Skinny, Mean Man

The first time I saw her I was putting together a standee for the film Legally Blonde. I was on the floor near one of the exits of the multiplex I was working at. It was opening day of Michael Bay’s opus Pearl Harbour. She wasn’t yet assigned her soul sucking white polo shirt and she arrived wearing a tight fitting Gloomy Bear Care Bears shirt.

Her hazel eyes sparkled from behind her thick rimmed glasses in a way that I hadn’t seen before. Her natural red hair fell in a near perfect bob that ended right at the base of her neck. I was mesmerized by just how attractive she was before we had even said two words to each other. I stopped paying attention to what I was doing and accidentally cut the palm of my hand trying to insert Reese Witherspoon’s slot A into the slot B of the background.

Brian was the only other supervisor on duty that night, and despite the fact that he was a 30 year old ex-Marine who was a dead ringer for Stone Cold Steve Austin, I actually outranked him. In his typical fashion of barking out orders he brought her over to me to say that I was supposed to train her tonight and that he couldn’t because “I got about 14 fahcking theatahs to clean and I got no fahckin’ stahf.” In a flash he was gone, leaving me alone with K.L. for the first time.

We were going to start her off easy tonight since it was supposed to be busy. I was tasked with training her on how to work the bulk candy section and to make bag after bag of cotton candy (the most popular snack item at the theatre thanks to its rock bottom $2 price tag). Manning the bulk candy section of the theatre was the second best job involving food service at the theatre. The only job better was popping popcorn, since our popper was located upstairs off of the projection booth and the popper never once had to come downstairs to deal with customers.

The bulk candy room was far removed from the “theatre in the round” that was the concession stand. It was located between the crappy arcade where I learned to master the Star Wars Trilogy game and the room that housed all the syrup for the soda fountains, which was prime make-out real estate for dating employees. You were within the line of sight of the concession stand, but far away from earshot. The only reason it was even a manned position was to make sure that no one was stealing anything. Few people were crazy enough to buy candy in bulk at a movie theatre.

On what was earmarked as being one of the busiest nights in the history of forever by an agitated management staff (it wasn’t), I was “burdened” by not being able to help out with anything and was “arm twisted” into training one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen.

Most of our night was spent talking and getting to know one another. She lived in Webster with her grandparents and younger brother. Her mother was a bit of a deadbeat who lived in a trailer about ten minutes from her. She didn’t want to talk about her father. I didn’t necessarily ask about him, but I was careful not to bring him up for the remainder of the evening.

She was going to school at Franklin Pearce University, a school in small town New Hampshire named after the long since forgotten 14^th president of the United States. She was studying psychology and neuroscience and was in desperate need of a summer job because her course fees for the following year were about to go through the roof. Not that she really needed the money for school, per say. She was poor enough that much like me she was getting a free ride to anywhere she wanted to go.

It wasn’t as one sided a conversation as I am making it out to be, but she was far more forthcoming about frank details than I was. I told her I was going to Boston University as a film major and I was utterly miserable by the creative block I felt. I told her my father wasn’t around (a clear lie since he was, but not in a way I wanted to talk about) and that my mother was quite ill.

We bonded, as many young people do, over music. We spoke lovingly of Blink 182 and Chantal Kreviazuk. We debated whether or not Jimmy Eat World had sold out by signing to a major label. We both begrudgingly admitted having a soft spot for the band Lifehouse who had been all over the radio with their hit “Hanging by a Moment.” We spoke of being bored at parties that didn’t play just an equal amount of “fun” songs and “party” songs.

When it came time to take our break – together since I had to take her through an entire average day of work – I showed her how to steal nachos by hiding them beneath a veneer of popcorn that would go undetected to the human eye. I showed her the blind spots of the security cameras to steal the bulk candy. I informed her that while it was frowned upon to take it that it was impossible to inventory the cotton candy. I told her when she gets more stealthy I would teach her how to steal from the Yogen Fruz and how to get around the chicken finger inventory. When you work at a movie theatre, one of the first things you need to learn is how to beat the system since the system will find new ways to take your fun away at a relentless pace.

Her honesty made me trust her with sharing my utter contempt for the job she had just signed up for. I might have been a bit cynical after what happened at the last theatre I worked at, and I knew that I wasn’t getting any reprieve at home. Her candour made it very easy to open up to her on a professional level, if not necessarily a personal one.

We were the only people in the break room and she took her polo shirt in the middle of the break room to reveal not the T-shirt that she walked in wearing, but instead a tank top that showcased even more just how stunning she looked. She had a tattoo on her left shoulder or a crescent moon with the words “I don’t want to live on the moon” in the centre.

I recognized it immediately. The personal barrier I had erected was about to fall.

“Is that a Sesame Street reference?”

“It’s one of my favourite songs. It really means a lot to me.”

She immediately started singing the song I was referring to. The same tune that pulled me out of a really dark point in my childhood. I started singing along. We never made it to the end of the song as two people managed to walk in to kill the mood entirely with loud talk of the killer kegger they were going to later that night.

We finished the remainder of our break in relative silence, but neither of us could stop smiling. I wanted to tell her the significance of what that song meant to me, but it definitely wasn’t the time or the place. Instead we mocked the girls across the room and their vapid quest to get laid later that evening.

When we went back downstairs, we didn’t stay very long before being sent home at 9pm. I don’t think we sold a single piece of candy all night, and as is wont to happen in such a movie theatre, payroll needed to be cut. I was ready to go before she was, and I felt the need to stick around to walk her out. After talking to her and feeling a connection, I didn’t simply want to walk away without at least saying “goodbye” or “you did a great job doing nothing tonight.” I had to say something endearing without flat out asking her out on a date. Because that would be, you know, crazy.

She emerged from the women’s changing room and we made our way to the lobby. Turning the corner from the entrance to the staff area she turned bone white. She saw something that clearly upset her, freaked out, apologized for what she was about to do, and ran back upstairs saying she would see me the next time she was working.

I was confused as to whether or not I should go to the lobby to investigate or to go back upstairs. I thought over just how little I knew about her and opted for the lobby. It didn’t seem like the time or the place to pry into what made her so upset. I felt something for her earlier in the evening, but I felt the need to play it cool on this one.

I walked over to the customer service desk to ask one of my eight managers a question before leaving. The man I spoke with, a portly older man who looked like a cross between Jimmy Corrigan and The Penguin, asked if I had seen her upstairs or if she had already left. I thought carefully about how to answer. There was something in the room that she simply didn’t want to deal with.

I said I didn’t know. In truth, I really didn’t since there are numerous exits one could sneak out of to escape the building undetected. I knew she never would have known where any of them were on her first day, but I still had a sense of plausible deniability.

“Well, her dad is here and he wants to talk to her.”

“Yeah, I think she took off, but I honestly wouldn’t know.”

From a point just to the left of me, a tall, skinny man emerged. Early 40s, crappy biker tattoos from a foregone era of youthful rebellion, and track marks on his arm that suggest a chequered past. His nose looked to have been broken several times in the past and his moustache was of the stereotypical soup strainer variety; jet black model modified by a healthy dose of Just for Men hair colouring that he wasn’t using on his salt and pepper receding hair line.

“I just wanted to let her know that she left her keys locked in her car with the radio on. I mean, its still out there so if she isn’t at her car she has to be here. That battery has got to be close to dead by now.”

“Andy, could you go and check upstairs? Maybe see if she’s in the break room or something and ask her if she needs our jumper cables?”

“That won’t be necessary.” her father chimed in. “I have a set in my truck. Won’t be a problem.”

I agreed to look for her upstairs. My boss and her dad were going to check the lobby area. I bounded up the stairs thinking back to how hesitant she was to talk about her father earlier in the evening.

When I walked into the break room, she was in tears and screaming to her mother over the phone about his being there. From the side of the conversation I heard I was able to gather, more or less, that her mother let it slip to her father that she had a new job while she was drunk. Apparently, she had a restraining order against her father, who was for the most part estranged.

I mouthed the words “wait here” and ran back downstairs to tell someone, but it seems as if we had just been cut from the working roster just as things were starting to get extremely busy on the floor. My boss was nowhere to be found and flagging anyone down with enough time to deal with this would have been near impossible.

“Didja find her?” His voice now took a bit of an ominous tone. Not confrontational, necessarily, but the kind of tone one infers from someone they just aren’t too sure about.

“Nah, I really don’t know where she could be.”

“Think I could come upstairs and look for her? I mean, I wouldn’t take very long. I’d just be in and out. I really want to help her with her car.”

I stammered for a moment, not wanting to escalate the situation. “You know what, she might just be in the change room. I’ll go check again. I’d bring you up there, but I don’t want to get in trouble. I’ll go have a look again and I’ll be right back down.”

I think he knew I knew something when he uttered almost entirely under his breath a monosyllabic “ppreciateit” before rolling his head back and to the side to continue his annoyed look for his daughter in another quadrant of the same lobby he had been scanning for the past twenty minutes.

I made my way back upstairs yet again. She had her head in her hands and I had my hand on my phone ready to call the police. Having been a victim of similar circumstances as a child I knew this was a volatile situation to be placed in the middle of. I launched almost immediately into defensive mode.

“Do you want me to call the police?”

She looked up and shook her head to say no. “I just want to get out of here.”

“You know, you locked your keys in your car, right?”

She furiously searched her purse and ran back to the change room. She didn’t know about the keys. As soon as she exited the change room she dropped to the floor and began wailing. I knelt down in front of her to obstruct a potential scene from anyone who might have walked by.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call the police?”

She cried louder.

“Look, I can get you out of here. I can help, but know there is no way for me to help you get your car out of here right now without you dealing with your dad. It’s also really busy down there right now, so if you say or do anything it is going to cause a bit of a scene. I have a car. Do you want to leave? I can get us out of here without anyone noticing.”

Her “yes” was long and pained. I took her by the wrists in to help her up, but she squirmed and quickly moved my hands to hers and squeezed as tight as possible. She didn’t let go of my hand until we were safely out of the building. She was parked in the back lot where employees were supposed to park. When I arrived at work earlier, I was forced to park in the front of the building since the back was nearly full.

I led her to my crappy Chevy Cavalier while constantly looking over my shoulder. Once we were safely in the car, a small weight felt lifted, but it was almost like trying to escape the gaze of Cujo.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere but here.”

And with that I began driving away as far as I could. I would take her for coffee (too young yet to drink in the U.S.) if she wasn’t such a wreck or I didn’t think it too presumptuous. I would take her someplace secluded, but that’s just creepy. I know when I am at the end of my rope it helps me to be where no one else is, but I couldn’t take her there in good conscience.

I had driven in the warm summer evening for about an hour with her almost in silence. All I really said to her is that she could talk to me whenever she wanted and that she could tune the radio to anything she wanted. She thanked me through her tears, but was mostly too wrecked to form coherent sentences.

I was driving her through the back country around where I used to work and through the old stomping grounds of M.S., with whom I was now on friendlier terms with than I had been the previous year. While rounding the corner from the apple orchard-slash-deli that I used to frequent after hanging out with M.S., she received a call from her mother.

Her dad had left in a pissed off rage from the theatre. Police weren’t involved, but he was back at his house 45 minutes away from the theatre and a good hour or so in the complete opposite direction from where we were. Her mother just wanted to know where she was and that she was okay. She apologized for telling her dad about her new job. Her mother didn’t have a car and couldn’t help her out with the dead battery, but she could call for a tow truck.

I interjected and suggested that we go back to the theatre where they have jumper cables and a blackjack that could get her keys out and get her back on the road. I didn’t tell her that I intended on filling the other staff in on the situation with her father, since I didn’t know how well that was going to go over. She agreed to go back with me. At least she did at first.

She didn’t want to go back right away. I asked where she wanted to go and she asked if there were any parks nearby. Being familiar with the area, I knew of plenty of parks, but none that got us closer back to the theatre or weren’t swarming with police and park rangers looking to bust kids that are drinking and making out past the 10pm curfew on park lands.

I took her instead to a far less regulated spot in my home town of Shrewsbury which put us closer to getting back to the theatre. We went to a hill behind a Borders bookstore from which one could see the entire town and the entire city of Worcester below. It was where all the local kids went sledding during the day and where teenagers staged Jackass style stunts over the long summer nights without ever getting caught by the police who preferred busting skater punks in front of Dunkin’ Donuts or jocks trying to test their mettle in front of their girlfriends at the local “haunted” mansion.

It was one of the places I liked to go to escape and definitely the most picturesque. My real quiet spot was in the same town, but in a valley so low that it wasn’t visible from the hill. It was a simple pond near my elementary school with woods on one side and an abandoned beach on the other. The pond was walking distance from where I grew up. This was more of a hike.

I parked the car in the lot of an abandoned rehab facility behind Borders and took her to the hill. I didn’t really even notice it at first, but she latched onto my arm and was using me to hold her up. I showed her the view and she perked up in awe of the lights and bustle of the towns and cities below. That’s one of the things I miss most about Massachusetts. The views were always spectacular.

I told her about how the sledding and how my one idiot friend decided to go down the hill once in a Rubbermaid garbage can. She sniffled and for the first time in two hours and some change was able to compose herself.

“This would be a great makeout spot.” She giggled.

I stammered. “Yeah, well, I actually wouldn’t know. I… I really just come up here to be alone sometimes.”

She smirked, “Uh-huh.”

Time for s subject change! “You know what else I like to do when I’m here?” was what I said as I propelled myself down the hill in a sort of rolling cartwheel-type, um, thing. The hill was a lot bigger than I remembered because making it to the bottom seemed to take an eternity as I began thinking about kissing her the entire way down the hill. I did it to make her laugh, which I saw briefly as my head came up and I saw her face illuminated by the nearby lights from the parking lot and a lot more clearly as I made my way back up the hill, falling twice.

“You want to try it?”

She laughed and balked at the idea. We sat down on the side of the hill and decided that given her evening it was time to open up to her a bit more than I had earlier in the evening. Ours was a friendship officially forged by fire, and she had earned an explanation as to why someone she had only met several hours earlier had shown her such kindness.

I told her that my mother was an alcoholic waitress that lost our house and that my father was too lazy and pride filled to either take a job that he felt was beneath him. I told her I had been abused by him and other family members as a child, both physically and verbally. I told her that my family embarrassed me and that I wished I had someone who understood what it was like. I told her that she didn’t need to tell me anything about who she was if she didn’t want to, but that if she wanted to talk about anything that I would be glad to lent an ear. As corny as it sounds “lend an ear” was a direct quote.

She began to pull closer to me, almost wordless except for a heartfelt and mournful “thank you,” but as she leaned against me the skies opened up and it began to rain heavily almost immediately.

We rushed back to the car almost immediately and sat down. I asked her if she was ready to go back to the theatre yet. It was almost one in the morning after my guts spilling session, and I still had to work a double shift the next day from 11 in the morning until midnight. (As penance for asking for Sunday of that week off to go to some event I have long since forgotten about. Beach with friends? Probably.) She also had to drive herself home, which was 45 minutes away and damn near the Connecticut border.

“I just need a few more minutes.” With that she leaned back into me as I turned the car on and put my arms around her. I put the radio on. “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls. I swear the universe was getting a huge laugh out of this tragedy. She snuggled directly into the sweet spot between the neck and shoulder and breathed in deeply.

“You smell like deodorant and popcorn.”

“Is that bad?” I chuckled.

“It’s actually kinda nice. Kind of clean and edible.”

We both laughed at how ridiculous that sounded. A lot of the laugher was probably just from being physically and emotionally tired.

It was a passing summer storm and it was over in a matter of moments. As the last of the rain cascaded off the windshield and mirrors I suggested we go before everyone from the theatre leaves for the night. She agreed and we were on our way.

The conversation on the way home was a lot more jovial and silly as we poked fun at each others tastes and sang along as loudly as possible to Blink and Lifehouse on the way home. It was all smiles until we arrived at the theatre parking lot shortly after 2am.

We turned the radio down and scanned the parking lot for any signs of life or trouble. Luckily her father wasn’t there, but unfortunately no one else was, either. Despite the addition of late shows, everyone except the cleaning staff had taken off for the night. The tools that we needed to get her keys out and get her home were locked in the safe in the inner office, which none of us had access to.

She stood outside her car tearing up slightly, but somewhat mystified that the battery hadn’t died yet despite the radio still obviously playing. Her keys dangled from the ignition of her sad looking and painfully beige Ford Escort. With the amount of baubles dangling from the lanyard attached to those keys, I was slightly amazed that gravity didn’t take over and snap the steering column in half.

I immediately offered to call a tow truck for her, but neither of us had the cash to bring the car anywhere that late at night. I then offered her a ride home regardless of how long it was going to take. She said I didn’t have to and she could just call and wake up her grandparents to come get her.

I insisted and she hugged me in a way that I had never felt before. It was full of warmth and comfort the likes of which I had only dreamed of. Sure, I had dated a few girls prior and received my fair share of hugs for being “that really nice guy” in my day, but this was different. I was starting to crush on this girl harder by the second.

We drove to her house in Webster with the same joviality that marked our time at work and on the way back from the hill. Belting out pop hits on the radio in horrible off key fashion as we made fun of commercials for Apple Auto Glass and Bernie and Phyl’s (Quality, Comfort, and Price… That’s nice!) to stave off the silence.

We arrived at her house close to 3:30 and she kept talking to me until 4. She told me she would invite me in to crash at her place but her grandparents were really old fashioned and she didn’t want her younger brother to wake up and give her crap for having a boy in the house. She asked me if I was okay to make it home as I looked pretty tired. I told her I would be fine.

She hugged me a final time and asked me when I was working again. We realized we wouldn’t see each other again until Monday unless it was in passing. We were both clearly bummed out about it, but we accepted it. And like that she was gone. I pulled out of the driveway and back on down the road.

About five minutes after leaving her house in the middle of suburbia, the low fuel light came on in the car and I pulled over to the shoulder in a somewhat wooded area. Having learned my lesson the previous year in the middle of an ice storm, I began carrying a gas can in my trunk for such occasions.

While I was topping up the tank I realized that I was in the midst of feeling something I have never felt for someone before. This wasn’t like what I felt with M.S. or J.E. or S.S. This was far deeper and more satisfying. It was a feeling of being in the presence of a kindred spirit when they were at their worst, but still finding a way to look beyond a rotten situation to find humour and have some fun.

I looked up at the sky to see a plethora of stars I wasn’t going to see in the city. The roads were empty, so I decided to lie on the hood of the car and look up for a while. I questioned not asking her for her phone number or asking her on a date, but tonight was so intense that I didn’t want to push my luck or seem like an asshole. But, boy did I want to.

I thought about how I was going to ask her out and what we were going to do shortly before passing out and again after a police officer woke me up thirty minutes later and forced me to take sobriety test. I thought about it the entire way home and how I couldn’t wait to see her again, and how I hoped she never had to go through anything like that ever again.

No. I didn’t go directly home even after that. I stopped at a 24 hour pizza place around 5:30 and grabbed the greasiest slice of pizza I might have ever eaten. It tasted of olive oil, too much oregano in the sauce, and pure victory.

I stumbled home, sleep deprived, at 6 to find my mother waiting for me in my bedroom. I had moved back in with my aunt out of sheer necessity for the summer and not because I wanted to. On her own, my aunt was fine to deal with, but I was also dealing with her heroin and crack addicted son Billy and my mother who despite her recent diagnosis with cancer seemed determined to drink and smoke herself to the grave.

She was smoking in my bedroom since she couldn’t in her own room. My aunt, a lifelong smoker, now had an oxygen tank housed in my mother’s bedroom. Between puffs on her cigarette she would make her way to her portable inhaler. Every time I told her that what she was doing was counterproductive, she told me to fuck off. I stopped trying to talk sense into her long ago.

She never showered anymore despite my pleas and she stopped going to the doctor except to get pain pills and hear more bad news that she always kept from me. Her hair was so natted it was practically dreadlocked and she always wore the same two nightgowns around the house during the day. She never got formally dressed because she just didn’t see the point anymore. She didn’t just let herself go. She gave up entirely.

It is really hard to watch someone you love waste away before your very eyes despite your best efforts to help them. It is even worse when they place all of the blame on you for every ill that had befallen them.

“Andrew, why don’t you love me?” That was the first question she asked when I walked in the room. It was a common question that I had answered numerous times in the past month.

I loved her dearly, but she insisted that because I wouldn’t co-sign on a credit card for her she thought I hated her. Because I refused to buy her beer and cigarettes, she thought I hated her.

“I gave you everything you ever wanted in your life. What would you be without me? Why don’t you ever help me?”

“Mom, it is six in the morning. I want to go to sleep.”

“Where the fuck were you all night? Having fun? I remember that. People with money always have fun. You’re just selfish.”

She put out her cigarette in an ashtray next to the inhaler and shuffled out of the room. “Just once, I want to be appreciated. I don’t think it’s too much to ask.”

And with that I fell asleep in my street clothes and all the happiness I felt of my crush earlier in the evening was brought crashing back to Earth.

At 7am, I got a text message.

“Can’t sleep. U?”

“Trying to. Got a lot on my mind.”

“Thx 4 everything 2nite. It meant a lot.”

“Anytime ;)”

“U want 2 go 2 a party with me Sunday?”

“Sure! :D”

“Kewl.”

I fell soundly asleep with a smile on my face, waking up almost late for work to another missed text.

“Do U have a GF? Just curious.”