Bridge of Sighs

that we’d both been naked in the same room and now were sitting together in a dark theater caused my heart to skip a beat. It was all incredibly intimate and scary, and I again felt the need to change the subject. “Who’s ‘they’?”
    “Buddy and my old lady. Who else?”
    “Buddy’s back?” I said, astonished.
    “He went someplace?”
    “I thought he went away. The police—”
    “Buddy won’t be gone till he’s dead.”
    Just then the lights in the theater began to dim, and when I faced the front I became aware, to my surprise, that the seat on my right was now occupied.
    “You remember Lou?” Karen said, leaning forward so she could talk directly to her boyfriend. “From the store?”
    Perry Kozlowski must have stopped at the snack bar for a soda, because he now sidled down the row in front of ours, stopping at the seat directly in front of me. Handing the soda to Jerzy, he knelt in the seat, facing me. “How come you’re sitting next to Karen?” he said. “She’s not your girlfriend.”
    “Lou bought my ticket,” Karen said, sounding bored. “Also my popcorn. Which is more than I can say for some people.”
    The coming attractions were on now, and Jerzy, the apparent object of Karen’s remark, seemed totally engrossed in them. He took a sip of soda, then passed it across me to Karen, who took a sip and passed it back, ignoring her girlfriends. I knew better than to take a sip myself, though the popcorn was suddenly dry as dust in my throat.
    “So you think if you buy her ticket, she’s your girlfriend?” Perry said.
    I told him no, that wasn’t what I thought.
    “You think if you buy her a bag of popcorn, she’s gonna what? Let you feel her up or something?”
    I assured him that this wasn’t what I thought either. I was hoping Karen would come to my defense, but she also seemed engrossed in the coming attractions, so for the longest time Perry just knelt there staring at me.
    Karen finally said, “Lou’s not that kind of guy.”
    “That true?” he said, smiling at me thinly. “What kind of guy are you?”
    “I don’t know,” I told him, the safest reply I could think of under the circumstances.
    An usher appeared in the aisle then, fixing Perry in the beam of his flashlight and motioning for him to turn around in his seat, which he did until the usher left, then he resumed his former posture. “Let’s you and me take a walk, Lucy.”
    “See you later,” Karen said, without actually looking at me, when I got up. “Thanks for the popcorn.”
    Jerzy stood to let me by, his attention still on the screen, then settled into the seat next to Karen. Perry motioned for me to follow him, which I did, figuring he intended to take me out into the alley, but instead we went out into the lobby. There he lifted up the velvet rope, with its KEEP OUT sign dangling, and led me up to the balcony, then down to the front row of the creaky, condemned structure. From our perch we could track the usher below by his flashlight. Directly below us were Jerzy and Karen, her girlfriends also having moved off somewhere. He was holding Karen’s hand, and the two had slumped down in their seats, but to my surprise they weren’t up to anything. Perry noticed where I was looking and elbowed me. “If you’re still thinking about Big Tits, forget it,” he said, his voice low, confidential, almost friendly. I’d just about concluded he meant this to be a warning, then he added, “Nobody home.”
    Below, in the company of his West End friends, Perry had been all menace. Now it seemed we were suddenly pals. After a moment he chuckled, at something on the screen, I thought, though nothing funny had happened there. “Damn,” he said. “I thought you were going to pee in your seat down there.”
    “Why were you so mad?” I said, which in truth was only half of what perplexed me. The other half was
Why wasn’t he mad anymore?
    “Who, me? That was for show. Like I care if you feel Karen up.”
    “Then why—”
    “You crossed the line.”
    “What line?”
    “What do you mean what line? The line.”
    “I didn’t—”
    “You didn’t know? I could tell that. Now you do, right?”
    Actually, I wasn’t sure. Had I crossed the line by paying for Karen’s popcorn? Her ticket? By sitting next to her instead of between her friends, where apparently a person could sit and still be alone? Or was it the row itself I wasn’t allowed in?
    “It’s like Division Street,” Perry explained.