A Night at the Movies Or, You Must Remember This by Robert Coover

Author:Robert Coover
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Fantasy, General, Short stories, Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction
ISBN: 9781564781604
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 1997-03-15T23:14:15+00:00

One Moment While the Operator Changes Reels

Intermission

The lights come up and a thin curtain covers the screen, but the sign behind it telling everyone to please visit the concession stands in the lobby while they're getting ready for the next feature can still be seen, and the ripply picture on it of a huge drippy banana split, which they don't even sell as far as she knows, makes her stomach rumble loud enough to give a zombie hiccups, so she decides to go out and see what she can find with less than six zillion calories in it. Her friend, who's flirting with some broken-nosed character a row back in a high school letter jacket and sweaty cowboy hat, turns and asks her jokingly to bring her back a salty dog - "Straight up, mind!" - making the guy snort and heehaw and push his hands in his pockets.

In the lobby, there's a line for everything - candy, soft drinks, popcorn, cigarettes, ice cream, even the water fountain. The soft drinks line is the shortest so she gets in it, though the smells of minty chewing gum, chocolate, and hot butter are driving her crazy. She feels like she's caught in that Chinese torture movie where they locked this guy in a steel collar with his arms tied behind him and left his food two inches from his mouth until he finally strangled himself to death trying to get at it. Her unhappy turn complains again and she grabs a fistful and squeezes it just to remind herself why she's being so mean to it.

At almost the same moment, some creep behind her, as though to say and that ain't all, kid, grabs a handful of what her girlfriend calls her holey altar - "You just kneel down and kiss it, honey!" she likes to say - numb from so much sitting, but not so numb she doesn't go lurching into the smart-alecky young schoolkids in front of her, setting off a lot of sniggering insults, mostly about her bosom, which is among more adult audiences usually her best feature. She turns to scowl at the masher behind her, but there's no one there. Instead, over by a movie poster advertising a sexy religious epic, there's this dazzling guy, all class and muscle, a real dreamboat, as they used to say in her favorite musicals, looking somehow heroic and vulnerable at the same time, and dressed in clothes they don't even sell in a town like this - and he's staring straight at her! She's almost sure she recognizes him from somewhere, not from this dump of course, it would have to be from some movie - like possibly he was a private eye with a tragic past or a great explorer or an alcoholic or a happy-go-lucky guy who gave his life for the woman he loved, something like that. Maybe even a half-naked martyr from that religious opus behind him, a show, if so, she wouldn't want to miss, much as she admires his present wardrobe.

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