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backed up into Bing Crosby, who had won for Best Actor in
Going My Way
. “You think we’re not in the theater yet?”
    “I think we know as much about quantum theory as we can figure out about May Robson from her footprints,” he said, putting his hand up to Ingrid Bergman’s cheek (Best Actress,
Gaslight
) and blocking my escape. “I don’t think we understand anything
about
quantum theory, not tunneling, not complementarity.” He leaned toward me. “Not passion.”
    The best movie of 1945 was
The Lost Weekend
. “Dr. Gedanken understands it,” I said, disentangling myself from the Academy Award winners and David. “Did you know he’s putting together a new research team for a big project on understanding quantum theory?”
    “Yes,” David said. “Want to see a movie?”
    “There’s a seminar on chaos at nine,” I said, stepping over the Marx Brothers. “I have to get back.”
    “If it’s chaos you want, you should stay right here,” he said, stopping to look at Irene Dunne’s handprints. “We could see the movie and then go have dinner. There’s this place near Hollywood and Vine that has the mashed potatoes Richard Dreyfuss made into Devil’s Tower in
Close Encounters
.”
    “I want to meet Dr. Gedanken,” I said, making it safely to the sidewalk. I looked back at David.
    He had gone back to the other side of the courtyard and was looking at Roy Rogers’s signature. “Are you kidding? He doesn’t understand it any better than we do.”
    “Well, at least he’s trying.”
    “So am I. The problem is, how can one neutron interfere with itself, and why are there only two of Trigger’s hoofprints here?”
    “It’s eight fifty-five,” I said. “I am going to the chaos seminar.”
    “If you can find it,” he said, getting down on one knee to look at the signature.
    “I’ll find it,” I said grimly.
    He stood up and grinned at me, his hands in his pockets. “It’s a great movie,” he said.
    It was happening again. I turned and practically ran across the street.
    “
Benji IX
is showing,” he shouted after me. “He accidentally exchanges bodies with a Siamese cat.”
    Thursday, 9–10 P.M. “The Science of Chaos.” I. Durcheinander, University of Leipzig. A seminar on the structure of chaos. Principles of chaos will be discussed, including the butterfly effect, fractals, and insolid billowing. Clara Bow Room
.
    I couldn’t find the chaos seminar. The Clara Bow Room, where it was supposed to be, was empty. A meeting of vegetarians was next door in the Fatty Arbuckle Room, and all the other conference rooms were locked. The channeler was still in the ballroom. “Come!” she commanded when I opened the door. “Understanding awaits!”
    I went upstairs to bed.
    I had forgotten to call Darlene. She would have left for Denver already, but I called her answering machine and told it the room numberin case she picked up her messages. In the morning I would have to tell the front desk to give her a key. I went to bed.
    I didn’t sleep well. The air conditioner went off during the night, which meant I didn’t have to steam my suit when I got up the next morning. I got dressed and went downstairs.
    The programming started at nine o’clock with Abey Fields’s Wonderful World workshop in the Mary Pickford Room, a breakfast buffet in the ballroom, and a slide presentation on “Delayed Choice Experiments” in Cecil B. DeMille A on the mezzanine level.
    The breakfast buffet sounded wonderful, even though it always turns out to be urn coffee and donuts. I hadn’t had anything but an ice cream cone since noon the day before, but if David were around, he would be somewhere close to the food, and I wanted to steer clear of him. Last night it had been Grauman’s Chinese. Today I was likely to end up at Knott’s Berry Farm. I wasn’t going to let that happen, even if he was charming.
    It was pitch-dark inside Cecil B. DeMille A. Even the slide on the screen up front appeared to be black.