The lights go out in the expansive movie theatre and suddenly everyone in row beside me is bathed in white-blue light.
Just to my left, a young Japanese (or Chinese, possibly) couple sits with their hands held over the armrest and a shared soda cup. He wears a university sweatshirt and a wide, open smile.
The movie opens with the sound of slot machines, and the boy whispers into the girl's flawless jet-black hair. She looks vaguely unreal with a bright polka-dot sweater and white mini skirt. She giggles and punches his arm harmlessly.
On the screen, someone dies in a dirty back room, and the killer walks out, dusting his perfect black suit. Adrian snorts beside me.
"This movie is boring me. Look at that gun, he's holding it like it's a Tiffany lamp, not an extension of his very arm. Totally unbelievable," he declares with an outflung arm. I swivel in my plushy seat to regard him fully.
He lounges carelessly with his head against the backrest and long legs supported on the seat opposite. His eyes reflect the screen glossily and his lips are pursed in a way that unconsciously makes you think of kissing.
"An extension of his arm?" I ask with a wry eyebrows-and-nose expression and he laughs, delightedly. He's got a deliciously free laugh that rings about the room, and a few people in our row turn to look for the sound and eye at us with arched eyebrows and pursed lips.
Us... me and Adrian. Adrian and I. Not a couple but a couple of people; relatively the same age, sharing a tub of popcorn and talking intimately. To the untrained eye (ahem, anyone but me) we are a couple.
Someone is possibly viewing me as part of a couple. Astounding.
***
"Let me have men about me that are fat: sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights: yond Cassius has a lean hungry look; he thinks too much: such men are dangerous."
