La Strada

“I stood in front of a mirror and said fearfully: I want to see what I look like with my eyes closed.”
          — Hans Richter

But Horner could not see what he looked like with his eyes closed; and so he stood in front of the mirror trying on clothes, over and over again, having immediately decided that the red lumberjack flannel and knit cap would never do. It was Saturday evening. Pale pink light spilled through his window blinds as the sun eased down, and he tried on another shirt, and then another and another, until he hesitantly decided on the green plaid button-down shirt and the green jacket over that. Which meant that he had to wear the brown felt hat, so that (he told himself, chagrined) he looked like a cheap college football coach knocking on the door of a rundown house on a lonely street, trying to recruit mama’s little boy to his team. A pair of multicolored running shoes completed the outfit with a farcical twist. He swapped them out for his broken-down Chuck Taylors, the ones with the hole in the toe that resembled a cracked eggshell. By then it was getting late, so he took a deep breath and plunged outside into the rabbit-hole, through the looking-glass, on his way to meet Milo for a movie before whatever vast undertakings might ensue.

Glorious! To walk briskly down Valencia Street with the last of the light pouring down in the Mission District evening. People were already out in it, glowing, eager for the night to come. But Horner felt enormously out of place in his clothes, cursing himself before he even turned the corner; everyone seemed to fit the pattern of the evening, everyone except him. The Latino body builder in his tight tank top, casually flexing. The gas station attendant in his red t-shirt, pulled over long blue sleeves. The lesbians leaning outside their dive bar in overalls, the professor-types wearing glasses and bowties as they stepped out of the video store carrying movie discs, the young hipsters in black engineering boots and leather jackets. Horner spotted his reflection in storefront glass and flinched self-consciously. His fingers inched up to fiddle with the red scarf he’d thrown around his neck to add a dash of color and cover the blotches on his skin from shaving recently.

La Strada. “The Road.” That was what they were going to see. Another Fellini film, starring Anthony Quinn. Big deal. Milo had been on a Fellini kick, ever since they’d watched La Dolce Vita in Berkeley, and over the past month or so he’d consumed almost all of Fellini’s oeuvre, either at various art-house theaters or on video. He said he was making a sort of informal study of Fellini as he worked on his own screenplay.

Horner had found an ATM machine beside the Roxie Theater and stood there withdrawing some cash. While punching in the numbers, he turned and caught sight of Milo, big as life in his chinos and plaid shirt, glancing back and forth as he crossed the street, on the lookout for Horner. Then he vanished into a crowd and Horner lost sight of him. Turning to walk into the theater, a black man with a nose piercing stepped close to Horner to compliment his hat. Where had he gotten it, anyway? Oh, yeah? Fulton and what? Horner took it off and let him inspect the brim and peer into the dimpled crown.

Horner bought a ticket at the box office and spotted Milo getting into line. Horner tapped on the front window and waved at him; soon enough, he’d found his way into the lobby.

“Hey man, how you doing?”

“Good… you?”

“Fine, fine, so well, ummm…”

“You want some popcorn?”

“Naaah… I’ll have some coffee, though.”

There was a nice-looking brunette stationed behind the concession counter, smiling as she waited for them to place their orders.

The movie started.

This one was dark and bleak and full of poor, sad clowns, and death, the sickness at the heart of all Fellini’s films that Horner could never understand. If it was going to be dreamlike, why not let it be a dream, why infuse it with such bleakness and death? Still, he enjoyed losing himself in the dark of the theater and forgetting about the uncomfortable itchiness of his clothes. And gradually, he began to notice the way that Anthony Quinn, the Great Zampanò, wore his clothes.

Fantastic, thought Horner. He really inhabits what he wears, the crinkled leather jacket with Christlike scars on the back, the mud-spattered pants, the jaunty way he slaps the knit cap on his palm and sets it on his head, delicately, with the tiny fold in the front pointed like a bird’s beak. A widow, grief-stricken but still crackling with sensual vitality as she stirs a big bowl of pasta to feed her guests, gives Zampanò her late husband’s old suit and hat. He struts around in an old stone barn, admiring himself in the eyes of his young mascot, Gelsomina, the poor girl he’s purchased from her mother to be his assistant. How ridiculous he appears in that pinstripe suit and enormous fedora! But then he does something remarkable: He simply flops down on a big stack of hay and lets loose a bombastic fart, closing his eyes in satisfaction. In that moment, the clothing is ineffably and inexorably his own.

When we see him again years later, he’s still wearing the suit, but it’s threadbare, the hat dented and drooping down over his ears. He’s all but lost Gelsomina amidst many struggles and hardships. But you could no more separate Zampanò from that hat than a snail from its shell — it’s encrusted onto his head, as though he’d long ago pulled it down over his entire body. That’s the way to wear clothes, thought Horner. Find something that fits, and roll around in it in the hay, farting and spreading out as though it was your very skin. Thinking this, Horner began to feel a bit better about his own attire.

They left the theater. Milo grabbed some of the glossy, full-color movie calendars sitting on a table in the lobby. Then he circled back to ask the woman behind the concession counter if she had any more, from previous months; he explained that he liked to cut out the little pictures from films and use them in collages.

“Oh, yeah, that’s a cool idea…” But she was unable to find any. “Well, I can set some of them aside for you. I’m working next Thursday.”

“I can’t make it next Thursday.”

“Well, I can leave them at the front desk for you. How’s that? And what’s your name? You’d better give me your phone number, so I can call you when I’ve got them ready…”

Horner strolled outside to check out the posters for upcoming films, not wanting to eavesdrop. After a moment, Milo joined him, and they pushed out into the cool fresh night, full of neon lights and flashing signs and faces of people.

“Well, that was interesting. Good-looking girl. You pick up her phone number?”

“As a matter of fact,” he smiled, flashing a scrap of paper.

“That’s a new one. Calendars, eh? I’ll have to give that a try.”

“Worked like a charm.”

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