This Light Between Us by Andrew Fukuda

Author:Andrew Fukuda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

35

JANUARY 24, 1943

Alex is watching a movie when a strange feeling comes over him.

He’s in a converted mess-hall-turned-movie-theater with several dozen other viewers. In the warmer months when the night is balmy and stars shine overhead, movies are shown in a firebreak between blocks. Hundreds lay their blankets on the ground and watch Road to Zanzibar or Here Comes Mr. Jordan or Sweater Girl on a screen as large as a drive-in screen. But in the winter, movies are moved indoors.

Alex is sitting beside Sandy Soto, a girl who had unexpectedly spoken to him that morning in church just as service ended.

“Want to see a movie tonight?” She was in the pew in front of his, returning a Bible to its holder. Her large eyes were on his.

“Me?”

She straightened her back. “Come on. Alex.”

“Huh? What?”

She blew the bangs out of her eyes. “This is awkward enough, a girl asking out a guy. But we’re in the middle of a desert with absolutely nothing to do. What excuse could you possibly think of?”

Not a single one, apparently. Because hours later, with the sun beginning to set outside, he finds himself seated next to her. The “theater” is crowded, surprisingly so. Alex had expected the place to be half-full at best. But almost every chair is taken.

Perhaps people are simply stir-crazy from being cooped up in their barracks for weeks on end. After the riot, the city of ten thousand ground to a halt. Martial law was imposed. Schools were shut down for over a month. Children were forced to remain indoors by nervous parents. People refused to report to work, and basic services came to a screeching stop. Barracks stayed dark at night.

But maybe that is coming to an end, Alex thinks, looking around. The young can take confinement for only so long.

The opening credits of the movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, begin to roll. When Maureen O’Hara’s name appears in the opening credits someone yells out, “Ohara? She’s Japanese?” And there is group laughter, the first such sound in weeks.

The movie, to Alex’s surprise, lures him in. He’s mesmerized by the scenes of Paris even though he knows the movie was likely shot on some Hollywood soundstage. Sucked into the screen, he’s transported from the dust-ghetto of Manzanar to the bell tower of the Notre Dame cathedral. Even in black-and-white, Paris is beautiful. The city of lights. The city of splendor. The city of dreams. Of love. The city of Charlie Lévy. He can almost smell its air, feel its cobblestones beneath his feet.

By the time the hunchback rages to Maureen O’Hara, “I’m not a man, I’m not a beast, I’m as shapeless as the man in the moon!” Alex has all but forgotten his immediate surroundings. He’s in Paris.

It’s at that moment … he feels an odd sensation. A tingle at the base of his spine.

Onscreen a man is laying almost atop Maureen O’Hara, their lips scandalously close, an inch from touching. She whispers, Say again you love me.

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