She took off her gloves and her coat. She was wearing a smart, simple suit and a pale green blouse. As she carried the coat to the rack, Frank took the lamp off the table, moved the table, set the projector down and plugged it into a wall socket.
“Isn’t sixty seconds very short?” she asked.
“No, that’s the usual length. Some are even shorter. Thirty seconds, some of them.” He looked up from where he was threading the film. “You don’t have to hurry back or anything, do you?”
“No, no,” she said. “As long as I’m back before dinner.”
“What time is that, usually?”
“Seven-thirty, usually. But I have to be back before then. My husband gets home at seven, you see. And he likes to have a drink first. So I should be home around six-thirty, seven. Not that I have to account for my time or anything, you understand.”
“Well, even if you did,” Frank said, “there’s nothing wrong with two adults having lunch together.”
“If I thought there was anything wrong with it, I wouldn’t have accepted.”
“In fact, it seems entirely prejudicial that a man and a woman can’t enjoy each other’s company simply because they happen to be married to other people-you didn’t tell your husband, did you?” he asked.
“No. Did you tell your wife?”
“No,” he said. “I never even told her I’d met you on the train.”
“It’s really silly, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” he said. “But you know, the truth of it is that most people just wouldn’t understand. If I told my wife... or
“And to a motel later...”
“To show you a film...”
“Who’d believe it?”
“There,” he said. “Let me just close these drapes.” He pulled them across the rod, darkening the room, and then snapped on the projector. As the leader came on, he adjusted the throw and the focus, and framed the film on the centre of the towel. “Here goes,” he said, just as a heraldic blast of trumpets sounded from the projector’s speaker. The film appeared on the towel. There were two ten-year-old children in the film. The children were singing.
The children were digging into a box of popcorn now. One of the children asked, “Do you like popcorn?”
“I love popcorn,” the other child said.
“Me, too.”
The children fell silent. On the screen, there were close shots of their hands digging into the box of popcorn, other close shots of the popcorn being transferred to their mouths. The camera pulled back to show their beaming faces.
“Good, huh?” the first child asked.
“Delicious,” the second child said.
“What is it?”
“Popcorn. What do you think it is?”
“Yeah, but what kind of popcorn?”
“Hot buttered popcorn.”
“I mean, the name.”
“Oh. I dunno.”
“Is this it here on the box?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
The camera panned down to the front of the popcorn box, and the words PIKE’S POPCORN printed on it.
“Pike’s!” one of the children shouted. “That’s the name!”
Together, they began singing again.
The screen went blank. Frank snapped off the projector, and then turned on the room light. Millie was silent for what seemed an inordinately long time. Then she said, “I didn’t realise it would be in colour.”
“Yes, we shoot everything in colour nowadays,” he said. “What’d you think of it?”
“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “Did you write the song, too?”
“No, just the dialogue. Between the kids.”
“Oh,” Millie said.
“It was very easy and natural for me,” he said. “I have three kids of my own, you know.”
“Yes, you told me that. On the train. Two boys and a girl.”
“No, two girls and a boy,” he said.
“Yes. How old are they?”
“The boy’s nineteen. The girls are fifteen and thirteen.”
“That’s older than my girls,” Millie said. “Mine are eight and six.”
They looked at each other silently. The silence lengthened. And then, into the silence, the telephone suddenly shrilled, startling them both. He moved towards the phone, and then stopped dead in his tracks. The phone kept ringing. Finally he went to it, and warily lifted the receiver.
“Hello?” he said. “Who? No, there’s no Mr... oh, yes! Yes,
“Is that the name you used? Mclntyre?”
“Yes, well, I figured...”
“Oh, certainly, what’s the sense of...?”
“That’s what I figured. I’d better move the car. It’s supposed to be in sixteen.”
As he started for the door, she said, “Maybe we just ought to leave.”
“What?” he said.
“Well... you’ve shown me the film already. And since you have to move the car, anyway...”
“Yes, but we haven’t discussed it yet,” he said. “The film. In depth, I mean.”