Tongues of Fire by Peter Abrahams Page B

but no coat. He was tall and strange and dangerous, but his lips were blue and his teeth were chattering. Rehv pushed past.
    â€œSoft pussy, you motherfucker,” the black man shouted at his back, but Rehv heard little anger in his voice. “Soft,” he repeated more quietly, urgently, as if it had been on that point that negotiations had broken down.
    Rehv walked quickly to the cinema and pulled at the door handle. A dark-colored van went slowly by, distracting him for a moment. The wind caught the door and blew it wide open with an angry scraping of metal on metal.
    â€œShut the fuckin’ door,” someone yelled from inside. Rehv jerked it closed and entered the lobby.
    It was cramped, ill lit, and dirty, but he noticed none of that at first. He noticed the smells: armpit sweat, foot sweat, crotch sweat, urine. And other smells that he couldn’t identify precisely, but were all bodily. At the end of the lobby a stained and shabby curtain hung across a narrow doorway. In front of the doorway was a small booth, enclosed completely by clear plastic walls. In the booth sat a fat, bald man with mustard on his cheek and a thick salami in his hand.
    â€œYou think it’s summertime or something?” the fat man asked. He bit angrily on the salami. Rehv could not remember having seen a fatter man. Fat hung in pouches under his shirt and under his chin; its invasion of his face was almost complete: Only two pinprick eyes remained to show that there had once been defined features.
    Rehv approached the booth. “One admission please,” he said.
    â€œOne admission please,” the fat man mimicked in the voice of a cabaret homosexual. Rehv felt himself becoming angry, not because he cared what the fat man said, but because he was drawing attention to himself. “Five bucks,” the fat man said, forcing the words around the meat in his mouth.
    Rehv slipped a bill into the slot and walked toward the dirty curtain. As he drew it aside he realized that the tiny eyes had never once focused on his face. Maybe the man had grown tired of looking at the kind of people who came into his lobby; maybe he couldn’t see past the salami.
    Rehv stepped inside the theater. It was very dark. He waited for a minute or two until his pupils dilated. The theater was much bigger than he would have guessed, as large as those that showed the latest expensive features from Hollywood. Nothing like that was playing at the Sheba. On the screen a black man was sitting on a sprung and tattered couch. An overweight white woman sat on his lap with her back to him. His penis appeared to be partway inside her rectum. In a tinny voice she told the black man, or perhaps no one in particular, that it made her feel nice. But she sounded quite bored, and the words weren’t synchronized with the movements of her mouth. The actress bounced up and down a couple of times. The actor was looking off to the side. After a few moments another man appeared from that direction. He wore a cowboy outfit. Soon he didn’t. He tried to push his penis into the actress’s vagina. She said it felt nice, and attempted to bounce up and down again, but couldn’t. None of the principals seemed able to move at all. The camera went to a close-up of the two penises, vagina and anus, but the lens was very much out of focus: It showed a close-up of a large and indeterminate shape, something that might wash up on a beach after a gale, and that might have once been alive.
    Rehv swept his eyes over the rows of seats. In very tight ranks they descended right to the foot of the screen, as though every inch of space saved meant more money for the owner. But there were few customers: Here and there a solitary figure slouched in the shadows.
    Rehv moved slowly down the aisle, careful to make no noise. In a row near the front he saw a lone silhouette that seemed to sit taller than the others. Rehv went nearer. The silhouette moved slightly,