In the fall of 1940 I accepted a job writing chapterplays as part of a team at Republic Studios. It was fun dreaming up the oblique situations and hairbreadth escapes, but the constant fight scenes (although simple to write) left not much room to "grow" a character, as Mrs. Templeton would say. In 1941 I was lucky enough to have a typewriter handed to me instead of a gun; I rode out the War Effort working on training films with a crew of animators whose only previous qualifications for mayhem were Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck. I spent some memorable afternoons with them in hot screening rooms watching rough cuts of Private Snafu cartoons. It was from them that I learned how to simplify the most complicated things, and how to sweeten the inedible with entertainment, like putting an envelope of chocolate around a laxative. When the war department animators built their room-sized maps of Japan, I was one of the few writers present. They filmed flight paths over this incredibly detailed miniature continent, and used them to brief their pilots. I helped write the narration. When they bombed Hiroshima the pilots were, in part, following my directions; that about killed writing for me.

So when all the surrenders were signed and done I took the advice of a friend and used the letter of recommendation that Mr. DeLodges had written for me nearly seven years before, back at the beginning of that short, confusing summer. It got me a job as salesman for the Eagle Novelty Company, based out of Clear Lake, Iowa. I spent the better part of a year driving from appointment to appointment in a rented Chevrolet, listening to baseball games over the radio and keeping my mind on the business at hand, the business of roads and selling. The long miles from city to town sometimes reminded me of similar trips I had made with the company of players, similar towns visited, but for the most part I was not plagued by Shakespearean ghosts. I did not think about theaters or actors; I did not think about writing. I didn't even carry a typewriter.

It was in the offices and back rooms of retail stores that I began to understand Moscow for the first time. There, waiting in some awful corner for the buyer to see me, I learned how to wear my face like a mask, and how that made-up face, though invisible, could put over a sale and still protect my own insides. What will it be this time, I thought, imagining a combination of Templeton's straightforward nose, Moscow's jawline, Margaret Darwin's reflective eyes, all fitting snugly over my own features, so that when I extended my hand it was like walking onto the stage, not even my own hand anymore, but the hand of a new character sewn together out of the parts of corpses. It was not enough to just take a deep breath, put my mind away and follow the script; when the clock started ticking and the samples started coming out, I had to BE The Salesman.

Then on a hot afternoon in the back of a little five and dime outside of Boston, my face almost came apart. I don't know what set me off; I'd been with tougher customers in my time. I never went back and thanked this one. But I feel that I owe him a debt.

He was a hard-faced man who refused all small talk, leading me straight through into an "office" that was nothing more than a painted desk crammed into the corner of a storage room. Three planks straddled a pair of beams overhead, loaded down with so much stock that they had bowed into a threatening U above us. He dragged a painted chair over for me, then sat at the desk with his arms folded and his knees pressed tightly together. "Fifteen minutes," he said. "That's all you've got."

I lost five of them just getting my cases open. Inside, packed neatly into their own snug compartments, were the whimseys and toys that I sold: false-bottomed boxes painted with crude oriental symbols, silk scarves that could be made to change their colors, bouquets of paper flowers that sometimes popped open on the long rides, false thumbs of varying sizes, a jack-in-the-box in the shape of a camera, a ten cent box of marbles, pamphlets with astrological symbols arcing over a purple background, Halloween baskets shaped like cats, pumpkins, devil's heads, skulls; a grey hare of not very astonishing realism made all of wool, oldfashioned optical disks picturing horses or ogres in motion and usually a mouse or cat dancing around the hub, a wooden egg with a hole drilled in one end (for vanishing kerchiefs or paper money), a metal bird that sang in its cage, a crystal ball complete with visions painted on a canvas roll concealed in its base, make-up kits and simple costumes of a sikh or clown, a wizard's peaked cap (folded flat) covered with moons, stars and ringed planets; three different tarot decks (French, Hindu and British), and Jugglehead, my own favorite, "the quick change toy; makes many funny faces."

I laid it all out before his empty eyes, remembering Moscow as he peeked through the curtain. "Look at them," he said, turning away from the slit of light that separated us from the house. "Farmers, shopkeepers, a banker or two. To them we're freaks. All of us, even you." And with my suitcases full of cheap tricks, of junk, I felt the same way.

"How now, Spirit," I said aloud. "Wither wander you?"

"'Scuse me?"

I couldn't remember where I had heard the line before; only that it was Shakespeare and I should know it. I nearly repeated it to him, until I saw the confusion on his face. "Sorry," I said. "I came all the way up from Philadelphia yesterday, and Baltimore before that. 'Next Week East Lynne.'" I had to laugh at that. It was an old theatrical phrase meaning I'd better have a sure thing. "Um, where was I?"

The man sitting with his hands behind his elbows gave me a blank, solitary look. "The Eagle Magic Set," he said. "Number ten."

"Ten?" I said. "That has a wonderful device. We used a larger variation of it, once. It went over big." I fumbled through the sample case until I found what I wanted. It was a plain hand mirror with a molded stem, and a deck of cards. "Patter's included with the instructions, but we won't bother with that. If you'll just pick a card"

I riffled the pack and my client stuck out his finger. "Three of hearts," he said.

Holding the mirror at arm's length, I asked him to place the card face down against the glass. He tried not to look at himself, and failed. "Now what?" he said.

"Pause for effect. Not too long. All right, take it down."

But his fingers were too thick; the card dropped away and fluttered to the ground. Instead of picking it up, my client looked into the glass. I knew what he was seeing: the image of three ghostlike hearts floating one above the other, superimposed over his own reflection in the silvered depths of the mirror.

"The hearts are printed on celluloid," I told him. "Elastic bands hidden inside the frame snap them into position when I touch a button on the handle." I pressed it to demonstrate: Click, and the hearts withdrew in a sudden rush, Click and they rose again before his eyes. "Simple. But kind of elegant, don't you think?"

"No thanks," he said. "What else have you got to show me?"

Then I lost another few seconds of my fifteen minutes. All right, I wanted to say to him, here. Here's some plastic shit, startle your neighbors confuse your parents. Here's some plastic vomit, just add water, is that the stuff you like? But I grappled and managed to pull my face back into place. It didn't fit as comfortably as it had earlier in the day, but I swallowed it all and just went on and finally got a small order out of him. When I left him I said to myself, Take a bow. I felt I'd earned it.

I went down to a cafe at the end of the block and ate dinner there with the street at my back and the remaining sun crawling across the orange wall of the booth. The meal tasted all right, but I was feeling too distracted to enjoy it. Instead of getting a start on my paperwork, I sat in a kind of daze and thought about Jugglehead, the three hearts, about magician's secrets, cliffhangers and Twelfth Night. It wasn't the kind of thinking that led anywhere, or accomplished anything. But it was the best I could manage.

In that strange, wistful mood I took myself back uptown, riding in a crowded car with my samples cases pressing on either side and a straw-haired lady at my elbow complaining that I took up too much room. When I came up out of the subway there was just enough light in the sky to blot out the glow of the streetlamps. It was three blocks to the parking garage where I'd left the Chevrolet; I didn't get more than half way before I noticed the lighted marquee glowing from an adjoining street.

It took me three or four seconds to decide that I wasn't going to stop, but by then my body had made the decision for me. The cases swung so heavily in my hands that I set them down on the sidewalk. Loitering there under the gathering night, I peered down into that street and argued with myself over whether or not I should go. Perhaps the box office would be closed. Perhaps I was too late, had missed the start of the show, or perhaps I would be too early. A steady flow of passersby broke and drifted around me; at last a traffic cop noticed me and beckoned me on. I picked up my cases, crossed over and kept on until I came to a row of glossy pictures. There were people sounds coming from inside, but no one in sight. The doors were open.

I entered into a lobby done up in dark blue paper, smaller than it seemed, relieved only by the light of the ticket booth and a brightly glowing candy stand. I bought a ticket and lugged my cases over to the cloakroom. The girl there laughed when I hefted them up onto her counter. "What've you got in those things?" she said. I said props, and added that it had been seven years since I'd seen a show as a paying customer. She was a hawk-nosed girl with dark eyes like an Egyptian. She said it was about time I saw what I was missing.

On the other side of the candy stand her twin sister was waiting for me in an ugly red usherette's suit. "Go on ahead," she said. "Take any seat. Curtain's going up."

The house was pretty well packed. By the time I found a seat, in an awful balcony overlooking the stage, the lights had come up, the music was swelling in a nervous, atonal chorus, and a large cast of actors was beginning to draw itself out from the corners of the theater. They came from the aisles, the exits, from out of the walls, waving their arms and calling aloud as if this was Market Day.

A handful of them passed under an iron grate hanging directly below me. Among them I saw a burly, shockheaded man who looked as if he had lost his way. He crawled up out of the orchestra pit, turned his face up and back and scanned the house with eyes like brown searchlights sweeping the night sky.

It was Moscow. He was twenty pounds heavier, covered with dirt, graying and crow-footed, but I recognized him and I saw that he recognized me. For a moment, the rest of house, the players, the play itself, all dropped away: he stood alone in the hard light above the pit, in a scene of terrible silence, looking up at me, as though waiting for the words that only I could give him.

--New York City,

October, 1958

The End