Closing Images

It wasn’t until I went to this evening’s film screening that I learned

that a woman died during last week’s show. I remember last week we were

at the end of From Here to Eternity when Deborah Kerr threw her flower lei into

the Hawaiian sea. The single-room theater was illuminated with

murmurs and movement I couldn’t see from the back of the balcony.

We learned she was a Greek Orthodox woman who went with her loved ones

to see Kerr and Burt Lancaster swallowed by the sea in the throes of adultery.

She may have drifted off around the time Sinatra did as well.

We didn’t suspect anything when we saw the ambulance pull away as we left.

Tonight, I had to sit through a showing of Ninotchka, of Garbo wearing that silly hat,

and wonder if this screening would also end prematurely. If this theater would

take another into the darkened sea that swallows the seats when the projector

kicks on. This theater was opened before Ninotchka and From Here To Eternity,

so there could be many leis thrown into this sea like popcorn kernels on the floor.

After Diane Seuss