Clandestine heaven

popcorn and a coke - it was breakfast time!

When my sons were in lower school, one of my favorite guilty pleasures was to sneak into the city during the day to catch a movie at one of the downtown cinema art houses. My friend Lynn was my partner in crime. We would each drop our kids off at school - for me that would be the Pingry School in Short Hills and for Lynn, McGinn in Westfield - and then we would meet up half way in between at the Starbucks at the Barnes & Noble on Route 22. Two Cafe Mistos with vanilla syrup to go please.

We would take turns driving and we'd cruise through the Holland Tunnel - it being well after rush hour - and park at this little outdoor lot diagonally across Houston from the Angelika, our cinema of choice. It cost $10 to park for the day! With a tip! We always got there way too early for the Soho shops, most of which only opened at noon. So we'd grab some more coffee at the World Cafe and head down to Canal Street and Pearl River Mart and buy a bunch of things we didn't need.

The Angelika always had five or six movies playing at the same time. We usually picked a movie that started around 11:00 am. If one of them was French or Italian, we'd choose that one. But sometimes we would just go by the name or the poster art. Swingers! How bad could it be with a name like that? Answer: we loved it! A cult favorite. Sometimes we would recognize the director. Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Or one of the actors from a previous film we had liked. Mark Rylance in Angels and Insects. It didn't really matter though. The films were always enjoyable - or at least interesting - allowing for ample discussion and dissection on the ride home.

the cinema @ Hyde Park

The Angelika turned over their films often so we always had plenty of choices every time. Lynn was the perfect date for our secret sorties. There was never any pressure over which movie we would choose. It was a lark. It didn't count. Nothing at all like the pressure of the weekly Friday movie date night with your husband where the choice of movie was always a matter of hot contention. "What do you want to see?" "I don't care; what do you want to see?"  Horror? Action? Costume drama? Lynn's and my choices were more like, "Which movie will get us back out on the street by 2:30 at the latest?" Done.

We would each buy a tub of popcorn no butter and a large diet Coke - it was lunchtime! We'd grab a seat on the aisle and disappear into the darkness and another world for a couple of hours while the sun was shining and people were being oh-so-productive outside. It was clandestine heaven! Especially since it was our dirty little secret. Or so we thought. Once, as Lynn's daughter Casey was getting ready for school one morning on one of our NY movie days she asked Lynn innocently what she had on for that day. "Oh nothing," replied Lynn. "Oh, you're meeting Darlene, aren't you?" Casey responded. Dang it, that Casey was always too smart for the room!

After the movie, we'd refill our diet cokes or grab another cafe au lait in Angelika's lobby bistro, dash out of the theater, grab our car in the lot across the street and shoot out the Holland again and back to our rendezvous spot on the Jersey side well before the afternoon rush hour even began. I'd be back in car pool line before 3:00!

Can I get a cafe au lait with vanilla syrup to go ...

We never once missed a car pool deadline. But there was always that chance that one of us might get a flat tire or there would be an accident blocking our timely return to our real life in suburbia. Sure, we had contingency plans just in case, but we never had to initiate them.

Later when our kids were in high school and stayed after school for sports practice and clubs, it became a much less dangerous sortie ... and therefore much less fun! And that great parking lot diagonally across from the Angelika? It's now covered by a high rise condominium. Pearl River Mart? Closing in December. Ah, life goes on. And so it does ... I moved to Joburg after all. I still enjoy going to movies during the day even though I hardly ever do. I don't know why not; it still feels like a mini-vacation from life.

But today I had the chance for a little deja vu moment. Vince was flying back from Cairo into Joburg this morning and I offered to pick him up at the Gautrain station in Sandton on his arrival around noon. As it happens, my daytime cinema group was going to see The Second Best Marigold Hotel at the Hyde Park Shopping Center this morning. We were to meet at the theater at 9:15 for a 9:30 movie. A little early for popcorn and a diet coke but I cannot seem to watch a movie without a tub of popcorn on my lap.

The movie ended at 11:45. Perfectly timed for me to be on schedule to pick Vince up at noon. No longer clandestine, but it still felt so guiltily good!