Scene: The entrance of the Joy Rio, a third-rate cinema which used to be a great old opera-house in a large city on the American gulf-coast. In another year or two the authorities will condemn the building as a public hazard and it will be demolished or perhaps it will be restored as a landmark; now forgotten and neglected, its historic glories are suggested dimly by greasy red damask, torn and blackening, and by the gilt baroque of the nymph which wantons over the bottom steps of the great marble stairs. The set will barely suggest these items, for the lighted area is very small. It includes the nymph, the bottom steps of the marble staircase and the entrance to a room marked “ladies”—and of course a door to the exterior where the ticket-box stands.

Faintly from time to time we hear the soundtrack of the film being shown. When a patron enters, his grotesquely elongated shadow is cast before him on the ancient carpet for the daylight outside is fiercely blazing.

As the curtain rises a new young usher, a schoolboy of sixteen taking summer employment, is being shown the ropes by a veteran employee of the establishment, a man of thirty named Carl. The new boy wears a dirty white mess-jacket and close-fitting sky-blue pants and he is perspiring more with nervousness than with the stifling heat of the August afternoon.

 

CARL [lazily flashing his light on the roped-off staircase]: These are the Stairs you got to watch.

BOY: What for?

CARL: This here’s an old opera-house. Y’know that, don’t you? Them stairs go up to three galleries. I don’t know, maybe four. I never counted ’em. A breeze would knock them over, and the top boxes, rows of boxes, all the way around from the right-hand side of the stage to the left-hand side of the stage. I went up to them once, only once, the day I started work here. The old guy shown me like I am showing you, only in them days it wasn’t forbidden to go up them there steps which now it is, which is something you got to remember. Because if anybody slips by you and goes up there, not only do you lose your job here, that is, if Kroger finds out, but if anything happens up there in that rutten mess, which is all fallin’ t’pieces, they bold you responsible for it and— What’s a matter, Gladys?

[This abrupt question is directed to a young girl, Gladys, who has entered the theatre and is loitering about the foot of the staircase.]

GLADYS [coldly]: I’m waitin’ fo’ my girl-friend, if it’s any busness of yours.

CARL: It’s my bus’ness, all right, if you start messin’ around in here anymore.

GLADYS: Look who’s talking. Why don’t you get a grown-up man’s job, honey.

CARL [flashing lamp on her precocious figure]: Look. Did you come in here to see the show? If so get back to your seat. If not, go home, or operate on the street or at the drug-store.

GLADYS: I hate you.

CARL: That makes me suffer.

GLADYS: I bet. I bet you suffer. You suffer like a fish, you fish, you fink, you fish-faced fish of a fink! If my girl-friend comes in, little boy, I’m sittin’ in the first three rows, she’ll fin’ me…

[This last is addressed haughtily to the new usher as Gladys swishes out of the lighted area into the orchestra aisle. A door swings open on the screen dialogue which comes up clearly for a few phrases.]

FILM DIALOGUE:	Get up off the bed.
	—I’m sick!
	—I said, Get up.

[A slap and a scream are heard. The new usher jumps a little. Carl laughs tiredly and hikes at the waist of his trousers. The door swings shut again and the sound track fades into incoherent murmurs.]

CARL: That Joan Bennett is a damn fine little actress, and did you know that she’s a grandmother? I should have a grandmother like that. Everybody should have a grandmother like that. You seen this picture before?

[New boy shakes his head staring big-eyed at the screen visible to him through oval glass of door.]

CARL: There is a scene in this picture where Joan Bennett is eating a piece of celery which I want you to look at and tell me what you think. [Suddenly.] Hey! [His pocket lamp stabs at a male figure slipping under the velvet rope of the staircase.] Where do you think you’re going?

MAN: I’m looking for the Gents’ Room.

CARL: You know it ain’t up there.

MAN: Why don’t they keep this place lighted so you can see where you’re going. [He walks off.]

CARL: You see what I mean about that old staircase? You got to watch that staircase like a hawk, ‘specially this time of the day.

BOY: Yeah?

CARL [standing close in front of him]: How old are you?

BOY: S-seventeen!

CARL: You ain’t seventeen. You ain’t even used a razor yet.

[Touches his chin.]

BOY: The paper said “Boy seventeen or over that could work afternoons.”

CARL: You’re about fifteen, ain’t you? Who did you talk to? Kroger? Did old man Kroger hire you? Yeh. I bet it was him, that old man’s dirty, he’s fruit. You know about fruit?

BOY: Fruit?

CARL: I don’t mean apples and peaches. Look. Look. You don’t need a job this bad that you got to work here. This here is a dirty place that’s run by a dirty man and I don’t even like to tell you about the sort of stuff that goes on in this place that I got to tell you if you are going to work here. Don’t work here. Get you an outdoor job or a job in a drug store. I’d tell your mother if I was acquainted with her, or your old man, because I’m a parent myself. That’s why I’m quitting. I been in a rut here, and it’s a disgrace of a job for a grown-up man to be a rutten usher in a movie. I’m twenty-eight and I been here ten years and I’m making ten dollars more than I made when I started and now I got a wife and a three-months-old baby and the priest tells my wife that trying not to have babies is a sin. [This is all said in a voice so enormously tired, that the words barely seem to have the strength to crawl out of the sagging lips.] This is the restaurant scene I told you about. Look. [He advances and pulls the swinging door to the orchestra partly open.]

FILM DIALOGUE:	—Hors d’oeuvres, darling?
	—No, thank you.
	—Have a piece of celery. It’s full of Vitamin B, which is good for the nerves.

CARL: There now! Look at that close-up!

BOY: I don’t see…

CARL: Look, look. Look at that, will yuh.

[An adolescent girl has entered with a greasy bag of popcorn. She stares at the two figures by the swinging doors for a moment. Then quickly steps out of her slippers and flies like a shadow up the marble staircase with the shoes in one hand. Carl turns lazily around.]

CARL: Was that somebody?

BOY: What?

CARL: Somebody come in, didn’t they?

BOY: I d-didn’t see.

CARL: How did that popcorn git there?

[Flashes pocket lamp on spilled popcorn at the base of the staircase.]

CARL: There wasn’t no popcorn there a moment ago. Somebody did come in. Look. There’s popcorn on the stairs! [Calls up.] Hey! Hey, up there!

[The manager Kroger enters from outside. He is a man of enormous corpulence with a quality of decay as palpable as the old building itself.]

KROGER: What’s the trouble? Did somebody get up the stairs?

CARL: Naw, sir.

KROGER: Then why are you shouting up there? What do you think I pay you guys to do, to look at the pitcher? Is that what you think you been employed to do? Two of you here, both enjoyin’ the movie while anybody that wants to slips under the rope and gives the place a bad name? You boy, you new boy. What did I say to you about them stairs? Didn’t I tell you you got to watch them stairs.

CARL [sullenly]: Nobody went up them stairs, Mr. Kroger, while I been here.

KROGER [to the boy]: You see anybody slip under that there rope?

BOY: —N-no, Sir…

CARL: All I seen was some popcorn spilt on the steps.

KROGER: Sherlock Holmes, huh? Are you sure Mr. Sherlock Holmes? If there’s popcorn on them steps it didn’t grow there, did it?

CARL: I’m not responsible for what’s on the steps in a dirty old place like this. If the management ain’t clean enough to see that the place is run decent I don’t give a goddam what’s on the dirty old steps, ice cream or bananas, far as I am concerned. I seen popcorn on the steps. That’s all I seen.

KROGER: And you was shouting at popcorn? You think popcorn can holler? Boy! How did that stuff get there?

CARL: He don’t know how it got there anymore than I do. Look, Mr. Kroger.

KROGER: Don’t say ‘Look’ to me, boy. Don’t say ‘Look’ to me ever.

CARL: I’ll say ‘Look’ to you or anybody else that I want to.

KROGER: What the goddam hell do you think you’re doing, talking to me that way in my own theatre?

CARL: Your own theatre, you fat old bug of a bunny, and strap it up twice for good measure. I quit. I quit this morning, have you forgotten? After ten years in the stink and sweat of this hole, I give you my notice because I come here clean and I’m going out dirty. Not my dirt but the dirt of this filthy place here, and if I talked—If I talked, Mr. Kroger! —Y’know what I could get done to this place? I could get it shut up like the blade of a knife! That quick and that easy if I just opened my mouth about half I know about what this — !

KROGER [to the hoy]: Boy! Boy, step outside and call an officer here!

CARL: Yeh, yeh, do that, do that, do that, I wish you’d do that!

KROGER: I will not tolerate impertinence like that from a moron!

CARL: Why, you fat old morphodite, you! [He rips of/his fancy mess jacket and throws it violently into Mr. Kroger’s face.] Did you hear what I said? Morphodite? Morphodite? Old fat stinkin’ old Morphodite?

[One or two patrons are attracted by the disturbance into a lighted area. An excited, skinny little woman of fifty, a cashier, darts in the door.]

CASHIER: Mr. Kroger, Mr. Kroger, what is it? Were you attacking Mr. Kroger?

[This is spoken to the boy who shakes his head in a panic.]

CARL: I was attackin’ Mr. Kroger, I was, Me, me! I sweated an’ stunk in here in this swill a dirt an’ corruption for ten long terrible years of my young life! And now I’m gonna go home an’ wash the dirt off me! You hear me? Wash the dirt off me, and I ain’t forgot what happened here ten years ago when I got the dirty job neither! Have you forgotten what happened here ten years ago when I got the dirty job, Kroger?

[Kroger falls back speechless toward the outside door.]

CASHIER: How dare you talk to Mr. Kroger like that, Carl! I don’t see how you dare to talk to Mr. Kroger like that, after all he’s put up with you, with you coming here drunk, with you letting girls upstairs and men after them up there like goats while you’re on duty, I swear to goodness, I don’t understand how you could have the nerve to open your mouth to poor old Mr. Kroger. And make this disturbance like this. You boys go back to your seats, there’s nothing to look at, go on back to the picture, you boys, there.

[The boys return into orchestra aisle. Mr. Kroger has retreated outside but his great, outraged voice can be heard summoning the law.]

CARL: I hope he does call the law, I just hope he does call the law in this sweatin’ stink-hole. If there was a cop out there he wouldn’t holler. You can be goddam sure if there was a cop on that corner he wouldn’t open his button loud as a whisper. [Tears off the cummerbund and the false front shirt and the elastic black tie and throws them in a heap on the floor and kicks them.]

CASHIER [sobbing]: I have never seen anybody act like this before in my life, Carl Meagre, and I have never heard language like that anywhere before in my life, and if you dare to open your mouth like that about Mr. Kroger who is sick with cancer, and you know it, why, I’m going to open my mouth about things I know concerning you and your conduct with certain girls that come here.

CARL: Go on, you prune. Take that rag-heap an’ burn it. Burn it, the whole bunch of it. I came here clean and I am going out dirty, after ten years of it!

[Carl rips down the front of the dirty sky-blue pants and kicks them off and stands before the woman in his underwear. Cashier screams and runs out into the blaze of sunlight. He kicks the sky blue pants, jerks down the velvet rope and goes upstairs to the usher’s locker room. After a moment the boy slips the velvet rope back in place. After another moment or two a police car is heard drawing up to the curb outside. At the same time Gladys comes out of the orchestra section and stares curiously and provocatively at the boy who reddens and turns the front of his body away from her gaze.]

GLADYS: Did you see my girlfriend.

[This has no question mark. The words are said as if they had no meaning.]

BOY: No.

GLADYS: She didn’t come in. She has on a white silk blouse and big gold earrings. She went out to get some popcorn and she didn’t come back.

BOY: No.

GLADYS: My girl friend is boy crazy.

[The boy shakes his head jerkily. His hand moves jerkily from his side to his pocket and then quickly back out of his pocket again.]

GLADYS: She’s fourteen. I think it’s bad to be boy crazy that young. How old are you?

BOY: —S-sixteen!

GLADYS: We are just the same age but you are blond and I’m dark. Opposite types! —I get so bored with that picture. Joan Bennett. You look at it?

BOY: No. No, I work here.

[Gladys laughs with an air of idiotic fatigue. Woman rushes excitedly in.]

CASHIER: Mr. Kroger, Mr. Kroger, Mr. Kroger!

GLADYS: —What?

CASHIER [to the boy]: Where is Mr. Kroger, in his office?

BOY: —I—I don’t know!

CASHIER: Watch here! Smoke is coming out of an upstairs window!

[She rushes back out crying for Mr. Kroger.]

GLADYS: I know something about that woman that I wouldn’t like to say, but she has got the nerve to tell me not to come to this movie because I’m too young. Do you know about this place? Kids can have lots of fun here, but they got to be careful. You have got to be careful. But if you are quick—and careful—you can have lots of fun here. You sure can have fun here if you know how to have it.

[Swinging doors open. Movie soundtrack and actress’s voice are heard.]

FILM DIALOGUE: —You were gone such a long, long time and I was so lonely I really didn’t want to. But I was helpless. It was stronger than I was. It was stronger than he was. Neither of us wanted it to happen, but it happened. Sometimes things just happen. Do you know what I mean?

GLADYS: That’s Joan Bennett. She’s explaining something to her husband. He don’t believe her. The fink! [She smiles with an air of unutterable fatigue.]

[Some resolute-looking policemen enter followed by the cashier who speaks in an hysterical whisper.]

CASHIER: If anybody says “fire” it will cause a panic!

[The velvet rope is lifted and they go upstairs with flashlights. Gladys throws back her head. She laughs softly to herself. Then rather loudly and coarsely.]

BOY: What are you—l-laughing at?

GLADYS: She’s always getting into some kind of a panic about things here, and you know why? The kids have so much fun in this place that it kills her! [Strolls up to the gilt nymph.] Lookit that naked lady! You like her shape? I bet I got a shape that’s better than that. Big hips have gone out of style like horse-and-buggies! Haa-ha-ha-ha-haa- … Excuse me. I am going to get a drink of water. [She enters the room marked “ladies.”]

[The policemen come down with scraps of half-burned usher’s outfit.]

CASHIER [following them]: He must be crazy, that’s all I’ve got to say, he must be crazy! Ripped off everything right here where I am standing! And burned it up there. I’m worried about Mr. Kroger. He had a hemorrhage of the bowels just two weeks ago from some malignant condition, and this has upset him so he’s likely to have a set-back …

[The policemen have gone out with the half-incinerated garments.]

CASHIER: Boy! Did Mr. Kroger come in while I was upstairs?

BOY: No, Ma’am.

CASHIER [going out]: Oh, Mr. Kroger! It’s all right, Mr. Kroger! Everything is all right now, Mr. Kroger. It wasn’t really a fire, it was just—

[The outside door swings shut. Gladys comes back out of the ladies’ room. She stands by the door staring at the new usher, slowly sweeping him up and down with her eyes. He turns his body at an angle away from her embarrassingly direct look.]

BOY: —Wh-what time’s it? It seems like I been standing here forever.

[The girl laughs with huge indolence.]

BOY: I don’t like this place. I’m going to quit this job before I get fired. I don’t like it. I don’t like a place like this. I can’t stand it here. I couldn’t stand to stay here every afternoon. I’d go crazy. Things going on like this. My father told me to take this job but my mother wanted me not to. I should’ve listened to her and not to him but he’s always nagging at me about being lazy. He thinks I’m lazy because I never worked in the summer before. But I did work. I wrote—I-I wrote—poems! —And had—two—p-published!

GLADYS: D’you know the song that goes “You’re so Diff’rent from the Rest!”? That’s my number, it’s number eight on the jukebox at that place on the corner where we kids go nights…You will be going there nights if you stay here…[Her voice is so indolent that it barely comes out.]

[Footsteps and voices are heard above. A policeman descends the stairs gripping Carl tightly by his arm.]

CARL [hoarsely]: Nothing ’ud suit me better, nothing ’ud suit me better’n t’ meet him in court! Let him talk. Let him do the talking. And then let me talk, too. We’ll see who has the best story of what kind of place this is and what goes on here! [As he is conducted outside.] This is an evil place! This is a place full of evil!

[The second officer flashes light momentarily on the gilt nymph at the base of the marble stairs. All go out except Gladys and the new usher.]

GLADYS: Did you ever play truth or consequences?

BOY: —N-no!

GLADYS: I did last night. Somebody says “Heavy, heavy, hangs over your head, what shall the owner do to redeem it?” It was my best pair of stockings. And I had to answer the question. I can’t repeat it to you. You’d be shocked to think that anybody would ask me that question! See that popcorn? That means she got upstairs! I’m going to find her! Want to follow? Come on up when the picture starts over again! [Slips under the velvet rope and runs up the steps out of sight. From out of sight she calls down in a shrill whisper.] Come on up when the picture starts over again!

[The boy nods jerkily. After a moment he darts toward the steps and fastens the velvet rope back into place. Then he darts back to his formal position. He stands very straight and rigid and the music of the finale is heard rising to a spiritual climax. The boy’s eyes stare straight out blue and glassy with wonder. With a jerky movement he swipes the sweat off his forehead.]

SOMEONE ABOVE: Sssssss! Sssssss!

[He bites his lips.]

SOMEONE ABOVE: Ssssss! Sssssss! Ssssss!

[He closes his eyes for a moment. The light starts fading. It lingers longest upon the gilt nymph.]

CURTAIN