Georgetown’s neon sign glowing red, waiting in line for the person in the glass booth to hand you your ticket, the smell of popcorn, the sticky floors, the ushers directing you to your seat with their small flashlights. I even had a habit of singing “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” in the shower. But my favorite part has always been the space between when the lights go down and the film begins to flicker—that brief moment when the whole world feels like it’s on the verge of something.
I wanted to share all this with Irina. I wanted to find out if she, too, felt on the verge of something. The lights dimmed, and when she looked at me with wide eyes after the MGM lion roared, I knew she did.
I don’t remember much about the movie. But I do remember that about a quarter of the way through, Irina opened her purse and poked around the beets to find her Boston Baked Beans. The candy rattled and she cursed when the beets fell to the floor. She made such a commotion that a man smoking a cigar turned around to shush us. I found it charming.
And when Fred Astaire stomped on his top hat at the end of his “Ritz Roll and Rock” number, Irina gasped and touched my hand. She removed it right away, but the feeling lingered until the lights came back on.
When we left the theater, it was raining. We stood under the awning watching water pour off in sheets.
“Should we wait it out?” I asked. “We could run across the street and get a hot toddy.”
“I better brave it.” She patted her purse. “Mama’s expecting her beets.”
I laughed but felt a stab of sadness. “Rain check, then?”
“Deal.”
Irina ran out to the turquoise-and-white streetcar idling on the corner. She boarded and I watched as it turned the corner and disappeared from view. The sky opened up with a crack of lightning. I leaned against a movie poster for Jailhouse Rock and it started to pour.
* * *
—
In the weeks following the movie, I took Irina to my favorite bookstores, going over each shop’s pros and cons and what I’d do differently if I owned it. We saw the West Side Story premiere at the National and sang “I Feel Pretty” at the top of our lungs the entire walk home. We went to the zoo but left after Irina saw a lion who’d paced so long in her cage she’d worn a narrow path alongside the bars. “It’s a crime,” she said.
In all that time, we hadn’t so much as let a hug linger a second too long, but it didn’t matter. It had been so long that I didn’t recognize it at first. Not since my Kandy days had I let someone get so close so fast. I’d built up a wall after Jane—a Navy Corps nurse with Shirley Temple hair and teeth white as soap—broke my heart.
Really, more than the heart breaks. When Jane told me our “special friendship” would be over as soon as we stepped back onto American soil and chalked it up to just one of those things that happened during the war, my chest felt as if it was caving in and my legs, my arms, the top of my head, even my teeth hurt. I vowed never to put myself in harm’s way like that again, and I had been relatively successful.
Plus, I knew there was no path that wouldn’t dead-end. I’d had friends who were picked up during their late-night walks in Lafayette Square, locked up, their names printed in the newspaper. I’d had friends who were fired from their government jobs, their reputations destroyed, disowned by their families. I’d had friends who convinced themselves the only way out was to step off a chair, a noose wrapped around their neck. The Red Scare had dwindled, but a new one had taken its place.
And yet I kept going. I kept asking her to grab lunch at Ferranti’s, or check out the new Korean art exhibit at the National Gallery, or try on hats and fascinators at Rizik’s.
I kept seeing how far I could go before needing to step back.
So when Frank asked me for another favor, I told myself that work would be a good distraction, a necessary distraction.
* * *
The night before I left for my next job, I put on a Fats Domino record and felt a jolt of happiness every time I placed