Modern Times, at the New Yorker. You came up to me after it, in that lobby-entranceway where they have that enormous refreshment stand and long vertical box with movie calendars for the next few months, and asked what I thought of the movie and we had coffee or tea at a coffeehouse nearby, or you asked me.” “I don’t even think the New Yorker was the New Yorker when we first met. It was the Stoddard or something. And the only movie we ever went to — no, there were two, but the first was Rhapsody, with Elizabeth Taylor and Vittorio Gassman — the one about music. They’re music students, concert performers. But young. And some other actor. John someone. A flash in the pan, pretty face, no talent, but the male romantic lead. Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto was also in it, I think, all over the place, and another schmaltzy piece — Rachmaninoff’s Second or Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. All I know is I loved the music then.” “No, I never saw it.” “At Radio City Music Hall. It was our first date. We sat for a while in the waiting room outside the two big restrooms downstairs.” “I thought our first date was at the Metropolitan Museum. You showed me all the paintings you knew something about, talked nonstop about them, I guess to impress me. I was so young I didn’t mind being impressed by a knowledgeable young man, especially about anything involving art.” “No. We once met there — the last time, in fact — several years ago. We were going in opposite directions on the grand stairway there. It was very brief, hello, not even a how’s-by-you, and then you ran as fast as anybody could run down those steps and I, I’ve got to admit, followed you out of the museum, or at least to the top of the steps, and watched you get into a cab.” “Why’d you do that?” “Because, because, why do you think? A bitten smitten. I mean, maybe not then — at the museum. Then probably I was following you to see what had interested me — maybe even obsessed me — for so long about you.” “You were that way about me?” “Are you crazy? Excuse me, but how could you say that? When I was sixteen, and then seventeen, eighteen and ninteen or so, I would have put my head under a speeding car’s wheel for you. I in fact almost did do something like that for you once. I walked out of my house — no, I should shut up.” “Go on, if you want. It’s long ago — unless it embarrasses you. It doesn’t me.” “With only a shirt on — a short-sleeved — you know, not an undershirt—” “A T-shirt.” “That’s right, and pants and shoes too, of course, but no socks. To get pneumonia. In the freezing cold and snow, that’s what I mean. So you’d hear about it later — from Robin Richards or through him to someone you knew — that I died or at least got very sick. And you’d be worried, concerned, upset, call me, want to see me — in the hospital room where I was recovering, for instance — then out of pity or something bordering on affection, start seeing me again but exclusively.” “We never really saw each other. It wasn’t even close to that.” “I know. But that’s how I felt. But all of that — the movie; movies, actually. I forget what the other one was but it was at Loew’s 83rd or RKO 81st. And bumping into me not only at the Met museum but at the old opera house Met and standing in the orchestra standing room section with me to see Faust, plus my feelings for you then — none of it rings a bell?” “I remember the opera. I met you there by accident, I think, though whether I stood with you inside or sat alone or with someone else — and certainly whether it was upstairs or downstairs where we stood, if we did — I forget.” “We stood alone. I stood behind you. We took the subway back to the West Side together. Before we took the subway I asked if you wanted to have a snack. Asked you outside or in the lobby after you wanted to leave after the second or third act. I stood behind you at the opera so you could see. I mean, that’s not why I told you I was standing behind you, though I might have, but that’s why I did it.” “Well that was very nice of you if that’s what you did. And whether it was