R. understood, barely. The fathomless movie, its fathomless sequel, panoplies of superhuman characters dying and being reborn. A passion for those who cared. R. didn't or hadn't.
"I'm afraid I missed my chance—"
"Of course. You're like me, you haven't a clue! I need someone much younger."
Did the man really mean younger? Perhaps, R. thought, he only meant someone who'd arrived at this place more recently than him. Or had they all arrived here at once? R. couldn't know. Such thoughts only confused him. What he found sad was the drab common denominator, the franchise film. R. would have liked to discuss something more exalted with the distinguished-looking man. Real cinema, like Welles Orthman's "The Munificent Unpersons," says. Or the choreography of Katrina Rausch. That unforgettable long-ago evening at the Boerum Arts Museum, before Trina Mausch had died. But now this all seemed wrong, the signifiers jumbled and receding into irrelevancy. Knowing the plot of "Revengers: Spendblame" might be the only social capital broad enough to signify here. Even that might be laughably parochial. Yet R. found himself wishing not to disappoint.
"Come, there must be someone." He offered a hand, drew the man to his feet, back into the game. "Someone must know."
The density of bodies had increased even since R. knelt. Now the obstacle to communication was less the rapidity with which others moved than the cumbersome nearness of those to whom one spoke. Still, R. worked on the man's behalf.
"Have you—did you happen to see—" R. found that he arrested no one's attention whatsoever. He tried leading instead with the hook, calling to the ceiling, rather than to anyone in particular, " 'Avoiders: Shamegame'—anyone knows how it turns out?"
No reply came, only the rich incomprehensible babble and murmur of other voices, other priorities. When R. turned fully around he saw that he'd lost the bearded man in the movement of bodies. It wasn't important, after all. He'd wished only to help, but it was a thing that couldn't be helped.
A middle-aged woman in a sari addressed him. In indirect reply to his query? He wasn't certain.
"I'm sorry?" he said, cupping his hand to his ear. "Could you . . . I missed—"
She smiled, seeming to relish a scrap of continuity, an actual exchange. "I was just saying how hard this must be for Westerners like yourself."
"Oh," R. said. "Yes. Thank you. I mean—"
She was gone before he could ask her to define her terms: what was "this," really? Then again, didn't R. know what it was? Had his certainty wavered? Yet what, precisely, had the woman in the sari assumed about him? R. was distracted from his quibbles by a sudden awareness as if a suppressed frequency in his range of hearing had been nudged open by her suggestion: so many of the surrounding voices were speaking languages other than English. He'd been filtering. R. felt shame at his own assumptions, the limits in his own terms of inquiry.
Ahead, in the great stream of bodies, R. now spotted a kind of island, an area left vacant. He inferred it, as one moving through a landscape might infer the presence of a distant lake or beach from a break in the tree line. What formed this airspace? Why should there be some zone that others here avoided? R. felt compelled toward it. He longed for the elbow room. It really had grown impossible to move without making contact with those edging him on every side, despite how all were invested in the imperative of constant motion.
R. moved for the open space.
****
