Thanks for the Trouble - Tommy Wallach Page 0,45

in three varieties: swirly and sudsy, sopping and still, or away on vacation.

“One time, I lost an entire hour staring at these things,” Alana said. “They hypnotize you.”

“It looks rather cozy in there,” Zelda said. “Like a bunch of little Jacuzzis.”

We stood in a row in front of the machines, watching them spin. Around and around, like the moon orbiting the earth. Like the earth orbiting the sun. My mind wandered back to what Zelda had said a few minutes ago: I was his first. Was that just another float in her unending Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade of fibs and fabrications, or a statement of intent? Would tonight be different from last night? And why did that thought make me feel at least as anxious as excited?

“Your hand’s sweaty,” Zelda said.

I hadn’t even noticed she’d grabbed hold of it.

“All right, kids,” Alana said. “Duty calls. Let’s make like a couple practicing the rhythm method and pull on out of here.”

WHAT YOU DO AT A MOVIE THEATER, PART II: THE RECKONING

FIRST OFF, YOU ORDER THE tickets on your phone, so you can bypass the ticket office without being seen. It’s a weekend, so the theater is busy enough for you to hide in the crowd. The venue is one of those massive cinema complexes with multiple floors, multiple little video-game arcades, and multiple snack counters. You find Tyler on the very top floor. He’s shoveling popcorn into bags and dousing each one with “butter.” He’s joined there by three other theater employees. One of them has an acne situation that has already colonized his face and neck and appears to have designs on his torso. Another is so overweight that everyone else has to turn to the side to pass her in the narrow alley behind the counter. And the third is an undeniably cute girl. She’s got pink pigtails and wears a lot of green sparkly eye shadow.

You stand at the back of the room and observe. Nothing happens for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then the lobby starts to empty out and you have to retreat to one of the arcades to wait. After another half hour or so (during which you demolish Zelda at a game of air hockey), the room begins to fill up again, so you head back out to the lobby to continue your surveillance. Tyler and the pink-pigtails girl are standing at opposite ends of the counter, but as they converge on the center to deliver a cardboard box of cheese-soaked nachos and an oversize carton of Milk Duds to a man who definitely doesn’t need either one, there’s a look. It only lasts for a second, but both you and Zelda recognize that sort of look, and you give each other a look to communicate the fact that you saw the look and that you both recognize the look. You’re not actually sure how you recognize the look, because it isn’t a look you can remember giving or receiving yourself, but some animal part of you, the same part that senses whether the dog on the chain outside the Starbucks is the kind that will snap at you if you get too close, the same part that can tell whether those dudes coming down the street are worth crossing to the other side for, knows that this look means, We are totally engaging in some kind of sexual activities when we are not in front of people and serving nachos and Milk Duds.

You take your time leaving the theater, because you know Alana will be waiting just outside, and the news you bring her is not good news. When you get there, she hurries across the street to you, and you give her a look that tells her about the look you saw, and she gives you a look that at first you think is going to be the precursor to a sobfest, but then you realize it’s a look that’s like Oh hell no! And then she’s marching back across the street and you’re chasing after her.

“Ticket?” the ticket-taker guy says. Alana stalks right past him. He turns and calls out after her. “Ticket? Your ticket?” His training has not prepared him for this level of insubordination, and you can see he is torn between his responsibility to chase after her and his responsibility to continue taking tickets. A few seconds later she has disappeared over the lip of the escalator. The ticket-taker guy shrugs.

“Oh well,” he says, then turns to you