A week after seeing the continuous showing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, D dropped by the cinema again.
And he said to E:
“That town you wanted to visit isn’t in the category of conquered territories, or in the category of territories yet to be conquered, but I can take you tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t have a hardware store.”
“And so?”
“Don’t you worry. I’ll be out the front tooting the horn at ten on the dot.”
In hindsight, D was the one who should have been worried. But since he wasn’t, at ten on the dot he went by E’s, and he deposited him in the main square of the ghost town, which he would do many times over the next few months.
While E took his photographs and made his enquiries, D would go to the neighboring town to fill it with locks and nuts. When he was done, he would return to the ghost town to collect E.
On the way back, they spoke about all sorts of topics, and, among other things, E told D that a foreign newspaper was interested in his photographs.
For D, anywhere abroad was excessively far away, so they changed the subject and spoke about the film that would screen at the cinema the next week: To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck.