In the lull preceding the start of the magnificent "Underworld," the 1927 silent crime drama set to a live band, I was telling Matt and Chloe about the crane that fell on a midtown Manhattan building that afternoon, killing four. They were rightfully horrified, but my story wasn't even done before this forty-something in the row ahead of us in our shitty seating section on the balcony interrupted and asked me to repeat myself. I obliged and, as soon as the word "midtown" escaped my lips, she nearly screamed out, "Midtown where?! Like, near the Village?!"

Appalled by this total lack of geographical knowledge but willing to forgive it because we were in Somerville, MA, I began to explain that Greenwich Village is four or five miles from midtown. She became more scared at this prospect and wondered loudly if this accident had happened anywhere near Lincoln Center. I assured her that it had happened on the east side, and that I was sure that anyone that she knew was just fine. She didn't appear to hear my assurance, but instead stared into space for a moment, absorbed in her own world.

Enough time passed that it became socially acceptable for one of the three of us to start a new conversation, confident that this woman would stay out of it. Chloe had begun telling Matt and I about an interesting fact that she had found in the program, something about Underworld being the main inspriation for the 1930's original "Scarface," which Al Pacino starred in the remake of decades later, when the woman turned around and interrupted her mid-sentence: "How does my hair look? I'm not too old to have it up, am I? You can tell me if I am. Should I have it up or down? Does it look alright if I sweep it behind my ears, or should I have it hang in front? Go ahead, you can tell me."

Not only did I not want to tell her that her hair looked equally ratty and gray no matter how she had it, I had no desire to sugarcoat that into something more tactful. Chloe saved the day, or so we thought, with: "Oh, it looks fine either way, but you should wear it up." I was still confused as to why this old lady was talking to us, but decided that she was harmless.

I finally took the opportunity, when custom permitted, to finish the story about the crane disaster. The bar on the ground floor of the leveled townhouse in eastern midtown was called Fubar. To a mild and morbid chuckle, I utter under my breath that Fubar is fubar.

The lady begins noticeably contemplating the ramifications of this revelation. After a few moments, just as we three teenagers practicing the ways of society were about to begin another line of conversation, and even slightly surpassing the subconscious cutoff where it is suddenly rude to speak up, she says, “Well, you know, Fubar, if you spell it backwards is rabuf, right? And rabuf, you know, the French, they call beef ‘beouf’ so ra-beouf, right? It must mean something.”

Realizing that she must be making a poorly constructed Francophobia joke, I and my thoroughly French companions chuckle mildly at the apparent attempt at humor. Without judgment, I tell her the meaning of Fubar as an acronym: Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. She doesn’t register this. Suddenly I realize where her line of thought is bringing her, a split second before the inevitable conclusion falls from her lips.

“Did you hear about the French documentary makers who were there when the twin towers got hit and had pictures of the whole thing? They must’ve been there for a reason… you know? I’d bet they were up to something….” She trailed off.

At this point, there was no stopping her.

“Because I know French; I’m fluent in French and when I was younger I lived in Michigan and we had this girl in our house that came from France and she was able to go to the university of Michigan because she lived with us… she was my house-sister for four years and I’d stay up with her all night just talking. These days we don’t hear a word from her, not even on Christmas. You’d think that since we let her have an American education she’d be a bit grateful and give me a call on Christmas but no, not since she was married.”

She paused for effect.

“And I know that she knows that I call her in France because she changed her phone and now when I call it says that it’s been disconnected. Ever since she stole her husband from me. Now she won’t call back.”

The three of us exchanged glances, filling in the gaps in this story with eye contact.

“So you see, if course, why I’m a little bit suspicious of the French,” she said airily, with a tone that belonged at a cocktail party. “What was she doing here, anyway? Probably earning American money and spending it in Paris.”

Chloe piped up again with a half-hearted “you shouldn’t not trust all French people because of one experience…” but she kept talking through this. I started hearing her again just as she said, “You know, my house-sister had a kind of a Jewish look to her. She looked Jewish. Brown hair, you know? She was probably spending money in France that she stole from America for the Four Pillars of Finance. You know about them, right? Four Pillars of Finance, yeah,” she concludes, as if we’d answered in the affirmative.

“You know what they did to the Towers. Probably hired those French documentary workers, too. Four Pillars of Finance. Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’re trying to have a conversation here,” Chloe says through partially gritted teeth.

“Oh yeah, sure,” she responds, and says nothing else for the rest of the night.

It is worth mentioning, as an afterthought, that as more and more people filed into the theater, every once in awhile she would get really happy to see one of them and stand up, waving frantically. No one came to meet her, and she sat alone.