Siobhan and I are seeing a midnight movie, a film noir, but it’s been going on a long time, and I have work in the morning. And the other moviegoers have put up their umbrellas because of the light drizzle. I can only see the movie through the translucent skins of black canopies.
“Hey!” I complain to the people in front of me.
And when it gets to the third hour Siobhan says we should go. It’s disappointing but it could easily go another hour, so we get up to go.
As we leave it seems that others think the same, and everyone is piling out toward the elevators. The lobby is muted browns fifties retro with extended black leather benches like the hotel in Jamal Ahmad. We cannot take the first elevator as it is too full, but we will get on the second.
We wait in the lobby, and I picture playing with our umbrella. It is raining outside and we’ll need it. And I have a sleeveless bomber jacket that I play with too, popping the buttons open and closed. But just as we get on, I realize that I have forgotten both on the theater seats, so we get off again and return to the auditorium. The umbrella and jacket are still there. I gather them up and we return to the elevator.
A man tries to squeeze in with us, but he won’t make it. He gets out and another person tries. She is more successful. And so the doors close in on us and we descend.
Outside it is pouring rain. I push up the umbrella and we huddle under it.
I am just then thinking of how we will get home when on the road, the far side of the courtyard, I see three blue and white taxis, their lights facing us, blindingly, from across the path — raindrops speckle the spotlights.
“Hurry!”
As two taxis peel off we run through the rain for the last one remaining. Behind us, the same woman from the elevator is trying to get the same taxi, but we have the run on her. We slide into the back seat, me on the driver’s passenger side, Siobhan behind the driver.
“Baltimore,” Siobhan announces, and I think that isn’t the best way to get home, but I say nothing and the fat cab driver sets off. He’s from South Asia and a little portly but he seems to know where he’s going although he’s driving through Acton, and I haven’t been through Acton before.
Siobhan turns to me. “Lizzie tells me she’s in a book.”
“How do you mean?”
“She did the illustrations.” And she pulls out a long slim paperback with a white cover and hands it to me. I flick through the pages and it has multiple drawings, multiple styles in black and white. There are bigger drawings in a realistic style and then, in a cartoon style reminiscent of Asterix, there are more detailed tightly drawn illustrations on the adjacent page.
“Those, hers,” says Siobhan.
“Wow, they’re great.”
One drawing is of Romans and Gauls sitting around a table, their familiar bulbous noses. They’re squeezed together and eating a feast.
“She could use a little more space.” And I turn to the back.
“That’s her, named,” Siobhan says, pointing top left, but it is written in Arabic, and the translation is unclear behind the partially removed price tag. I turn it over to the front and there is Lizzie’s name again, this time in English: Elisabeth Lowrents, and I laugh at the misspelling.
“Oh well!”
The road rises and the shops shine deserted, to the left of us, their neons glistening in the night rain.
”Is this the right way?”
“Oh yes, we’ll go through the Winslow,” says the driver. He’ll have to cut left at some point, but up ahead there is traffic, we can see the red tail lights reflect in the rain.
The taxi pulls up against the glistening lights.
The driver thinks he’ll turn back and go the other way. And then he begins the three-point turn. Jackknifed across the road, he comes to a stop and is not moving, and we lean forward to look at him, but he is sleeping.
Night photo by Taema on Flickr
Photo of Goscinny and Uderzo‘s characters by Michel Wal on Wikimedia Commons, B&W
