Robert Coover - A Night at the Movies Or, You Must Remember This

He trips over the crumpled suit of armor: he is back in the hallway but now up on the landing once more. He wipes away the tears, pulls up his pants, leans over the railing: whatever he might have hoped, she is still down there, hanging by her slender neck at the end of the pullcord, swaying gently from the push he has given her. Her hands, though fallen to her sides, continue to scratch weakly at the air. He tugs again on the cord, tries to bite through it with his teeth, saw it in two against the railing. All in vain. Her body, still twitching faintly in its long white gown, turns slowly round and round below him at the end of the rope, her eyes staring up at him in black anguish, her long flowing hair tangled and pasty with custard pie. Charlie beats his brow in dismay. The light dims as though she were spinning shadows with her feathery turnings. Her mouth opens slowly as if to speak, her swollen tongue emerging like a final stiff rebuke. Charlie gasps, yanks up his trousers, and plunges blindly through another door in search of something with which to cut the cord.

It is, though through a different door, the boudoir again. He starts to turn away, but then does a double take: over on the dressing table, among the vials and sprays and spilled jewelry boxes, there is, aglow as though spotlit, a pair of silver scissors! He rushes toward the table and the lights go out. When they come on again, he is sprawled on the floor near the table, one leg over a silk-cushioned chair, the thick carpet about him littered with shoes, perfume bottles, pale twists of flimsy underthings, glittering bits of broken glass. The scissors are gone. Across the room in front of a mirror, the maid is standing in her bloomers and apron, snipping the buttons off the front of her vest with the scissors, then tossing them over her shoulder and kicking them high in the air with the heel of her shoe. Charlie pulls himself painfully to his feet and, in a rage, hurls himself at her, but even as he plunges it is into darkness as again the lights go out, returning to find him bang up against a wall, blood running from his nose into his black moustache. The maid peeks coquettishly at him from behind the bed, its canopies hanging obscurely now like weighted webs, there and not there: it is as though there were a new distance between them, a graininess in the space that was not there before. She pops out, legs spread, and, whipping her bodice open, flashes her breasts at him. They glow in the gathering dimness as though lit from within, pimpled by dark little nipples like pupils of frightened cartoon eyes. Even as Charlie pushes away from the wall, the lights blink off and on again. Though the maid is still there in the same place, wearing only her apron like a frilly dinner napkin, the bed is gone — in fact, the whole room is turned around. Terrified, Charlie turns to flee — but no, it was a mirror image: he crashes into her and they fall together onto the unmade bed. He struggles to free himself but becomes entangled in the bedclothes. He loses his derby. He burrows into the linens to recover the derby, loses his pants. He recovers his pants, loses a shoe. He leaves it, staggering away toward the door, dragging the canopy with him — but the maid blocks the way, squeezing her bare breasts at him, swaying her white aproned hips, smirking provocatively. He threatens her with his cane, but she only turns her backside toward him in open invitation. He spins away toward another door, but there she is, holding her apron out in front of her, shaking it at him as though taunting a mad bull, the scissors between her teeth like a rose. He backs away, tripping over the debris on the carpet, bumping into things in the deepening haze. Only she is bright, brighter than ever, her eyes sparkling, her flesh glowing, the black shaggy patch of pubic hair winking at him from behind the fluttering white apron like the negative of a sputtering lightbulb. His hand closes around a doorknob — he whips it open and leaps through, but it is only a closet: he thumps up against the wall, falls back in a thick bind of knotted gowns and petticoats, straddled by the grinning maid. He clambers to his feet, losing his derby between her squeezing thighs, and tries to escape, but she backs him up against the wall and, standing on his trousers, rips his shorts away. He opens his mouth to cry out: she stuffs it full with one of her plump breasts, then, pushing his derby down around his ears, her knee jammed between his legs, commences to trim away his little moustache with the scissors. He closes his eyes, shudders: the maid slips and the scissors jab his nostrils. He gasps in pain and seems to get the maid's breast caught in his throat. He staggers about, gagging and snorting, crashing into things, taking pratfalls, dragging the startled maid with him. Tears are streaming down his puffed-out cheeks. The maid is pushing on his face, hanging on to his ears, prying at his jaws, her own mouth agape with torment and effort. At last the breast pops free and they fall apart, somersaulting away from one another as though spring-loaded. The maid, clutching her breast, crawls over by the dressing table, tears clouding her darkly lined eyes. Her belly has gone soft, the soles of her feet are dirty, her hair is snarled. She tosses him the scissors as though breaking an engagement, crawls under the table. He twitches what remains of his moustache, takes up the scissors, and, watching the maid warily, hitches up his pants and backs out of the room on his hands and knees. The maid seems to have shrunk. She is curled up under the dressing table, her thumb in her mouth, like a small tearful child, like the child perhaps of the faded photograph on the table above her, abandoned, some promise broken, in a studio boudoir festooned with rumpled clothing and jagged mirror fragments like sequins, its flowered wallpaper already starting to peel.

Charlie turns around and finds himself in the bathroom once more, one shoe off and one shoe on, gripping not a pair of scissors but a limp douche bag. The policeman, fully uniformed, is sitting in the bathtub, chest-high in water. His stern manly features are lined now with worry, his rugged jaw is grimly set, his eyes asquint. Charlie wipes his face with his sleeve and, still on his hands and knees, crawls over to plead with him once more, but the policeman ignores him, his gaze narrowed instead upon a small flock of rubber ducks floating between his legs. His uniform is black and ripply beneath the surface, the brass buttons appearing to float free. Water has crept up through the wool of his coat and laps darkly now at the edges of his untarnished badge. Suddenly his arm flashes out of the gray bathwater, his fist clutching a billyclub: he brings it down with all his might — pow! — — on one of the rubber ducks. Water geysers out of the tub, splattering Charlie, the walls, the floor, even the overhead light bulb, making it fizzle and pop, but the duck bobs placidly back to the surface. Again and again the policeman smashes at the duck with his club, but always the duck bobs back. The policeman's shoulders slump, his arm goes slack. He looks up at Charlie. Water is dripping off the edge of his bell-like helmet, off his nose and the tips of his handlebar moustache. Charlie points to the door again, tears in his eyes, clutching the douche bag as though in offering, but receives only a blank stare in return. Then, slowly, the policeman begins to smile. The smile spreads, showing his teeth: the two in front are missing. Charlie blinks in disbelief. The policeman's eyes cross. He bobs his eyebrows, waggles his tongue. He snatches Charlie's douche bag away, peers inside, gives a squeeze: it is filled with ink which blackens the policeman's face. The tips of his moustache fly up, his helmet spins around, steam shoots out his ears. He bops Charlie on the head with his billy, bops himself on the helmet. Everything seems to be speeding up. Buttons fly off the policeman's coat like popping corn. He stretches his lower lip up over his nose, his badge shoots sparks, his ears flap. He gives Charlie his douche bag back, points him toward the door, bops him with the billy again. He gives himself another blow on the helmet and sinks into the water, his eyeballs — stark white now behind the black ink — rolling round and round, the rubber ducks bobbing.