The automatic turnstile dial amount was framed in the wall; I transcribed the number and checked to make sure the amount was correct. Every time a patron entered the theater, through the turnstile, the digit increased one. A speck of dirt was caked over the tenth digit. Using my fingernail, I scratched off the dirt, the tiny square of glass moved just a bit. Jotting down the figure, I subtracted it from the matinee figure; it came to one hundred and thirty-one, the number of patrons that had come tonight. Multiplying that by four, the amount came out correctly to five hundred and twenty-four bucks.
What prevented me from taking that money? Or at least part of it? First, there were the Spanish-speaking cashiers, but their memories were always a clean slate the next day, never remembering or reporting anything of yesterday. The only real safeguard was that dial in the wall.
It started as a curiosity that crystallized into a hunch. When I scratched the tiny frame of glass and realized it was a little loose, I found that with a great deal of tedious angling the glass could slip up just fractions of an inch. But this was just enough space to wedge a straightened paper clip. The paper clip caught into the tiny teeth of the right cog. I flipped the clip up and the small dial turned back a digit. Each time it turned back a digit, it meant four dollars were mine. It was like turning back the very hands of time.
A sudden knock at the door shattered everything. “Who’s there?”
“Day’s done, see you tomorrow.” It was the irate projectionist.
I realized that it was time to lock up the theater so I quickly inspected the place. Although no film was on the screen and the lights were turned up, there were still guys doing it downstairs and in the auditorium, so I turned the house lights up full and yelled that the theater was closing. I could hear pants being buckled and, slowly, guys filed out. After a moment, I checked the place again: empty. I turned off the lights, pulled down the drop gate in front of the theater, and locked the glass doors. I returned to the office and locked the office door.
With a tempting money supply before me, I needed something other than my own desire to calibrate the flow of cash into my pocket. On the day-to-day desk calendar it was procedure to dash down the amount of money we totalled each night. I spent the next hour summing up two averages. I summed up the average amount that we had brought in every night for the past month, next I figured out the average amount we took in every day this week. It took me about an hour before I realized that sitting in front of me was approximately two hundred dollars above the average amount earned each day that week, and approximately a hundred dollars above the average amount earned that month. I decided to pocket two hundred bucks, and dismiss it as an unprofitable night. I rewrote a new cashiers report, and reforged all the signatures. While in the middle of this, there was a soft knock at the door.
“Who is it?”
It was only Thi, the night porter, another false alarm. After leaving, I walked to the night deposit on Fourteenth and Broadway and made the drop. Heading up Broadway, I made a left on Twenty-third and walked over to the fashionable George Washington Hotel, just north of Gramercy Park. It was a far cry from either the filthy YMCA or Helmsley’s hell house.
Even though rooms were cheaper by the week, I wasn’t sure how long it would be before I could move into Sergei’s house. Money was still a handicap, but I had recuperated much since earlier that evening. At the bar in the lounge, I had a couple of whisky sours and relaxed. After a while, I took the elevator to the tidy room; there I stripped and slipped between clean, cold sheets. I tried but couldn’t sleep.
I thought about Helmsley and his twisted beloved one. Trains of thought jumped tracks while I waited for sleep. Eventually I ended up at that old and familiar terminus. I always ended up thinking about death. Looking up at the strange shadows along the clean ceiling, I thought about how one day my awareness and everything about me would be no more.
A moment later fresh morning light poured into the room, and I was aware only of being in a strange room. I had this sudden panic. I needed to know the time. I called downstairs and the desk clerk said it was nine A.M. While dressing, I considered the two appointments of the day. The first appointment was with the director, and then I had to try to get a lunch date with Glenn. The trick was looking both punkishly gay for Sergei, but afterwards older and responsible for Glenn, the career women. It was still early and I didn’t have to evacuate the room until noon. I checked my key with the desk clerk and left to hunt for a punk wardrobe. In the clothing shops of Twenty-third Street, I purchased all those styles of clothes that I had always ridiculed—black, torn, tight, and aggressive looking. Even in the early eighties they were passé. I saw a line of male cosmetics while passing by a drugstore. The counter girl gave me profuse advise on what mascara to buy, then applied it thickly and held up a mirror before me. I looked like a vampire, but it was probably exactly what Sergei was looking for. She also sprayed me with a new body scent called Truce and put a touch of a cologne called Bondage gently behind my ears.
Hair was still one of the most important canvases of fashion, and in order to be convincing, I needed an authentic haircut. I got to a pay phone and called the Astor Place Hair Cutters; that was the haircut place. A couple of years ago, the Astor Place Hair Cutters was just a couple of older barbers going out of business like most other old-fashioned barbers, but apparently one of them snapped his fingers one morning and learned how to pander to the fashions. Some guy on the phone said they had an hour’s waiting time. It was too long.
I walked around the area until I passed one salon, which had a sign in the window. It read, “Special, this week only, $25 for any fashion plus a free nipple piercing!” The walls of the place were lined with posters of punks, and all the barbers were ambisexual punks. Squeamishly I rubbed my chest and entered. Until now, I had only patronized the barber college on the Bowery where a haircut cost only three bucks. I put haircutting on the same parallel as fingernail clipping and tooth brushing. Twenty-five-buck haircuts seemed ludicrous, but I rationalized it as down payment for Sergei’s apartment. I chose the flashiest barber, a guy who had the colors of the spectrum running down his mohawk and, sitting in his chair, I nervously asked him for his most daring concept.
“Daring concept?” he asked. “Heel and sit.”
“I’m just a bit nervous,” I confessed. He leaned the chair back and fitted my head into a sink. He shampooed my hair, wrapped it in a towel, patted it dry, and then started clipping. Initially I watched him in the mirror, but after a while, I couldn’t bear it. I looked away at the shelf where he kept all his accessories. After about ten minutes, he started up his blow drier. Fashion, which I had neglected so long, was finally taking revenge on me.
“Finished,” he finally said. “Now remove your shirt for the piercing.”
It could have been worse. I looked like Billy Idol. My hair stood on end, electroshock style. All that junk he kept pouring into my scalp was peroxide. I was bleachy blond.
“Divine, no?” He displayed me to the other hair virtuoso who, due to the absence of any other clients, inspected.