shave the baby

there is a scene playing in my head right now and it goes like this:

a man is running down a dark alleyway at night. he looks behind him and in front of him and left to right, short-winded and wide-eyed. he seems to be running from something--but what?

he dips into a dilapidated building underground. he removes his hat--immediately he feels warm. he knows he'll be sweating in a minute. it must be eighty or ninety--even a hundred--degrees.

an old man with the voice of william s. burroughs is sitting at an accountant's table reading out loud from steppenwolf by hermann hesse. there is one lamp on the table which provides the dim light by which the old man reads. it is the only light source in the room.

he takes this all in--the warmth of the room and the simple network of dark shadows and stark illumination--like a chiaroscuro painting. it seems from what he is able to see that he and the old man and the lamp and the desk and the old man's booming voice mixed with the incredible heat (which makes him think of holocaust-era gas chambers) are the only things filling this room.

he takes a few tentative steps forward--into the dark of the room. he imagines himself walking past the man and beyond, for surely there is something beyond what is ostensibly there; what is immediately visible in the strange light--or lack thereof.

he walks past the old man, bumping into the lamp on the way. the old man is unfazed by this--continues reading in his voice that is loud and full of authority but at the same time very dry and monotonous and comforting like the heat might be to geriatric patients on the verge of death and taking up space in the old folk's home.