Once upon a time, when I was younger, Dad and I used to go to the movies.
Like once a week at least when my mom worked Saturdays. It was our day, and we had a ritual. We always got to the theater early enough to see all the previews. We always got one big popcorn to share and two individual boxes of Nerds (our mascot). We always went to the bathroom right before the movie to avoid mid-film emergencies. And when we got inside the theater, we connected straws together so that they could go from the sodas on the floor all the way up to our mouths—that way we would never have to look away. Afterward, we each had to answer two questions.
What was the image from the film that we just couldn’t shake?
And:
How was the last line?
And the Green Street Cinema is where we went the most.
Dad didn’t like the multiplexes. He thought they were soulless and bland. Besides, the Green Street was right down the street from the university where he taught, and everyone knew him there. The concession guys gave him extra butter. And most Saturdays I got in free. “If that kid can sit through Das Boot,” the cashier once said, “it’s on the house.” I started volunteering there before I was old enough to work, and even before that, I hung around while Dad did his college film screenings.
I would watch him from the back row as he gesticulated in front of the screen, saying outrageous things in his lecture about Rear Window, like, “Clearly Hitchcock is taking on impotence here! Right? Look at that phallic cast on Jefferies! But he can’t do anything!” and ignoring the chuckles that followed. His hair was curly and he didn’t get it cut often enough. Mom used to say he looked like the professor from central casting, but it wasn’t quite that bad. He was surprisingly athletic. He played pickup basketball, and once when I went to the college gym, I saw him sink a jump hook from the free-throw line over the outstretched arm of a winded biology professor. It was a thing of beauty.
But still, he never seemed more at home than at the Green Street. It was his home away from home, and especially after he died, it became mine, too. These days I usually came in at eight a.m. only to leave at six or seven that night after every smooshed Milk Dud had been scraped from the floor. I still changed each letter on the antique marquee by hand. And I could feel it in my soul when a spring popped loose on our duct-taped seats.
Which is why my heart nearly stopped when I first held the papers that said we were done. The man holding the papers was from the university’s real estate office, which owned our building. He had a thin beard and a crisp university polo shirt tucked in tight to his slim cut jeans. His eyes were squinty behind a pair of frameless glasses. I looked at the paper on top of the pile, which said:
EVICTION NOTICE
It was written in the largest font I have ever seen. People could probably see it from space.
“What’s this all about?” I asked.
The man looked down at the gigantic words EVICTION NOTICE. Then he looked back at me. Then he told me what this was all about.
The theater was in debt, in excess of $145,000.
Randy had mismanaged the budget very badly over the last five years and had missed a lot of grant deadlines that might have kept us afloat.
Randy had personally loaned his theater over $75,000, guaranteed against the value of the property, but now he was out of money.
This had been a problem for a long time, and why Randy had never told us about it was anyone’s guess.
Barring any ability to pay off the debt in full, the university would be forced to demolish the Green Street to make way for a “Residential/Retail establishment.”
Once he was done telling me very clearly what this was all about, the man looked at my name tag, which read, “Wendy. Manager,” and asked:
“You in charge here, Wendy?”
“I am,” I said.
He smiled.
“How old are you?”
“I am very old,” was my reply.
He squinted at me with his already squinty eyes. Then he looked around the place, as if for the first time. And it might help to know here that the Green Street was last remodeled in 1935. You know, when Franklin Roosevelt was president. It was originally done in an Art Deco style, which should be really cool. Bold colors and wild geometric shapes. But the glamour had faded over the years.
Like literally faded.
We used to have gold wallpaper, but now most of the shine had worn off and it looked like faded tinfoil. The cool old light fixtures hadn’t been wired in years and collected dust on the walls beneath some bad fluorescents. And the concessions counter looked more like an Old Country Buffet than Radio City Music Hall. In short: The Green Street looked like something that used to be awesome, but was now very not-awesome, and possibly full of black mold.
The man took all this in and then turned back to me.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said.
“Free country,” said Griffin from beside me, radiating THC.
I gave him a look. The man’s gaze bounced around the room.
“Does anybody actually come to see movies here?” he asked.
He seemed genuinely curious, like the concept was totally mind-blowing to him. Before I could say anything, though, Lucas chimed in from behind the counter, stuffing a handful of popcorn in his mouth straight from the machine.
“We cater to an elite clientele,” he said. “True cineastes!”
The man looked at Lucas like he had just blown a particularly foul odor in his direction.
“Ah,” he said. “Cineastes.”
My feelings at the moment were tough to pin down. On one hand, I wanted to murder Lucas for being such a pretentious ass. But I also wanted to hug him for being so wholly himself in the face of this dude. I wanted to start crying. But I also didn’t want to show weakness in front of the enemy. Oddly enough, I also felt like going back into the rat closet. Life had been easier in there.
I was supposed to say something now—that much was clear—but I didn’t know what to say. So, I did what I always do when I don’t know what to say: I quoted a movie. I have a lot of them memorized. All those post-movie discussions with dad had carved them into my mind.
Here’s what I came up with:
“Three weeks from now, I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be, and it will be so. If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you’re already dead!”
The man watched me carefully. Then, after a few seconds, he furrowed his sizable brow, and turned around to walk out the door of the theater. At just that moment, however, Sweet Lou, the organ player happened to be showing up for work. She was very old, and quite large, and she walked with an amazing gold-topped cane. And when the polo man opened the door, Sweet Lou wedged herself past him, stomping out her cigarette on the threadbare carpet of the theater in the process.
“Watch it, honcho,” she said.
Then she walked off. The man looked down at the smoldering cigarette butt, then at Lou disappearing into the theater, paying him absolutely no attention. He left the building then without uttering another word. When he was gone, Lucas walked over and stood beside me.
“Was that a line from Gladiator?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “It was.”
“Oh,” he said. “Huh.”
Behind us at the concession stand, the popcorn was starting to burn.