Marc Levy
The Exit Stage
It is 1971. A cold year. Heavy with snow, bitter with rain. It is one year since the killing time, when men fell like red drops in a bad storm and their thunderous screams filled day and night. It is the time before nightmares. It is the time before furious sex. It is the time before the rising rage. It is the time before doctors pushed drugs which only made me shake. It is the time before my dog was killed by a car and I wept, unable to bring her back; it is the time before the days of drink; it is the time before lawless deeds. It is the time before walking up to hollow-eyed men, asking, “Who were you with? What year were you there?” It is the time before regretting I did not shoot the officer who tried to send me back on patrol. "A mistake," he said, hands raised, my weapon trained on his chest. It is the time before moving sixteen times in less than one year. It is the time before I pressed unloaded pistols to young girls’ heads. It is the time before the time when life is neither good or bad. It is the time before I understand human beings.
It is Friday. I work six days a week. I am the head doorman at the Branford Theater in Newark, New Jersey. Outside, in the sleeting cold, large black letters hung on a triangular marquee tout the feature films, their ratings, and times.
Shivering customers huddle beneath the illuminated tent. They are waiting to buy cardboard tickets from a young girl enclosed in a cramped black booth. One at a time they push their money under a metal grill. The girl mechanically presses a large green button, makes change, counts it twice, then pushes the ticket and money back into their shivery hands. One by one the customers push past thick wood doors located immediately behind the booth. They walk, or amble, or strut down the well-lit corridor, which is fifty meters long and flanked by mirrors on either side. They are walking towards me.
It is the time before computers. It is the time before automatic inventory control. It is the time when tedious things are done by hand. Each ticket contains a hole through its center. I slot the paper square onto a long thin rod contained in a sturdy waist-high rectangular metal box. The ticket shimmies backwards down the upright pole. Later, the manager will loop black thread around the top of the over-sized needle. He will upturn the box, causing the tickets to form a bracelet of perforated squares. Behind locked doors he will count them one by one. Just as he will count the paper cups, candy bars, hot dogs, and popcorn boxes which remain after Irish Lucy, whose hair is a forest of fire, has closed the glittery concession and handed him cash. Even though he trusts Lucy, by subtracting items remaining in stock the manager will determine the day’s take. The previous girl had skimmed the till, stashing her loot in garbage bags which she later recovered in the alleyway, out back. Confronted by the manager, she confessed, and was let go.
The main auditorium is reached by a set of double doors past the concession stand. It can seat four hundred people. The cushioned chairs are numbered with small metal plaques nailed to the right arm rest. Several seats have been stabbed or slit or knifed open. The yellow foam rubber puffs out like a rose bush in permanent bloom. Most chairs creak from age and abuse. The balcony, reached by a narrow staircase can hold one hundred and twenty-five people. But there are rats, and most customers prefer to sit elsewhere.
The walls of the theater are covered with intricate plaster designs and gold leaf trim. An ornate chandelier hangs defiantly overhead. When the house lights fade all eyes focus on the motorized velvet curtain, which raises in a series of reverse cascades like a maiden hoisting up her skirts. As they watch the coming attractions, customers munch or chew or lick their salty lips. Soon the lights will go out, the curtain will close and reopen and the main picture will begin.
Six days a week, eight hours a day, half hour lunch, wearing a black tuxedo, white shirt, bow tie, and shined black shoes, I take tickets.
“Tickets, please. Have your tickets ready. Tickets.” No one knows I carry a gun.
Sometimes I flirt with pretty girls. Sometimes I let them in free. And sometimes I have interesting conversations with men. For example, one afternoon a middle-aged man spoke at length about Christ. Even Lucy listened to his passionate appeals. But then his voice went wild and he spoke in tongues and the ushers came and threw him out. I had never seen that before. Speaking in tongues. Nor did I know what a bull dagger was until Lucy waited for the patron to leave. “It’s a woman,” she said. “They dress like that. They do sinful things. Sinful. Shame on them. Shame. Shame. Shame.”
Lucy is slender, gaunt, bony and frail. Crimson spider veins flush her nose and cheeks. She is old. Perhaps fifty. Perhaps sixty-five. Her long bad teeth jut forward when she opens her mouth. When asked by customers, Lucy will name each item for sale. Names and prices. She does this a hundred times a day. I hate when she does it. The same words over and over. The same uncaring tone in her voice. Lucy wears too much make up. She looks as if she is wearing a mask. A scarlet mask, like a sneering devil or mocking clown, a painted whore, which makes me mad.
Whenever I speak or listen to Lucy I always look at the space between her eyes, the one just above the top of her delicate nose. In this way there is no true eye contact, though like most people she thinks there is. Otherwise Lucy will look like a woman before her husband and daughter and three sons have been shot. Otherwise I might scream at Lucy to shut the fuck up. Then butt stroke her across her red flushed face. And Lucy would drop silly and not feel the blows of our boots, which are also covered in the color I hate.
Why it happened I still do not recall.
Hector is different. He is young, mustachioed, handsome. He parts his straight black hair high on the right side of his head. With his thin waist, dark eyes, and sharp, angular features he reminds me of Mendez, met on the long crowded flight departing the far away land.
With his three Silver Stars and two Purple Hearts, Mendez the medic unleashed harrowing tales until he slumped down, drunk on gin, covered in ghosts. Like Mendez, I too was a medic. We loved our men. When the airplane lands, Mendez holds me close in the arc of his arms. Holds me until the shaking stops. I have missed the closeness which comes with combat. Today, there is something of Hector I do not know, and wish to know it. We talk secretly, and when Lucy leans to our moving mouths she cannot hear us.
“One o’clock,” I say. “By the balcony exit.”
I take his ticket and watch it sail down the sturdy pole. When I look up another customer is waiting.
Two hours later, I unlock a service door and lead Hector up the fire escape to a large storeroom. Its high brick walls hold large opaque windows embedded with steel thread to make them safe. Wide shafts of sunlight pour down into the room, illuminating the dust our steps have kicked up. We look about. The walls are crowded with cleaning supplies, dry stiff mops, rusty buckets, and wooden ladders missing pivotal slats. Below us, as the movie unfolds, the loudspeakers cause the floor to tremble. But here, inside the sun-lit room it is quiet.
Like boxers squaring off, we stand less than one meter apart, ready to strike. With my right hand gripping the loaded twenty-five automatic pistol sheltered in my coat pocket, I wait for Hector to suck my cock. If he makes one wrong move I will shoot him. Yes. Although I have never had my cock sucked by a man before, I will shoot Hector if he takes one false step. I have done that. And I know that seeing and touching and smelling the dead is better than sex and that killing is even better.
Hector says, “C’mon man. Do it.”
I say, “I thought you were doing me.”
I say to myself ‘Careful. If he makes one false move shoot him. Shoot the fucker.’
Hector drops to his knees, unbuttons my pants, unzips my fly, and smothers my cock with his mouth. After a time I grow big watching his head bob like a piston forward and back. He is very excited. After a time he works up a lather of white spittle which coats the length of my cock. His mouth glides over the slippery foam.
I am afraid. I am afraid my cock is forever saturated by spit. I am afraid my cock has been ruined.
After a time, discreetly aiming the gun at his head, I say, “That’s enough, Hector. I don’t want anymore.”
Hector continues a moment, then stops.
I say, “We have to go.”
Still on his knees, Hector says, “Take off your shirt, man. C’mon, drop your pants. I want to see you naked.”
I unbutton my shirt and expose my chest.
“More,” he says. “Back up. So I can see you.”
I take three steps back and feel the sun on my neck. I open my shirt. My loosened tuxedo pants fall to the floor. My body is still lean and muscular from patrols and monsoon. For several minutes I stand and pose for handsome, smooth talking, cock-sucking, spic-faced Hector. But if he takes one wrong step, I will draw my weapon and shoot. The small bullet will penetrate his brain and he will be dead. Yes. I will shoot and kill this black-haired, wheat faced, spic-fuck, cock-sucking, fucker who has spoiled my dick. And I will curse and kick the round blue hole in his head. I will kill and kick the one who has spoiled my cock.
“Muy bonita,” says Hector. “Muy, muy bonita.”
I set the safety and put on my clothes.
At the exit landing, before we re-enter the theater, Hector says, “Don’t tell anyone, all right?”
What the fuck? I am twenty-one years old. I have four confirmed kills. I have fragged a lieutenant. I have lost half my platoon. But Hector, whose slippery mouth and rapid tongue have searched and destroyed my unscathed cock says don’t tell? What the fuck, over?
In my best combat voice, the one used to tell the stuck-pig wounded they are all right, the one used to calm impossible pain, the one used to instill false hope, to calm other men I say, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”
Then he is gone.
Downstairs, I lock myself in the narrow employees' bathroom and repeatedly bathe and scrub and wash my dick with warm soapy water. When I am satisfied it is clean, restored, safe, I return to work.
Lucy, who has covered for me says, “You’re late.”
Straightening my jacket and pants, arranging my tie, I say, “It won’t happen again.”
I look down into the metal box. There are many tickets to count.
On the third day of the third month of 1971, I was fired from the Branford Theater.
I have never married. I do not drink or smoke or use drugs. I have nightmares. I have crying spells. I spend much time alone.
And what of the Branford? Gone, whittled in half, the once-towering building now flat-faced with plate windows and white signs which shout impossible value. Inside, the bland interior is stocked with bins piled with failed merchandise. There is no mirrored corridor. There is no stairway. There is no second floor.
Gone too are the laughing children, drunks, pimps, cons, the lonely men and lonelier women. Gone are carpeted floors and heavy brass rails; gone is the hidden projection booth and its slow whirring, two-reeled carbon arc projector run by a man whose name was Lee; gone are the velvet curtains, dimming lights and hundred-foot screen. Gone are the sudden gasps, shouted curses, the cascading litter; gone are the trudging footfalls of satisfied patrons hurrying home before dark.
Nothing remains of the Branford Theater. Only the narrow, garbage-strewn alley out back has escaped untouched. It is fenced off on both ends, locked tight, impossible to enter or exit.
I once looked past the thick link chains and saw myself walking. The scent of stale urine seemed to rise over broken glass, crumpled cans; the sounds of stifled sex. I heard rats scurry in the shadows created by tall humming lamps which curved overhead. Further on, in dark forbidding spots, I felt the hot breath of men lying in wait. I swore I saw blood. I swore I saw the surrendering man shot point blank. Everywhere I saw the blood of memory. I looked away. Nothing was left. Nothing.
And the gun? There are four main parts to any pistol. Frame, slide, barrel, magazine. The practiced hand can break down and reassemble a pistol in thirty seconds. Twenty is better. And last summer, on a very hot day I pushed the safety on, depressed the magazine button, drew the slide back to inspect the chamber, removed the barrel from the slide by rotating it out, eased the slide off the frame, and removed the recoil spring and guide bar from the frame tunnel. I did that. I had done it many times.
And after cleaning the weapon with poisonous solvent and soft round patches, after wiping it down, after applying a small amount of gun oil to each moving part, after reassembling the weapon, after inserting an empty ammo clip, retracting the slide, checking the breach, letting the slide snap forward, I pointed the slick, clean weapon upward and pulled the trigger one last time, the action sharp, smooth, tight, then put the gun away, hoping to never use it again.
©2003 by Marc Levy
Marc Levy served with the First Cavalry Division as an infantry medic in Vietnam and Cambodia in 1970. His work has appeared in various publications, including Skid Row Penthouse, PLACES Magazine, Slant, Rattapallax, 
