long strip of masking tape across the arms.
“Sit, sit,” he said. “Save the aisle seat for me. I’ll join you once the movie
starts.”
They milled for a moment and then filed in: Zack, Daniel, Abbas, Elena,
and an empty seat for Ross. They fell into their chain of overlapping couples.
Zack was sorry Elena was at the other end of the row and he couldn’t talk to
her without shouting across the others.
“You have seen this film?” Abbas asked Daniel.
“Oh yeah,” said Daniel. “Not great, but it has its moments.”
They spoke in a brusque, dry, masculine manner, like two straight men
dragged to a movie by their wives.
E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a
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“The music is great,” said Zack. “It has music by Gershwin.”
Abbas gazed coolly at Zack but made no attempt to smile, not even as a
courtesy.
He feels guilty, Zack told himself.
The theater was half full tonight, crowded by Williamsburg standards, al-
though the extra numbers were not students but older folks, middle-class re-
tirees. Williamsburg had become a retirement center for people who didn’t
want to go to Florida. Daniel claimed these were people who thought Florida
had too many Jews. Zack disagreed, but the locals did tend to be awfully con-
servative. An old musical might be their idea of a fancy night on the town.
“Hello? Dr. Knowles? Hello?” a woman shyly called out.
Zack looked, and there was Fay Dawson, at the other side of the theater.
He smiled and waved at her.
A heavy man with a crew cut grumbled something to Fay—he must be her
husband. She lowered the hand she’d been waving and slipped guiltily into a
chair beside him.
“Who was that?” asked Daniel.
“Oh, someone I work with.”
It was a good thing Fay couldn’t guess what was going on over here or the
good Christian lady would never trust him again with her own secrets. But
maybe she should know. Then she’d understand that nothing she confessed
could shock him.
Finally, the lights dimmed. There were no commercials or trailers. The
movie began. Ross raced down the aisle and plopped into the seat next to
Elena.
The restored Technicolor was gorgeous, the Gershwin score terrific, Leslie
Caron exquisite. Zack enjoyed watching Gene Kelly’s toothpaste grin and
boulder-round butt. The boy-meets-girl story, however, was much too simple,
and the thing was paced like a glacier. After half an hour, Zack’s attention
began to wander. He glanced over at the others. Daniel and Abbas both
stared straight ahead, looking skeptical, like two jurors at a murder trial.
Elena, however, was enthralled, her face radiant in the kaleidoscopic bath of
light. She wasn’t kidding, she really did love this movie. Zack pictured her in
Leningrad thirty years ago, watching a washed-out print with Russian subti-
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C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m
tles. An MGM musical would’ve seemed as wild and decadent as an acid trip
in the old Soviet union .
Ross appeared to enjoy the movie almost as much as Elena did. Or maybe
he was enjoying Elena enjoying the movie. But the three gay men—or two and
a half, depending on how Abbas counted—grew detached and bored. Zack
sensed Daniel and Abbas getting especially restless.
He wondered how Daniel felt sitting between him and Abbas. Zack re-
membered seeing movies in college during his closet years when he sometimes
found himself sitting beside a crushee. He would let his knee lean against the
other man’s knee and see what the other knee did. If it withdrew, Zack knew
he was barking up the wrong tree. If the knee remained, his heart would fill
with hope—he could live off that hope for weeks. But Daniel was beyond the
hopeful stage, wasn’t he? A knee was superfluous when you already knew the
genitals. Nevertheless, Zack stole a sidelong glance down. Their knees were
apart, their hands not even close.
He noticed Ross at the end of the row, twisted slightly forward to check
out Zack. His face was vague in the movie glow, but he seemed to be smiling.
Did he know about Daniel and Abbas? Of course not. He probably thought
Zack was wondering about him and Elena. Was anything even going on
there? This was ridiculous, like being back in high school. Zack turned away
to watch the movie.
They had come to the interminable dream ballet in the last reel: Gene
Kelly dances through half-finished paintings by Renoir, Rousseau, and
Toulouse-Lautrec until he ends in a splashy, splotchy, crowded street scene
like the watercolors that Zack remembered from the waiting room of his den-
tist when he was a kid. Then Kelly wakes, sees Leslie Caron out his window,
realizes he loves her, and runs outside. They dance on a long, long staircase