Bridge of Sighs

the theater. His lips were moving, but I saw it was himself he was talking to, his body rigid, his hands balled into fists. He gave the impression of somebody talking himself into something.
    When the credits began to roll and the lights came up, he strode purposefully toward the couple. Kids were spilling into the aisles now, but quickly stepped back into the row when they saw him coming. I saw, rather than heard, Perry shout something down the row, then a surprised Three Mock turned toward him and shook his head. The white girl, who was standing between them and looking scared now, said something—maybe
Go away!
—but Perry paid no attention, lunging across her and shoving Three Mock, hard.
    A chant went up then, like it always did—
“Fight…fight…fight”
—and I saw the usher pushing through the throng. Perry and the black boy were scuffling now, right in front of the white girl, who got knocked back into her seat, clutching her nose. When the usher finally arrived, he pulled the boys apart and pushed them out the side exit into the alley, then closed the door, as if what happened out there was none of his business. The Negro kids, I noticed, were standing on their seats to see what the fuss was about, and I could tell by the way their heads went together that they knew one of their own was involved. Wondering what Jerzy’s reaction to all this might be, I glanced down to where he and Karen had been sitting, but they’d disappeared.
    In order to avoid being seen coming down from the balcony, I had to wait until the theater emptied. The usher had positioned himself at the foot of the stairs, on the other side of the velvet rope, flexing importantly at the knees until the last kid (he thought) was safely out the door. Only when he disappeared back into the theater—presumably to start cleaning up the mess left behind by a hundred-plus heedless junior high schoolers—did I dare steal down the staircase and around the rope. Heading outside, I noticed that the door marked OFFICE was partially open and a girl was sitting there with her head between her knees. Her dark curly hair hung down, so I couldn’t see her features, but I knew it had to be the girl who’d been with Three Mock. She was holding a bloody handkerchief.
    A voice from behind the door said, “Still no answer,” followed by the sound of a phone being hung up. “Is there someone else we can call?”
    “It’s okay,” the girl said, her voice weak and frightened. When she raised her head to speak, I could see that her nose was crusted with dried blood and her eyes swollen from crying. Even so, I recognized her as Sarah Berg, an eighth grader, and I think she recognized me, too. “I’m better now,” she said, but then lowered her head again, and I went out into the street.
    Fights in the parking lot behind the theater on Saturday afternoons were not unusual, but they had a lazy, obligatory feel to them. Often they seemed to originate in the lurid melodramas of the movies themselves. So many teenagers crowded into a theater watching a story of passions run amok invariably created an excess of energy. The result was usually just a shoving match, the combatants taunting each other, calling names, without any real fear of escalation. After all, the police station was just a couple of doors down, and Mount Carmel’s church and convent were right across the parking lot. Even a noisy throng of excited spectators wasn’t often able to produce any real hostility, and this was the sort of flaccid conflict I expected to find when I joined the crowd that had gathered there today.
    But halfway down the alley I sensed that something was different. Perhaps it was the relative quiet. The circle of kids surrounding the combatants was three or four deep, so at first I couldn’t make out exactly what was going on, but then I noticed the theater’s fire escape was down, and I climbed the bottom two rungs for a better view. Three Mock was just picking himself off the pavement, and he had a split lip, the red of it contrasting vividly with his dark skin. Something about his manner suggested that this wasn’t the first time he was picking himself up. Perry had probably begun by shoving him, hands to the chest, but apparently the most recent shove had been to the face. The boy ran his tongue over his busted lip and must have tasted blood because he spat—nowhere near his adversary, though Perry chose to interpret this differently. “You think you