Some Other Town by Elizabeth Collison

Author:Elizabeth Collison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Picnic

How good to see Ben again? Did I just say that? Oh I really must go now and find him. Ask “Ben, what is wrong?” Are you all right? Do you think we could both be all right again?

Soon enough, I think. Right after work, I will go right after work. But just now I need more to focus, as there is not much time left for my plan. What I need to do is not reminisce but understand about Ben and me, specifically how it went wrong. It is important to think through that part, what led to this winter’s discord and Ben’s subsequent, hasty retreat. So that when I find Ben, I will know what exactly to look out for. I will know how to keep him safe, how to keep him closer to home. I won’t make the same bad choices.

So then, a little more still about Ben and me. About that night we went to the movies, that is, when it all began to unravel.

As I’ve mentioned, normally Ben and I did not go out together in public. We kept it to his house or mine. And it is how we would have continued, we would have stayed home drinking our coffee and tea or sitting around in the grass. But then, more or less by accident, I invited Ben out to a movie. It was a lapse in judgment on my part. We would probably not have had the problems we’ve had, specifically Ben’s disappearance, if we had not gone to that movie.

This is what I am getting to.

One day late last fall I read in the paper that the Bijou was showing Picnic, starring, as luck would have it, my most favorite actor, William Holden. He is a specialty of mine, I have an unreasonable crush on him. I study his every move on screen, his lanky long stride and secret half smile, the lazy assured look to his eyes. I try to see all of his movies.

And so when I read about the Bijou showing Picnic, circa 1955, in which William Holden starred but with sizable reservation, a movie I had not had the chance yet to see, I dialed up Ben Adams immediately. “Oh we must go, we must go,” I said into the phone, urgent and going on shrill. “Tonight, Ben, it’s showing just tonight.”

“Margaret,” Ben said, “take it easy.” But when I pointed out again it was just this one night, well OK, he agreed. We’d meet there.

But now, in the dark, it is a mistake, this movie, from almost the beginning I know. It is no wonder William Holden had his doubts. William Holden is older than my father by one year, born in April 1918. Which means at the time they were shooting Picnic he was almost thirty-eight years old, playing Hal, a carefree young drifter, opposite Kim Novak’s nineteen-year-old Madge. There’s no denying William Holden feels out of place and I am reminded of Sunset Boulevard, another of his starring films.

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