“A RUTHLESS DAME”
by Tim Floreen
TWO YEARS AGO this older couple moved into the house next door to mine. I heard they’d just bought the old three-screen movie theater downtown. I found that sort of interesting because I’m obsessed with movies. Not new ones, though, like the kind they show at that theater. I prefer those black-and-white ones with guys in neckties double-crossing each other over suitcases full of cash. “Film noir,” they call movies like that. More than anything, I love the ladies from those movies, with their perfect hair cascading down over their shoulders in shiny waves, and their slinky dresses slit all the way up to the hip, and their cute little guns tucked under a garter. Just so I can stare at those actresses all the time, I printed a bunch of Hollywood glam shots off the Internet and taped them to the wall above my bed. My parents don’t know what the hell to make of them. Probably they’re just glad the pictures aren’t of guys.
They haven’t got a clue what gets me about those women. You know what it is? I mean, aside from the hair and the outfits and the way they look when they smoke. What I really love is that people always underestimate them. It happens over and over in those movies: the lady pulls out her cute little gun and aims it at the guy, and he doesn’t think she’ll pull the trigger. “You haven’t got the guts.” That’s what he always says.
And then the lady does.
But anyway, like I was saying, that couple that moved in next door . . . It sort of interested me that they owned the movie theater, but apart from that, I didn’t think much about them. Until Christmas break a year and a half ago, when their son came home from college for a visit.
I was standing in our driveway with my mom and dad and brother and sister at the time. We were about to get into the minivan to go to church. The guy pulled up in front of the Morettis’ house in a loudly chugging, beat-up compact and got out. He had one of those scraggly billy-goat beards that makes a guy look like some kind of Middle Earth wannabe hipster. He stretched as if he’d been driving all night. His arms were still up in the air when he spotted us staring at him. Even Mom had paused in her ritual Sunday morning inspection of our faces and hair and outfits to check him out, because a new person in the neighborhood’s always interesting.
The guy checked us out, too. His eyes moved from face to face and stopped on mine. I squirmed in my scratchy polyester-blend dress shirt and plaid necktie because I knew my church clothes only made me look dumpier than usual. But he gave a nod, and even though the others probably assumed he was nodding at all of us, for some reason, I got the feeling he meant the nod just for me.
I didn’t see him again for a couple days, although I kept an eye out. Then one night after dinner, I ducked out to the backyard. It was cold as hell outside, but the rest of the family was in the living room playing Bible-opoly, and that always sends me running for the hills. I heard a noise and glanced over. There was the Morettis’ son, standing on their back porch with a cigarette in his hand and one shoulder leaned up against the house, already watching me.
“You won’t tell, will you?” he said, holding up his smoke. “The parents don’t know I do this.”
He didn’t look all that worried, though. I wanted to come back with something clever, like the women in noir films always do, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
He walked over to the waist-high chain-link fence separating our yards. For the first time I got a decent look at his face. He wasn’t handsome, but gazing at him made my insides sort of flutter anyway. Maybe it was just because college-aged people automatically seem cooler, even if they have piece of junk cars and billy-goat beards. But I was pretty sure there was something else about him, something that had nothing to do with age, that overcame his lack of looks and excess of chin hair. He was like Humphrey Bogart. Bogie wasn’t good-looking, but he had magnetism. This guy had magnetism too.
“I’m Mike.”
“Cody,” I managed.
He nodded, the cigarette wedged between his teeth, his eyes squinting as he grinned at me, like he was sizing me up. I sucked in my belly and shifted my weight onto one foot and rested my hand on my hip, hoping the pose would make me look svelte and alluring. He snatched his cigarette from his mouth and held it out to me, which struck me as odd, since I was fifteen and looked even younger, and he didn’t even know me. Still, I wished again I had the confidence of a femme fatale. I’d grab the cigarette and take a drag and let the smoke leak slowly through my lips. Or maybe I’d blow it in a narrow stream over his shoulder or exhale it through my nostrils like a lady dragon. Those noir actresses knew a million different ways of exhaling cigarette smoke, and each one seemed to have a different meaning—like smoking was its own language.
I’d never smoked a cigarette in my life, though, so I shook my head. An awkward silence had started to set in, and I could see in another second he’d turn away and go back into the house, but by some miracle I finally thought of something to say.
“You’re the Morettis’ son?” Not exactly film noir–caliber dialogue, but at least I’d kept the conversation going.
“Yup. Home for break. I’m a sophomore down at the University of Atlanta. What about you? High school?”
“I’m a sophomore too. Hillville High.”
He took another drag and nodded. “So what’s there to do here in Hillville?”
I would’ve thought anyone on Earth could take one look at me and see I was the exact wrong person to ask a question like that, but I tried to play it off. “Not much,” I said with a scoffing laugh, like I’d be out partying right that minute if only I lived in a cooler location. “Actually, I prefer to call this place Hellville. Hellville, West Virginia.”
“Well, there must be a burger place at least. You like burgers?”
Wait a second, I thought. What’s happening right now? Is he asking me out? I just nodded, since I’d once again lost the power of speech.
He stuck the cigarette between his teeth one more time so he could pull out his phone. “What’s your number? Maybe we can get a burger sometime.”
I glanced over my shoulder, thinking maybe there was someone else behind me, someone thin and good-looking and probably female, because honestly, Mike seemed pretty straight to me.
“It’s just that I don’t know anyone in this town,” he said. “And you seem cool.”
I turned back around and looked up at him—he was a full head taller than me—and said, “Thanks. Sounds like fun.”
Then something must’ve gotten into me, maybe the spirit of Barbara Stanwyck, because all of a sudden, without even planning to, I grabbed the cigarette right out of his mouth, put it between my lips, and took a puff.
I just about coughed my guts clear out of my body.
* * *
He didn’t try anything the first time he took me to the Burger Barn. He was a gentleman. But he started texting me, and the texts got sexy way before he did in person. Maybe it was easier for him that way. I could tell he wasn’t out of the closet and wanted to keep a low profile. (I got the impression the phone he’d programmed my number into wasn’t his regular one. I noticed once during our meal he answered a call from his parents on a different phone.)
I didn’t mind. Not only was I in the closet, I was also a total virgin who didn’t even know for certain if I’d seen another homo in the flesh, aside from those two old guys at my mom’s hair salon and this other boy at church I had strong suspicions about. And considering I was pudgy and girly and still let my mom pick out my clothes and home-cut my hair because I trusted her to know what a normal straight boy was supposed to look like way more than I trusted myself, meeting a guy who wanted to get friendly with me that way was literally the last thing I expected to happen.
But here it was happening. Over the course of the week between Christmas and New Year’s, Mike sent a steady stream of texts. First: u have a great sense of humor.
Then: u have a funny laugh.
Then: u have a cute nose.
Then: u have a hot ass.
We only got to hang out one other time that week. That’s another reason things didn’t move faster when we were actually together. My parents were forcing me to do all these hellish Christmastime church activities (at least I’d finally outgrown the Nativity pageant), and I guess Mike’s family kept him busy too. Plus, it was tricky figuring out excuses to sneak away and hang out with him. I knew I couldn’t just tell my parents I had plans to randomly spend time with the way older son of our new neighbors. So both times we went out, I said I was going to have dinner at my friend Sarah’s house. It scared the hell out of me, because I never lied to my parents, at least not about stuff like that. Not because I had some moral objection to it or thought God was going to strike me down or something. I’d just never had a reason before.
Mike took me to the Burger Barn again that second time, and still nothing funny happened. He never said a word about those sexy texts he’d sent me. When he dropped me off—a block away from our houses because he knew as well as I did we couldn’t let our parents see us together—he touched my apparently cute nose with his index finger and gave me a wink, and that was the only moment that made the evening feel like sort of a date.
Then before I knew it, New Year’s had passed, and it was just a day before he was supposed to go back to college, and I’d gone into a full-on panic. He texted, asking if I wanted to get together that night and go to his parents’ movie theater after hours. He’d arranged something special, he said.
As I stared at my phone’s screen, my chest started to heave. I thought I might faint, actually faint, the way nobody did in real life but my noir ladies did all the time. He had something special planned. What did that mean? Would we finally kiss tonight? Or would it be just like the other nights? I honestly didn’t know which possibility scared me more.
He asked if I could sneak out of my house late. I knew that part I could manage. I had the only bedroom on the first floor, which meant I had zero privacy, but at least it made stealthy exits easy. Theoretically, at least. Of course I’d never actually tried. He told me to meet him on a corner a block away from our houses at midnight that night.
He drove me to the theater. It had already closed, but he pulled out a ring of keys and unlocked the back door. Inside, he went behind the snack counter and asked what I’d like. Probably blushing, I told him Milk Duds and a Cherry Coke. But I tried to say it the way a femme fatale would order a gin and tonic, with a toss of my head and a mysterious smile.
We went into one of the screening rooms, and he sat me down in the middle of the middle row.
“I’ll be right back,” he said with a wink.
I sat there alone in the big, dim screening room with its scratchy seats and hard armrests and sticky floor, my heart going bang-bang-bang in my chest. I popped a handful of Milk Duds and washed them down with a swallow of Cherry Coke. The room went dark. With a low mechanical hum, the old-fashioned red curtains at the front of the room slid apart to reveal the movie screen. On it the black-and-white Paramount logo appeared, and then the words “DOUBLE INDEMNITY.”
I sucked in a breath.
Mike reappeared next to me. “Didn’t you say you like this kind of movie? I found it in storage and thought of you.”
I didn’t know what to say. He grabbed my hand, and I felt shivers everywhere.
Then he pulled my hand over the armrest and put it in his lap.
Fade to black.
* * *
The next day he left. I watched from my bedroom window as he waved to his mom and dad, got in his piece of junk car, and chugged away. That night I told my family I didn’t feel well. I went to my room and cried while I clutched my phone and stared at the screen. He’d said he’d text me.
Finally, he did. I miss u.
I cried even harder, tears of sadness and happiness mixed together. I miss u 2!!! I texted back.
how bout sending a pic?
I spent the next three hours working on it. I rehearsed my smokiest, sultriest femme fatale expression in the mirror on the back of my bedroom door, half closing my eyes and holding my head just so. I figured out camera angles and adjusted the lighting. I even tried dabbing Vaseline on my phone’s little camera lens because I’d read somewhere that was what Hollywood photographers used to do to make their portraits of film stars look all blurry and beautiful. (It didn’t work.) The picture I ended up with just made me look like I was really sleepy and had a stiff neck, but I knew I probably wouldn’t do any better even if I tried for another three hours, so I sent it.
I clutched my phone again, wondering if all my effort had been worth it, wondering if he’d just find me hideous.
I didn’t have to wait long. A response came less than a minute later. I meant w/ no clothes on. ;)
Outside my bedroom door, I could hear the rest of my family playing Christian charades. I knew other kids—far, far cooler kids—sexted each other, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind that Mike might want something like that.
Another message showed up on my screen: come on.
Then: I won’t show it to anyone.
Then: I swear.
Then: I think ur gorgeous.
Before I could lose my nerve, I adjusted the lights and figured out the camera angle again. I arranged my old Noah’s ark–patterned sheets on my bed so they looked messy, to suggest . . . I don’t know, that something interesting might have actually happened there. I pulled off all my clothes, fluffed my hair to make it look carelessly tousled, arranged myself on the bed, and snapped the picture.
In my very first shot, I had a more convincingly sultry expression than I’d had in my clothed pic after three hours of trying.
I sent it.
thx.
I waited for him to send another text, or maybe even a picture of his own, but I didn’t hear from him again that night.
The next day I texted, how’s it going?
good! classes starting might get busy.
yeah classes starting here too, I texted back.
I totally understood. I didn’t expect him to keep sending me messages at the same rate he had over the break.
I waited a week. Then two. Nothing. I didn’t allow myself to text him, though. I knew only losers let themselves seem too eager.
But after three weeks, I couldn’t stand it anymore. hi! how r u?
Then: u there?
Then: u okay?
Then: u mad at me?
Then: Mike? plz?
* * *
He never did text me back. I went through the second semester of my sophomore year a zombie, barely paying attention in class, barely squeaking by with passing grades. I’d never felt so miserable. But how else had I expected things to end? I kept asking myself that. How could I reasonably expect anyone to fall in love with dumpy, pathetic me? Let alone a cool college boy? (Well, maybe not cool, but definitely magnetic.) All along, it had only been a matter of time before he came to his senses.
The day he’d left, I’d printed out a photo of him I’d found on Facebook and taped it on my wall, hidden underneath a shot of Lauren Bacall. At night I’d unstick the top of the Lauren Bacall picture and let it hang down, revealing the picture of Mike. I kept it there all semester and uncovered it every night and laid there in bed staring at it. Just to punish myself, I guess.
Then one Sunday morning the whole family was out by the minivan again, Mom busy with her pre-church inspection, when the Morettis stepped outside on their way somewhere else. (They didn’t go to our church.) They paused near their car to make small talk with Mom and Dad, asking if we had any summer plans. Mom gabbed for a bit about the monthlong family Bible camp we were going to in August.
“What about you?” she asked.
“Italy,” Mrs. Moretti gushed. “We’re spending the whole summer.”
Mom and Dad gave vague nods, like they’d never heard of the place before.
“I have some family there,” Mr. Moretti explained. “Mike’s coming home to run the theater while we’re gone.”
The back of my neck prickled under my poly-blend collar at the sound of his name. My mind started to race. The Morettis said good-bye and got into their car, and before Mom had even finished spit-smoothing my cowlicky hair, I had a plan. Because in spite of everything, part of me still hoped Mike hadn’t just blown me off. He might’ve lost the phone he used to text me, and my number along with it. He might’ve gotten scared. Didn’t I owe it to him, and to myself, to give him a chance?
The following Saturday afternoon I slipped out of the house and rang the Morettis’ doorbell.
“I’m looking for a summer job,” I blurted, my palms sweating, “and I love movies. Any chance you need someone to help out at the theater?”
That June I started behind the snack counter a week before Mike got home. It had taken some convincing to get Mom and Dad to agree. I’d had to promise only to work daytime shifts, when the matinees were playing, and never to sneak in and watch any of the R-rated movies.
So there I stood next to the popcorn popper in my paper hat and clip-on bow tie when Mike walked in. He still had the billy-goat beard, and he still had the inexplicable Humphrey Bogart magnetism. I felt it the second he walked in, even from all the way across the lobby. My heart started going faster.
Then it lurched to a stop. He had someone with him. A girl with a huge head of frizzy hair, like a mass of blond cotton candy. As I watched, he slung his arm over her shoulder.
Mr. and Mrs. Moretti followed them in. They’d all come so Mike’s parents could show him the ropes. They stopped on the other side of the lobby, and Mr. Moretti started explaining how to work the cash register while Mike, only half listening, let his gaze wander.
His eyes landed on me. His face went pale. His arm sagged away from the girl.
Mrs. Moretti noticed him staring at me. “Mike, did you ever meet Cody? The neighbors’ boy? He’ll be working the snack counter this summer.”
Mike’s mouth opened but nothing come out. I could see him trying to figure out what he should say, what lie he should tell about us.
I was nervous too, but at least I’d expected this moment and rehearsed it in my head. I’d run through a million scenarios—although none where a girl with cotton-candy hair was standing next to him.
“I—I saw you a few times,” I stammered. “I don’t think we ever met, though.”
Still he didn’t utter a word. To fill the silence, I stepped out from behind the counter and held out my hand to the girl.
“I’m Cody.”
“So nice to meet you!” she said, seizing my hand with both of hers and pumping it hard. “I’m Rochelle. I’ll be working the ticket counter.”
“She’s my girlfriend,” Mike finally said. His eyes had a steely set to them, and his beard seemed to bristle as he spoke. “She’s spending the summer here.”
“We’re going to have so much fun!” Rochelle still hadn’t released my hand. She gave it another excited shake and beamed at me, like she thought I was just adorable.
I mumbled something about needing to get back to work and scuttled behind the counter.
A couple hours later, after Mike’s parents had gone home to pack, and the matinees were all underway, and Rochelle had left to have a look around downtown Hillville, Mike stalked back to the snack counter. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hissed between his teeth, slamming his palms on the glass.
I backed up against the popcorn popper. “I needed a summer job,” I answered in a small voice.
“Here?”
“I wanted to see you.” I could hear how pathetic the words sounded even as they fell out of my mouth. “I missed you.”
“Not cool, Cody. My girlfriend’s here. Things are different now. We need to forget Christmas break ever happened.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Didn’t you tell me yourself you can’t have your parents finding out about you? You said you knew for a fact they’d kick you out if they knew you were gay. You said they pretty much told you so point-blank. Isn’t that right?”
“Well, yeah.” I felt dizzy. The smell of melted butter filled my nose and made me want to throw up. Behind me, the heat of the popper burned into my back. I could feel the thing shake with each tiny explosion of a popping kernel.
“So you have just as much to lose as I do,” he said. “More probably. I mean, I’m not even gay, really. I just like messing around with guys sometimes. So let’s just bury it, okay?”
My chin started to shake. “But I . . . I love you.” The words landed in my ears with a pitiful thud.
Mike gave me a look of pure bafflement. “What are you talking about?” He glanced around, like he feared someone might see my little breakdown and draw conclusions. “Look, pull yourself together, okay? Let’s talk later.” He disappeared into the manager’s office muttering, “Jesus, I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved with the neighbors’ kid.”
I tried to do what he said. As I stood there with my back still to the popper, though, I didn’t get calmer. I got angrier. It seemed the mystery had been solved: Mike hadn’t lost my number. He hadn’t gotten scared. He’d just been an asshole. Behind me, the tiny explosions started coming faster. Pop. Pop. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
I barreled through the office door, ready to let Mike have it, but I found the room empty. Behind the door to the manager’s little private bathroom, I heard him moving around.
On the desk, though, lay Mike’s phone. Not the one he used with his parents. The secret one he’d used with me. He wasn’t texting me anymore. So who was he texting now? The screen still glowed. He must’ve set it down seconds ago without locking it.
Careful not to make a sound, I grabbed it. He had his photos app pulled up, and it only took me a couple taps to get to his most recent image. A selfie taken by some boy about my age, maybe even younger, naked, in a bedroom. I swiped through the previous photos and found more of the same. A parade of naked boys, all of them in sharp focus and bright color, unlike the Hollywood starlets that decorated my wall. Many were tubby like me. Maybe that was his type. Had he gotten together with all these guys in real life? Or just chatted with them online? Or gotten the photos off the Internet?
I swiped again, and my image appeared, right there among all the others.
“Cody?”
I jumped about a foot in the air. The voice calling my name hadn’t come from the bathroom, though, but from the open office door. A kid I knew from church stood there. Ernest Kimball.
“I didn’t know you worked here,” he said.
A second ago I’d had my back to the door. Had Ernest spotted the image of me on the phone’s screen? I didn’t think so. I’d probably see it on his face right now if he had. I hoped Mike couldn’t hear him talking from the bathroom.
“Hey, have you seen that movie Samson yet?” Ernest asked. “I’ve watched it three times now, and—”
Locking the phone and dropping it back on Mike’s desk, I hurried past Ernest, past the snack counter, past the popcorn popper still going pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
* * *
A few minutes later I’d run out to the little parking lot behind the theater and pitched to my hands and knees on the rough asphalt. Whenever a lady in a noir movie had her heart broken, she’d throw herself diagonally across her bed, and the tears would slide down her cheeks like shiny pearls, and she’d still look gorgeous. In my case, I couldn’t even bring myself to cry. I just wanted to puke.
I grabbed the paper hat off my head and crumpled it. Below me little shards of broken green and clear glass gleamed in the sunlight, like diamonds and emeralds. A little farther away, at the base of the theater’s rear brick wall, among the weeds pushing up through cracks in the asphalt, lay a little pile of rusty, sharp-looking nails.
I grabbed a handful, hauled myself to my feet, and walked over to Mike’s piece of junk car. Inside my body I imagined I could still feel little explosions going off, little hot kernels of rage bursting. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. I positioned a few of the nails under one of the tires. Then I went around to the other tires and did the same thing. I’d never tried this trick before, but my brother had gotten busted for it years ago. It was childish and stupid of me, and Mike would know exactly who’d done it and probably figure out a way to get back at me, but I didn’t care.
I’d just finished when a shadow fell over me. I whirled around, sure it must be Mike.
Instead I found Ernest Kimball standing there, watching me, his hands on his hips. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said, his gaze so sharp I swear I felt his eyes poke me in the chest.
“Um.”
I’d known Ernest since kindergarten. We were friends back then, because we were both girly and liked to play with Barbies, although whereas I was chunky, he was so thin I bet his clothes weighed more than he did. When we got older and the fag comments started to come, we drifted apart. We never talked about it, but both of us must’ve realized we’d be safer if we kept our distance. Over time Ernest got more and more into church, just like I got more and more into noir. These days we went to different high schools, but I saw him at service every Sunday, sitting in the third row with his back very straight and a yellow notepad in his lap so he could take notes on the sermon.
Ernest had the same pad with him now. It stuck out of a canvas bag he had slung over his shoulder. I wondered if he took notes on Samson, too. You might’ve heard of that movie. It was really big last year with the Christian nutjob demographic. It tells the Samson and Delilah story, which makes it sort of like Gladiator for Bible-thumpers. I snuck in to watch it once during my first week at the theater, and I thought it sucked, but on the plus side, the guy who played Samson was hot as hell and spent half the film shirtless.
“Never mind,” Ernest said. “I know what you were doing. Pulling a prank. Trying to ruin some poor person’s day. Shame on you, Cody.” He actually wagged his finger at me as he said it. “This isn’t very Christian of you. I could report you, you know. It just so happens I’m on my way to the police station right now. As president of the Teen Council for Moral Decency, I have a meeting there every Tuesday afternoon to discuss worrying issues in our community. I bet if I mentioned this incident to Officer Crane, she’d have a few choice words for you. For your parents, too.”
The mention of my parents jarred me into finding my voice again. “I wasn’t just playing some random prank, Ernest. I’m having a really bad day, okay? Someone treated me like dirt, and I’m having a really bad day.”
His expression softened. He turned his poky eyes on the car. “Who does this thing belong to?”
“A guy named Mike Moretti,” I admitted.
“And what did he do to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” With my free hand I tugged off the clip-on bow tie and undid the top button of my shirt. “He manages the movie theater,” I added. “He’s my boss.” I hoped Ernest might assume I’d gotten mad at Mike for something work related.
It seemed like he did. “Have some self-respect, Cody,” he said, but in a gentler tone. “Aren’t you better than this? You need to follow a higher example.”
That stopped me. I opened my fingers to reveal the leftover rusty nails nestled in my dirty palm. I glanced at the clip-on bow tie in my other hand and the crumpled paper hat lying on the ground where I’d dropped it. “You’re right,” I said. “I am. I do.”
Ernest looked pleased. He didn’t smile—I didn’t think I’d ever seen him smile—but he gave an eager nod. “I understand you’re mad, Cody, but you need to ask yourself what Jesus would do in this situation.”
But Jesus wasn’t the example I was thinking of. My head had filled with images of my film noir heroines. Rita Hayworth. Ann Savage. All of them. They wouldn’t have done something so trashy and unimaginative and shortsighted as pop the tires of the guy who’d wronged them. They would’ve gotten back at him, but they would’ve thought about it first. They would’ve come up with a plan.
I needed to do the same thing. The only question was: Could I be ruthless? Did I have the guts?
I turned around and gathered up the nails from behind the tire next to me. “I’m sorry, Ernest. I was just being stupid.”
“Not stupid.” I could tell from the pink blush coloring his cheeks he hadn’t expected his intervention to go this well. “Just human. We’re all fallen creatures.”
After we’d finished circling the car together and gathering up the rest of the nails, I said, “Can we keep this a secret, though? I just lost my head for a second. I don’t usually do stuff like this, I swear.”
Ernest bit his lip. “I suppose.” He looked up from the nails in his hand, and his eyes poked me again, but more kindly this time. “Listen, if you ever need to talk about it—about why you were so angry, I mean—I just want you to know you can come to me.” He gave my shoulder an awkward pat. “We can pray together.”
“Thanks.” I dropped the nails in the trash. “That’s very nice of you. Maybe I will. But right now I’d better get back to work.” I picked up my paper hat, smoothed it out, and stuck it back on my head. As I headed toward the movie theater’s back exit, I could feel a little swing work itself into my hips, like the spirit of one of my heroines had once again slipped inside my body. I threw a glance over my shoulder and said, “You’re a lifesaver, Ernie. I owe you one.”
* * *
Two days later Mike’s parents left for Italy. Mom watched from the living room window, shaking her head as they got into their taxi. “Leaving your son and his girlfriend in your own house for a whole summer to do Lord knows what,” she said. “It’s something I’d never do, that’s for sure.”
I told her I was running out to the Sheetz a couple blocks away to get a snack. Once I got there, though, instead of going inside, I stopped at the old pay phone next to the door and slid a few coins in.
I dialed the police.
“Hello,” I said, “I was just walking by 4537 Forest Street and saw someone suspicious entering the house. I really think you should send someone to check it out.”
“Who is this?” the lady taking the information wanted to know. I wondered if by some coincidence she might be Officer Crane.
“I’m ever so sorry,” I said with a breathy Rita Hayworth laugh, “but I don’t want to get involved. I prefer to remain anonymous.”
I hung up the phone and ran home in plenty of time to see, through my bedroom window, a police car pull up in front of the Morettis’ house and a cop walk up to the front door.
At the theater the next day, during a lull when all three movies were running and Rochelle had run out to get a Burger Bucket at the Burger Barn, I sidled over to the manager’s office door and stuck my head in. Mike and I hadn’t talked over the past couple days. When he noticed me there, his face went dark. He pushed some papers around on his desk, like he actually had something important to be doing, and said, “What is it, Cody?”
“Sorry to bother you. I just wanted to say I hope things aren’t going to be weird between us. I thought about it, and you’re right. I was being silly. What happened between us last Christmas . . . It was just a casual thing, and I’m letting it go. I’m ready for us to have a purely professional relationship.”
He squinted at me like he thought I was a lunatic. “Are you sure? Because it might be easier for both of us if you just stop working here. We can make up an excuse. No one would have to suspect a thing.”
“No, Mike, please,” I begged. “I need this job. My parents are so stingy with money, and this is the only way I can have some of my own. Plus, it gets me out of the house. I think I’m going to die if I have to spend another Saturday afternoon playing Christian Scrabble with them.”
He blew out through his mouth and shook his head. It killed me to talk to him like that, like everything was just okay, and to beg him for my job, but I had to do it.
“Fine,” he said. “Just keep your distance, all right?”
I nodded. “All right. I will. Thank you, Mike.” I started to turn away. Then, exactly the way I’d rehearsed in front of the mirror in my bedroom, I stopped in his office doorway, like I’d just thought of something. “Hey, can I ask you a random question?”
He rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. Rochelle’s going to be back any second.”
“But we’re just talking. She won’t think that’s weird. Anyway, the question’s a quick one. Did the police come by your house yesterday?”
He tensed. All of a sudden his hands got antsy and started shuffling papers around again. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that a cop rang our doorbell yesterday afternoon. He told my dad someone had called in saying there was a suspicious-looking prowler in the neighborhood, and he asked if he could take a look around the house. So the guy came in and searched all over. He even went in my bedroom, which I thought was weird.”
Mike gave a noncommittal shrug. “Okay.”
“So after that,” I said, “my dad was talking to Mr. O’Farrell on our other side, and he asked him if the cop had come to visit him too, and Mr. O’Farrell said he hadn’t talked to any cop. That seemed odd, though, since the officer had said he was visiting all the houses in the area. My dad got suspicious, thinking maybe the guy had targeted us for some reason, so he went by a few other houses near us and asked the same question. The cop hadn’t visited any of them either. And we just couldn’t figure it out. Why would he only come to our house?”
Staring at a stack of papers gripped in his hands, Mike said in a low voice, “He came to my house too.”
“Oh!” I opened my eyes wide in surprise. “So it wasn’t just us. That makes me feel better.” Once again I started to leave but then stopped. I grabbed the doorframe with one hand and peered back at him over my shoulder. “Although I still don’t understand why he would visit your house and mine and no one else’s.”
* * *
Now I needed to talk to Ernest again. I knew I’d see him that Sunday at church, and sure enough, there he was in the third row, boring into Paster Pete with his eyes and scribbling away on his pad each time he heard something he thought was important. After the service everybody went downstairs for something called fellowship, which was basically a time for the congregation to mill around in the multipurpose room drinking bad coffee and eating stale pastries and gossiping. As soon as Mom and Dad and my brother and sister split off to yammer with their friends, I scanned the room until I spotted Ernest’s round head of neatly combed hair. I closed in.
Ernest was deep in conversation with some old lady—it didn’t seem like he had many friends his own age—but when I edged into his field of vision and gave a little wave, he made an excuse and came right over.
“Hello, Cody,” he said, friendly but with a dash of sternness, like he wanted me to know he hadn’t forgotten the circumstances of our last encounter.
“Sorry for bothering you, but you said if I ever needed to talk . . .”
His eye went big and hungry. “Of course! And I meant it!” He waved me over to a quiet corner, grabbing a couple pastries on the way. After motioning for me to sit down in a metal folding chair, he slid a Danish at me across the table and said, “Go ahead.”
“You were wondering why I was so mad at Mike Moretti?”
He nodded.
“I think I’m ready to tell you. I think as president of the Teen Council on Moral Decency you should be aware.”
“Cody, I promise, you’ll feel so much better once you let it all out.” His eyes drilled into me as he absently unwound his cinnamon roll.
I folded my hands on the table, leaving the Danish untouched. It would only get in the way of my delivery. “Well, I know you’ve been going to the theater a lot lately, so you’ve probably noticed that sign next to the popcorn that says ‘Real Butter,’ right?”
“Sure. I get a carton every time I go.”
“And a small lemonade. I remember. But you see, Ernest, that sign, it’s a lie. A dark, dirty lie.”
His hand went to his mouth. The way he stared at me with his huge eyes, I felt like I was a movie screen. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Last week I discovered the theater isn’t using real butter at all, at least not anymore. It’s using soybean oil with artificial butter flavoring.”
“No!”
“Yes. Apparently, Mike switched from real butter to fake as soon as he took over, and he’s pocketing the savings. When I found out I confronted him about it. I told him I couldn’t in good conscience keep a secret like that. He flew into a rage and said he’d fire me if I told anyone. I didn’t want to lose my job. It’s the first I’ve ever had, and I don’t want my parents to be disappointed in me. So when he said that, I just felt so powerless and angry. That’s why I wanted to do something to hurt him.”
Ernest grabbed the edge of the table with both hands. “Your parents won’t be disappointed! Not if it’s a matter of conscience! Not if you’re standing up for your beliefs!”
“You’re probably right. But after I got that talking-to from you the other day, I finally calmed down enough to really think, and I realized maybe I shouldn’t be so mad at Mike. Maybe I should feel sorry for him instead. Maybe the Lord called me to this job for a purpose. So I talked to Mike some more, and he’s not really a bad guy. Just misguided. Have you seen him at the theater? Do you know who I’m talking about?”
He gave a nod, and a flush of pink colored his cheeks. I suspected I wasn’t the only one to notice Mike’s Humphrey Bogart charm.
“I think somewhere deep down he wants to be redeemed,” I said. “But he needs someone better at redeeming than me. That’s why I thought of you.”
You should’ve seen it. I had him in the palm of my hand. He fanned out his fingers on his chest as if to say Me? He hadn’t taken a bite of his cinnamon roll, but he’d fully unwound it. The thing lay there on his plate like a snake.
“I think you should go to his house,” I said. “Talk to him. But don’t let on that you know about the butter. If he finds out I told anyone about that, he’ll skin me alive, and I bet he won’t talk to you anymore either. Make it seem like you’re just going around the neighborhood knocking on people’s doors to spread the Good News and talk about the church.”
“Yes.” His eyes shifted away from me and narrowed as he thought about it. “That’s probably the best approach.”
“But at the same time, be persistent. I really think with a little push, he’ll tell you everything.”
* * *
I kept watch all that afternoon through my bedroom window. Sure enough, at two o’clock on the dot, Ernest came marching up the Morettis’ front walk, his hair neatly combed, the excitement in his face visible even from that distance. I couldn’t see him once he got to the front door, but I kept an eye on the clock on my nightstand, and he didn’t reappear for a full five minutes, which meant at least Mike couldn’t have sent him away right off the bat.
The next day at the theater, I slid over to Mike’s office door again.
“What is it?” he said, giving me the same wary look he always did these days. I must’ve been making his life hell, showing up there every day with his girlfriend just a few feet away, but even though he was aware I had more to lose than he did if our little secret got out—which was true, by the way, because my parents really would kick me out—I guess he was just scared enough of me not to actually give me the boot.
“I know this is another really random question,” I said, “but you didn’t get a visit from a really enthusiastic Christian kid who wanted to convert you over the weekend, did you?”
He went stiff, just like he had when I’d asked him about the cop. “Why? Did you?”
“Yeah. I know him actually. Ernest Kimball. He goes to my church. He came by our house yesterday, and he specifically wanted to talk to me. I always thought he seemed a little odd, but yesterday he said something about the Lord telling him I needed help because I’d been victimized or something.”
He screwed up his face. “Victimized? What the hell was he talking about?”
“That’s just the thing. I don’t know. It was a really weird conversation, and of course I didn’t say a word about us, but . . .” I stood there wringing my hands.
“But what? What the hell are you talking about?”
“It just made me wonder. Like, if somehow he knows what we did.”
His face scrunched up even more. “How? You think the Lord was really talking to him? I thought you didn’t believe in that shit.”
“I don’t. But once he left yesterday, I watched him from my window, and I thought I saw him go over to your house. And after that weird police visit a few days ago, it made me wonder if they might be related. Mike, what if that cop was looking for something specific?”
His face hardened. In an equally hard voice, he said, “What do you think he would’ve been looking for, Cody?”
My hands continued to grab at each other. Ladies in noir movies did that all the time when they were anxious—or faking it. “Look, I should probably tell you something else. Last week after you got mad at me your first day here, I went to your office, but you were in the bathroom, and you’d left your phone on the desk—unlocked. So I went through it.”
“What?” he snapped.
“I was upset. I wanted to see who you else you were texting with. I found all those pictures of boys on your phone. And right after I got to the picture of me, I noticed Ernest Kimball standing at the door behind me. I thought he might’ve seen what I was looking at.”
It was almost the truth. That was the beauty of it. Maybe Mike even remembered hearing voices in the office that day while he was in the bathroom.
He smacked his hand down hard on the desk, making me jump. That I didn’t fake. “Get to the point, Cody.”
“So all those pictures of underage guys on your phone . . . Isn’t that possession of child porn? Technically, I mean? And isn’t that a felony?”
His eyes jumped to Rochelle behind the ticket counter, visible through his office door. He shot out of his desk chair, yanked me all the way into the office, and banged the door shut. “Is this some kind of threat?” he snarled. “Is that what this is? Are you trying to get back at me?”
He’d shoved me up against the big corkboard on his wall. Pushpins dug into my back in a dozen places. I shook my head. “It’s not. I swear. If the police find out what we did, it’ll be the end for me.”
“No, it won’t. It’ll be the end for me. I could go to prison if they catch me for something like that.”
“Look, all I’m saying is this isn’t a threat, okay? I’m scared too.”
He let me go and turned away, still breathing hard as he raked his fingers through his hair.
I didn’t say anything. I waited.
“That kid Ernest did come to see me,” Mike said. “He said the Lord told him to come. He said we all have sins, and he had a feeling I was ready to confess mine.”
I fluttered my hand to my throat. “Oh God.”
“But what makes you think that has something to do with the cop?”
“Because Ernest’s the president of the Teen Council on Moral Decency at our church. And I heard sometimes they work with the police, like when they think there’s something seriously bad going on in the community.”
Mike looked unsteady. His face had gone sweaty and greenish. “So you think he saw the pictures on my phone and told the police about them? And now they’re investigating?”
I nodded. “And maybe he’s doing his own investigation too. Maybe that’s why he asked you to confess your sins and why he’s always carrying around that pad and pen. He’s taking notes.”
Mike’s office chair creaked as he dropped into it. He pitched forward and clutched his head in his hands. “This can’t be happening.”
“Don’t freak out,” I said, leaning in, rubbing his shoulder, speaking in a soothing voice. “When the cop came to search your house, did he see the phone?”
He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure I had it in my pocket.”
“So that means they don’t have any concrete evidence.” I gave him a pat. “I think we’re all right. For now, at least.”
* * *
But Mike only got more freaked the next day, Tuesday. Ernest came in to see Samson again that afternoon. At some point during the screening, Mike’s secret phone went missing (thanks to a quick visit I paid to his office while he was using the bathroom again), and he just about started bleeding from his eye sockets he got so worked up. At first he wanted to go after Ernest and take the phone back by force, but I convinced him that would only make him look guilty. I told him we should keep cool and trail Ernest after the movie ended. Mike made some excuse to Rochelle, and together we piled into his piece of junk car and trundled after Ernest as he biked down the road.
He made straight for the police station.
We parked across the street, and Mike gripped the wheel with both hands and made soft whimpering noises while he watched Ernest lock up his bike and march inside, his yellow notepad sticking out of his tote bag.
“Oh God,” Mike panted, putting one hand to the back of his neck, like he could already feel the noose there slowly tightening.
“I still think we’re safe,” I said. “They don’t have your unlock code, and not even the police can access your phone without that. I mean, unless they put their special police hackers on the case, and I’m sure those hackers have better things to do. Look, let’s lie low for a while. See what happens. Keep calm.”
Which was exactly what Mike couldn’t do. The last part at least. A few weeks passed. Ernest kept coming to the theater, even more often now that Mike had become his project, and every time he’d spot Mike in the lobby or pass by his office, Ernest would give him a serious, significant look. A couple times he even whispered to Mike—with me there to witness it—”Whenever you’re ready.” Meanwhile, Mike could barely do his job (and believe me, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to manage a movie theater). He kept pulling me into his office for frantic closed-door chats. I kept telling him to hold on.
August came. In a few days I’d leave with my family for Bible camp, and Mike would have to go back to school before we returned, which meant he’d be on his own with Ernest for the rest of the summer. The idea of that had him even more panicked.
Then one day I rushed into his office, shut the door, and said, “I talked to Ernest. He cornered me at church again. He kept digging and digging, trying to get something out of me, until finally I lost it. ‘Mike and I know the truth,’ I said. ‘We know you’re working with the police. That’s why you’ve been grilling us.’
“And he admitted it. He said he saw those pictures on your phone, just like we suspected, and he decided you needed to be stopped. I begged him to drop it. I said it would ruin your life, and mine too. I told him you’d never mess around with vulnerable underage kids again. Because you won’t, right?”
He shook his head hard. “No way.”
“I asked him what we could do to make this whole thing disappear.”
Mike’s fingers gripped the armrests of his office chair. Tiny beads of sweat had broken out on his upper lip, like a mustache to go with his billy-goat beard. “What did he say?”
“He said it’s not too late. The police haven’t unlocked your phone, so right now all they have is his word. He’d be willing to tell the police he made a mistake . . . on one condition. He wants you to make a contribution to our church. ‘As proof of your good faith and repentance,’ he said.”
“For how much?”
“Seven thousand dollars. He asked me how much cash we usually have in the safe, and I’m sorry, I mentioned you haven’t been making the bank drops lately.”
He clapped both his hands over his mouth and let out a muffled roar.
“It’ll be an anonymous donation,” I said. “You won’t be connected to it, and neither will he. That’s why it needs to be cash. He wants you to give the money to me, and then I’ll hand it off to him. He thinks a direct handoff would be too risky.”
Mike looked up at me, his eyes going narrow. “Wait a second. How do I know you’re not just going to take it for yourself? How do I know you’re not playing me?” He shook his head. Beads of sweat had broken out all over his face now. A few of them had burst into trickles and run all the way down to dampen his scraggly beard. “I’ll give the money directly to Ernest, but I’m not giving it to you.”
Don’t worry, though, I’d expected this. In fact, I was counting on it. “So you don’t trust me? Even after all we’ve been through?” I made my eyes gleam with hurt. “Fine. I’ll see Ernest this Sunday at church. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll try to convince him.”
* * *
I did see Ernest that Sunday during fellowship, and I did talk to him. “I think Mike’s finally ready,” I told him as he peeled open his croissant. “Your persistence is paying off. He’s gone back to using real butter in the popcorn.”
“I thought I could taste a difference this week!” Ernest exclaimed.
“Now he told me he wants to talk to you again. He wants to make a confession, and also a donation to our church. All the profits he made on his fake-butter scheme.”
Ernest gaped. He dropped the fully dissected croissant onto his plate. “Of course! I’ll make another visit to his house this after—”
I shook my head. “But he wants to do it in secret. He still doesn’t want his girlfriend or anyone else suspecting. He wants to meet you at the theater tonight, after closing, at midnight. And you’re not supposed to let anyone see you arrive.”
He blinked at me. I could tell the idea of a middle-of-the-night meeting scared him a little but excited him, too. “Midnight,” he said. “Tell him I’ll be there.”
* * *
I didn’t work on Sundays—my parents didn’t want me to—so I had to call Mike to tell him the news. That might’ve been for the best. By now I was so full of nervous excitement I didn’t know if I could keep the act going if I talked to him in person.
“Ernest’s agreed,” I told him. Even though Mike couldn’t see me, I still tried to hold myself like a femme fatale, sitting in my desk chair with my legs crossed, winding an imaginary phone cord slowly around my index finger. “I said he should rendezvous with you at the theater tonight at midnight. I told him you’d be waiting with the money behind the curtain in screening room one. I’ll meet him at the door and bring him to you.”
“Okay.” The fear made Mike’s voice crack and wobble. “Jesus, how am I going to explain all that missing money to my parents?”
“They’re gone for the whole summer, right? So you can make the money disappear in the books somehow, can’t you?”
“I guess. And Ernest swears he’s going to let this drop once I pay him? Like, forever? This’ll make it disappear?”
“Yes,” I said. “He swears.” I gazed at the photo of Lauren Bacall on the wall above my bed. Her face, beautiful but strong and angular. I’d torn the picture of Mike out from under it weeks ago. Crumpled it and thrown it into the trash. “And Mike,” I said, “if you really want to make this disappear, there’s one more thing I think you should do.”
* * *
That night I snuck out of the house at eleven fifteen and hurried to the theater by foot. Mike had just locked up for the night. On the floor of his office, we counted the money one more time and stuffed it into a black duffel bag. Then he stationed himself behind the red curtain in screening room one. Just like I’d advised, he wore a button-down shirt, unbuttoned halfway, and a splash of cologne. He’d put some product in his hair and in his billy-goat beard, too.
Before I left him, I said, “Tell me one thing, Mike. It wasn’t all bullshit with me, was it? You did like hanging out, didn’t you?”
He looked confused at first, but then his face eased into a smile. He gave me a wink, and for a second, he really did look like a young Humphrey Bogart. “Sure I did.”
“Thanks. I just needed to hear you say that.”
I went to the theater’s back entrance, the one that led directly to the parking lot, and let in Ernie, who was just as punctual as I knew he’d be. I led him into screening room one and all the way to the narrow backstage area between the curtain and the movie screen. Mike stood there smoking a cigarette with his shoulder leaned up against the wall. He looked just like he had that first night when he and I met back behind our houses. Except he was a lot more nervous now.
I didn’t stay. I had one more thing I needed to do. I went back to the theater lobby, and this time I headed for the front entrance, stuffing my paper hat on my head as I went.
Rochelle stood there, an eager grin on her face, along with even more makeup than usual. She wore a tight red dress, and her cotton-candy hair looked extra poufy. In her hand she clutched the “ticket” I’d printed and hand-delivered to the Morettis’ house earlier today. I’d told her Mike had sent me. It had been her day off, but Mike still had work to do. The ticket read: Good for one admission to a night at the movies you’ll never forget. Come to the theater tonight at midnight.
“This is so exciting!” she bubbled as I let her in and slid behind the snack counter.
“A Diet Coke,” I said. “Isn’t that your drink?”
“Uh-huh. And a box of Milk Duds, please.”
“An excellent choice.”
I pushed her treats across the counter and walked her into screening room one. I sat her down in the middle of the middle row, in the very same seat where I’d sat during my date with Mike.
“He’ll be right here,” I whispered. “He’s just getting everything ready for the big show.”
I started to go, but Rochelle grabbed my hand and peered up at me through big, shiny eyes. “Thank you, Cody. I mean it. You’ve already made this evening so special.”
I felt a pang right then. I admit it, I did. Rochelle really was a sweet girl. At least a couple times a week she’d get us all a Burger Bucket at the Burger Barn for lunch. She’d always let me have as many burgers as I wanted and never let me pay her a dime. For that matter, Ernie was a good guy, too, in a judgy, hyper-Christian sort of way. I suppose I should’ve felt some solidarity with him, considering I was 99 percent sure he was a closet case just like me. But I couldn’t let any of that stop me. A femme fatale wouldn’t. To get what I wanted, I had to be ruthless. I was a chubby homo living with his Christian nutjob parents in goddamn motherfucking Hellville, West Virginia, and I had no other choice.
I made my way to the front of the theater, off to one side, and peeked behind the red curtain. I flicked a switch on the wall. The curtain hummed open, revealing Mike and Ernie with their mouths locked together, a desperate grimace on Mike’s face, Ernie’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, his arms thrown wide open and his fingers wiggling, like he was falling from a great height.
The picture only lasted a second. A scream cut through the room, and they lurched away from each other. Mike whirled around to squint at the house.
“R-Rochelle?” he sputtered. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She was already rushing down her row and up the aisle, her hands over her mouth. He jumped off the stage and sprinted after her. I’d pulled back into the shadows at the side of the room so he couldn’t see me.
Ernie didn’t notice me either. He stared after the others, his fingers still wiggling, his face red with confusion and mortification, before he hurried out through the emergency exit on the other side of the screen.
And then I was alone. Which left me plenty of time to grab the black duffel bag from the stage and, with a swing in my hips Lana Turner would’ve envied, sashay out of the theater.