Popcorn and a Movie

My best friend Calvin loved the “X-files.” Perhaps a little too much. I mean he really believed all that stuff about flying saucers. So much so that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he told me one day that he had been abducted by aliens. 

Calvin never missed a Friday night episode of the show about a government coverup of the reality of UFOs and extraterrestrial beings. He viewed the show as the first step in everybody finally understanding. I viewed it as TV show, and not even my favorite genre. I much preferred horror to science fiction.

Still, many a Friday night found me at Calvin’s drinking Coke floats and watching Scully and Mulder come close but never close enough. But, as happens with Calvin, do something once that he likes and it becomes a tradition. Those Fridays when I finally had something to do other than watch “X-Files,” Calvin would pout. For Calvin, nothing would ever compete for his Friday nights with Scully and Mulder.

And so it was that he kept a calendar counting down the weeks then days to “The X-Files: the Movie,” and with each passing day he worried that Hollywood was going to screw it up. 

“We saw what those fucking morons did to Batman, didn’t we?” Calvin asked. We were new to cursing and as with most new habits, we overindulged. And although our range of profanities was somewhat limited, that scarcity didn’t inhibit their use.

He was right. Everyone hated “Batman and Robin,” last year’s worse movie. 

“They should have just made the movie about Poison Ivy,” I said, and Calvin looked at me like I had spoken in a foreign language, which was happening with some regularity whenever I mentioned girls or sex. I’m sure he barely noticed Uma Thurman.  

Just as when I tried to interest him in my father’s Playboy Magazine, he preferred his comic books. Me? Not so much. If I was going to read, it wouldn’t be a comic book. It would be something Stephen King wrote. 

But like a good friend, when the day arrived for the premier of “X-files,” I stood in line that Friday night in mid-June, when it was hot everywhere but a scorcher in Georgia. So hot that thunderclouds had been gathering all afternoon, promising a storm that might never happen. So hot that once inside, the air conditioning felt unusually cold. Your sweat chilled you like a night-time jump in a mountain lake. 

The lobby was crowded — mostly boys about our age; some high schoolers and fathers with boys and a few mothers with their sons. When Calvin and I went to the movies, we always made a beeline to claim the best seats we could get (optimally dead center and two rows back of the middle, toward the projector room). Then, one of us would go get the popcorn and Cokes.

So it was that I found myself standing in a line that didn’t seem to move. At all. People were getting fidgety as the guy operating the popcorn machine seem unnaturally slow and easily flustered and had spilled a good many kernels on the counter near the machine as he was scooping them into the fryer. And he’d also spilled so much freshly popped corn onto the floor that it made a crunching sound as he and the young girl working the fountain machine moved about the concession area. The girl seemed more apt, but you can only fill a soft drink cup just so fast. They should have had more help.

“Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve,” as my old man was found of saying whenever one spoke of what he termed “lost opportunities.” 

But no matter how pitiful the guy looked, that didn’t stop some people from complaining. Loudly.

“Come on, buddy,” said the father most likely of the kid standing beside him. Couldn’t have been seven. Hard to imagine he was into “X-files.” Probably the father was the fan and he had just drug his son along. He is one of those people who makes everybody feel embarrassed for him.The line seemed to relax after he and his poor kid left. 

Still, it moved slowly. It seemed everybody was getting popcorn. Until it came my turn when the guy said they were out of popcorn. The person in front of me had gotten the last bag, and there wasn’t enough time to pop a new batch before the movie started. The guy looked like he might cry if I got upset, so I just asked for a box of Milk Duds, got my Cokes and hurried back to our seats.

Calvin was not happy. He reminded me that he liked popcorn with his movies. It was like so many things with Calvin, a ritual. A habit. An obsession. One that could only be indulged at the movies because he wasn’t allowed popcorn at home. His parents worried a kernel would crack a tooth, and Lord knows how expensive dentists are. Apparently Calvin’s older sister had cracked a tooth chewing ice, and ice and corn kernels are sort of the same thing in the world of worry that most parents wallow in.

I said I liked popcorn, too, but at least we had Milk Duds. 

He gave me that look he does when he thinks I stupid. Actually, that look amused me. It’s so practiced that I laughed at the thought of Calvin standing in front of a mirror rehearsing. If I laughed too much though, he’d just give me a sterner version of the same look. 

“And did you just see that,” Calvin said, pointing to a mom and her son walking further down the aisle.  

“What?”

“They have popcorn.”

“Jesus! Calvin. They obviously got them before they ran out,” I had no sooner said than four more patrons walked by and all had popcorn.

“And over there,” he said, again pointing to several late comers, all with popcorn, awkwardly side-stepping down a crowded row.

Calvin swiveled his head around the auditorium and pronounced, “Everybody has popcorn but us.”

I couldn’t help but take a quick look around, and he was right. It seemed like everyone was eating popcorn. Which was weird. There is no way that guy popped that many bags after I left not two minutes ago.

“Okay already,” I said, standing up. “I’ll go back and get your blasted popcorn.” 

As if on cue, the lights began dimming as the curtains parted. 

“Oh forget it,” Calvin said, pulling me back down into my seat. “The movie’s starting.”

The opening was a solid white screen that became snow falling on a frozen tundra, crushed underneath the feet of two advancing figures. 

“30,000 years ago” was superimposed on the screen as the figures were revealed as cavemen.

Calvin stifled a shout, “I knew it,” but it still brought a “hush" from the audience. Which didn’t stop him from leaning over and whispering, “Maybe I wrong.”

He meant he might have been wrong in thinking Hollywood would ruin his fantasy. It was clear he already loved it. What he meant by “I knew it,” I had no idea, but I was sure it would be the topic of conversation for days to come, if not forever. And all it took to convince him and make him forget about popcorn were two cavemen braving the darkness of a cavernous underground chamber where a monster would shortly savage them. 

While Calvin was enjoying the movie, I had no idea about what I had just seen. Perhaps Calvin was right, I should have watched more shows because clearly I had missed too many episodes to easily grasp the significance of the first scene. 

A few moments later, the movie flashed forward to the present day and Scully then Mulder appeared. They were looking for a bomb of all things, and I was even more confused. They found the bomb, and the agent in charge elected to diffuse the bomb by himself and orders everyone — even though Mulder insists he remain and help — out of the building. As Scully reluctantly pulls Mulder into a getaway car, we see the agent sitting passively in front of the bomb, watching it tick down, never trying to stop it from exploding.

And explode it does. Spectacularly, and in slow motion. 

I always wonder how much it costs a movie company to buy a building in order to blow it up. Or are all the buildings that blow up on screen demolition projects in reality. Pretty impressive either way, but I was beginning to wonder if I would ever understand what was going on.

And then Scully and Mulder were walking back toward the wreckage as paper and plaster dust floated down like confetti when the lights in the theater went out and the movie disappeared. 

Calvin moaned along with the packed theater of “X-files” fans who had eagerly anticipated the movie that was supposed to answer all their questions about aliens and extraterrestrial phenomena.

“This sucks,” he said.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on,” I asked him.

“We obviously lost power—“

“Not that, stupid. The movie. What the hell is going on?”

Again the look. “If I tell you, it’ll spoil it for you.”

“Bullshit. You don’t know either. Admit it, oh X-files expert extraordinaire.”

“Hell no, asshole. And shut up. I got a notion of what’s going on at least. You’re some kind of retread.”

“Look who’s talking. You got a ‘notion.’ A notion? Where did you learn to use that word? Wait til I tell everybody you have notions.”

“You suck and this does, too.”

“You’ve said that.”

“It still sucks.” 

Calvin said, “This sucks” no less than a million times while we sat in the dark waiting for either the lights or the movie to come back on. I said, “Yep,” the first thousand times but then just sort of zoned out. 

The lights came back on full force, no incremental light adjustment, just a blistering white flash that remained intense. There was a cracking sound I couldn’t place.

We both did a series of quick, jerky double and triple takes looking around the auditorium. 

It was empty and we were alone.

“What the fuck?” we both said simultaneously. 

And again, “Where is everybody?”

We both jumped up out of out seats. I hurried right toward the outer aisle as fast as Calvin went the other way.

I stood in the right aisle looking back at the dark projector booth. I didn’t know what was going on but I could hear myself breathing as I tried to think. I kept looking around like any second now it would all make sense. I had never been so dumbfounded. The curtains were drawn and I had no idea what that meant, if anything. All I could say was “damn.”

“Oh, God. Oh. God. Oh God,” Calvin said over and over as he hop-scotched frantically back and forth, up and down, in an out of the aisle and rows, looking for what, I didn’t know. He ended up next to me.

“This is crazy,” I said. “Let’s go,” and turned to walk up the aisle. 

Calvin grabbed me from behind and I screamed, “Shit!”

“Don’t go up there, yet,” Calvin said, still holding on to me. “We should think first.”

“Let me go, freak, you scared the shit out of me. And don’t be a pussy,” I said, pulling clear of Calvin. “We need to find out what happened.”

“Isn’t it clear? Obvious?” Calvin said. 

“No, it isn’t. So please tell me what is so clear about an empty theater that was packed just a few minutes ago?”

“What makes you think it was just a few minutes ago?” 

Neither of us wore a watch and there was no clock in the auditorium. I shrugged. “So what happened?”

But Calvin was already heading down the the exit. 

“Wait, what are you doing?” I asked, now the one urging against throwing caution to the wind. 

“Just a quick test,” he said, as he pushed on the handlebar. 

“It’s locked,” he said, as if confirming his hunch. 

Suddenly, I was scared. I felt a warm flush and was embarrassingly aware of the grumbling low in my stomach. I knew if I looked at Calvin, I’d be even more scared and might freak. Hell, I might start crying and that definitely couldn’t be allowed to happen. I chewed on my tongue.

Calvin walked over to the other exit and tried to open it. No luck. 

“Okay, so let’s check out the lobby,” I said, now in a hurry to get out of there.

I wish I could say that I had a plan, or even a notion, as Calvin would have said. But I was operating on pure fear-feed adrenalin that had my heart racing and face hot with beads of sweat forming on my forehead, and that’s when I noted the AC hadn’t come back on. It was hot.

The hallway that led to the lobby was a florescent hall of horrors, as the ultra-bright light both reflected off the plastic movie poster displays that lined the wall and cast the actual images into a gossamer of shadows, making even more menacing the depictions of “Halloween 20 Years Later” and “Blade,” another Marvel superhero movie Calvin was looking forward to.

The lobby was empty and not brightly lit. Only then, did I realize just how bright the auditorium and hallway had been. Here was the low light of a closed theater revealing just enough vision for a peek inside by a security guard making the rounds. 

I walked straight to the front doors, knowing they would be locked. And I was right. Walking back, I found Calvin at the concession stand. 

It was obvious that the staff had cleaned up. The floors weren’t littered with popcorn and paper wrappings. Our shoes weren’t sticking to floors. The counters had been wiped and the machines turned off and cleaned. 

“I was hoping to grab a candy bar or something. But the case is locked. I’m hungry.”

“How could you think of food,” I said, as I looked for a phone. There was a row of three pay phones near the bathrooms. None had a dial tone. 

Then I heard Calvin yell, “Henry! Henry!” And the hair literally stood out on my neck as I raced to Calvin.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Look what I found,” he said, holding up two small bags of popcorn. “They were in this little box thingy with a lightbulb to keep them warm. Probably somebody forgot them” and with that he nibbled one off the top and pronounced it edible though no longer warm. He handed me the other bag. I tasted one and handed the bag back to him. 

“What? You’re not going to eat yours?” I said no and Calvin was more than happy to eat both bags, while I wandered around trying to see if there were other doors or phones. There were, but they were either locked or out of order.

There was really nothing left to do except wait for the morning or whenever someone came to open up or check on them. Surely parents would be worried at some point.

We stationed ourselves near the front door. As soon as I sat on the carpet and leaned against the wall, I felt like going to sleep, and the last thing I remember was listening to Calvin eat his popcorn.

I woke up to someone saying, “Son. Son. Young man.” 

I opened my eyes and saw two men hovering over me, one on each side. “Can you tell me your name, son,” one said. 

“Henry,” I said, though my tongue seemed attached to the roof of my mouth. I tried smacking my lips.

“That’s good, that’s good,” the man said. 

“Son, do you remember what happened?”

I couldn’t. I tried, but no thought lasted long enough nor was any image recognizable. Nothing was connecting. Suddenly, I felt myself being lifted. I felt like I was going to fall when I realized I was on a stretcher. Doors were opened and I was rolled outside. 

“Calvin,” I said as loud as a could and still one of the men asked me, “What?”

“Calvin. Where’s Calvin?”

“Who is Calvin?”

“My friend.”

“Your friend?”

“Where is he?”

“Where did you see him last?”

I couldn’t remember. 

“Was he with you last night?”

I said yes though I didn’t really remember.

 I heard the other man say there wasn’t anyone else. “He’s the only one.”

“Okay, Henry. Just relax. We got you and we’re going to take care of you. Okay. Just hold on.”

I was losing the battle to stay alert. All I really wanted then was to sleep. 

“You know,” one of the men said, just barely loud enough to be heard over the engine and siren, “the county really ought to shut that theater down. People are always getting sick there.”