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bought it. Something something something heh aha something,” he said.
    “ Heh aha to you too.” She gave him a goofy grin. “I love this movie.”
    Encouraged by her sudden enthusiasm, he bent to kiss her forehead and took her hand. “Let’s get moving. I remember what you said you’d do last time. Heh aha .”
    They piled into Shelly’s old Chevy and took off. The inexplicable queasy/pleasant feeling lasted the whole thirty-mile drive to Creighton, even through a hurried meal at a Wendy’s a few blocks from the Golden Oldies theater. He felt better than he had since Sunday afternoon. Shelly seemed to have forgotten—or decided to temporarily ignore—his weird behavior, and she hadn’t mentioned marriage again. Superficially, at least, she was her usual self, buoyant and eager. Since we took her car, she’ll have to drive me home , he thought with a schizophrenic mixture of happiness and apprehension as he sank into one of the theater’s red plush seats and inhaled the scents of the place: the buttered popcorn that wafted from a couple a few rows behind them, the musty-fusty funk of the cavernous room itself and the anonymous but ever-present carpet cleaner.
    And roses.
    That would be Shelly’s perfume.
    And Shelly herself.
    The movie started.
    And everything changed.
    One second he was mildly euphoric, thinking that maybe, just maybe, the nightmares were losing their hold on him, that he would soon once again be capable of rational action, and he could have a normal life with Shelly. The next second, as a supposedly Swiss lake filled the screen and the teenage Durbin’s soaring soprano filled the theater, he found himself engulfed in the same mixture of terror and helplessness that gripped him each time he struggled to pull free of another nightmare.
    This is crazy! he told himself angrily, wincing as he realized he’d bitten his tongue to keep from screaming. I haven’t even been to sleep!
    Somehow he managed to sit quietly, gripping the arms of the seat like an airline passenger whose plane has just been hit by a powerful downdraft. It was all he could do to keep from hyperventilating. It had to be the movie, he told himself, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t close his eyes. Behind his eyelids, he knew, the nightmares waited, no longer confined to the realm of sleep but ready to overwhelm his waking mind.
    “Are you all right?” he’d remembered Shelly asking him.
    No. “Yes,” he said.
    Gradually, however, the panic subsided, leaving an eerie, directionless fear that turned every shuffling foot, every cleared throat, every whisper or crinkle of candy wrapper into an icy assault. He felt Shelly turning cold beside him. Maybe he didn’t love her; maybe he only loved the thought of spending his life with someone, dreading always coming home to … no one. Was that what held him back? That he didn’t truly love her?
    If she pressed him again, he knew that nothing would keep her questions unanswered now.
    Was he all right?
    No.
    Did he love her?
    I don’t know.
    Could he tell her the truth?
    Did he feel anything?
    O O O
    Carl braced himself as the screen went dark and the house lights slowly brightened. How long ? he wondered yet again. How long before she worked up the nerve—or the anger—to demand answers? Answers that made sense? Answers that she deserved ?
    How long before, unable to answer them, he simply had to walk away?
    Entering the lobby, he saw he had gotten another minuscule reprieve:
    He could barely see the marquis for the sheets of rain.
    “No reason for both of us to get soaked,” he said. “I’ll make a run for the car and bring it around.”
    “You don’t have to—” Shelly began to protest, but he had already snatched the keys from her hand and was plunging into the drenching rain, easing his taut muscles with his long gangling strides, his head ducked low to keep the rain out of his deep set eyes.
    As if on cue, Shelly’s car came into sight half a block