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“I got to start the new reel in just a minute,” the projectionist said.

“I’ll wait,” Kelly told him.

“Good. Hold on now, I got to get by you.”

It was a tight squeeze. Kelly held his clipboard over his head while the projectionist slid by him and went to man the quiet robot on the left. There was a small eyehole next to the projector’s opening in the wall, and the projectionist bent to this eyehole while keeping one hand on the projector’s controls.

The peephole above the table was open, too, aid was about four inches square. Leaning over the table, Kelly could see the screening room, could see the long figure sitting in there in the dark, rear row, aisle seat. On the screen, a limping wolf crossed an icy river at night. The film flickered slightly, sometimes darker, sometimes a bit lighter, as though God hadn’t known exactly how dark. He wanted things that night. A massed chorus of male and female voices belted out a triumphant paean in a foreign language in the background. An off-camera voice spoke at length in perhaps the same foreign language, and white typewriter letters appeared on the screen, down near the bottom of the picture:

Vavlov was growing tired

“There!” said the projectionist, and the left-hand robot began to click and whirr. “Got to get by,” he said, and crowded past Kelly again to service the right-hand robot. Kelly watched him shut it down, open it up, removed a reel of film from its innards, move an empty reel from here to there, get another reel from a case under the table and put it in place, thread the film on a route through the projector more complex than the Los Angeles Freeway system, shut the projector up again, turn to Kelly, brush his hands, and say, “Done! We’ve about twenty-five minutes.”

“I’m sure it won’t take that long,” Kelly said. He hoped it wouldn’t anyway. Getting his clipboard and pen into position, he said, “Your name?”

“Gillies,” said the projectionist. “W. Clembert Gillies.”

“W?”

“Wellington,” the projectionist said, showing some embarrassment. “I never use it.”

“I see.” Kelly leaned forward and looked out the peephole. She was still there. “Will our voices disturb anyone in there?” he asked. “Should we close this?”

“Oh, no,” W. Clembert Gillies said. “They can’t hear a thing. We’re soundproofed, see?” He pointed at all the little holes in the walls and ceiling.

“But what about the peephole here?”

“She won’t hear a word,” he said. “Guaranteed.”

“Very well.” Kelly shrugged, knowing better than to push it any more. He poised the pen over the clipboard. “Now. How do you spell Gillies?”

Frank followed a spur of blacktop away from the main entrance of the hotel and around to the side, parking just around the corner. B. B. Bernard and the Afghans were off to the right, involved with a palm tree.

Frank pointed. “That door there,” he said, “leads into the corridor we want. The door to the stairs is just ahead on the right.”

Robby nodded. “Good.”

“Now remember,” Frank said, “if anybody asks us anything, I do the talking.” Switching to Jamaican accent, he said, “All I know, I got to deliver this rug.”

“I suppose you think that’s funny,” Robby said.

Frank looked at him. “What is?”

“That you can do a native better than I can. That wig looks rotten on you.”

“It does not. I look like Laurence Oliver in Othello.”

“That’s what I said,” said Robby.

“You’re just jealous,” said Frank.

“No,” said Robby. “It’s nerves, like I told Kelly. How come you aren’t doing your voices any more?”

“I don’t feel like it right now,” said Frank. “Come on, let’s get going.”

They got out of the VW, walked around to the back, opened the rear doors, and got the rug. It was rolled around a long bamboo pole, which stuck out a foot or more at each end, giving them something to grab it by.

“Heavy,” said Robby.

“Wait’ll we bring it back down,” said Frank.

Leaving the VW rear doors open, they carried the rug into the hotel.

Kelly leaned forward. She was still there. What was taking them so long? He turned back to W. Clembert Gillies. “You live in Anchovy,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“No street address?”

“No, just in Anchovy. Right in town.”

“Very well.” Kelly made marks on the clipboard while he hunted around for more questions to ask. “And how long,” he finally said, “have you been in your present employment?”

When Frank uncapped the chloroform, Robby made a face and said, “Ugh. You’ll be knocking me out in a minute.”

Frank poured some onto the handkerchief, then capped the bottle again and put it back in his pocket. “Lovely stuff,” he said. “Wakes me right up.”

“It would. You’ll never get near her with that, it smells all over the place.”

“Don’t you worry about me,” Frank told him. “You just be ready when I come back out.”

“I’ll be right here,” Robby said.

Frank took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “Well, here goes nothing.” He opened the door and went into the screening room.

Robby stood beside the rug in the empty hall, looking nervously toward the stairs, and waited.

Four fat women shoveled rubble. A coloratura sang wordlessly on the soundtrack. One of the women rested, leaned on her shovel, and spoke in a foreign tongue to the woman beside her. Words appeared on the bottom of the screen:

Sometimes I worry about Vanya

Frank shut the door behind him with the hand not holding the chloroformed handkerchief. The smell of it seemed stronger here in the dark. He waited a few seconds till his eyes began to get accustomed to the darkness, till he could just make out the dark figure of the room’s only occupant in the seat to the right of the aisle, rear row. Then, using Kirk Douglas’ voice, he said, loudly and heartily, “Sassi! They told me you were here!” Walking swiftly forward, talking fast and loud to cover his intentions, he said, “I just flew in this morning, going to be at the dinner tonight, couldn’t wait to come see you, had to say—”

He bent over her, as though to give her the standard greeting peck on the cheek, and instead clapped the handkerchief over her nose and mouth.

She struggled violently, but Frank held on for dear life, pinning her to the chair from behind, and at last her struggles lessened, eased, slowed, came to a stop. Her arms dropped to her sides, and when he released her, her head lolled.

He looked up, and the peephole in the projectionist’s booth was open. Kelly was supposed to have gotten that thing shut by now. Inside there he could just see the top of Kelly’s head.

Well, if Kelly kept the projectionist distracted, it wouldn’t matter. Frank hurried back to the door, opened it, and left it open when he went out to the hall. “Ready,” he said to Robby, half-whispering.

“Good.” Robby was half-whispering, too.

They carried the rug into the screening room, set it on the floor behind the seats, and Frank shut the door.

“Hey!” Robby whispered. “I can’t see a thing! Leave it open.”

“And have somebody come in here? Work by feel.”

There was a faint dim light reflecting back from the screen, where tanks were now rumbling through what looked like a destroyed slum. There was no music at all, nothing but a lot of squeaking tank treads.