Movie Night

By Trevor Pyle

We spent the afternoon in bed watching movies. The Yakuza with Robert Mitchum, Sunset Boulevard with Gloria Swanson—her eyes as feverish as a startled horse’s. Buried in blankets were plates dusted with crumbs and hardened squares of cheese.

Rita teased the blinds open.

“It’s dark,” she said.

I circled my arms around her.

“Time for another?” I asked. “Casablanca?”

She said, “OK. But it’s still two hundred an hour.”

I said, “Casablanca‘s short.”

Rita sat down on the bed. She slanted an imaginary fedora to a rakish angle.

She said, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

Her Bogie wasn’t bad.