Connie Willis - At The Rialto

He had managed to maneuver me over behind the display of Academy Award winners. It was an accordionlike wrought-iron screen. I was in the fold between 1944 and 1945.

“And as if that isn’t enough, you suddenly realize you’re standing in the courtyard. You’re not even in the theater.”

“And that’s what you think is happening in quantum theory?” I said weakly. I was backed up into Bing Crosby, who had won for Best Actor in Going My Way. “You think we’re not in the theater yet?”

“I think we know as much about quantum theory as we can figure out about May Robson from her footprints,” he said, putting his hand up to Ingrid Bergman’s cheek (Best Actress, Gaslight) and blocking my escape. “I don’t think we understand anything about quantum theory, not tunneling, not complementarity.” He leaned toward me. “Not passion.”

The best movie of 1945 was Lost Weekend. “Dr. Gedanken understands it,” I said, disentangling myself from the Academy Award winners and David. “Did you know he’s putting together a new research team for a big project on understanding quantum theory?”

“Yes,” David said. “Want to see a movie?”

“There’s a seminar on chaos at nine,” I said, stepping over the Marx Brothers. “I have to get back.”

“If it’s chaos you want, you should stay right here,” he said, stopping to look at Irene Dunne’s handprints. “We could see the movie and then go have dinner. There’s this place near Hollywood and Vine that has the mashed potatoes Richard Dreyfuss made into Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters.”

“I want to meet Dr. Gedanken,” I said, making it safely to the sidewalk. I looked back at David. He had gone back to the other side of the courtyard and was looking at Roy Rogers’s signature.

“Are you kidding? He doesn’t understand it any better than we do.”

“Well, at least he’s trying.”

“So am I. The problem is, how can one neutron interfere with itself, and why are there only two of Trigger’s hoofprints here?”

“It’s eight fifty-five,” I said. “I am going to the chaos seminar.”

“If you can find it,” he said, getting down on one knee to look at the signature.

“I’ll find it,” I said grimly. He stood up and grinned at me, his hands in his pockets. “It’s a great movie,” he said.

It was happening again. I turned and practically ran across the street.

“Benji IX is showing,” he shouted after me. “He accidentally exchanges bodies with a Siamese cat.”

I couldn’t find the chaos seminar. The Clara Bow Room, where it was supposed to be, was empty. A meeting of vegetarians was next door in the Fatty Arbuckle Room, and all the other conference rooms were locked. The channeler was still in the ballroom. “Come!” she commanded when I opened the door. “Understanding awaits!” I went upstairs to bed.

I had forgotten to call Darlene. She would have left for Denver already, but I called her answering machine and told it the room number in case she picked up her messages. In the morning I would have to tell the front desk to give her a key. I went to bed.

I didn’t sleep well. The air conditioner went off during the night, which meant I didn’t have to steam my suit when I got up the next morning. I got dressed and went downstairs. The programming started at nine with Abey Fields’s Wonderful World workshop in the Mary Pickford Room, a breakfast buffet in the ballroom, and a slide presentation on “Delayed Choice Experiments” in Cecil B. DeMille A on the mezzanine level.

The breakfast buffet sounded wonderful, even though it always turns out to be urn coffee and donuts. I hadn’t had anything but an ice-cream cone since noon the day before, but if David was around, he would be somewhere close to the food, and I wanted to steer clear of him. Last night it had been Grauman’s Chinese. Today I was likely to end up at Knotts’ Berry Farm. I wasn’t going to let that happen, even if he was charming.

It was pitch-dark inside Cecil B. DeMille A. Even the slide on the screen up front appeared to be black. “As you can see,” Dr. Lvov said, “the laser pulse is already in motion before the experimenter sets up the wave or particle detector.” He clicked to the next slide, which was dark gray. “We used a Mach-Zender interferometer with two mirrors and a particle detector. For the first series of tries we allowed the experimenter to decide which apparatus he would use by whatever method he wished. For the second series we used that most primitive of randomizers—”

He clicked again, to a white slide with black polka dots that gave off enough light for me to be able to spot an empty chair on the aisle ten rows up. I hurried to get to it before the slide changed, and sat down.

“—a pair of dice. Alley’s experiments had shown us that when the particle detector was in place, the light was detected as a particle, and when the wave detector was in place, the light showed wavelike behavior, no matter when the choice of apparatus was made.”

“Hi,” David said. “You’ve missed five black slides, two gray ones, and a white with black polka dots.”

“Shh,” I said.

“In our two series, we hoped to ascertain whether the consciousness of the decision affected the outcome.” Dr. Lvov clicked to another black slide. “As you can see, the graph shows no effective difference between the tries in which the experimenter chose the detection apparatus and those in which the apparatus was randomly chosen.”

“You want to go get some breakfast?” David whispered.

“I already ate,” I whispered back, and waited for my stomach to growl and give me away. It did.

“There’s a great place down near Hollywood and Vine that has the waffles Katharine Hepburn made for Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year. ”

“Shh,” I said.

“And after breakfast we could go to Frederick’s of Hollywood and see the bra museum.”

“Will you please be quiet? I can’t hear.”

“Or see,” he said, but he subsided more or less for the remaining ninety-two black, gray, and polka-dotted slides.

Dr. Lvov turned on the lights and blinked smilingly at the audience. “Consciousness had no discernible effect on the results of the experiment. As one of my lab assistants put it, ‘The little devil knows what you’re going to do before you know it yourself.’ ”

This was apparently supposed to be a joke, but I didn’t think it was very funny. I opened my program and tried to find something to go to that David wouldn’t be caught dead at.

“Are you two going to breakfast?” Dr. Thibodeaux asked.

“Yes,” David said.

“No,” I said.

“Dr. Hotard and I wished to eat somewhere that is vraiment Hollywood.”

“David knows just the place,” I said. “He’s been telling me about this great place where they have the grapefruit James Cagney shoved in Mae Clark’s face in Public Enemy,” Dr. Hotard hurried up, carrying a camera and four guidebooks. “And then perhaps you would show us Grauman’s Chinese Theatre,” he asked David.

“Of course he will,” I said. “I’m sorry I can’t go with you, but I promised Dr. Verikovsky I’d be at his lecture on Boolean logic. And after Grauman’s Chinese, David can take you to the bra museum at Frederick’s of Hollywood.”

“And the Brown Derby?” Thibodeaux asked. “I have heard it is shaped like a chapeau.”