It was at a small theater in Brooklyn, close to where I stayed. I was smoking a cigarette, walking back to my place when I saw it. The poster on the wall of the theater was grubby. Romeo and Juliet, it proclaimed, in bold Times New Roman. The matinee was today. Above, pink light flickered. THE GLOWING BELL. The double “L”s were smashed and dark. As I looked, the “-WING” behind GLO sputtered once like a death rattle and went to neon tube heaven. What kind of theater calls itself “The Glowing Bell”? I took one last drag from the cigarette. It was a spur of the moment thing. I took the money I had been thinking of using to buy a new pair of shoes and after a moment of hesitation, I stubbed out my cigarette on the sidewalk and entered the theater. The ticket lady was a fat, bored looking lump filing her nails with an emery board. I approached her and cleared my throat when she didn’t look up. “One ticket please.” Jabba the Hutt put down the board and pushed herself on her little roller chair over to the machine. She tapped stuff into it. The machine grumbled, spat out the ticket and she slapped it down on the counter, chair squeaking in abject pain. No words were spoken. I smoothed out my ball of crumpled notes as much as I could and passed it over the counter. “Packed house?” I asked, trying to break the silence. She looked up and stared at me like I was crazy. I let the excuse of a conversation die, took the ticket and walked in. It was dark and damp. I could smell mould. There were no ushers. I couldn’t tell what seat I was supposed to be on as I couldn’t read the smudgy font on the ticket. I grabbed a mid-row seat anyway, not that it mattered. The theater was nearly empty. There was a young couple snuggled near the back, moving shadows in the dark. The girl was on the guy’s lap making stifled moaning noises as they tried their best to have stealthy sex. They couldn’t have been more than sixteen. There was an old man on the left, head hanging back, sleeping. He was Jewish, that much was apparent by his beard, and reminded me uncomfortably of a long buried memory I couldn’t place. He looked dead. The lights dimmed further, stage lights went on, and that’s when it started.