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DELMORE SCHWARTZ
513
them the benefit of his childhood talent for such efforts, his
ability to make the machine give freely by a certain trick. But he
knew that the boys would merely be shy, or afraid of him, and
perhaps even antagonistic. At the age of twenty-five, he said
to
himself, I am neither here nor there, and can no longer expect
to
return with ease to the world of the young, that cruel zoo
inhabited by a special kind of animal.
He came to the arcade of the movie house, reading the titles
printed in electric bulbs framed by other lights which raced
backward and forward along the arcade.
JOHN BOLES AND EVELYN LAYE IN ONE HEAVENLY
NIGHT ALSO SPENCER TRACY IN FREEDOM
SCREENO TONIGHT $475 CASH
The presence of the new lottery annoyed him, for it meant an
interruption in the flow of movies while the stage was lit and
everyone looked about dazedly. At such times, Cornelius
slouched far down in his seat, ashamed for some reason to be at
the theater alone, as if it were a confession of a lack of friends
and engaging activities. But Spencer Tracy was an actor who
had often pleased him by an absolute unself-consciousness, and
Cornelius wished also to permit himself
to
be moved by the
operetta music. Decided, he walked toward the box office, as a
stream of people came out of the darkness of the theatre, looking
like sleepwalkers.
At the door the uniformed ticket taker gave him a card on
which was printed a kind of checkerboard, having in each box a
number.
It
was obviously the old game of Lotto, the object being
to get five numbers which were successive either horizontally or
vertically or in a diagonal.
In
the center, amid numbered boxes,
was a box entitled GRATIS; the management gave this box
to
the audience.
Cornelius completed his examination of this card while
walking on the eerie soundless plush carpet of the stupendous
lobby, from whose lofty top great chandeliers hung.
In
a
moment, he was in the midst of the ghostly evening of the
theater; two thousand entranced persons stared toward the white
and black screen, ignorant of all else. A harried usher led him to
