Chapter V: The Too Little, Too Late Night Shift

The Too Little, Too Late Night Shift

 

            The last set was over and I wanted out.  But the concession stand needed its daily pampering.  I loathed cleaning that stand after a busy day.  It only took about an hour, but that’s an hour that I could have been doing anything else other than taking apart a soda tower or brushing out a popcorn warmer.  Thankfully, the new kid, Keith O’Malley, was washing the popper when I got behind the stand.  Finally, someone who took some initiative around there other than Jen Fisher and me.  But who’s kidding who, I knew he’d become a lazy bum after he got his first paycheck.  Happens with all the mollycoddled Catholic school kids whose parents forced them to get a job to learn about “responsibility.”  Such bullshit.

 

Try working thirty six hours over the weekend while putting in as much time as possible during the week while attending school full-time and on then your one afternoon off running around to four different grocery stores (because there’s always that one item on the list that the previous three stores didn’t have in stock) to get two hundred items (half of which will never be used) and then being expected to pick up a whining three-year-old sister from daycare who already decided she hated your mere existence and then running home to cook dinner, write a paper on the historical significance of the Battle of Thermopylae, and then hopefully getting the chance to catch a “Whose Line is it Anyway?” rerun before passing out in your bottom bunk.

 

“Responsibility?” Please.  You just do it because you love your family.  Even though it seems they don’t appreciate or comprehend all you do for them.  But I guess you don’t appreciate or comprehend all they do for you.

 

I figured Keith had it fairly easy.  He passed for a typical smart a*s at times, but smartasses often get along.  I felt it was time to frivolously banter a bit to waste away the time.

 

            “F****n’ Pastry!  Why the hell are you still here?”

 

            The things you say after working a twelve hour shift.  The Jester Mob doles out nicknames to all the social employees who don’t get offended easily.  Joe Nicholson was simply known as Mr. Nicholson because he started the whole idea of the Mob.  Just another way to pass time and talk smack.  Joe nicknamed me the “Boston Butcher” because I went to Boston University and he took simple delight in alliteration.  Bud “The Texan Trojan” Costigan had never been to Texas and thought “Trojan” only referred to the brand of condoms.  I bestowed upon him the name because of his everyman’s sensibility and my assumption that his burgeoning muscle mass came from supernatural or at least unnatural means.  He said the pills were fore his asthma.  I told him to be careful his asthma didn’t shrink his nuts down to the size of popcorn kernels.

 

I’m not sure how Jen Fisher got the name “Code Orange” but it suited her well.  Whereas I worked hard when I felt like it, Jen outshone the neon lights behind the stand due to the intense energy she exuded while filling orders.  Jen barely said a word, but we knew she was the best worker there.  I think she wore three “Jester Associate of the month” pins at the time I started working for the theater.  I got that recognition my second month there.  But everyone who stayed at least six months eventually got it since the crew only reached twelve members in strength at its summer peak.

 

Ted Sloan was the “the banker.”  I didn’t care for Ted that much.  He asked me once for Cameron’s phone number.  I guess he should have checked his sources and not have relied on the Jester Drama Gossip Vine.  He said he heard we broke up.  But even then, was his action excusable?  Who would ask a guy for a girl’s number after they had been in a serious year long relationship?  I guess when you’re the snobby son of a Jeweler making money off of African blood diamonds—such an action seems perfectly kosher.

 

Keith O’Malley didn’t’ have a nickname until that night.  From then on, he was “Keith “the Pastry” O’Malley.  I had never been more proud of myself.

 

“Did you just call me a f*****g pastry?”

 

“Yea, I guess I did.  And you better get used to it because that’s your new call sign.”

 

“Are you serious?  Pastry?  Jesus, Zach, that’s gonna ruin my life!”

 

Keith still had some growing up to do.  I don’t think he realized the hilarity that would occur in coming months generated by the generous gift of such a humiliating nickname.

 

When I had finished windex-ing the counters, Jeff sent me off to do the last round of theater checks before I could clock out and finish watching the movie Seth and Cameron went to see.  Theater checks require two skills—the ability to walk and the ability to carry a flashlight.  A theater worker grabs a flashlight, walks down the theater aisle, and then leaves.  During these checks, one should check to make sure that the screen is focused properly, the temperature feels comfortable, and the exits remain free from obstructions.  In other words, it gives the usher a chance to watch two or three minutes of a movie on the clock.  Every once in a while you get to entertain yourself by throwing thirteen year-olds out of “R” rated movies, but most of the time it’s just getting paid to walk in a circle.

 

I had to move a little faster that night to get all the theater checks done before some of the movies started to let out.  I went to the smaller theaters first.  I was not surprised to find everything in safe, working order.  I turned on my flashlight and walked into theater seven which was playing a crappy kids movie called How to Eat Fried Worms.  I didn’t remember selling any tickets to that movie, but decided to at least poke my head in.  To this day, I wish I had just walked past that rattlesnakes’ nest of a theater.

 

Seth and Cameron were in the front row of the theater and they were not watching the movie.  They were full-on-mostly-naked-hard-f*****g during the middle of a goddamned kid’s movie.  Seth must have flung Cameron’s lavender blouse a good four rows back leaving her faultless flailing breasts exposed to the silver-blue hue emanating out from the screen. Five minutes before I might have been fanaticizing about a situation like that—but Seth had no place in my fantasies.  I’m not sure how many curse words, slurs, and insults I lambasted at them as soon as the theater door closed.  Seth and Cameron got the message expediently.  I roared at them to get out and to never talk to me again.  How many movies had they been to in their lives?  Didn’t they ever notice the depressed guy sauntering down the aisle with the flashlight seemingly there only to serve as a distraction from their movie-going pleasure?

 

They busted out of the theater blouse-less and pant-less through the emergency exit door that led to the parking lot.  I had never suspected anything.  It’s not like it was a common occurrence for them to go to a movie together without me.  Perhaps Seth’s years of frustration finally culminated in a senseless display of sexual intentions or maybe Cameron just had enough of my constant absence and directed her passion at the only other guy who seemed to understand her.

 

            I could care less.  From then on they were out of my life.  Never before had I felt that a life line connecting me to mental and emotional safety had been severed with betrayal’s serrated blade.

           

            I left the theater and pulled out an usher schedule out of my pocket.  I wrote Cameron’s phone number down on the back and threw it at Ted Sloan who was decidedly not busy emptying a trash can as slowly as possible.  I told Jeff to tell Ted to finish up theater checks and that I forgot that I needed to get home before mid-night to do something for my parents.  He let me go.

 

I punched out and waved good-bye as I walked through the side door into the parking lot.

 

Never before or since had I considered what I considered that night as I drove the Saab back up Snark Road. The cliffs to my left, the damned aluminum guard rail and the cliffs to my left.