he let out another guttural laugh of cathartic , self-inflicted madness as a tear came to his eye ; people were shuffling back and forth , ignoring the grizzled old fool , who seemed to scream spitefully at the heavens above from his rusty old wheelchair ; money and fish and antiques and shoe polish and drugs and quick-dry spermatozoa , meanwhile , passed as effortlessly as fluid between free-moving clumps of mass .