Yesterday was a slightly frantic day of zoom meetings and online repairs. What knocked my legs out from under me in the morning was the realization I’d made an error setting up the online reservation system for the discussion that night, one that prevented some people from reserving.

No great harm was done. Lots of people had managed to sign up anyway, I fixed the problem, and by the end of the day we had over fifty reservations. But it was hard to keep my mind on writing after that.

The event went very well.

Movie nights have always been complicated events. In the time before COVID, I start setting the room up at 3:30 pm. I must arrange the chairs and tables, wipe down the table tops, set out the electric candles, lower the screen, do a test run of the film, connect and test the microphone. If the film’s aspect is wrong, I must fetch a ladder, climb up to the projector, and adjust the lens. Then I must deal with the bar in the back, setting up the wine glasses, making sure we have enough bottles of white and red, chilled juice and sparkling water.

I must pop the popcorn and bag it, which is most time-consuming of all, and sometimes brings people drifting into the room. “That smells so wonderful!” they always say. If they work at the library, or if they are one of our more down-at-heels members (at least two are homeless) I give them a bag without comment. If they are not employees, and well-dressed, I request a one-dollar donation in our jar before handing one over, then tell them, with apologies, the room is closed.

Everything picks up speed. The volunteers arrive, I assign them tasks, go out to say hello to the regulars queuing up in the hallway, ask if they’ve seen the film. At 5:00 or a little after, the curator shows up. At 5:30 pm I open the doors to the cafe and let everyone in.

6:00 pm. The program starts. The curator talks about the film for a few minutes. I go to the podium. “Please remember to turn off all cell phones or portable devices…”

Expectant silence. I turn on the projector. I start the movie. I signal anyone standing by the doorway, to turn off the lights. I’m always nervous about technical glitches.

Once, years ago, the film would simply not start, and the screening was pushed back 45 minutes while I frantically pointed and clicked the remote, then leafed through the manual. The projector had overheated.

(I had no ladder back then, and later I got a tongue-lashing from our IT person because I was suspected of allowing a member to stand on a chair and push the projector’s “on” button manually. “That is unacceptable if it’s true. The projector is library equipment!” said our computer guy, who is 5 foot nine and who always went home at 4:30 pm on Friday. “Only employees can touch it!”

( I thought, but didn’t say out loud, “I’m five foot two. I was here, and if-I-did-that-and-I’m-not-saying-I-did, the member who might or might not have pushed that button was tall. Where were you?“)

The new projector we put in four years ago works fine. The opening credits and sound begin. I wait until the theme music has stopped and the dialogue starts, adjust the volume up or down, hurry out at a crouch so I don’t block the screen, go to the back of the dark room, listen, then three times out of ten, hurry back to the front and adjust the volume some more. When I’m satisfied it’s perfect I go behind the bar.

That doesn’t mean I relax and enjoy the film. We use DVDs. Will it skip? Will everything grind to a stop? Will I have to turn on the lights, take the damned thing out, wipe it down and try again? A single flicker, one scene that seems too motionless for a second too long, and I’m biting my nails for the rest of the movie. Are the lamps in the projector all working? One went out once, and though nobody else noticed that yellowish smear in the upper right corner of the screen, I spent all of A Streetcar Named Desire wanting to bang my head on the bar.

The last scene begins, I discreetly slip out, wait for the music to rise over the end credits, another crouching scuttle to the podium. Turn down the volume slowly, as someone turns on the lights and the curator steps to the front of the room. At a signal from him, I turn off the projector.

I rarely listen to the salon because I’m busy helping to clean up in the back, or shushing people who talk too loudly and drown out the discussion, or toting up the donations. All talk has to end by nine, which is when the building closes. We’ll get a pained email from the cleaning crew if we go much longer than that. At 8:40 pm, I stand in the back and wave five fingers at the curator. At 8:45 pm, I make the vertical/horizontal “time-out” gesture, and he ends the conversation.

Everyone files out. Last bit of tidying up in the bar, raise the screen, raise the blinds, put the microphone and DVD away, water the plants, start the dishwasher. If I changed the lens of the projector, I must fetch the ladder again, climb up, put it back to normal so if someone does a Power Point presentation on Monday they won’t have to adjust it.

For this, I spent six years at university.

I’m rarely out the door before 9:30 pm. When Michael was curating, we’d walk home together through downtown SF on a Friday night, edging around street musicians, gaggles of young people on their way to clubs, and clots of older tourists on their way back from shows to their hotel bars. We would talk about what went right and what went wrong during the movie. Now I walk home alone, which is a bit lonelier but more restful.

Thus has gone most of my Friday nights.

Until the pandemic.

I wrote most of the above in present tense, which, of course, is wrong. That’s in the past now, and even if and when we start events again at the library itself, I doubt it will be the same.

Last night our members, who had watched Room at the Top last night at their leisure on Kanopy, showed up only for the discussion on Zoom. I saw a few familiar faces, but more than half the attendees are now non-members, and some clicked in from other states, Illinois, North Carolina, Florida… Now my job is to manage the discussion, watching everyone in gallery view, quickly un-muting those the curator calls on, then muting them again after they’ve made their comment or asked their question. I feel like an old fashioned switchboard operator.

It went well last night. The comments were good, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, though they had to pop their own popcorn and pour their own wine. Michael made a cameo appearance and waved at everyone to applause, but sensibly stayed in the background while the present curator ran the discussion.

No walk home this time. It ended 7:00 pm, the time I would normally be leaning on my elbows in the back of the dark room, listening for talkers and coughers to shush or hand cough drops/water, and keeping my eye on the screen.

Shortly after we all waved goodbye and I closed the zoom session, a neighbor telephoned us.

She felt sick. No, not the symptoms associated with the CV-19, but an old problem that had cropped up, worse than ever, not life threatening but painful. In fact, it had never been this bad before. We took turns talking to her, questioning her. She lives by herself, just around the corner, just one of three remaining tenants in a building that’s been largely emptied by her A-hole landlord, who wants to flip it and for months has been filling the place with clouds of dust and the sound of hammers. She tried to minimize it, but it was plain to me that she was frightened and in a lot of pain.

Michael and I conferred, and agreed that Michael would walk down the hill to a pharmacy and pick up a couple of remedies for her, which he’d hand off at her front door.

She promised him she’d text us later last night, but never did. (That’s not unusual.) She is a late sleeper, and at noon today, we are going to call her. I’m not going to feel okay about this until I hear from her.