Page 20 of The Second Chance Cinema
10
The next Saturday night, they found the cinema open again.
Round marquee bulbs hummed around the title—The Story of You—and cast a welcoming glow over the alley. Ellie peeked through the doors. The chandelier gleamed without a speck of dust in sight. Outside, the ticket boy was perched at the booth wearing his familiar white uniform and apathy. “That’ll be ten dollars,” he said, pulling the second movie ticket from each of their labeled boxes.
“Can we talk to the manager?” Drake asked as he gathered the bills from his wallet. “Before we watch.”
The ticket boy fumbled around his desk for a pack of gum. He pulled one of the sticks out, set it between his teeth, and folded the silver wrapper into a sloppy 747. Eventually, he offered a heavy nod. “I’ll have Natalie find you inside,” he said, the echo of the speaker amplifying his annoyance.
Natalie wasn’t who Ellie expected. She readied herself for another surly teenager or video store clerk who moonlit at a vintage theater. The person who surfaced behind the concession counter was a generation older than them and had the confident build of a stunt woman. She was ready to fight fires and villains in a billowing gold suit. The only thing interrupting all the gold was regal, wavy gray hair leading to a name tag that readNatalie, with a customizable section beneath the name where she’d written “Ask me about the beach.”
“I heard you were looking for the manager?” Natalie asked. When she stepped out from behind the counter, Ellie’s focus moved to her shoes. Natalie was wearing, along with the gold suit, a pair of white Chuck Taylors pulled fresh from the box.
They waited a beat too long to answer her question. Drake was stalling. Ellie was supposed to tee this discussion up, it seemed. Where could she possibly begin? “We were just curious about … you know,” was where she landed.
“Yeah, I hear ya.” Natalie sighed with her whole body, as if accepting her role in a fight sequence she’d ultimately leave unscathed. Another truck on fire, another damsel in distress, another day. “I know it’s not great.”
“What isn’t great?” Drake asked.
“The popcorn.” Natalie glanced over her shoulder to face the popcorn in question. The ticket boy had moved inside and was in the middle of preparing a fresh batch. He poured hot microwaved butter sauce over the kernels in a practiced zigzag. “It’s an old machine and it comes with a lot of quirks. We think it might have belonged to a carnival in a past life.” Ellie noticed some soft music emerging from the machine. It had the light tinkle of an ice cream truck.
“The popcorn is fine,” Ellie said. “I mean, we haven’t tried it, but I’m sure it’s good.” She could feel Drake’s questions becoming more imminent.
“Phew. That’s good to hear. I get riled up about the popcorn.” Natalie propped her elbows on the counter behind her and leaned back, like she was still at the beach, with imaginary palm trees swaying above her toned arms and calves. Ellie guessed Natalie didn’t worry about things like sweat, bugs, time-share presentations. “Well, what is it then? Is it the picture quality?”
Drake was about to burst. “We need to know why your movie theater is playingour lives. And why it only opens for us. Andhow it looks completely worn down one moment and then minutes later—”
“Okay. Wow.” Natalie nodded.“Lots of questions.” She tapped on her name tag. “You know what’s great about the beach? Almost no questions. What was not great about the beach was the lobster. You’d think they’d do lobster well, being by the water, but it was fishy.Fishy.” Natalie curved back behind the counter to grab a nibble of the popcorn from the silver pail. “Uh-huh,” she said, munching on a few kernels. Her face scrunched up, confirming her earlier assessment. “Speaking of fishy, you were too nice about this popcorn.” She turned her attention to the ticket boy. “Not your fault, bud.”
“The popcorn is fine!” Ellie and Drake insisted, in unison. Natalie drowned her sorrows with a shot of generic cola. After a sip, she smiled, wandered out from behind the counter and spread her hands like she was finally about to reveal something.
“Let’s chat.”
She waved for them to follow as she strode across the lobby and up the grand steps of the right-side stairwell, leading to a second level. They were climbing a towering, tiered cake. “By now, you’ve probably figured out that this movie theater isn’t like other movie theaters you’ve visited,” Natalie acknowledged. “We only open for one movie every Saturday at midnight, and that isThe Story of You.”
“Yeah, we’ve noticed,” Drake snapped. His need for information was insatiable.
“The Story of You,” Natalie said,“is a movie that combines the memories of its audience.”
“Why are we the audience?” Drake asked.
Natalie paused halfway up the stairs and leaned forward to examine the subtext of their relationship, reading them less like an eye chart and more like a crystal ball. She didn’t seem to find whatshe was looking for. “Well, maybe there’s something you need to revisit. From your past. Something that’s keeping you from moving forward?”
“No,” Drake said, lightning fast.
Absolutely, Ellie thought. She swallowed and changed the subject to a less loaded one. “What about the tickets?” she asked. “Why are there only ten showings? I mean, watching someone’s memories could be never-ending.”
They were on the move again. At the top of the second level, Natalie peered over the banister. She seemed proud of the place, more the impassioned tour guide, less the employee. They were eye level with the chandelier. Each individual strand of soaring jewelry sparkled. Ellie joined her in appreciative silence, but Drake refused to settle down. He was a ball of chaos.
Natalie stepped back from the railing. “Have you ever seenMiss Congeniality 2?”
“Armed and Fabulous,” Drake filled in.
“Right. Well, inMiss Congeniality 2, you don’t see boring parts of Sandra Bullock’s day, do you?”
“What?” Ellie and Drake asked, in unison, again.
“You see all the high stakes, right? But not once do you see Sandra reading the back of a cereal box to find out the iron content.”
