Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust [57]
He knew what it would be like lurking in the dark in a vacant lot, waiting for her. Whatever that bird was that sang at night in California would be bursting its heart in theatrical runs and quavers and the chill night air would smell of spice pink. She would drive up, turn the motor off, look up at the stars, so that her breasts reared, then toss her head and sigh. She would throw the ignition keys into her purse and snap it shut, then get out of the car. The long step she took would make her tight dress pull up so that an inch of glowing flesh would show above her black stocking. As he approached carefully, she would be pulling her dress down, smoothing it nicely over her hips.
“Faye, Faye, just a minute,” he would call.
“Why, Tod, hello.”
She would hold her hand out to him at the end of her long arm that swooped so gracefully to join her curving shoulder.
“You scared me!”
She would look like a deer on the edge of the road when a truck comes unexpectedly around a bend.
He could feel the cold bottle he held behind his back and the forward step he would take to bring…”Is there anything wrong with it, sir?”
The fly-like waiter had come back. Tod waved at him, but this time the man continued to hover.
“Perhaps you would like me to take it back, sir?”
“No, no.”
“Thank you, sir.”
But he didn’t leave. He waited to make sure that the customer was really going to eat. Tod picked up his knife and cut a piece. Not until he had also put some boiled potato in his mouth did the man leave.
Tod tried to start the rape going again, but he couldn’t feel the bottle as he raised it to strike. He had to give it up. The waiter came back. Tod looked at the steak. It was a very good one, but he wasn’t hungry any more.
“A check, please.”
“No dessert, sir?”
“No, thank you, just a check.”
“Check it is, sir,” the man said brightly as he fumbled for his pad and pencil.
27
When Tod reached the street, he saw a dozen great violet shafts of light moving across the evening sky in wide crazy sweeps. Whenever one of the fiery columns reached the lowest point of its arc, it lit for a moment the rose-colored domes and delicate minarets of Kahn’s Persian Palace Theatre. The purpose of this display was to signal the world premiere of a new picture.
Turning his back on the searchlights, he started in the opposite direction, toward Homer’s place. Before he had gone very far, he saw a clock that read a quarter past six and changed his mind about going back just yet. He might as well let the poor fellow sleep for another hour and kill some time by looking at the crowds.
When still a block from the theatre, he saw an enormous electric sign that hung over the middle of the street. In letters ten feet high he read that
“MR. KAHN A PLEASURE DOME DECREED”
Although it was still several hours before the celebrities would arrive, thousands of people had already gathered. They stood facing the theatre with their backs toward the gutter in a thick line hundreds of feet long. A big squad of policemen was trying to keep a lane open between the front rank of the crowd and the facade of the theatre.
Tod entered the lane while the policeman guarding it was busy with a woman whose parcel had torn open, dropping oranges all over the place. Another policeman shouted for him to get the hell across the street, but he took a chance and kept going. They had enough to do without chasing him. He noticed how worried they looked and how careful they tried to be. If they had to arrest someone, they joked good-naturedly with the culprit, making light of it until they got him around the corner, then they whaled him with their clubs. Only so long as the man was actually part of the crowd did they have to be gentle.
Tod had walked only a short distance along the narrow lane when he began to get frightened. People shouted, commenting on his hat, his carriage, and his clothing. There was a continuous roar of catcalls, laughter and yells, pierced occasionally by a scream. The scream was usually followed by a sudden movement in the dense mass and part of it would surge forward wherever the police line was weakest. As soon as that part was rammed back, the bulge would pop out somewhere else.