I preferred these gummi gators to gummi bears because, being much larger, they had a real thickness and density to them, which made them more difficult—and thus more rewarding—to chew. The slow, writhing slide of a half-masticated alligator down my throat made me feel, in the dark of the theater, less vulnerable: for I, too, could devour my prey whole, no differently than Godzilla. In essence, what I felt like was Death itself: an all-powerful and -annihilating predator, plucking each gelatin creature from its candy-box habitat and thrusting it into my maw. At the time I even pictured Death, not as a robed and scythe-brandishing skeleton, but as a giant, invisible lizard, one who would pluck children like me from their habitats and devour them in one bite. As I looked up at Godzilla, it occurred to me that this was what Death must resemble, assuming Death were visible. It was only when I glanced over to my father—his face merely amused by the lizard onscreen—that I realized Death might take a different shape for him. ((And how strange to think that, when I was a child, before I had ever read or indeed heard of Tom Jones—before I had even, for that matter, encountered death—my own conception of Death [[as a giant, invisible lizard, a presence that you cannot see]] was already consonant with Allworthy’s))]). I see that the gecko has continued to crawl into my field of vision. About two-thirds of its body is on the window now, all four of its adhesive feet stuck to the pane. Where its toetips touch the glass the pressure makes them pale, so its feet seem to terminate in five little Tic Tacs of padded whiteness. If I lean in and squint at these pads, I can just begin to make out (or imagine that I can just begin to make out) their setae, the fernlike fronds of micrometric hair by which the gecko grips the glass, via so-called van der Waals forces. Afraid of startling it, I ease back in my chair and rest at my original distance. (Of course I have no idea whether it would even be possible for me to startle the gecko, since I can’t tell whether it can see me. On the one hand, it’s doubtful that it can see me, for its eyes aren’t visible to me [the spade-shaped underside of its jaw is resting perfectly parallel to the glass, such that neither of the gecko’s lateral eyeballs, welling out liquidly from either side of its skull, can be distinguished]; but, on the other hand, it might be able to detect me in its peripheral vision.) Even from four feet off, I can still make out almost every detail of the gecko’s belly, the skin of which—a paler shade of pink than either its legs or back—is lilac, almost white in places, extending from groin to breast in a leotard of lighter-colored flesh. This skin of the stomach is so thin that through it I can see the dark forms of the gecko’s internal organs, sacs of amorphous blackness that bulge against the lilac when it breathes.