My sister arranges for another babysitter so I can go see the opera she's starring in. I'm to meet her friend Cindy at the door of the State Theatre and give her the other ticket. While I wait for her I amuse myself by scanning the crowd. One woman has come for the All Hallows Eve Eve performance wearing a black and orange feather boa. A whole pack of priests arrives, six or seven Roman collars. I idly wonder what the appropriate collective noun would be until it hits me that, of course, I should call it a mass of priests.
Then Cindy appears. She took lessons at the same time my sister did in Chicago; currently she's the soprano understudy at the Met and that's what's brought her to town. Opera singers have complicated social lives but they are bound to run into each other every so often. Cindy is petite, pretty, vivacious, highly outgoing, the sort of person I take to immediately. We make opera-related small talk (I can fake it with the best of them) and I anticipate a pleasant evening.
Before we go in she says, "I need to call my husband. We've been having problems with our internet access and I should check in." She flips open a cell phone and dials. I wait. "Hi...Angela says the first act is an hour and 45 minutes. Should I call back at intermission and walk you through the setup?...No, what?...I haven't heard anything, what have you heard?...Madison Square Garden? Not far enough."
I look at her. "What is it?" I ask.
She looks at me, her eyes wide and serious. She speaks into the phone with a sudden note of authority in her voice. "Okay. In that case, I'll grab them both and get the hell out of here."
"What happened?" I croak. She just clutches my arm, this woman I've never met, and says into the phone, "It's a stone building, would that help? Wouldn't it have to be lead-lined?"
For a horrible, horrible thirty seconds while