Lunar Follies

SEA OF CRISES

A Film

Black night, black rain falling outside the windows of a brightly lighted room, within which a meeting has come to a barely discernible order. “A meeting about what?” A man, obviously a real-estate agent by the look of his too-expensive tie and shoes, not to mention the Mont Blanc pen in his shirt pocket, rises to address the people in attendance, who shout at him despite a pinched-face, cadaverous woman’s call for order and decorum for God’s sake. What is her name? And what gruesome diet has she embraced to make her resemble a handful of broken straws, to make her legs so pitifully thin that her stockings bag and wrinkle at knees and ankles? The Auschwitz diet? And what is the real-estate agent’s name? “I don’t understand this part of the picture, especially the fat man who has appeared in the doorway on the right?” The starved woman looks at the fat man, not understanding his presence in the doorway. Has not this door always been closed? “Are these horrible people supposed to be tenants?” The real-estate agent has removed his tie and shoes, and plans, or so it would seem, to speak. The tenants rise and begin to dance. “Did they dance like that back in the old days?” What old days? There is a sign on the wall (seen for the first time) that notes, in large black letters, NO VACANCIES. Where is it stated, in what contract or its bylaws, that such signs are even permitted in impromptu meetings such as this one? “Stated?” Black night now enters the room at last, preceded by black rain and the usual bitter cold. “Ain’t California, man.” The tenants have left. The real-estate agent gives his skeletal assistant a kiss as she reads from a book of mediocre feminist poems, Purple Gentian. “Who is the author of this lousy book?” Fake soldiers in Class B khakis enter the room, their brass dull and smudged, their patches and chevrons sewn on crookedly, their shoes scuffed and spotted with what looks to be dried vomit and Christ only knows what else. “These guys are soldiers? ”They stand out starkly against the black night, starkly and a little artily. The room is, let us be clear about it, a freight elevator, in which the skinny woman, her lips swollen with sexual excitement, gazes at her boss, who is now a different man altogether, one who pretends that his name is not Arthur, the name that his amorous assistant calls him by. “Is this guy the same guy as the guy before with the tie?” Thus the indispensable magic of cutting-edge cinema, so they buzz, buzz and trumpet. “Buzz and — wotthefuck? — trumpet?” The elevator stops at the sub-sub-basement and the doors open onto an echoing and dimly lighted parking garage. NO VACANCIES trumpets the sign on the wall, a sign that may well have been transported from an earlier place, or scene. And yet, the garage, echoing and dim, is virtually empty of automobiles, another mysterious image, or at least symbol. “For like, life?”The tenants, however, have all gathered here, and they are once again shouting at Arthur in a language that is not comprehensible, even though it is clear that Arthur and his flushed assistant, who has quite shamelessly removed most of her clothing, not only understand it, but are repelled by it. The fat man, it is now apparent, is the tenants’ leader, although he pretends to be raptly studying a diagram of the sub-sub-basement, whose only legible words, at this distance, read: You Are Here. “Is that the name of the movie?” The real-estate agent is speaking quietly to his gal Friday, whom the fat man is ogling. “Maybe she’s the real-estate guy’s wife.” Wife or no, Arthur seems to think that she is some dish, as does the fat man, bony though she may be. “It’s always the way.” the parking garage is now filled with cars, and the NO VACANCIES sign at last makes sense, even though there may well be some vacancies. At least the shiny machines look like cars, but you never know, you never know. In any event, they are not, as Arthur’s eager enamorata attests, art! Despite the stares of the tenants and the fat man, she is, as the phrase has it, all over Arthur, and dizzy with lust. How she’d rather be in her favorite Village “pub,” sitting across from Arthur, their eyes locked above their tomato martinis, speaking of art and life and love, and, well, serious things in general. Love, sizzling love, would follow, in due course. “Is this, I mean this whole thing like, art?” Black night absorbs the entire shebang.