Chapter 4

            The public theatre masturbateur in his masturbattoir is a creature of undeniable willpower, not the fallen man lacking impulse control that most would imagine. First off, the theatre is always full and the seats are compact in every way. Arm rests were hard and shared. There were no empty rows in which to set oneself apart. If you were going to start tugging your shit, your neighbors were near enough to make them accessories-after-the-fact. Stroking your rod was far from an alienating labor, here, in the dark rows of grainy red fabric and art-deco iron, it was an act of community.

            There were several types of playhouse onanists, and Bruno rarely caught them empty-handed. The total-stealth were the most basic and most outright covert. The total-stealth slides a hand into the front of his pants and begins yanking out and down in quick steady pulses, bringing himself to orgasm by working the head with the bottom side of his fist. Then there are the half-stealths, which is like the full-stealth but the hand is outside of the pants and the strokes are slower, a more deliberate kind of man who is more tender with themselves.

            Next are the Mole Men, whom do pull their cocks all the way out of their pants but bury them beneath rumpled coats or sweaters, leaving the wretched things in the dark — dumb, fleshy, blind.

            Lastly there are the Conquistadors, who whip out the full member in view of everyone around them, and enjoy themselves in a free and selfless sort of way. There are, of course, other levels, hypothetical strata where the visionaries and innovators reside, but they are a rare visitor who resists easy categorization. Over the course of an evening two years prior, Bruno became convinced a man of wild black hair, sporting cheap aviators parked at his receding hairline, was using his mind to actualize a hands-free jerk session. There was something about his grim lips and furrowed brow, the mystery of his eyes, which suggested self-pleasure on the make. He couldn't prove it, but Bruno imagined theta waves from the stilled man's brain pushing all the blood and heat towards the lap, where his cock was plumped repeatedly by flexes of the perineum. Again, it was all conjecture, but Bruno knew what he knew, and felt dissatisfied by the notion that he would have to let the man get away with it.

            Conquistadors posed the most danger, from a crowd-control perspective. There was a brazenness to it that agitated people. Bruno had a keen ear, and he could recognize by the pitch of a gasp whether someone had just been astonished by a dick they were expecting versus a dick they weren't. Fights were known to break out, though Bruno had thought most remarkable the ability of some to simply ignore the basest of self-abuse occurring directly adjacent.

            Bruno strode down the aisle and put the beam of his flashlight into the old man's eyes, blinding him. The proper humiliation for a wanker caught was to hoist him up before he could pull up his pants and stow his genitalia, and lead him to the exit with a bobbling dangler retracting in shame. He would have done it to the old man, but he was distracted by the changing of the music. A familiar tune poured out of the speakers. Freddy-Rick began an introduction, but it sounded like gibberish being suppressed by the song. He heard this song every night. It was steady, with a sparse tapping on the edge of a snare drum in lieu of a backbeat, palatial piano chords in succession, sounding like they were being played from a very large and distant room. A woman crooning quixotic poetry in a witchy voice barely above a whisper. A bridge of beeps and static. A swell of violins. It was Natalie's song.

            He turned his flashlight off and looked towards the stage, jaw gone to slack. A dancer he had never seen before entered from the sliver at center where the curtains met. The theatre lights had dimmed, and the woman on stage alone was tall in her heels and blank in her affect. She wore Natalie's wig, glowing shimmery strands the color of the last leaf to fall off a tree in Autumn. The color of apricot cider.

            Bruno watched the entire dance. He waited for something titillating to occur, some manner of undress and manipulation, but it never came. She moved fluidly from side to side, rolling her head back like a person dodging a very slow and drunken bird. Bruno was paralyzed in the place where he stood. He began watching himself from afar, like he was still just a grainy figure in a cellphone's video library. He didn't know if the old man had stopped or even let go of himself. Bruno wondered who this was, but he was sure it was Natalie's wig she wore. There was no mistaking it, the bounce of the hairs, the uniform length around the back of the neck. He wondered where she got it. He wondered if it had been stolen from him as he slept in his bed. He wondered a lot of things, but never let his focus waver, not for a moment. He didn't hear a single thing but the music — there were no drinks being mixed, there were no conversations between friends and lovers. It was silent, the music was in some way silent, there was no one here except for Bruno and the dancer. She looked right at him. She sauntered about smoky-eyed, her gait lilting with the taps of the drums, crisply, succinctly. Her performance resembled a haute couture runway walk more than it did anything raunch-vaudevillian.

            The last piano chord thundered and the song submerged back from where it came, the electronic ambience dissipated in the air. The cooing of the singer rose and rose until it droned away to nothing. The dancer turned her back to Bruno and exited the same way she entered. It wasn't until she was gone that he realized how tightly he had been gripping his flashlight, his hand strained and his palm burned white. He dropped the flashlight like a hot iron, it rolled down the aisle until it stopped at the bottom of the stage.

            Bruno bolted for the green room, he had to meet her. He had too many questions. Upon entering, he looked for the wig and the wearer, or a tall damsel still dewy on the skin, pits of arms made earthy from the spotlight's heat. She wasn't there.

            He tapped Brigette on the shoulder, she was sitting on a pink wool makeup chair, vacantly staring at herself in the mirror. The marquee of lightbulbs that bordered her reflection sparkled with ramshackle glamour. She finished the last slosh from her water bottle as she turned around and gazed upward.

            Hi, Bruno.

            Who was the woman who just performed?

            Who?

            The woman who just danced to Natalie's song. I've never seen her before.

            Uh, Lissane's out there with Menno. You can hear the kazoo, listen. She put her finger to her lips before sweeping it flush with her ear. There was still chit-chat and the sound of tight shoes being clomped into place — not exactly silent — but over the din they both could hear the timbral drone of a kazoo funneling pussy farts into party noises.

            No, I mean before them. Who just got off stage, what's her name?

            Femke and Niel just finished.

            After Femke and Niel.

            Lissane and Menno.

            No, said Bruno, laughing quietly in frustration. There was a woman after Femke and Niel. I just saw her.

            What are you talking about? Brigette didn't know what to say.

            There was a woman, by herself. She came on after Femke and Niel and before Lissane and Menno. I just want to talk to her. She was wearing Natalie's wig and dancing to her song. Where did she go after she got off stage?

            Bruno, said Brigette, there wasn't anyone between Femke and Niel and Lissane and Menno.

            Yes, okay, you didn't see her. I'll go talk to Freddy-Rick, thanks.

            Freddy-Rick told him the same, that there was no woman like Bruno described. Jack and Telemachus hadn't heard Natalie's song. For the first time, for the very first evening of his tenure, Bruno wished someone had recorded the show. Bruno checked the playlist, a printed sheet of descending songs and named duos tacked to the wall of the greenroom next to the stage door. The list was based on the regular schedule, written in size eighteen font, and marked up with red ink where people had called off or made last-minute changes. Natalie's name was marked up and replaced with Ally. Bruno pawed down the list, blinking as he read. There was no markup between Femke and Niel and Lissane and Menno. There were no names that he did not recognize. It made no sense. Bruno considered the possibility he was being pranked. It was an attractive explanation, as it allowed for him to keep his sanity, but it would be so insensitive of them all. And who would be the mastermind? Most of them couldn't master their tax returns. He also considered the possibility that he was having a psychotic break. It had happened before, a spring day the first year he was in the city, a day of horrifying sunshine and feverish certainty that he'd become the star of a television show about his life. He snapped back hours later in the cool evening and returned to himself, and when he returned he found himself repeating monologues outside of a brown brick coffeeshop. It never recurred so Bruno never sought treatment.

            Bruno insisted to himself he was not in the midst of a schizophrenic episode. How could he know for sure? He tried comparing his current state of mind to a past one and found it to be the errand of a fool. There are no past states of mind, just the one, always leaning dangerously into the mere moments beyond the threshold, always collapsing back on the permanent now. Always the present sensation, always the fresh pump of blood through the face.

            Again he asked sanity of himself. He found no fever, he found no evidence that he was already dealt into a blackout's hand. There was nothing hyperreal — this was normal. He was having normal breaths. He was a bit thirsty. This was good. When you've lost your footing, you don't feel thirst or hunger. Those primitive needs are bylaws of a lesser brain. He felt in control.

            What then? What then accounts for him having seen a girl, a real live girl, with his own eyes and felt the passage of six or seven minutes at the going rate of everyone's time? No one else would claim it happened. What then did he see? Maybe he hadn't. Maybe he had imagined the whole thing: wig, girl, all. What's a memory then? What's a memory of a memory? It already seemed like a lifetime ago. No matter. Just another thing to be put behind.

            Menno was on stage, doing the thing where he wrapped his long, limp dick around his wrist like a watch, demonstrating its unusual length, and Lissane knelt beside it, her ear pressed against the taut tube of skin like she was listening with expectant eyes for the faint ticks of an aging timepiece. The crowd loved it.

            Seeing a few empty seats near the front, Bruno went to go take the next three people in line.