There were no tickets. Patrons paid their money, refused the offered penny change and were clicked through a turnstile. They walked into the theater proper past a soda machine that had stopped working in 1978.

There was some cruising, despite warning signs about illegality and AIDS, but liaisons were discreet and the transvestites and the mostly black and Hispanic female hookers, who picked up twenty bucks for their halfhearted services, would usually take their clients up to the balcony, where even the vice cops didn't like to go.

Despite the unpleasant conditions the theater did make money. Rent was the highest expense. The owner and his wife (and an occasional cousin from the huge inventory of relatives overseas) took turns in the box office, thus keeping salary expenses down. And because of the video system they didn't need a union projectionist.

The owner also bypassed the largest expenses of movie theaters. Under the copyright laws he was supposed to pay license fees for each theatrical showing of a film-yes, even porn. This, however, he didn't do. He would buy three VHS cassettes for $14.95 each from an adult bookstore on Eighth Avenue, show the films for one week, then return them. The owner of the store, who happened to be a Pakistani immigrant, gave him a five-dollar credit for each film and then resold them for the full $14.95.

This was, of course, a violation of federal law, both civil and criminal, but neither the FBI nor the producers of the films had much inclination to go after a small business like his.

When the man considered the type of films that his theater showed, he was not particularly proud, but he wasn't much ashamed either. TheKama Sutra, after all, had been written in his native country. And personally he was no stranger to sex; he'd come from a family of twelve children and he and his wife had seven. No, his major embarrassment about the business was the low profit margin of the theater. He would have been much happier if his return on investment had been five or six percent higher.

Today the owner was sitting in the ticket booth, smoking and thinking of the lamb kurma that his wife would be making in their Queens apartment for dinner. He heard angry words coming from the theater. That was one thing that scared him-his patrons. There were a lot of crack smokers, a lot of men working on their third or fourth Foster's. These were big men and could have broken his neck before they even thought about it. He called the cops occasionally but he'd gotten their message: Unless somebody had a knife or a gun the police didn't want to be bothered.

Now, when the dispute didn't seem to be vanishing, he rummaged under the ticket booth and found a foot-long pipe, capped at both ends and filled with BBs. A homemade cudgel. He walked into the theater.

The blonde on the screen was saying something about there being one kind of love she hadn't tried and would the actor please accommodate her. He seemed agreeable but no one could tell exactly what he was saying to the woman. The voices from the front row were louder. "The fuck you think you're doing? S'mine, man." "Fuck that shit. I lef it here."

"An' fuck that! Wha' you mean, you lef it, man? You sitting three seats over, maybe four, man. I seen it."

The owner said, "You must be quiet. What is it? I call police, you don't sit down."

There were two of them, both black. One was homeless, wearing layers of tattered clothes, matted with dirt. The other was in a brown deliveryman's uniform. He was holding a paper-wrapped box, about the size of a shoe box. They looked at the Indian-they both towered over him-and pled their cases as if he were a judge.

The homeless man said, "He be stealing mah package. I lef it, I wenta take a leak, and-"

"Fuck, man. He din't leave no box. I seen some guy come in, watcha movie for ten minutes and leave. It was there when he left, man. I seen it. He left it and it's mine. That's the law."

The homeless man grabbed for the box, a shoe box.

The deliveryman's long arms kept it out of reach. "Get the fuck outa here."

The owner said, "Somebody leave it? He'll be back. Give it to me. Who was it left it?"

The deliveryman said, "How'm I supposed to know who the fuck he was? Some white guy. I found it. S'what the law say, man. I find it, I get to keep it."

The owner reached out. "No, no. Give it to me."

The homeless man said, "I said I lef it. Give it-"

They were in that pose, all three sets of arms extended and gesturing angrily, when the fourteen ounces of C-3 plastic explosive inside the box detonated. Exploding outward at a speed of almost three thousand miles an hour, the bomb instantly turned the men into fragments weighing no more than several pounds. The theater screen vanished, the first four rows of seats shredded into splinters and shrapnel, the floor rocked with a thud that was felt a mile away.

Mixed with the roar of the explosion was the whistle of wood and metal splinters firing through the air as fast as bullets.

Then, almost as quickly, silence returned, accompanied by darkness filled with smoke.

No lightbulbs remained in the theater. But from the ceiling came a tiny green light, swinging back and forth. It was an indicator light on the videotape player, a large black box dangling from a thick wire where the projection booth had been. It blinked out and a second light, a yellow one, flickered on, indicating thatCaught from Behind, Part III had finished, and HighSchool Cheerleaders was now playing.

Detective Sam Healy, lying on his couch, was thinking about the women he'd had in his life.

There hadn't been a lot.

A couple of typical college romances.

Then he'd lived with one woman before he met Cheryl and had one affair just before they'd gotten engaged.

A little flirtation after he'd been married-a few drinks was all-and only after Cheryl had mentioned for probably the hundredth time what a nice sensitive man the contractor doing the addition to the bedroom was.

Though Cheryl hadn't been unfaithful. He was sure about that. In a way he wished that she had been. That would've given him an excuse to do a John Wayne number: kick in the door, slap her around, and in the aftermath give them a chance to pour out their hearts and express their fiery love for each other.

Nowadays, that wouldn't work. Think aboutThe Quiet Man -Maureen O'Hara'd call the cops the minute John Wayne touched her and he'd be booked on second-degree assault, first-degree menacing.

Times were different now.

Ah, Cheryl…

He stopped the VCR when he realized he hadn't been watching the tape for the past ten minutes.

The problem was that Lusty Cousins was just plain and simple boring.

He found the other remote control-the one for the TV-and turned on the ball game. Time for lunch. He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He took out one of the thirty-six Rolling Rocks it contained and popped it. On a piece of Arnold's whole wheat bread he laid four slices of Kraft American cheese (four of the hundred and twenty-eight) and added mayonnaise from a quart jar. Then topped it with another slice of bread.

Sam Healy had been grocery-shopping that morning.

He walked back to the living room. He gazed out the window at quiet Queens. Silhouettes showed on window shades in the houses across the street. Seeing them depressed him. He couldn't concentrate on the game either. The Mets were having less luck than both of the lusty cousins.

He looked at the cover to the cassette of the film and decided he didn't like adult films in the first place. They were as interesting as watching a film about someone eating a steak dinner. He also didn't like the weird, slutty makeup and lingerie contraptions the actresses wore. They looked prosthetic and artificial: the fingerless lace gloves, the garters, the black leather bras, the orange fishnet stockings.