The Moviegoer: Chapter 2, Section 12 Summary & Analysis

In the middle of the night, during a thunderstorm, Binx is startled out of bed by the phone ringing. It’s Aunt Emily; she can’t find Kate. She was supposed to be at a Carnival ball, but she never came home. Emily tells Binx that Kate’s diary mentioned her “tight rope”—her expression for the feeling, even on ordinary occasions, that one is walking over a chasm. In her diary, she writes that she can no longer cope with tight ropes and is trying a “new freedom.” In case Kate wanders in Binx’s direction, Aunt Emily asks him to drive her home.

At 3:00 a.m., Binx goes outside in the windy, dripping night and sits in the bus shelter across from the neighborhood school. There is a vacant lot for sale on the corner, and Binx is considering buying it and building a gas station there. Just then a taxi pulls up, and Kate gets out. She is unsurprised to see Binx, and she looks as if she’s just had a great new idea. Kate grabs Binx’s arm and asks him if he thinks it’s possible for a person to derail his life by a single mistake.

Binx waits unhappily for Kate to finish telling him her idea. Every once in a while, Kate has an “exalted” moment when she knows exactly what she wants from life but then plunges into a dark depression soon thereafter. Today, at Merle’s office, she suddenly realized that a person does not have to “be” this or that, but can simply be free. She does not, in other words, have to strive to be the kind of person she is expected to be. At that, she strode out of Merle’s office feeling wonderful.

Binx sees that Kate is already feeling strained, and that by morning, her joy will fade. He distracts her with his gas station idea, suggesting that Kate come and stay with him at Mrs. Schexnaydre’s. Kate says that Binx’s “proposal” is sweet, but her exalted mood is disintegrating. She hugs herself and groans. She asks Binx to tell her that everything is going to be all right, and he does.