Saving Elijah

figure again, just as a white flash from the screen illuminated his features for maybe half a second. He was handsome, about forty-five or fifty, tall, broad. You don't have to study a face at length to recognize handsome and guess an age.
    I smiled. "I guess they'll just have to come up with ever greater superlatives."
    He smiled back. "And I'm sure they will."
    I chose a seat in the middle of the nearly empty theater. The coming attractions ended, finally. The lights dimmed, the credits began. A clarinet, high and plaintive. A charming Italian town. You could tell this wasn't an American film by the look of the actors, who resembled regular people, except for the woman the postman loved, dark-skinned and breathtakingly beautiful. When I see women who look like that playing such roles, I always think, For God's sake, all your character has to do to get out of that life is head for Eileen Ford. Oh, honey, are we going to make you a star.
    Every image on the screen seemed to have been tipped in gold, perhaps by a filter over the camera. The poet was thoughtful and noble, the postman simple and wise. The camera movements were languid, the Capri vistas sweeping.
    "Are you all right?"
    I turned. The same man was sitting in the row behind me, just a few seats over. The last credits were rolling. I had slipped into another daydream, I think, yet another imagining of a dreaded future. I'd been so caught up in my own suffering that I hadn't even realized I'd been sobbing. He must have heard me.
    "I'm fine. Thank you." I took the handkerchief the man held out. "Just a sentimental fool, I guess."
    "Me too."
    "Oh. Were you crying, too?" I handed back the handkerchief.
    "Only on the inside," he said.
    We both started moving out of our rows.
    "Did you like the film?" he asked.
    "I liked it." I'd been watching without taking much in. Poetry and love. Great scenery.
    "I used to write poetry," he said. "To my ex-wife, before we were married. After we were married a few years ... well, you know you're in trouble when your wife starts criticizing your love poems. Even when they're written for her."
    I laughed. "I guess that's why she's your ex."
    We had reached the end of the rows and started up the aisle together.
    "One of the whys. But do you think life is like the 'film? That people from such different places can affect each other so profoundly like that?"
    "I'm not sure."
    "I'm probably bothering you. Sorry."
    "I'm probably being rude," I said, stopping for a moment as we got to the lobby, redolent with popcorn.
    "Why shouldn't you be rude? I could be a serial killer, for all you know."
    I laughed and started walking again. "Are you?"
    He laughed and guided me around a group of people blocking the entrance. People were trickling in for the next screening. "Definitely not," he said. "Ask my patients, any of them."
    I stared.
    "I'm a physician."
    "Really." I said this evenly, as if it were neutral information for me. We had come out of the front doors and were standing on the sidewalk in front of the theater now, in the glare of a sunny afternoon. I fished my sunglasses out of my bag.
    He nodded. "Wednesday's my day off. I like movies. We surgeons need our downtime, too."
    I put my sunglasses on my face. "Surgeon, huh?"
    "You have something against surgeons?"
    "Well, you know what they say about surgeons."
    "That our egotism is exceeded only by our arrogance?"
    I smiled. "Something like that."
    "That there's only one thing we think is larger than our own importance?"
    "Something like that, too." I realized I was blushing.
    "Oh, yeah? Well, who are they? Can you get them here? I'd at least like the opportunity to defend myself and my ego, which is actually on the puny side."
    The guy was charming. "I'm sorry. Someday I'll learn to keep my big mouth shut."
    "No need to apologize. I'm the one who spelled it out, anyway. And whoever they are, they're probably right." He smiled and extended his hand. "I'm Peter St. Clair."
    I shook his hand. "Dinah Galligan."
    He stared at me for a moment, then said, "You write the humor column for the Connecticut Star? The 'Agitated Observer'?"
    "Guilty as charged. Assuming I can come up with an idea for my next one—I'm stuck, which is why I went to the movies. Diversion."
    "Your column is the best thing in that rag," he said. "Didn't see it for a while. I really got a laugh out of 'Film Noir Housewife.'"
    "Thanks."
    "But why do you give the impression in the piece that you're a housewife when you're