Daily Blague

My tale today of adventure and caprice in Times Square may have one or two boring parts. I seem always to be more interested in the boring parts.

However! Kathleen and I -

No, now I remember. I was going to begin this piece with "When has a prediction about my immediate future ever played through?" I'm always wrong, or proved wrong. If I say that I'm going to do X, you may be sure that Y and Z are more like it. If only we knew.

We were going to meet at the Marquis Theatre for a performance of The Drowsy Chaperone. And we did, only not inside the theatre. By the time we met -

The ticket taker looked askance at me. "Have you already been in?" she asked. I didn't find the question important, although it was. You see, they don't tear off theatre tickets any more. They scan them. I walked into the Marquis and, oh dear, noticed that a woman was sitting in Kathleen's seat.

Ushers were summoned - very nicely. Ticket stubs were examined - with Japanese politeness. Good thing, too: for our tickets are for next Friday.

I was covered in embarrassment. The woman whom I'd asked for proof (that she wasn't sitting in Kathleen's seat) couldn't have been nicer. My new worry was that Kathleen and I had somehow mixed up the dates. That we ought to be in our seats for History Boys instead. Plus, I had to find Kathleen before she, too...

We found one another. I explained the situation. Kathleen was certain that we weren't supposed to be seeing History Boys this evening, and I believed her. We could just go home.

But I said no - we were in the theatre district, it was still ten to eight, and we might find something that would be good to see. Let's just go out into the street, I said. You can do this in New York, I said. Kathleen, who knows only too well that you can do this in New York, was too bewildered by my new spontaneity to object.

I peered down 45th Street. A Chorus Line  - no thanks, even if that's the show that gave me the name that I pasted on Kathleen in the first week of law school - Morales - because she grew up on the north side of 96th Street, a joke that absolutely nobody else in our class got. But "Morales" is a lot easier even for Anglos to say than "Moriarty."

I peered further, and found true gold. "Let's go see Avenue Q!" I cried. "What's Avenue Q?" shouted Kathleen back. She still insists that she knew nothing about the show prior to seeing it.

We paid a lot for our last-minute seats. They were on the aisle, and in the same row as our Drowsy Chaperone tickets.

Which must mean something. We loved Avenue Q. I wept through the whole thing.

"You're not like this," said Kathleen, referring to my having insisted on seeing the show (any show) and then buying the tickets

"Now I am," I replied.