First Date (for Jessica)

Slipstream Romance by Zebulon Huset

Third time together outside of the community college grounds, we caught the last showing of… whatever was playing. Something bumbling over cobblestones, let’s say it’s set in London. The cashier booth vacant, the concession stand empty. The hush of a library matched its standard occupancy—just us. We had our pick of abandoned theaters screening their films for crowds of upholstery. We sampled every seat, drunk on our public solitude and rum. She sampled my lap. We hadn’t followed one word of dialogue but the picturesque background drew us clasping hands into it, past the actors startled by our sudden transplantation. Peeking their heads inside the theater through the camera lens. We stole a fruit and let its black and white juices curl on our backwards tossed chins. A deeper black than I’d ever seen in a fruit, like burgundy in the darkroom huffing those fixer fumes. We stepped up the double-decker bus’s stairs and kept going. The sun’s blinding white darkens the sky so we head for clouds encircling Big Ben and she laughs when I again mention that the bell is named Ben, not the tower—I was still spilling my words through a sifter with her. The bell bonged and clouds parted to the excessive light of a still empty theater post-credits. A ghost-town with crazy carpet still, our hands damp from long- clasping, we floated to the parking lot then off the calendar.