“Huh?”
“You keep saying that,” she said. “It makes you sound far less intelligent than you are. What are you doing right now?”
“I’m looking at chainsaw brochures,” I said.
“Oh, good grief,” she said. “Your cinematic education has a hole in it the size of Lake Michigan, and you’re squandering your precious time on power-tool porn?”
I laughed again. “I am not going to touch that line.”
“Yeah, I know: with a ten-foot pole,” she said. “Stay right there. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“You’re coming here? To my house?”
“Yes. The wonders of MapQuest. And I’m bringing Dr. Strangelove with me. Unless you’d rather I didn’t.”
“No,” I said.
“No, which?”
“No, I wouldn’t rather you didn’t. Yes, I’d rather you did. I mean, please do.”
She hung up without another word, and I found myself staring stupidly at the receiver. Isabella was coming to my house? At nine o’clock at night? To bring me a movie?
I wasn’t sure what else, if anything, to make of it. I’d put on a pair of scrubs after I ate dinner—for some reason I’d always felt silly in pajamas, but scrubs gave me the comfort of PJs without the self-consciousness. Now I changed into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.
Forty-five minutes later, I saw headlights in the driveway, and then the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, I saw that Isabella had a canvas book bag hooked over one shoulder.
“You’re nuts,” I said. “Why didn’t you just hand it to me next time I came to the library to flirt with you?”
“Because I know you’d never get around to watching it if I just handed it to you,” she said. “You’d set it aside and look at bones. Or chainsaw brochures.”
“So you’re not just handing it to me now?”
“Not a chance. We are going to sit down and watch this together.”
“What—now? You’re making me watch this right now?”
“You’ll thank me later,” she said. “Your moral and intellectual development hangs in the balance. Besides, it’s funny as hell. Also scary as hell, because things haven’t changed as much as they should’ve.” She reached into the bag and pulled out a DVD case, which she handed to me. “Okay, you start the movie while I start the microwave.”
“Why are you starting the microwave?”
“To pop the popcorn, of course.” She reached into the bag again and pulled out a pack of Pop Secret. The name made me smile. Or maybe it was the way she wiggled her eyebrows as she wiggled the package. “I brought Diet Coke for you, Original Sin for me.”
I was almost afraid to ask. “Original Sin?”
“Hard cider,” she said brightly. “Apple juice for grown-ups. You should try it sometime.”
“I’ve got Menier’s disease,” I told her. “Occasional vertigo. The last thing I need is something else that makes me dizzy.”
“One bottle of cider would not make you dizzy,” she said. “But no peer pressure. I would never dream of telling you what to do. Now go start the movie.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I pointed her toward the kitchen, and a moment later I heard the microwave beep as she keyed in numbers and hit START. Then, as the FBI copyright warning on the television screen gave way to the film’s opening credits, I heard the staccato fire of corn kernels exploding. Over the noise in both rooms, I called, “Do you want me to pause this?”
“No,” she yelled. “I’ve seen it fifty-seven times. Sit. Watch.”
I sat. I watched the credits roll. “I didn’t know Peter Sellers was in this. I love the Pink Panther movies.”
“He plays three roles in this,” she said from the doorway. “He was originally supposed to play four, but he sprained his ankle and couldn’t do the fourth.”
The film appeared to be in black and white, which seemed odd. “When was this made? I thought color film was invented in the 1930s.”
“In 1964. It’s in black and white to look like the Cold War and civil defense films and whatnot. Now shush! Watch. And marvel.”
I shushed. I watched. And I marveled. Starting with the notion of “mutual assured destruction”—the Cold War strategy that created nuclear arsenals capable of incinerating the planet many times over—the film took the arms race to its logical conclusion, if “logical” can be used to describe a scenario in which one superpower booby-traps the entire planet and the other superpower springs the trap.