Don DeLillo - Point Omega

He looked at the screen, trying to consider what he might say. He had a good vocabulary except when he was talking to someone.

Finally he whispered, "The private detective. Man on his back."

It was a constricted whisper and he wasn't sure she'd heard him. But the response was nearly immediate.

"Do I want to know who's stabbing him?"

Again he had to think a moment before he decided on an answer. He decided on the answer no.

He said this, "No," shaking his head to indicate finality, if only to himself.

He waited for some time, watching hand and knife in midframe, isolated, and again it came, the voice nowhere near a whisper.

"I want to die after a long traditional illness. What about you?"

The interesting thing about this experience, until now, was that it was all his. No one knew he was here. He was alone and unacknowledged. There was nothing to share, nothing to take from others, nothing to give to others.

Now this. Out of nowhere, walks into the gallery, stands next to him at the wall, talks to him in the dark.

He was taller than she was. At least there was that. He wasn't looking at her but knew he was taller, somewhat, slightly. Didn't have to look. He sensed it, felt it.

The blond children went moping after their parents and out the door and he imagined them leaving black-and-white behind forever. He watched Janet Leigh's sister and Janet Leigh's lover talking in the dark. He didn't regret the loss of dialogue. He didn't want to hear it, didn't need it. He would not be able to watch the real movie, the other Psycho, ever again. This was the real movie. He was seeing everything here for the first time. So much happening within a given second, after six days, twelve days, a hundred and twelve, seen for the first time.

She said, "What would it be like, living in slow motion?"

If we were living in slow motion, the movie would be just another movie. But he didn't say this.

Instead he said, "I guess this is your first time."

She said, "Everything's my first time."

He waited for her to ask him how many times he'd been here. He was still adjusting to the presence of another person but isn't this what he'd wanted these past days, a movie companion, a woman, someone willing to discuss the film, evaluate the experience?

She told him she was standing a million miles outside the fact of whatever's happening on the screen. She liked that. She told him she liked the idea of slowness in general. So many things go so fast, she said. We need time to lose interest in things.

Either the others could not hear them or did not care. He looked straight ahead. He was certain that the museum would close before the movie reached its actual end, its story end, Anthony Perkins wrapped in a blanket, the eyes of Norman Bates, the face coming closer, the sick smile, the long implicating look, the complicit look at the person out there in the dark, watching.

He was still waiting for her to ask him how many times he'd been here.

Day after day, he'd say. Lost count.

What's your favorite scene, she'd say.

I take it moment by moment, second by second.

He couldn't think of what she might say next. He thought he'd like to leave for a minute, go to the men's room and look in the mirror. Hair, face, shirt, same shirt all week, just look at himself briefly and then wash his hands and hurry back. He worked out the location in advance, men's room, sixth floor, he needed to see himself in the event she stayed until closing time and they left the gallery together and stood in the light. What would she be seeing when she looked at him? But he remained where he was, eyes on the screen.

She said, "Where are we, geographically?"

"The movie starts in Phoenix, Arizona."

He wasn't sure why he'd named both city and state. Was the state necessary? Was he talking to someone who didn't necessarily know that Phoenix is in Arizona?

"Then the locale changes. California, I think. There are road signs and license plates," he said.

A French couple came in. They were French or Italian, intelligent-looking, standing in the faint light near the sliding door. Maybe he'd said Phoenix, Arizona, because the words appeared on the screen after the opening credits. He tried to remember if the name of Janet Leigh's character was part of the opening credits. Janet Leigh as-but the name hadn't registered if he'd seen it at all.

He was waiting for the woman to say something. He remembered in high school when being shorter than the girl he was talking to made him want to fall on the floor and get kicked by passersby.

"Some movies are too visual for their own good."

"I don't think this one," he said. "I think this one is worked out carefully, shot for shot."

He thought about this. He thought about the shower scene. He thought about watching the shower scene with her. That might be interesting, together. But because it had been shown the day before, and because each day's screening was discontinued when the museum closed, the shower scene would not be part of today's viewing. And the curtain rings. Was he completely sure there are six rings spinning on the curtain rod when Janet Leigh in her dying fall pulls the shower curtain down with her? He wanted to watch the scene again, to reaffirm the curtain rings. He'd counted six, he was sure of six, but he needed to reaffirm.

Such second thoughts go on and on and the situation intensified the process, being here, watching and thinking for hours, standing and watching, thinking into the film, into himself. Or was the film thinking into him, spilling through him like some kind of runaway brain fluid?

"Have you been looking at other things in the museum?"

"Came straight here," she said, and that's all she said, disappointingly.

He could tell her things about the story and characters but maybe that could wait for later, with luck. He thought of asking what she did. Like two people learning a language. What do you do? I don't know, what do you do? This was not the kind of conversation they ought to be having here.

He wanted to think of them as two like souls. He imagined them staring at each other for a long moment, here in the dark, a frank and open look, a truthful look, strong and probing, and then they stop staring and turn and watch the film, without a word passing between them.

Janet Leigh's sister is coming toward the camera. She is running into darkness, a beautiful thing to see, decelerated, the woman running, shedding background light as she comes, face and shoulders faintly shaped, total dark falling in around her. This is what they ought to talk about here, if they talk, when they talk, light and shadow, the image on the screen, the room they're in, talk about where they are, not what they do.

He tried to believe that the tension in his body alerted her to the drama of the scene. She would sense it, next to him. This is what he thought. Then he thought about combing his hair. He wasn't carrying a comb. He would have to smooth down his hair with his hands once he got in front of a mirror, wherever and whenever, unnoticeably, or some reflecting surface on a door or pillar.

The French couple changed position, moving across the room to the west wall. They were a positive presence, attentive, and he was sure they would talk about the experience for hours afterward. He imagined the cadence of their voices, the pattern of stress and pause, talking through dinner in a restaurant recommended by friends, an Indian place, a Vietnamese place, Brooklyn, remote, the harder to get to, the better the food. They were outside him, people with lives, it was a question of actuality. This woman, the one next to him, as he regarded her, was a shadow unfolding from the wall.

"You're sure this isn't a comedy?" she said. "I mean, just looking at it."