TERMINAL BAR
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Even if they were the last three people left alive in New York City you wouldn’t want to know any of them–and you certainly wouldn’t want to be any of them. Dwayne, a homosexual schoolboy, has returned home to find his family fled and the house in the hands of the servants, who now refuse him even his overcoat. Holly is a pregnant housewife from a small southern town who has just left her mortician husband to seek her fortune in the Great Urban Unknown. Both end up at the Terminal Bar, now deserted but for Martinelle the hooker, who has assumed hostess duties for the owner while he does business on the phone. With a radio looted from a Christmas window display, the three of them listen as newscasts trace the progress of the mysterious epidemic that has devastated the huge metropolis.
But there are also reports of perverse glee–“What fun to die and be an event!” Dwayne’s friend Iris exults, reveling in the media attention. And there’s a twisted sort of peripeteia, as when a lifelong transvestite declares on his deathbed, “Enough already! My name is Sherman!” and dons male attire for his imminent burial. Martinelle’s wry courage and jocularity are echoed by the weary Dwayne, who suggests, “Maybe we could turn on the lights and have last call.” He reminds Martinelle that her hair and fingernails will keep growing after her death. “Hey, Holly,” Martinelle jauntily replies, “do you think your husband could exhume me once a month for a manicure and a perm?”
