The Night Matinee

It was really, really late at night when I decided to go see a movie. There was a theater about a mile from my house that showed movies all night, though, and charged a very low price for the later showings.

It seemed like a good night to go see a movie. The air was about skin temperature and there was a gentle breeze. Even though it was about 3 am, it looked like twilight. There were beautiful orange and purple clouds above the horizon. The town seemed deserted, though. I saw the occasional car in the distance, but there weren't any people out or lights on in houses. The town was very quiet.

I was much younger than I am now. I didn't have a driver's license, and I was also a little worried about getting into an R-rated movie. I got my bicycle and helmet out of the garage and set off for the theater. I think I was sneaking out. In my pocket I had the movie theater's ad and show times torn from the newspaper. I made a few metal-on-metal noises when I opened the garage door, but other than that there was no sound, natural or artificial.

The theater was neither very close to or very far from my house. It was at a good biking distance. My house seemed to be in the middle of farmland, as though it were outside of town. I rode on the shoulder, right next to crops wet with dew. It felt good to be alive and doing things at this time of night.

I arrived at the movie theater and locked my bike to the bike rack. I had a strange, rigid bike lock. It was about 5 feet long and looped. It wouldn't attach to the bike rack properly at all. I eventually just used it to secure the bike to itself, then hooked the whole mess to a tree. There were trees all around the theater, so I just boosted the bike a little until it hooked on a branch. The tree was bushy enough that it wasn't visible from the ground. The bicycle was very light, but I didn't worry about that. It took several tries to hook the bike on a branch properly.

I went inside the glass doors of the movie theater. The floor was steeply slanted, and it was a long, hard walk up to the concession stand, which was the width of the building. There was no entry but through several doors in the concession stand. The workers there sold tickets as well as the usual food. Once I had purchased a ticket, the clerk pressed a button and a little light went on on top of the waist-high swinging door. It unlocked, and I went through. I don't know what movie I bought a ticket for, and I don't remember the clerk having a face. Just hands.

The lobby was very dim and decorated in dark colors. There were no posters on the walls, and the floor was the brown-red of dried blood. There were a few small chandeliers lighting the path to the theaters proper, as well as strings of tiny white lights around the corners, edges and doorways of the room. The atmosphere was thick with smoke or fog. Although it didn't irritate my lungs, I began taking shallower breaths.

There was no one to take my ticket, but I knew which theater to enter. From four featureless doorways, I chose the third to the right. The opaque door pivoted in the middle to let me in.

I was the first person in the theater. It was eerily silent within. I checked my watch and found I was half an hour early. I wasn't irritated: it's good to plan for extra delays when bicycling somewhere. I decided to go up the stairs and snag myself a balcony seat.

The theater was brightly yet dimly lit, like a high school gymnasium. At first it appeared well-lit, but eye fatigue led to the realization that it was a trick of décor. The seats were hard plastic of a brilliant orange, and the floor was carpeted in very deep green shag rug, at least 3 inches long.

The balcony was a lot nicer. It had black and white checkered linoleum flooring, brass railings and black metal chairs with red cushions. The chairs matched the tables and, further back, the booths. I realized I'd never gotten to the theater in time to get a balcony seat before. There were no noises up in the balcony, not air conditioning, staff or even pre-show pop radio. Silence.

The balcony was also raked, but not as obviously as the entry was. The booths in the back were on platforms several feet higher than the tables, to aid movie viewing. I got the impression, however, that most people in the balcony were here for food, and treated the movie as a bonus. They thought they were sophisticated, paying for a movie and then ignoring it. There was a bar with stools in front of the front railing. I sat at the end. There were laminated menus and chrome napkin dispensers.

It seemed to make sense that the back of the theater connected to the back of the concession stand. Looking back, I realize that I walked through the back of the concession stand, but it seemed that they were connected at the time.

I ordered a milkshake, which arrived in a cold metal mixing cup, along with a big glass to pour it into. I don't remember talking at all. I was pleasantly surprised to taste the malt, but briefly wondered how people who didn't like malt felt when they got their milkshakes. People began to arrive and fill up the movie theater. The sound of their voices was almost a shock.

The movie started, and I was still the only one in the balcony.