HARVEY JACOBS

GOOBERS

For all his vast behind-the-screen experience, however, it’s clear that Harvey is a cineaste who loves the whole experience of going to the movies. In fact, he reports with dismay that some theaters have been trying recently to substitute Goobers with Planters or even peanut Me)Ms. “While this may work for an audience raised on disposable diapers,” says he, “it will never succeed with true cinephiles. ” Witness the case of one such man and how those delicious Goobers (a trademark item of the Nestle corporation, thank you very much) help change his life.

NESTOR FRIK PLAYED A GAME with himself. The object was to make his box of Goobers last. Through announcements about no smoking, courtesy to other patrons, refreshments provided for your convenience, management’s willingness to address complaint, and coming attractions. It was a tantalizing exercise in restraint.

The rules of the game required that he strip the cellophane from his Goobers box, rip a tiny window in the upper right corner and allow himself only two preliminary Goobers. He could savor the chocolate skin, then crunch on the peanuts hidden inside, or he could bite down and pulverize both Goobers instantly for the sudden delicious rush. But, until the feature, and only after opening titles ended, he was not to devour another Goober or even allow one to slip through the cartoh’s exit into his hand.

Once the film began, there were no further restrictions. The game was over. He’d either won or lost. More often than not, Nestor lost. He finished his Goobers even before he learned the name of the writer or director. The first Goober set off such urgent greed, liberated so much desire, that he usually gave up on will power and spilled the remaining Goobers, brown nuggets of pleasure, helter-skelter into his palm and shuttled them to his chocolate-craving, peanut-primed mouth.

He felt anger and guilt when he realized the box had emptied so quickly. A sudden flood of saliva splashed around his tongue. But so what? He never took the game too seriously. There were no other players to gloat. His sins were committed in the flickering theater dark. His Goobers game was not a matter of life or death. It was something he did, just silliness.

This time, though, he was doing well. The lights had long since faded, announcements and coming attractions played out, the feature begun and Nestor had his Goobers intact. He was pleased by the tiny victory. It balanced so many defeats.

The woman sitting next to him, a gross stranger, made wet sounds while she wolfed Raisinettes too quickly and too soon. Nestor never liked Raisinettes. They were too sweet, too yielding. A patron behind him spilled buttered popcorn, then crushed the lost kernels with a vindictive sneaker. The attraction of oily popcorn evaded Nestor. To each his own, still, the choice of Goobers said something about a person.

During the opening scene, the Raisinette woman threw her depleted box under her seat and shifted heavily from side to side. For the moment, Nestor controlled the arm rest that separated them. His Goobers were firmly under control. He could ration them in ones and twos or gulp a dozen.

He had all his options open. The woman knew it, the Spiller behind him probably sensed it. Her candy was squandered, his wasted popcorn already turned to dander. Nestor settled into the comfortable theater seat and gently rattled his Goobers box, confirming its content, feeling its weight, taunting his shadowy neighbors. “Jesus,” he thought, embarrassed by his own gloating, “Is everybody eight years old?”

The film he’d come to see, Billy Eiffel, had earned all kinds of praise. It was featured in the Times’ Arts and Leisure, in New York Magazine, cherished by Siskel and Ebert who’d waved enthusiastic thumbs. Nestor knew it had something to do with a Native American living in Paris but he hadn’t read beyond the headlines in the Times or New York, nor had he focused closely on the television pundits.

What really motivated him to see the movie was that, in addition to media raves, it had come up in two disparate conversations. One was with a client in Denver during a sales meeting, the other with Susan Acorn, a girl he knew from his building laundry and who was somehow involved with ballet.

Nestor was a curious man who recognized the importance of keeping alert to the cultural environment. The problem was, his work swallowed him up. It was the way of things at a time when the economy was suspect and competition increasingly vicious. Every sale took a major effort. There was no time to breathe.

So, he created a guideline. If a film, book, play, or even a song came to his attention three times, if it achieved triangulation, he made the time to find out about it firsthand.

Awareness of current “ins” was not only important socially, but for business. The client in Denver, for example, represented potential millions to his company and Nestor had to tell the man, “No, I haven’t seen Billy EiffeI, though it is on my list.” As for Susan Acorn, he sensed her displeasure even though their conversation took place between floors in an elevator. “Yes, I know it’s playing over at the Quad, but I’ve been on the road more than I’ve been home the past month. So, is it as good as they say?”

If he’d been on firmer ground, who could say what might have followed. She brought up the subject, gave him the bait, and he spit it out. “When I have the chance to play catchup, I promise to see Billy Eiffel and we’ll compare notes.” But Susan Acorn was by nature a girl who made spontaneous judgments. Nestor saw her eyes go blank.

Of all the popular arts, films were certainly the most essential when it came to communication. They eclipsed even sports except during the World Series or the Superbowl. Nestor knew he should have seen Billy Eiffel because it was there and before it could be used against him.

And now he was about to see it. He let his mind dissolve like the Goober he tongued as he gave himself to the opening scene, a montage of Left Bank vignettes. The camera zoomed in on a beautiful young woman at a sidewalk cafe. She lifted an infant from a sack on her back, unbuttoned her blouse and began to nurse what must have been a symbolic papoose given the subject of the film (probing, intense, a single parent you won’t forget, a brilliant evocation of the impact of ethnic clash, a movie you can’t afford to miss).

Nestor watched the baby suckle at a perfect breast. The woman’s black hair cascaded over her huge, silent eyes. She had wonderful cheekbones and a straight, determined nose. Just as she began to hum a lullaby, the screen blotted out. Her tranquil image was replaced by the broad back and huge head of a man who flopped into the seat in front of Nestor’s, probably the last free seat in that small theater.

Nestor flexed at the obstacle. He bent his own head far to the right until he was nearly cheek-to-cheek with the Raisinette lady who, in turn, shifted uncomfortably.

Nestor’s new position was not only uncomfortable, it was pointless. The wall still blocked most of the screen. Nestor tried sitting taller but that was no better. The massive head in front of him was crowned with a burst of hair that grew in bristles like the foliage on a Chia Pet.

Nestor ate his Goobers, tried to make sense of the fractured picture and splintered English titles. He listened to floating French voices for some sense of continuity, but his efforts were futile. He might as well have been sitting with a bag over his head. Nestor remembered that, long ago, at summer camp, sadistic counsellors forced rebellious campers to watch the weekly movie facing backwards.

Fuming but inert, he stayed to the end, grasping what he could of Billy Eiffel. He pushed his way up the aisle when the film was done, trying to catch bits and pieces of audience reaction. The remarks he.heard echoed the critics, wonderful, fabulous, absolutely original.

In the lobby he stopped to adjust his coat. He felt himself shoved aside. While he regained balance, Nestor realized that the person who’d nearly sent him sprawling was the same mountain that ruined his entertainment. The enormous whale of a man tried to cover his basketball head with a cap. “Piece of pretentious crap,” the man muttered, “crock of pure shit. There is no way a streetwise Cherokee broad would take up with a Lautrec wannable. No fucking way. Waste of time, waste of money.”

Nestor followed him out into the street and watched him lumber toward Sixth Avenue. So the movie was a love story and the Native American decided to stay with the physically challenged Algerian artist. That explained some of what Nestor managed to see through the narrow valley of vision. He ate his last Goober, then threw the box into a trash can and went home.

Some days later Nestor ran into Susan Acorn at their subway exit. They walked together making small talk about the weather, about life in New York, about nothing in particular. Then Nestor told her, “By the way, I managed to catch Billy Eiffel.”

“Did you? What did you think?”

Nestor swallowed his spit. He knew how important his reply would be to the flow of their tenuous relationship. “It was interesting. A bit fragmented, but definitely worth seeing.”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“I had problems with it,” Nestor said to his surprise. “I mean, it left me with a credibility gap. That such a girl, one might say an experienced girl from the reservation, would have no reservations about hitching her star to the fate of a handicapped artist…”

“What artist? You mean the bio-technician? I suppose you could call him an artist of sorts.”

“The bio-technician, yes. He reminded me of Toulouse Lautrec.”

“I can see that, yes. His mission was to create beauty and joy for others.”

“Beauty and joy, yes. But to be honest, I’ve got to tell you that while I enjoyed segments, I found it a bit pretentious.”

“Predictable, you’re saying. I could agree with that. But the total impact?”

“Generally powerful. Credit where credit is due.”

“I’m glad you felt that. Nestor, I wonder if you have time to stop up for a drink? I’ll warn you, I’m a white wine and candles type of person.”

“White wine and candles would be very welcome.”

The next morning Nestor left Susan Acorn’s studio and went downstairs to his own place. He showered, dressed and made himself a cup of decal tea, then called his client in Denver. “Dave, I expected to catch your voice mail. What time is it out there? Dawn? What do you do, milk the cows?”

“Doesn’t everybody? I’ve been going through your presentation.”

“And?”

“It’s close to the mark, Nestor. My reaction is positive.”

“Good, Dave. By the way, last evening I got to see Billy Biffel. That film you mentioned. And I want to thank you for nudging me to see it. Powerful stuff.”

“That Indian maiden is some piece of ass. I never thought I’d want to change places with an Algerian dwarf.”

“I know what you’re saying. It’s all in the genes, eh?”

“You think you can deliver at the price you quote?”

“Absolutely.”

“Let me just run this past The Lone Ranger and see if we can move things along, good buddy.”

“Great. We look forward to working with you guys. So, hang in there, Torito.”

“Yeah. Take care, kimosabe.”

Some weeks later, when triangulation occurred for a film called The Dead Soldier, Nestor went to a late show at a theater on the Upper Eastside. Late or not, the film was a must see, so a long line snaked to the box office. Nestor got one of the last available tickets and was thankful to find a seat.

Fortunately, the person sitting in front of him was of normal size and dimension with a head no bigger than a cantaloupe. In the dash for seats there was no chance to stop for Goobers. By the time Nestor had his coat off, The Dead Soldier was already rolling the names of its stars.

Chet Trigarian played the lead, which meant The Dead Soldier was an action picture in English. It was exactly the kind of film Nestor felt like seeing, a no-nonsense, no brain, pure and simple entertainment. Susan Acorn once remarked that she could see a resemblance between Nestor and the macho Trigarian so he studied the actor’s face with more than usual interest.

The first scene showed Trigarian as a flat-faced detective, stalking a small-time drug pusher through the hopeless streets of a gray city. As he closed on his prey, a gorgeous woman slammed a white Corvette around a corner. The car flattened the doomed hood, ripping into him with its bumper, then zoomed away like an angel with bloody lips.

Trigarian watched from the shadows with the expression of a man who has seen worse. But there was a glimmer of something like surprise. The cop knew who that woman was, and Nestor knew by the way Trigarian scowled that there had once been something between them. Nestor suspected a flashback.

The woman in front of him began coughing uncontrollably. She stood, grabbed for her coat, and ran for the door, trailing gurgling sounds. Then the theater was quiet again except for a ripple of slow jazz from the soundtrack. The camera closed on Trigarian’s dead eyes as, sure enough, his mind took him back to another time, another place where…

Nestor couldn’t know to what time or place Trigarian was taken because he was distracted by a plodding figure moving down the carpeted aisle. The large shape dropped into the vacated seat with the thud of a suicide hitting pavement.

It was the same man who’d thwarted Nestor’s full appreciation of Billy Eiffel. There was the avocado body, the swollen head and the tangled tendrils of hair pushing out from under that stupid cap.

Without even the consolation of Goobers, Nestor felt his rage crest, then curdle into a belly ache. He could hear Trigarian whispering to the homicidal girl but he couldn’t concentrate on the words. Once Nestor could accept as an annoyance. TWice, considering the odds, the number of films in New York, the number of theaters, the number of seats, the number of hours and days — twice passed coincidence and verged on insult.

But, like the first time, there was nothing much Nestor could do. The screen had clearly announced that no standing room was permitted because of the fire code, and the place was jammed.

He lasted out the film, gluing sounds and sentences together like puzzle pieces, trying to fathom the plot. Trigarian had known the girl when both were young and vulnerable to dreams. They’d been separated by circumstance; he’d gone to Vietnam and returned convinced he was really dead. The irony was, the girl had assumed his death and, after years of grieving, began a series of ugly relationships with men chosen to give her pain, and more pain.

Now she was the rich widow of a kinky industrialist, evolved into a self-styled vigilante bitch. She was respectable by day but used her nights to snuff out evil wherever she saw it wearing pants. Bottom line, she was a serial killer and he was a cop, a serious, dedicated cop rigidly pledged to duty.

When the lights came up, Nestor rose to leave and was dumped backward by the gross obstacle who was already vertical and moving. Nestor was about to protest when he saw that the lump spotted a familiar face and rushed toward a woman who seemed glad to see him. They exchanged pecks on the cheek. Nestor heard her ask him what he thought of the film and he offered to tell her over coffee.

Nestor followed them to a luncheonette on the corner. They took the last unoccupied booth, but there was room at the counter. Nestor squatted on a stool, ordered a Sprite, and kept his ears open. He didn’t have to strain. The man proclaimed his opinions.

“It was a perfect vehicle for Trigarian,” the woman said.

“I suppose so,” the fat face howled. “Accepting that Trigarian is an advertisement for terminal constipation. And the chutzpa, giving it a happy ending. Resurrection of the zombies. Come on.”

“You want to nit-pick, go ahead. But I believed the story and I certainly believed him. How could he have sent her away for life or a lethal injection.”

“So instead he sentences her to a life with him and a series of lethal injections. Please. I suppose it was clever enough. I mean, updating The Maltese Falcon for the age of enlightenment.”

“I see what you mean. You’re right, as usual. On the other hand, injection by Trigarian wouldn’t be the worst punishment.”

“If the movie left you in heat, maybe we should wander up to your place,” the glob said loudly enough to turn heads.

“If you’d like.”

Nestor spilled his Sprite. The vision of that garbage bag naked and thrusting, huffing and puffing, was too much. He apologized to the waitress and helped blot his spill with a napkin. When Nestor looked up, the couple was already gone.

“I’m glad I’m not the poor bastard manning the Richter Scale tonight,” he said to the waitress who smiled and nodded. She couldn’t speak much English but she saw that he’d left a dollar tip. Nestor thought of calling Susan Acorn but remembered she was out of town for a recital.

“So you caught The Dead Soldier,” his boss said while they pissed side by side after a meeting. “Trigarian. I like that guy. He’s a walking dick. How’d you like it?”

“Interesting. Entertaining. I guess they were updating the Bogie flick, what was it, not Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon.”

“The one about the bird? What has that got to do with this?”

“Not much. Not really. Just rifting. Bogie turns in Mary Astor, remember? He does what he has to do by 1940 standards. Trigarian doesn’t turn the killer in, he turns her over. New family values.”

“You blame him, Nestor? What should he do, let them cook her? What a waste. I wasn’t in ‘Nam but I knew guys with those fried egg eyes. Dead soldiers. I could see him thawing out. I could see him forgiving her. Considering. I loved that movie. Maybe you’re too damn critical for your own good.”

“Did I say I didn’t like the movie? I liked it,” Nestor said.

“We’ve got to get down to the World Financial Center in a half-hour. You pissed enough. What have you got, diabetes?”

“It was a good, solid movie,” Nestor said, zipping. “I’d give it three stars.”

“That’s nice of you,” his boss said. “Who made you God?”

Nothing else triangulated for a month, not until Nestor heard a flight attendant enthuse about Polly Valentine, a film Susan raved about when she got back to New York. Then he heard Polly Valentine’s director interviewed by Charlie Rose on PBS. “I think it’s the first animated film noir ever made,” the director said. “And I’m not amazed that the intellectuals embraced it. Maybe a little amazed. Not a lot amazed. I was dealing with universal themes here and I know how much of vintage sweat I put into those frames.”

Nestor picked a theater far from his neighborhood for a Saturday matinee. The theater was crowded with ancients. A sign outside invited seniors in for only two dollars.

This time he sat in the front row, trading eye strain for vista. He ate his Goobers without even the pretense of struggle while he watched the overture of advertisements, a trivia quiz, and clips from next week’s bill.

His mind replayed the humiliating scene in the men’s room. His boss had made several snide references to Nestor’s remarks about The Dead Soldier, smug barbs. Nestor had only himself to blame. He wondered why he had listened, much less repeated, comments by that horny tub of feces, that barrage balloon, that luncheonette lothario whose only purpose was to dilate a middle-aged vagina.

No question, the exchange with his boss, however innocent, had done him corporate harm. There is something about mutuality of movie taste, shared celluloid pleasure, that cements like nothing else. Conversely, opposition is implicit aggression and not easily forgiven. Nestor had shot himself in the leg but the wound would heal. It could take years.

Nestor dumped a dozen Goobers into his mouth and quickly knew something was very wrong. The Goobers tasted like chalk. He herded the residue in his mouth, careful not to swallow any more of the paste than he had.

The occupants of the first row were standing, brushing themselves, muttering curses. A snow of white plaster fell slowly from the high ceiling. An usher ran to lead the displaced through white mist while patrons in other rows laughed. “The management is deeply sorry for this inconvenience. You’ll all be given a complimentary pass good for a future presentation. The thing is, workers are doing some repairs on our roof. It won’t happen again. Please find alternative seats. Our feature is about to begin.”

Nestor spit the tainted clot of Goobers into his handkerchief and rolled it into a ball. “What happens if I get sick?” he said to the usher.

“There’s an empty seat for you, sir. Three in on the left.”

“Not there,” Nestor said, “no, please,” but he was shushed by the impatient crowd around him. He already knew who would be entrenched in the seat in front of three in on the left. He didn’t even bother to look.

For the first ten minutes of Polly Valentine Nestor kept his eyes shut and concentrated on what Goobers were left safe in their box. Finally, he opened his eyes to the fleshy curtain that obliterated most of the screen.

Above, and on each side of that bulbous head, through those tufts of brillo hair, Nestor saw cheerful flashes of brilliant color even as he heard the soundtrack shriek. The director had been correct, the audience was entrance&

Polly Valentine was a farm girl from New Hampshire .chosen as the annual virgin sacrifice offered to some unknown force during Summer Solstice. Ordinary citizens orchestrated her fate. The ceremony was a well-kept local secret, nothing for tourists to know about. There was a mansion outside the charming village with a history no one dared probe. The place reeked of unnatural death. And that was to be the place of Polly’s penetration. She was a curious mix of innocence and materialism, a willing co-conspirator, eager to confront whatever darkness lurked in that cursed house, convinced she could turn it to a profit.

Nestor ate his Goobers and thought about what the obstacle must be thinking. “Beauty And The Beast meets the Home Shopping Network. There is a visual poetry in the special effects but it all adds up to a soggy comic book. Animated horror is like a Sophoclean Loony Toon. The antipathy of form and content…” Nestor forced himself to stop speculating. Whatever Mallomar Man had to say on the subject was less than irrelevant and could only lead to more trouble.

“Can’t you be more specific?” Susan Acorn asked later that night, looking up from her pillow.

“Do we have to talk about Polly now, darling?”

“Well, yes, actually, Nestor, I’d like to hear your opinion while it’s fresh in your mind. Either you liked Polly Valentine or you hated Polly Valentine. There’s no in-between with that kind of cinematic statement.”

“Statement?”

“He is a serious director. He did do Cigar and One No Trump. You saw those, didn’t you?”

“Of course I saw those. And Polly Valentine shows the same kind of intensity.”

“I felt it was a departure. There was depth and maturity. What was your favorite scene?”

“We’re making love, Susan.”

“And this is part of our love play. Remember the preliminaries? What was your favorite single scene? Mine was the symbolic decapitation.”

“Decapitation? Yes, mine too!”

Susan took his face in her hands and kissed him.

“But I felt the horror was diluted by the animation and the animation was compromised by the horror.”

“That’s how you reacted, Nestor? To Polly Valentine? I don’t think you saw the movie with your eyes open. Or was it your heart? I’m honestly upset by all this.”

After that night, Nestor was certain that neither the film or the theater mattered, or the time or even triangulation. Whenever, wherever he chose to see a movie, that man would arrive in time to plug the space between himself and the silver screen. He was grateful to Susan Acorn, even though they had broken up soon after their Polly confrontation. It was she who’d first spoken of decapitation, however symbolic.

Nestor bought a wicker basket from a wrinkled Peruvian at a Soho street fair, and an officer’s sword from a Village antique shop that specialized in Teutonic souvenirs. At his local Korean vegetable market, he ordered a case of honeydews already so ripe they were marked down by fifty percent.

At home, he fashioned a makeshift mannequin from an old plaid shirt shaped around foam rubber slabs, stiff denims fortified with bubble wrap, and, for whimsy, a pair of Nikes filled out with wooden shoe trees. He rigged the body with a neck that was a gift from the city, a wide rubber tube he found on the street. The rubber was elastic enough to cup a honeydew like a clerical collar and hold it in place.

In the same whimsical spirit that made him use the shoe trees, he took a Magic Marker and drew a face on each honeydew head, then topped the fruity scalps with tufts of absorbent cotton.

Nestor positioned two kitchen chairs, one behind the other, in front of his TV set. His floppy dummy was strapped into the front seat with worn-out belts he’d marked for the Salvation Army but somehow saved. Then he slipped a video of Lawrence Of Arabia into his VCR and pressed Power and Play on the remote.

With his basket cleverly hidden inside a large plastic bag from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and his truncated sword concealed in a black umbrella, he sat behind his honeydew Frankenstein and watched the movie. He even had Goobers, not the large, theatrical size, but a miniature ration from the candy store.

While Lawrence rode the desert sands, Nestor licked and chewed and thought about his predicament. For some reason, it didn’t matter why, he was being movie deprived like one of those rotten little rebels forced to sit facing backwards in the Camp Barefoot recreation hall.

In most cases they deserved denial. But Nestor was certain his persecution was unfair and possibly even arbitrary. He was no major sinner, he kept the social contract, give or take. He was only doing his best, trying to hold his own in the world and possibly reach some distant shore, swimming against a clutching undertow that sucked at him like he sucked chocolate.

Was he being paranoid? The man who blocked his vision, not unlike fat blocks an artery to the heart, was no fantasy. The fat had to be reamed away or surgically bypassed. It was a matter of personal survival. There was a whole crop of major motion pictures on the horizon.

This creature who plagued him was guilty of the worst kind of sabotage. And who would miss that bundle of pus and negativism? The man hated everything; his acid eyes peered inside armpits and between toes. Depression and cynicism could erode even the strongest and most beautiful temple.

“Wait for pay cable or the rental store?” Nestor answered the slumping dummy who hadn’t asked anything. “Put my life on hold for a year? Thanks, but no thanks.”

Nestor positioned his basket, slipped his sword from inside the umbrella, held his breath, and struck. The first rehearsal was a fiasco. The honeydew was slashed at midpoint, near the nose. Juice and seeds scattered in every direction. Green flesh fell into Nestor’s lap, missing the basket by at least an inch.

But Nestor got up, replaced the severed head with another, and tried again. Nestor had never been overly impulsive or impatient. He believed that he who learns slowly learns best.

For three months Nestor allowed himself to endure indignity. He saw American Rapture, Invaders of the Dream, and a remake of Romeo and Juliet without seeing much of anything except his nemesis’ rear. At night, he executed honeydews by the dozen.

Once, during Invaders, the man came with a companion, a boy, and Nestor verged on hysteria when he considered that the tumor might have metastasized and produced an offspring. But the boy had thin bones and wispy blond hair. The idea that he could be even a distant relation defied every law of genetics. The whole picture long, and it was a long picture, Nestor heard a pontifical Mr. Wiseass chortle and whisper his put-downs.

The film was already nominated for ten awards and had grossed two hundred million. Nestor pitied the boy and was tempted to lean forward and plug those impressionable young ears with fresh Goobers. Instead, Nestor closed his own ears. He vowed not to repeat the error that already cost him Susan Acorn’s delicious embrace and nearly his job.

Nestor wasn’t much interested in those films anyhow. He was there to study, to calculate, plot and plan. He took notes in the dark, how the man shifted, how he held his head, how often he fidgeted, at what angle his head tilted forward, or to a side. Most important, Nestor tried to read the man’s body language, to anticipate when the head would tilt back. Gravity was Nestor’s best ally.

Finally, two months later, Nestor was ready to attack. His practice sessions at home were always successful. A quick swish of the sword and another surrogate skull would be neatly cut from its base and fall backward into the waiting basket; towels at the bottom muffled sound and drank up excess juice.

Nestor browsed listings in the newspaper and chose his killing ground. The film he picked had not only triangulated, it seemed more than perfect.

Crescendo told the story of an obscure classical composer obsessed with the creation of a symphony powerful enough and loud enough to muffle the booming voices of enemy cannon destroying his beloved hamlet. A celebration of the human spirit, a testimony to courage and resolve…As the music rises and crashes like a wave of outrage on a violated beach of resolve, one is totally immersed in a cathedral of cacophony and yet there is harmony and the redeeming trill of the lark. Nestor savored the reviews. “Loud is good,” he thought. “The louder the better.” Because even with the cleanest swipe of his blade there was a slight woosh from the firmest of melons, albeit hardly more than a sigh.

Nestor covered his tracks on the evening chosen for murder. Before he went out, he had Chinese food sent to his flat. He dismantled his mannequin and got rid of the final debris of bisected honeydews. He turned his TV to his favorite program with the volume high enough to be heard by his neighbors. He even phoned Susan Acorn to ask how she’d been, compare notes, and make the point of telling her how much he looked forward to spending an evening of lethargy and solitude.

Then he slid the sword into its umbrella sheath, perfectly reasonable since the evening’s prediction included a chance of showers, lined his wicker basket with a fresh turkish towel, hid it inside the Bed, Bath, and Beyond bag, and went quietly down the back staircase and out through the basement door.

It was both ironic and convenient that Crescendo was playing at the same local theater where he’d first encountered the sullen giant. When the deed was done, he could be home in a matter of minutes.

This time, the theater was practically empty. Nestor chose a seat at random and waited for the lights to dim. He played his Goobers game, priming his taste buds with two, holding back the primal urge to gobble up the rest. That proved he was in cool control.

His victim arrived on schedule and plopped into his ordained seat just after Nestor caught a glimpse of Crescendo’s associated producers.

As it happened, the reviews proved accurate. It was a loud movie, filled with screams, explosions and trumpets. The music vibrated through Nestor’s intestines.

He waited until the small audience was entirely hypnotized, caught in a shell of emotion. Then Nestor freed his sword and balanced the basket between his knees.

Just as he cocked his arm to strike the death blow, the man in front of him turned. Nestor was eye-to-eye with a face that belonged to an errant moon from a distant planet. It was pocked by asteroids, imprinted with a smirk, glossed by jellied perspiration. The man leaned closer.

“You have Goobers. I smell them. My doctor forbids them. They’re like tiny bombs. But if you could spare a few, I’d gladly pay a dollar. This movie is such vomit, that elephant-fart score has got me so crazy, I need something tasty if you know what I mean. Mercy, then? A Goober for the old guy?”

“Now you want my Goobers?” Nestor said, and swung his sword with magnificent efficiency. The fact that its target was so cooperative, leaning toward him, miraculously tilted downward, was a gift from the gods.

The man’s last expression, something between a plea and anticipation of taboo Goobers, clung to that continent of a face until the eyes rolled and faded to black.

Then the head fell neatly into Nestor’s basket. The deed was done. Nobody noticed anything unusual.

Everything went so smoothly, Nestor stayed for most of Crescendo. He did exit quickly though, before the closing credits ended and the lights came back on. He’d missed the opening, but from what he’d managed to see, Nestor found the movie deserving of its praise. He couldn’t imagine why the man complained or criticized such an uplifting story and memorable score.

His original plan was to dispose of the head in the Union Square BMT station but instead he took it home and put it in his freezer. The man was, after all, an encyclopedia of 20th Century cinema. He had probably seen everything there was to see.

Nestor knew and respected what he’d read about cryogenics. It was entirely feasible that at some future date the head could be thawed and returned to ambience. With that possibility, what he’d done to save himself, however justified, could hardly be called murder in the first degree.

And he might actually have the opportunity to ask the head what it was about Crescendo that bothered it enough to risk health, well being, and more for a few Goobers. That head certainly was smart enough to know that Goobers are addictive, that within minutes it would crave its own box and urge its body to make a trip to the theater’s refreshment stand. To do that might have risked missing a climactic scene, the very scene that could have completely altered opinion.

The head, turned to ice, took up important space in Nestor’s small refrigerator. It changed the way he shopped for frozen vegetables. Otherwise, it gave him little trouble beyond a few disturbing dreams.

Nestor had no further problem at the movies and found himself in agreement with most of the respected critics and his peers at work and play. He was promoted to Divisional Sales Manager within a year and was welcomed into many warm beds. Despite the Goobers, even his dental check-up went well, and his cholesterol count remained within the norm.