“You sure I shouldn’t meet him now?”

“Just disappear until he does.”

Hastening into the bathroom, I started to urinate but kept hearing the sounds of fumbling in the adjacent stall. I concentrated on a hand-lettered sign that Miguel must have written. It read, “Save water, New York is going through a drought.” Underneath it was all the predictable graffiti, “Fight Aids not Gays. Save Soviet Jews… Win Prizes. Ernie loves Tony loves Casper loves Ira loves Bozo…” The sounds in the stall got louder and louder. So I retreated into the theater, took a seat, and discreetly checked around me. Most of the guys were hunting around for someone. Three aisles in front of me, I caught the outline of a couple occupying the same seat in a contorted position. I watched the film awhile. Apparently a jogger named Mario had bumped into a handball player named Sheldon. It turned out that they had been noticing and admiring each other for some time. Their characters were left undeveloped, but they were both eager to advance on to the subsequent scenes. Neither of them had any other appointments, obligations, or occupation. Sheldon, it seemed, played handball and slept, and Mario jogged and slept. As the unlikely plot progressed, Mano invited Sheldon up to his house, which was conveniently near. There, they each made comments like, “Sa-a-ay, I’ll bet you’re pretty big with the ladies,” and, “You look good enough to eat,” and so on. Finally they stretched out on a sofa and started making out. Sheldon’s hand started moving down to Mario’s flimsy shorts.

Simultaneously I felt a liquid hand slide into my lap and I hopped up. It was Miguel, laughing.

“He’s gone.” I rose and followed him back into his office.

“Why does he come? Why couldn’t I meet him?”

“Well, I wanted to tell him I hired you before you met him because sometimes he acts like an animal. He usually comes by about twice a week just to make sure everything’s okay. He makes the rounds.”

“What rounds?”

“The rounds of the chain. Ottos family owns it and he does most of the administrative work for them.”

“He looks like an asshole.”

“He looks dumb; in fact everything about him is dumb. Only he ain’t dumb.”

“How do you know?”

“His actions are very calculated, almost predestined.”

Soon it was closing time. Miguel collected all the money together, wrapped a filled-out bank deposit slip around it together with a rubber band, shoved the bundle into the green deposit bag, zipped it up, and locked it. Together, we walked to the nearby bank, and he put the money into a night drop. Then we went back to the theater. Rosa, the listless box office lady, went home, and we went into the office. After Miguel filled out a variety of forms, which created the illusion that an authority was checking us, the projectionist buzzed down to warn that the film had come to an end. Miguel turned up all the lights in the theater and turned out all the outdoor lights. Together we inspected both the theater and the dungeon downstairs to clear out all malingerers. The place was empty. While checking the toilet, I asked Miguel if plunging the toilet was among our many duties.

“The last time the toilet got plugged up was sometime last October—anyway, I had to unplug it.”

“I used to do that all the time at the Saint Mark’s. Awful business, unplugging a toilet.”

“Oh,” he responded. A memory was apparently set in motion. “Last October when I started plunging, first blood started coming up, and then black feathers.”

“Christ.”

“Finally a small bird came up.”

“I once unplugged a piece of red meat at the Saint Mark’s, I think it was Kielbasy.”

“Well, I didn’t finish my story. The toilet still wouldn’t flush so I kept plunging and plunging and finally a filthy black pelt came out.”

“A what?”

“The pelt of a small animal. It looked like a gerbil. And I flushed again, but the toilet still flooded.”

“Still? I’d be on the phone to Roto-Rooter by then.”

“Well, I wish I did that,” Miguel replied, “’cause I finally sucked out what looked like a fingerless hand.”

“Christ!”

“It was just about this size”—he distanced two fingers a couple of inches apart—“like a child’s hand. But it wasn’t as awful as it sounds.”

“You found a baby’s hand and you weren’t worried?”

“Well, I had a pretty good idea whose hand it was.”

“Whose?”

“This nut that used to come by a lot. He got pissed once because I found him trying to stuff a … well he got mad at me, and later I heard that he worked with cadavers.”

“You should’ve called the police.”

“Let me warn you right now. Never, but never, call the police. They’ve been trying to close us down since the beginning. I just tossed the hand off the back of the roof. No one’ll ever find it.”

“But what do I do if something happens to me?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what Ox told me when I first started working here. If you can take them, beat them; if you can’t, run. There’s a bayonet and a baseball bat in the office. If you kill anyone, drag them into the office and Ox will get rid of the body for you.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“I think he was kidding, but listen, nothing serious ever happens. We’re open every day of the year here for twelve hours a day and since we’re in a low-income non-residential district, we’re subject to a lot of crazies. You can’t let them get to you.”

The evening was over, everybody had left, and the lights were out. But Miguel said he still had some tedious business requiring his attention.

“I’m wide awake. I might as well take it all in.” So he told me how much money the theater had made that day.

“Now the way we check this is …” And he showed me a little glass-enclosed dial above the desk, cemented into the wall. “Each time the turnstile spins, this number increases by one. We subtract the amount that the dial displayed at the beginning of the day from this figure, and the amount we’re left with is how many patrons came in today. We multiply that by four, which is the price of admission, and that’s how much money we should have. Understand?”

“In theory,” I replied, and began to ask a question, but interrupted myself with a yawn.

He smiled and said that we could do it again the next day when my energy level was maximum. He walked me to the door. Thi, the porter, had already started cleaning the theater. Miguel wished me good night. I started walking to the subway, but I decided that I didn’t want to be stranded in Brooklyn wide awake.

As I passed Eleventh Street on Third I saw the big bright sign of the Ritz. Jersey kids were still stumbling in, so I walked over to the door. There was usually a five-dollar admission but an accord had been arranged between Pepe and the manager of the Ritz: their respective employees were allowed free into each others places. I approached hesitantly. The doorman, who was chatting with a group of Jerseyites, apparently remembered me from my many previous entrances. Unaware of my dismissal from the Saint Mark’s, he just waved me in.

Once inside, I had just enough to buy a beer. I was wide awake, so I decided to try dancing off some energy. I approached a skinny girl leaning against the bar and we danced for a while. She kept trying to dance slower and closer, and I kept pushing her away and the tempo up. Finally when it took more energy to repel her than to dance, I thanked her and left the floor. I saw an attractive, healthy girl put down an almost full bottle of beer and leave. 1 would kiss her if she let me, and with that criteria I wiped off some lipstick at the nozzle and poured it into my mouth without touching the rim.

I finally felt tired enough to fall asleep on Helmsley’s sofa, which seemed to be getting harder and harder every time I was on it. Heading toward the door of the club, I was suddenly stopped by two soft hands shoved before my eyes.