin head in the pounding rain. And the banging door? The banging door?
Lap Dissolves
She clings to the edge of the cliff, her feet kicking in the wind, the earth breaking away beneath her fingertips. There is a faint roar, as of crashing waves, far below. He struggles against his bonds, chewing at the ropes, throwing himself against the cabin door. She screams as the cliff edge crumbles, a scream swept away by the rushing wind. At last the door splinters and he smashes through, tumbling forward in his bonds, rolling and pitching toward the edge of the cliff. Her hand disappears, then reappears, snatching desperately for a fresh purchase. He staggers to his knees, his feet, plunges ahead, the ropes slipping away like a discarded newspaper as he hails the approaching bus. She lets go, takes the empty seat. Their eyes meet. "Hey, ain't I seen you somewhere before?" he says.
She smiles up at him. "Perhaps."
"I got it." He takes the cigar butt out of his mouth. "You're a hoofer over at Mike's joint."
"Hoofer?"
"Yeah — the gams was familiar, but I couldn't place the face."
She smiles again, a smile that seems to melt his knees. He grabs the leather strap overhead. "I help out over at Father Michael's 'joint,' as you'd say, Lefty, but — "
"Father — ? Lefty! Wait a minute, don't tell me! You ain't that skinny little brat who useta — ?" It's her stop. She rises, smiling, to leave the bus. "Hey, where ya goin'? How'm I gonna see you again?"
She pauses at the door. "I guess you'll have to catch my act at Mike's joint, Lefty." She steps down, her skirts filling with the sudden breeze of the street, and, one hand at her knees, the other holding down her fluttering wide-brimmed hat, walks quickly toward the church, glancing up at him with a mischievous smile as the bus, starting up again, overtakes and passes her. Her body seems to slide backwards, past the bus windows, slipping from frame to frame as though out of his memory — or at least out of his grasp. "Wait!" The driver hesitates: he jams his gat to the mug's ear — she's like his last chance (he doesn't know exactly what he means by that, but he's thinking foggily of his mother, or else of his mother in the fog), and she's gone! The feeling of inexpressible longing she has aroused gives way to something more like fear, or grief, frustration (why is it that some things in the world are so hard, while others just turn to jelly?), anger, a penetrating loathing — how could she do this to him? He squeezes, his eyes narrowing. Everything stops. Even, for a moment, time itself. Then, in the distance, a police whistle is heard. He takes his hands away from her throat, lets her drop, and, with a cold embittered snarl, slips away into the foggy night streets, his cape fluttering behind him with the illusory suggestion of glamour.