I should have known the Green Street was doomed the day I discovered the Styrofoam beam. It happened last fall when we were doing a “Westerns on Wednesdays” series. I think Randy hoped retirees might show up to watch their childhood heroes act overly masculine in a dusty landscape. Anyway, Lucas and Griffin were tying licorice ropes into lassos and swapping John Wayne quotes like imbeciles.
“I never apologize,” shouted Lucas. “It’s a sign of weakness!”
He swung his red rope over his head.
“Courage is being scared to death,” yelled Griffin, “but saddling up anyway!”
Lucas was making me film all this on his phone. He was always talking about making a movie, but he never showed us anything he’d actually cut together. He just had endless amounts of footage, mostly on his phone, that he never did anything with. He’d come in with pep in his step some days, talking about an epic he was envisioning.
“It’s going to be a neo-realist thing,” he’d say, “like De Sica, Only about my life. The life of a movie theater worker. Working-class cinema, you know? The plight of an immigrant artist trying to make it in an indifferent capitalist world.”
Other days, he’d look totally dejected and when we’d ask him why, he’d say:
“Frank Capra was right. The cardinal sin of filmmaking is dullness.” Then, he’d sulk off to replace the hand soap in the restrooms.
The day I found the beam, he was aiming a licorice lasso at Griffin’s head. I didn’t have the heart to ask him how this fit in with his movie. But I was filming it dutifully.
“If you’ve got ’em by the balls,” he said, “their hearts and minds will follow. Hiya, Cowpoke!”
He let go of his rope and it soared over Griffin’s head and hit a wooden beam on the ceiling. I followed the flight of the rope with the camera, and so I saw clearly that instead of slamming against the beam and falling back down, there was an explosion of white dust, and the entire beam wobbled and dropped down where it landed, without much sound at all.
“Oh shit,” said Griffin, speaking for all of us.
We all walked over to the fallen beam. There was a healthy chunk missing from it, and inside was pure Styrofoam. The whole beam was painted to look like wood. It was a decorative beam.
“That can’t be good,” said Lucas.
He motioned for me to turn off the camera.
“Styrofoam is really terrible for the environment,” said Griffin.
We all agreed that this was true. And that the best thing to do was to get on a ladder, put it back, and pretend we had never seen just how fragile the bones of our temple really were.
I was staring up at this secret beam when Sweet Lou stepped out of the ladies’ restroom and walked past me. Her dyed red bangs hung over her eyes, and her cane dug into the carpet with each stride. She put a hand to her head and looked out into the fading sunlight then she croaked over her shoulder.
“That asshole’s back.”
And before I had time to respond, she was gone. When I faced the door, there was the squinty man again, outside with a bunch of other men in matching gray suits. He was gesticulating and pointing wildly at things in the neighborhood. A few regular customers had to dodge the group to find their way inside the building for the evening film. At one point, squinty man himself was actually blocking the door.
“Ugh. Ron Marsh,” came a voice from behind me.
I turned around and found Griffin refilling the soda machine with Coke syrup. More than a couple of times in my tenure as manager, I’d caught him syphoning off the syrup into a cup and drinking it straight, which I don’t recommend. It tastes a little like how I imagine sugar would taste if someone scraped the skin off your tongue right before you ate a spoonful.
“What did you say?” I said.
“Ron Marsh,” he pointed outside. “I can’t stand that dude.”
“How do you know his name?”
He blinked.
“Oh, I went to his office, yesterday.”
I nearly fell over.
“What?”
“Yeah, I was going to give him a piece of my mind, but then when I showed up, the secretary was really nice to me, and he wasn’t around. I didn’t think it would be fair to yell at her just because she works for a dildo, so I just came back here.”
Outside, Ron Marsh was laughing at what appeared to be his own joke. The men in suits were also laughing. Griffin watched them.
“I’m sorry, Griffin. What are you saying?”
“Nothing really. The whole thing was kind of a waste of time if you want the honest truth. But yeah, anyway, his name is Ron Marsh and he has a pretty fancy office. There were M&Ms with his initials on them in the waiting room. I ate a green one. It was delicious.”
We both looked out at Ron again.
“Well, he’s standing out there right now,” I said. “If you want to go tackle him or something.”
“No thanks,” he said. “I think my natural state might be pacifism. An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind, you know?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Gandhi said that.”
I started walking toward the door, picking up speed as I went.
“Mahatma Gandhi,” he said.
“I know who Gandhi is!” I said.
I swung the door open, and it breezed right past the back of Ron Marsh’s head, sending his hair straight up in a gust of man-made wind. The group of men in suits took a step back. Ron wheeled around and frowned.
“Can I help you with something, Wendy?” he asked.
I stood looking at him for a moment. Whatever sense of righteous indignation had sent me out there was already wearing off.
“Yes, Ron Marsh,” I said slowly. “As a matter of fact you can. You are blocking the main entrance to my theater, making it difficult for my customers to come inside and watch awesome movies. . . .”
“Your theater?” he said.
I just stared back at him. He did not back down.
“Did you just say this was your theater?”
“Well,” I said. “I mean . . .”
“Oh, no. I’m afraid this is not your theater, Wendy,” he said. “It is the university’s theater. Randy Frick was renting it for a while, but he forfeited that privilege when he stopped paying his bills. And the only reason it’s still open as we speak is because of the capital market.”
“The capital market?” I said. The words tasted unfamiliar in my mouth.
There were a few nods from the suits. Ron exhaled.
“Eventually, you’ll come to realize that there are bigger forces in the world than what you want. In this case, capital. The market wasn’t so great the last few years, so the university took our foot off the gas pedal when it comes to real estate projects. But now the market’s back! So, here we are.”
He winked at the guy next to him.
“Anyway, this theater, no matter who is running it, is a blight on the neighborhood and the campus. You have to know this! Look at it! No one uses it. And it’s already falling apart. I’m sorry that this situation will no longer allow you to make minimum wage while you crack smug jokes with your friends. But that’s the way it goes.”
“A dollar more,” I said.
“I’m sorry . . .”
“I make a dollar more than minimum wage,” I said. “Because I make the schedule. And order the films. And restock the snacks. And I make sure the seats aren’t sticky. I clean them myself. So that when someone comes here to leave the world of capital markets behind, they can watch something strange in a clean seat.”
Ron Marsh was staring at me. The suits were staring at me.
“If you’ll excuse me . . .” he said.
Ron was turning his back on me when the door opened and I heard a familiar smoker’s rasp:
“So, you boys are good with the Historic Preservation Commission, then?”
Sweet Lou stood in the doorway, a cigarette already burning in her thin lips.
“I’m sorry. Who are you?” Ron asked.
Lou waved away his question.
“Before you all get too excited about making your shiny new building, you should know that a nomination has been filed in favor of putting this building on the National Registry. It was built by Liebenberger and Katz.”
There were blank looks all around.
“Liebenberger?” Ron said eventually.
“And Katz,” said Sweet Lou. “Don’t forget about Katz. Real famous. They built theaters all around the country. Most people think Liebenberger was the genius since he was the more famous of the two. But Katz was amazing with acoustics. A real visionary.”
Ron, for the first time, seemed at a total loss for words.
“One thing you boys will have to realize,” said Lou, “is that sometimes there are bigger forces in the world than what you want.”
She coughed and sent her cigarette rocketing over their heads. They watched it whizzing past, and I saw a few men flinch when it hit the ground in an eruption of sparks. Then, Lou held the door open for me and waved me inside. I looked at Ron, desperately trying to think of a stinging parting phrase.
“Yeah, Ron!” I said.
It was the best I could come up with.
Then I walked inside the Green Street and watched all the fancy men stand there another moment before Ron turned and led them down the street. Behind me, Lou was leaning against the concessions counter, chuckling to herself. She pulled a wad of napkins out of the dispenser and wiped her perspiring forehead.
“Whoa, Lou,” I said. “That was kind of amazing. I had no idea about the preservation commission. How did you know all that stuff about the architects?”
She leaned on her cane and watched the lights of the marquee come to life outside. Her brow folded over her narrow eyes.
“Are you kidding me?” she said. “I have no idea who built this place.”
I could feel my smile freezing.
“What do you mean?” I said. “What about Liebenberger and . . .”
“Katz. Those were my boyfriends from Hebrew camp.”
She grimaced and cleared some phlegm from her throat. I knew it was time to stop asking questions, but I couldn’t help myself.
“So, you haven’t really filed a . . . nomination?”
“God no,” she said. “This place is about to collapse. But they don’t know that, do they? Just because an old lady says it, it must be true! It should buy us a little more time, at least.”
Lou released a cough then that sounded like a small pipe bomb going off. And it occurred to me that maybe “a little more time” was all she cared about. She was getting up there, and if she put off the demise of this place a little longer, that might be enough. Me on the other hand: I was hoping for something a little longer term. Lou stepped over and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Sorry I don’t have the answer, kid. But, you know, maybe you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs in this basket anyway.”
I looked at Lou’s callused hand.
“I don’t have any other baskets,” I said.
She stifled another cough and looked me in the eye.
“You’re young. You seem healthy. You’re less of an idiot than most. Tell me: There really isn’t anything else you care about?”