One of the men, who is not managing to get rid of his mask, too well pasted onto his real face, hurrying to finish, for the moral's squad looking for under-age homosexuals is always a danger in these neighbourhoods, loses patience, strips off at random the various lumps or protrusions on which he can get a grip, and begins tearing at his ears, his throat, his temples, his eyelids, without even realising that he is actually lacerating in his haste big sections of his own flesh. And in a little while, when he appears in "Old Joe's" to report to Frank on his mission and to recoup his strength with a double shot of bourbon, the band will suddenly stop playing, the trumpet-player suddenly mute, without thinking in his astonishment of putting down his meaningless instrument, will merely take it away from his mouth, holding it motionless in the air about three inches from his lips which still keep the tense position of a soloist in the middle of a fortissimo, while all the heads in the room turn with a single movement toward the street door, in order to see in their turn what the musicians have seen first from the bandstand: the bloody face which has just appeared in the rectangular frame by the open door against the black background of the night.
[Project for a Revolution in New York, Robbe-Grillet, A.]
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