They are early for the evening show but they buy their tickets to sit in the near empty loge The two cigarettes that she has taken from the crumpled packet in her father’s jacket poke out of his breast pocket He looks smarter with his glasses They climb the carpeted stairs imprinted with fleur de lis and Bauhaus geometry descend to the edge of the abyss and sit in the front row with the brass colored railing She leans over to get a precarious glimpse of the floor below It makes her giddy Directly overhead smoky dragons whirl and cavort caught in the halo of the projector light Directly beneath them the nasty boys are wadding up little bits of paper and rolling them around their tongues with spit while the news reel plays The matron sits in the back row you can see her bulky shape every time the door opens with a harsh funnel of light ushering in popcorn smells and lobby chaos The aubergine velvet curtain rises Teenies shrieks of delight mingle with cymbals and horns Their cheeks are red without rouge He leans into her the way her Retriever does and walks his fingers closer on the armrest surrounding her hand with his In the dark—his pulses quicken She remembers sitting in this row watching The Man in the White Suit with Alec Guinness her father’s favorite Down below the closing credits for the latest redundant western Followed by Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker THAT’S ALL FOLKS herald the mass exodus of small boys pelting the last of their spit balls at red eyed young girls who jostle in the dark rolling around their last jawbreakers with rainbow colored tongues They exit arm in arm grateful for the quiet street and the muted colors of dusk (Queens, NY), 2019, Cape Cod
Hiding Out