Maybe They Hear Us

We’re at the movies, watching a film of a live performance of the musical 42nd Street (is that complicated enough?). It’s a riot of color and movement, sound and vision, with smiling, beautiful people soaring across the screen dozens of feet high and luminous, and after every spangled, full-bore, blow-out of a number, many people in the audience applaud, including Katie, even though I can’t quite bring myself to clap for performers I know can’t hear me.

When I apologetically mention this to Katie (since I don’t want to shit all over anybody’s good time), she says, “Oh, I can’t help it. I’m like the dog in the car that walks back and forth thinking he’s making the car go."