R. began to wonder whether he'd find anyone he knew. Even as he registered the thought, he understood that this was a preoccupation among many of those roaming the floor. In fact, he saw now that it was this imperative that dictated the general movement, the characteristic circular milling. All present had seized on it by instinct, the urge to sort through the faces of others, in search of recognition. R. was party to this. More bodies had moved into the side room, perhaps feeling a kind of reverse claustrophobia, a terror of the vastness of the main space.
He grasped instantly that there was no reason to deny stranger's acknowledgment. Or more than acknowledgment—brief, friendly greeting. Yet the hurly-burly militated against doing more. One was driven. There might always be a person one knew from before if one only kept looking. Under such circumstances, even the briefest acquaintance would signify enormously.
A teen-ager, grinning, reached down, and touched the knees of R.'s pants. The gesture was obscure, not necessarily unfriendly. In any case, the teen mingled into the bodies and was lost. The crowd, loose at the outset, seemed to be growing denser. Was this happening only in the side room he'd entered? Perhaps it had grown crowded with those like R., who'd felt curious to see what it held. It appeared as though at the far end of the side room it opened to another enormous indoor space, one perhaps as without boundary as the one that R. had just left. Yet the density of bodies in the current room made it unappealing to attempt to cross. So R. turned back toward the large room from which he'd come, seeking free space.
Though things had grown generally more crowded, it was looser there, yes. He felt a little animation at this discovery, and a thrill—for the first time? Again?—at the extent of this space, and all the possible encounters contained within it. The smaller room, he saw now, had been a mistake, a waste of time. He resumed energetically milling. The point was to relish the freedom here, to refuse constraint. And among these numbers, R. felt certain he'd find, if not actual acquaintances, then those like himself—his tribe, his type, his people.
"I hear—"
"Monsters are us—"
"How long does this go on?"
"Apropos of nothing—"
"Everything happens at parties."
"Does remembering make you sad?"
"I said to her, if the future of sex is bald men with ponytails, I want no part of it."
"—songs sung by ghosts—"
"They quit stocking the minibar—"
"Tell me about the time someone gave you money for something crazy."
"What happens to your shit when you're gone?"
"—vicarious holiday weekend—"
"I need a date."
"—perfectly good empty apartment in Bed-Stuy—"
"Funny? Or stupid? Or in bad taste?"
The moment R. attuned to speech, it rose and swirled around him. The fragments jostled his ears like the bodies jostling in this space. If he could have written the words down they'd make epic mediocre poetry, or perhaps lyrics for a post-punk band. Here, now, on the floor, was a man who appeared to be doing just that, writing on a scroll-like piece of paper, but when R. knelt beside him he saw that the page was blank, and what he'd taken for a scribbling pen was only a moving finger. The man had a beard and glasses—he at least resembled a poet. Having gained the man's attention by joining him on the floor, forming a little haven in the sea of motion, R. thought to salvage the encounter.
"It doesn't add up to very much, does it?" R. said, with a shrug and a smile.
"It doesn't add up to anything at all!" the man said. "Not unless you saw the sequel."
"The sequel?"
" 'Avengers: Endgame'!"
****
