for a women's restroom here. "Stall" was indeed the correct expression.
Dolly was pre - center console, pre - cup holders. I opened the huge glove compartment and lined up the drink cups on the horizontal lid.
The sound unit spouted alive, producing chuckling music and a laugh track as film trailers and commercials for long-gone car models and local businesses unreeled on the screen. I could hear rustlings and heavy breathing from the cars all around. One great heaving beast of lust had materialized in the parking lot.
Meanwhile, giant numbers were counting back from ten on the screen. From the surrounding parked cars - some convertibles, all with rolled-down windows - came an echoing shout. "Four - three - two - one!"
Meanwhile, the film started flickering on the giant graph-paper-lined screen.
Meanwhile, the sound system surged into Phantom of the Opera shrieking organ mode. Heavy block letters as distorted as the sound covered the screen.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.
"It's a contemporary newsreel," I said.
"It's a classic," Ric said. "You must have seen this on the TV in your group home."
"I turned off anything made after the nineteen-forties, pretty much."
"Delilah, this was released years before we were born."
"So were the film zombies! I turned off the gory stuff. Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price were scary, but elegant. And a bit too hokey to believe."
"Come here, baby," Ric coaxed. "You can do this. You've offed vampire mummies."
"But they were real. This is just freaky-scary."
Ric stroked my hair as I peeked through its strands to the screen. His arm was around my waist. My hand on his chest could feel the calm, steady thrum of his heart.
"I'm here for you," he whispered into my forehead.
Yes, he was. Guess I could sit through one gory guy movie after having risked my soul to bring him back from the dead.
And the chance to see a black-and-white film blown up to Times Square billboard size was awesome.
TOO BAD THE black-and-white people on-screen weren't my favorite CinSims, but no-name actors from the sixties. I amused myself for a while by eyeing the heroine's ultra-short skirt and long blond hair in a shoulder-brushing flip.
Ric picked up the popcorn and pop and munched and sipped, even when lumbering, glassy-eyed zombies crammed a liver into their mouths or gnawed on an obviously human bone.
Yawn. The humans took refuge in a deserted farmhouse. They broke furniture to nail breakaway boards over the doors and windows, to no avail. They cowered and screamed, the zombies walked. Very, very slowly. And walked. Relentless.
Around us the audience gasped and shrieked a little.
Me, I fell asleep, waiting for a witty line of dialogue, on Dolly's body-warmed red leather, in the embrace of my zombie movie-loving significant other. My silver familiar had become a calming, actually ticking, old-fashioned locket-watch on a neck chain, resting right where my heart slowed and disappeared into a dream.
THE SHRIEK THAT awoke me echoed on and on, nothing new in this movie.
Another voice had joined the panicked chorus and I knew it.
I sat upright.
"Some date, sleepyhead," Ric said. "Where's the fire?"
"Quicksilver's howling at the half-moon."
"How could you hear him with all this zombie growling and gnarfing and victim shrieking? This is classic. Nightwine should lease some of these zombie CinSims to guard his grounds and yours."
"Something's wrong, Ric."
"That's a line from the movie, Del. Aren't you glad I'm into classic films, like you are?"
Grrr. Arghh! The dialogue leaves a lot to be desired, I thought.
"Quicksilver?" I got on my knees in the front seat to look into the back one.
My dog lofted over the car's side, his hackles fluffed enough to masquerade as a bad dame's good fur coat in a thirties movie. Real classics.
"Ric!" I screamed.
He had set the nostalgia food and drink on the open glove compartment lid and was staring at the pandemonium on the giant screen.
"These zombies are marvelous," he said. "Romero, the director, got away with murder. Nude rear shots, cannibalism close up and personal, helpless humans, the living dead on a rampage. This is the forerunner of spatterpunk."
Oh, joy.
Quicksilver was panting and salivating as he stared at the screen. I followed his intent canine gaze.
Oh.
Oh.
The zombies were walking, all right.
Right off the screen.
And they all looked eight feet tall.
Chapter Eight
"THERE'RE PUTTING VINTAGE movies in three-D?" I exploded. "That craze has gotten out of hand. Some of us find what Romero did in 1968 plenty scary, not to mention icky."
"I'm no film purist like you or Hector Nightwine," Ric agreed, "but adding three-D is