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Show towards some ineffable goal, but simply as himself. We see what Boaz does before the dogs die; we see him in his laboratory, shuffling through stacks of graphs, drawn meticulously on green-ruled paper, running his fingers down the index columns in the back of a thick black-bound book; we see him sprawling in a swivel chair, talking with his assistant, the girl Maia, or perhaps by telephone with his wife; he sprawls back, his hand hanging idly over the arm of the swivel chair. One of the dogs is sleeping beneath the chair; Boaz' hand finds the dog, and his fingers play beneath the rope lead around the dog's neck. The dog moves just enough so that Boaz' fingers can scratch all of its neck, no more. There is only one window in the laboratory, and it is obscured at the top by an uneven Venetian blind, at the bottom by an old and noisy air conditioner. They will turn the air conditioner on in the afternoon, Boaz and the girl Maia, even though it is not summer: it will grow hot in the small square room with the door closed, hot and heavy with the odors of the dogs. They will have to keep the door to the lab closed so that the office workers across the hall do not see what they are doing, and so that the dogs do not break loose and escape down the long colorless corridors. And they will think too, that the throaty hum of the air conditioner will cover the noise of the dogs, so that the office workers across the hall do not hear. |