Under the Film

The grey haired guy comes out of nowhere, extends his hand to Andrew and says, “Did you know the door’s locked?”
Andrew has been in a fog, grinding his teeth, tapping his heel, brooding in a circle-thought nightmare of frustration and annoyance, and for a second he doesn’t even know what to think. Like a dreaming man he shakes the guy’s hand, two strangers meeting in a movie theatre. Andrew’s wife, Erin, in the next seat, watches.
“Peter,” the guy says, by way of introduction. “Sorry to bother you, but I just went to use the bathroom. I was gonna talk to the ticket ripper while I was out there, see why the movie hasn’t started yet, but…well…the door’s locked.”
“The bathroom door?”
“The door to the lobby. We’re locked in.”
“That was Carrie Orleans with her surprise hit for this year’s holiday season: Christmas in Nashville.” This is the male DJ voice salted between the bullshit top-40 tunes that have been driving Andrew crazy since he and Erin arrived in the theatre fifteen minutes ago. They were running late as usual (Erin’s fault), late enough to miss the coming attractions, which she knows drives him crazy, so he was pissed at the jump and things only got worse as they had to suffer through the “pre-show entertainment,” a disastrous loop of bad music and inane pop-culture themed factoids from the big screen.
Like what’s up there now: Entertainment Cinemas Trivia Quiz!, in foot high letters on a neon blue background. Which of these Hollywood Stars has webbed feet?, it wonders, offering as choices Ashton Kutcher and three other boobs Andrew’s never heard of. And still, though the film was scheduled to begin 10 minutes ago (it’s always a film to Andrew, never a movie) it still refuses to roll.
Andrew leans forward so Erin can’t hear and asks Peter what he means by “locked.” Peter must be in his fifties. Behind him stands a woman about that same age, her eyes flashing worry.
Peter says. “Come and see.”
Andrew follows him into the aisle, saying, “Be right back,” to Erin. To tell the truth, he’s still angry with her. She’d busted his balls all the way to the theatre, knowing how he hates to be late but refusing to take it seriously. She’s a queen high ball buster, his wife, one of the things he most loves about her, unless she’s turning the skill on him.
He follows Peter down the center aisle and past a jabbering group of teenagers seated down front. The three boys have identical haircuts: wavy, greased-up spikes. The two girls are skinny and giggling, one of them speaking loud into her cell phone, saying, “I told you I’ll be home after the movie! No I don’t know how long it is!” The teens also share in the blame for Andrew’s skyrocketing annoyance level. Having his film talked over by chatty kids annoys him almost as much as shitty top-40 music, or getting hassled by Erin.
They turn down the ramp toward the lobby door, the path bathed here in red exit-sign light. Andrew grabs the door handle, confident the door will open, as such doors must.
It doesn’t budge.
“Huh,” he muses, and pulls again. It doesn’t even shift in its jamb.
Peter reaches in and pounds the door once with his fist. Andrew says, “Hold on. This—” And then the anger is upon him like an infection. The accumulation of stresses – their lateness, Erin’s needling, the pre-film pop-o-tainment loop (“That was Kelly Clarkson’s latest, Don’t You Wish You Were My Man? On Entertainment Cinemas Radio!”), the teens, the film not starting, and now this door thing – opens an adrenaline spigot in his stomach. He works to control himself, hissing the calm phrase Dr. Carter gave him, “Weekends at the river…Weekends at the river…” as he stalks back up the exit chute, across the theatre, and down towards the screen. He’s too far gone to notice that the chatting teen girl has lost her connection, calling, “Hello? Hello?!,” into her phone.
He’s not going to embarrass himself pounding on the door while the knucklehead ticket rippers giggle from the lobby. Not going to give them the satisfaction. He’s going to exit the rear door, the one under the screen, circle through the parking lot and reenter the front of the building. Then he’s going to give those little-fuck ticket rippers the dressing down of a lifetime, the last they’ll get as employees of Entertainment Cinemas if Andrew’s got anything to say about it, the last—
But the rear exit is locked as well. No handle here, just a push-bar across the door’s waist. Nothing gives, but still Andrew tries. Rather, the adrenaline spigot inside him tries. It does so by forcing his hip into the push-bar, forcing his lips to shout, “Open, Motherfucker!” forcing his feet to kick until his toes hurt, forcing his palms to slap at the metal surface, making tiny, ineffectual noises, “Fucking open! FUCKING OPEN!!”
Then the spigot shuts off and he’s left standing there with only a dim memory of his most recent actions, the echoes of his calm phrase floating in his mind. The last time he experienced such a disassociation, he came back to himself with three knuckles on his right hand split open and blood-dripping, and the unconscious body of a balding medical equipment salesman from Nantucket bleeding below him on the floor of a bar. Christ, he realizes, I had another one. Without wanting to, he tallies the total amount he’s already spent on anger management. Well over two grand. Not enough.
He turns slow, knowing Erin will have risen in her seat and will be staring at him, worried, but angry too. And there she is, just visible in the low light, bathed pinkish from the onscreen display, a photo of Jason Biggs with his dick in a pie. Did You Know?! American Pie grossed $120,000,000 its opening weekend!
She’s not the only one staring. The teens have stopped laughing amongst themselves. The older people at the back of the theatre are all leaning forward for a better look. Andrew burns.
Peter runs up. He seems not even to have noticed the outburst. He says, “Come see what I found!”

***

Brittany is one of the skinny girls seated down front, and her iPhone doesn’t work anymore. The batteries are still half charged but she had no bars. No internet either. They had all gathered to share this information; fourteen people locked in a movie theatre, passing Brittany’s celly around like an artifact, checking their own to confirm that, no, they weren’t working either.
“I sent my Mom a text,” Brittany had said.
That was a few hours ago. Now Brittany sits by the lobby door, pounding with her tiny right fist, repeating, “We’re in here…We’re in here,” in an annoyed voice.
They’ve all had turns at both doors. They’ve all had turns thinking this a joke, or a mistake. They’re all still stuck in the theatre. They sit in groups now, some chatting like travelers stranded at an airport, some not talking at all.
Andrew’s wife Erin hasn’t spoken since they took their close look at the lobby door – Peter oddly proud to show them what he’d noticed – but Andrew is not worried about her. She looks determined, like she’s close to figuring something out.
Andrew eats his Snowcaps and sips his Coke, in which all the ice has melted. The anger spigot that exploded into his public tantrum at the rear exit has reformed now into a tight, throbbing ball, and is now working its way up through his intestines toward his chest. Without meaning to he checks his cell phone clock and groans; then – not wanting Erin to know why he groaned – says, “Not this fucking song again.”
She doesn’t seem to notice though, just keeps chewing her lip.
The screen asks, “Did You Know? Heather Graham is a classically trained ballerina!”
The song is Christmas in Nashville. Song seven in a twelve song loop. It’s the fifth time they’ve heard it. Andrew’s clock reads 12:16. Showtime was 7:05.

***

Erin dozes against the back wall, slipping in and out of conversation with Veronica, who is seated at the rear of the theatre with her husband, Brett, and their two friends. Veronica is worried about her sitter, a nice girl from the neighborhood who has a test tomorrow, and whom she had promised to be home no later than midnight.
“It’s not fair to the sitter,” Veronica keeps saying. “She’s the one I’m most concerned about. She’s such a responsible girl, she’ll feel duty bound to stay until we return and that could directly affect her—”
The DJ voice booms, “THAT WAS THE BLACK EYED PEAS WITH MY HUMPS! THAT WRAPS UP THIS SESSION OF ENTERTAINMENT CINEMAS RADIO. ENJOY THE SHOW!”
“—grade and that’s what most concerns me. Spending a night in a theatre is no big deal. I’ve spent nights in worse places…”
Erin isn’t listening – to Veronica or the DJ voice, which is lying anyhow. This particular session of Entertainment Cinemas’ Radio had wrapped up before. And though for a while she’d thought each wrap would actually be a wrap – that the lights would come up and the doors unlock and some police or theatre employee or anyone from outside would run in saying, “Thank God you guys are all right! We’ve been working to save you for hours!” – she’s long since given that up. Just as the trivia questions and Did You Know’s? repeat in a short rotation, so the song cycle will begin again in about thirty seconds. First up: Beyonce Knowles featuring Slim Thug with Check On It, then Rihanna with If It’s Loving That I Want, then the hated Carrie Orleans.
And they’re no longer all right anyhow. That girl Brittany had some sort of seizure and is now unconscious (a mixed blessing - at least she’s stopped knocking on the lobby door, her hand was bleeding pretty bad) And Veronica’s husband Brett has stopped talking; he’s just sitting there with his eyes wide open, facing away from the screen. Erin had stayed with Brittany for a while – down by the lobby door which no longer seems to be a door at all – long enough to make sure she was still breathing. Then, unsure of herself, she'd returned to her seat. No one knows what to do about Brittany. No one knows what to do about being locked in the theatre. No one knows what to think about the door or the music or the fact that they've been here for so long. They’re all just waiting.
As for Brett, Erin can relate. She’d fought her own urge to do that early on, to go to some other place without music or trivia or bright pink placards reminding you that Jim Carrey took a job as a busboy at Jerry’s Famous Deli to prepare for his role as Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. Previous to this, Erin hadn’t known such a place existed in her mind, a place to crawl and shut out what she sees, hears and smells (stale popcorn, thanks); but it’s there. It looks warm and plush too, with sofas and a thick down comforter. But she realizes that going to that comfortable place has certain strings attached, that she might not easily return, so she’s decided to remain here with her husband.
Andrew sleeps a few rows up, reluctant for some reason to abandon their original seats. Periodically he and his friend Peter have walked down to the rear exit door under the screen. She's not sure how often, time has gone squishy since the last of their phones ran out of batteries. The theatre has no natural light, no clock. She’s glad Andrew is calm enough to sleep now. He had one of his fits earlier, down by the rear exit. How long ago had that been?
“If only my phone worked. I’m going to have a long talk with those Verizon folks when—”
Beyonce cuts Veronica off. Erin smiles at the older woman, takes a sip from her water bottle, which is nearly empty, pulls her coat over her ears and tries to sleep.

***

“Dude, you got any food?”
This is the taller of the spiky haired teens, whose pants are baggy and whose shirt is an Oakland Raiders jersey. The other two boys are asleep in the opposite corner. The remaining young girl, who must feel alone without Brittany to talk to, sits by the tall boy’s side. Peter and Andrew are commiserating by the rear exit again, which means they’re in the tall boy’s territory.
“I told you I don’t.” Peter says.
“No candy or nothin’? No mints?”
“You know we’re out of food.” Peter makes his voice harsh, like a father.
“I saw you fuckin’ guys eating back there.”
“No you didn’t. Now shut up, alright?”
The kid throws his hands up and slouches, tapping his foot nervously. The girl pats his leg and whispers in his ear.
Andrew swallows hard. The anger ball is somewhere near his heart. He says, “Okay,” to Peter and they take their positions, each leaning a shoulder into the door.
Peter says, “Three…Two…One…”
And they push.
They’re here at the rear door because the lobby door is gone. The handle is still there, but the seams have disappeared, as if the metal of the frame and the metal of the door have fused. The hinges are also gone, along with the gap along the floor. Beyond the handle, no evidence but the shared memory of fourteen people who passed through it suggests the lobby door ever even existed.
This rear exit, through which none of them passed, is different. This is still a door – seams and hinges and all – and so it might still open. This fact keeps them pushing, this and what is visible along the door’s bottom edge: a bare yellow tinge of what might be daylight.
“Okay,” Andrew groans, and they break, heaving. “Wish we knew what time it was.”
Peter rubs his stomach, “Lunch time,” trying to make a joke.
Andrew winces. Only one of the fourteen people in the theatre wears a watch, and this is Brett, husband of Veronica, and if you get too close to Brett he bays like a spastic and slaps at his head. The rest of them relied on their cell phones for the time, and the last of their phones ran out of batteries a while ago. All they have for clocks are their stomachs, and Andrew’s tells him they’ve been in the theatre well over twenty-four hours. He long ago lost count of how many times Christmas in Old Nashville has played.
“How ‘bout something to drink? C’mon, give it up.” The tall boy again. Andrew chewed the last of the Chicklets from Erin’s purse long ago and his throat feels raw. None of them thought to conserve food and drink. Why would they?
Andrews ignores him and concentrates instead on the thin line of light under the door, to which he feels desperately connected, and also troubled by. The light is the only thing that indicates the door might stand between here and outside. But - even though Andrew has lost complete track of time, like a drifting shipwreck survivor loses the ability to tell one patch of ocean from the next – he and Peter have come down to the rear exit eighteen or twenty times now, and each time that thin line of light has looked exactly the same.
If that’s outside, why hasn’t it gotten dark?
“Ready? Three…Two…One…”

***

“…NEXT ON ENTERTAINMENT CINEMAS’ RADIO, GWEN STEFANI IS LUXURIOUS!”
It’s murky between the rows. Erin has to search with her hands. She’s been doing this for at least an hour, working her way down from the back of the theatre. She’ll go no further than the center aisle because the tall, spiky haired boy has ordered them not to pass that point. He thinks the adults are hording food and, recognizing Andrew and Peter’s interest in the rear exit, has ransomed their access to it. Andrew and Peter are pissed. They’re having a serious talk. Erin is too hungry to worry.
Smooshed into the floor between the rows she’s found nearly a handful of popcorn and ten or twelve assorted bits of candy – Bunch’a’Crunch, Milk Duds, Jujubees, Whoppers and two Snowcaps she’s set aside special for Andrew.
She’s eaten some already, but she’ll bring the bulk back to the group huddled against the back wall. Veronica will try and give some to Brett, but he won’t take it.
She’s got as much as she can carry now, and after only four rows of scrounging. Not bad. Before heading back she peers over the railing at Brittany, lying there dead in a pile by where the lobby door used to be. The stench strangles the air above her corpse. Her iPhone dangles from her battered knocking hand.
The tall boy roars, “Leave Brittany the fuck alone!” Erin swallows in shock and her throat burns.
He watches her from his front row street through eyes invisible in the low light. Even after eating the few pieces of floor candy, Erin is still hungry in a way she’s never imagined, like her stomach is a mouth eating her from the inside out, eating itself even. The thought of losing the food she worked so hard to collect causes her to clench up, become feral. She slinks away from the railing, away from the smell and out of the tall boy’s sight.

***

“Did you see that train?”
“No.”
“Some sort of old fashioned train.”
“Didn’t see it.”
“Swear it was a train… You ever do anything bad to anyone?”
“What?”
“You know. Bad. Like when I was in school there was this kid Jed and he had a weird shaped head. Like watermelon shaped. Why would a parent give a kid with a funny shaped head the name ‘Jed’? But we all made a career out of making fun of this kid. It got so you could see it on his face, the fear. He carried it with him.”
“So what?”
“So nothing. I’m just saying.”
“Whatever this is, Peter. It’s got nothing to do with Jed.”
“Of course not. I’m just saying… Sure you didn’t see that train?”
Andrew had seen it. Somewhere between the trivia and film stills and paparazzi shots there had been a gargantuan locomotive, ancient and oppressive, blasting through a damned and deserted wasteland, belching a plume of smoke as greasy and dense as a Dixiecrat’s pompadour. And that’s not the only disruption that’s occurred to the regular program. There’s also been a bout of porn, a particularly nasty and inhuman sort, unremarked upon by any in the audience. And what he can only assume is the death video of that reporter got caught by Al Queda a few years back, Danny Pearl.
And Andrew thinks he saw his father on screen as well. Dad with those blotches he got on his cheeks when he’d had a few too many. Dad with his arm cocked forward across his chest, ready to swipe out with the animal quickness for which he was so renowned. Yup, Andrew’s pretty sure he saw that too.
“I didn’t see any train,” he whispers.

***

Erin and Andrew make love. They do this quietly, in between the last and second to last rows. They do it with her seated on his lap, her pants down just enough, his fly open. They do it because they want to think about something other than their hunger and their raw, burnt throats. Andrew thinks they’re being discreet but Erin is sure some of the others see. The Tall Boy for one; he sees everything.
Like before when Erin realized that Veronica had died sleeping next to her, the tall boy somehow knew already. He’d started shouting from his front row seat. “Is that bitch dead? I think that bitch is dead!”
They’d put Veronica by the lobby door, next to Brittany whose lips have begun to pull back from her teeth. Been a few days at least, Erin thought. Three. Maybe four.
She strokes Andrew’s chin. A pretty good beard lives there. She kisses his dry lips. The DJ Voice blares, “UP NEXT, THE PUSSYCAT DOLLS!” The voice is the only thing in this eternal pre-show that ever changes. It keeps getting louder

***

They’re almost too weak to stand, so Andrew and Peter agree to try for the door and fuck that spiky haired prick if he gets in their way. They walk together down the center aisle.
“And if you never hear a sound, you’ll know it’s Christmas in old Nashville town…”
More than the hunger or the weakness or the rotting smell that’s long since overtaken the smell of piss and stale popcorn, Andrew hates this song. The rest he can deal with, bad as they are, but this one is unacceptable; the worst sort of New Country bullshit. That he’s now heard it more times than he’s heard any other song in his life is the cruelest irony. Trapped in darkness, starving, dealing with the Tall Boy – all that he can handle; but this fucking song about fucking Christmas in fucking Nashville – it really makes the old anger ball ascend. It could drive someone crazy.
Which reminds him of Erin. She hasn’t spoken in a long time, not since they dropped Brett’s body with the others by the former lobby door, where it rolled to rest with one finger in his wife Veronica’s staring eye, his stylish watch showing 6:25 (am or pm? What day?). At first Andrew thought Erin was asleep, but then he noticed that her eyes were open. He figures maybe she just needs a few minutes, time to work things out.
So he and Peter will go it alone, and when the rear exit is open, Erin will return to him. In Andrew’s mind this is a simple, intractable equation.
As soon as they cross into the Tall Boy’s territory, they start to run. More a stumbling lurch than a run, but at least they make impact together. And is the rear exit felt to shake the smallest amount? Maybe, but they’re so exhausted by the exertion that they crumple against the door and each other. Andrew is immediately hypnotized by the yellowish light along the floor. He feels like he might vomit, but what would come up? His stomach? His heart?
“They’ll all be hollerin’ and hootin’ around, when it’s Christmastime in Old Nashville Town…”
Then he is yanked by the hair, and then on his back. The onscreen display shifts, bathing his attacker, the Tall Boy, in pink light. Andrew has time to wonder where the boy gets his energy, and then the sneaker is falling about his head and chest, stomping him into the painted concrete, into the squashed popcorn and jelly beans and napkins and sticky spilled soda. Andrew could use some help – he hasn’t the energy even to protect himself – but he and Peter have an agreement. The Tall Boy can’t attack them both. Whoever is able must go for the exit. The exit is the important thing.
That, Andrew jokes to himself, was before he went for me. And he must speak some of this because the tall boy asks, “What’d you say, Motherfucker?” in the hissing whisper they all now pass for voices. He stomps Andrew’s face, repeating, “What’d you say? What’d you say?” in strange rhythm with Christmas in Nashville, “Its Christmastime in…What’d you say, Motherfucker!?”
Andrew lifts his head in time to see Peter carom off the rear exit again, and then he absorbs another savage foot to the chest. He manages to roll, some ancient reserve of adrenaline powering his body through the act. The anger ball that has been rising, rising all this unknowable time, finally reaches his throat.
And magically he finds his feet. The tall boy is green now, his hair a pagan crown.
“Where’s the food, motherfucker?” The boy hisses.
“Nobody here’s got any use for a frown, ‘cause it’s Christmas in old Nashville Town…”
Clunk! Peter at the door again.
The Tall Boy comes for Andrew, speed and fury and – more than anything else – hunger. He comes with his fingers out like claws, his knees kicking high. He pushes Andrew into the front row and leaps atop him, but catches an armrest in the balls and loses his wind. The anger ball erupts through Andrew’s mouth. The spigot – the one that landed the medical equipment salesman from Nantucket in the hospital, and landed Andrew in the office of Dr. Carter, Anger Management counselor – opens wide. Andrew leaps. The tall boy’s head hits the cement and Andrew is straddling him and lifting him by the shoulders and pounding his head down again and doing it again and once more and then many more times, as many times maybe as he’s heard Christmas in Nashville by Carrie Orleans, until the Tall Boy’s head is no longer shaped like a head, until his nose and mouth and hair have strayed disastrously from their proper geography. There is blood, a great deal of it just visible in the darkness – now tinted green, now neon blue – and Andrew thirsts for this blood, for how it will moisten his throat, his miserable blister mouth.
While he drinks he hears the Nashville song. He hears Peter attacking the door.
The DJ’s voice explodes, the loudest thing ever.
“THAT WAS CARRIE ORLEANS WITH HER SURPRISE HIT FOR THIS YEAR’S HOLIDAY SEASON: CHRISTMAS IN NASHVILLE. NEXT UP ON ENTERTAINMENT--”
“It’s open, Andrew! It’s fucking open!”
Blood on his lips, Andrew whirls. He sees Peter by the exit, now opened just a crack. That stygian yellow light fills the space between door and jamb, and an odor – stronger than offal, death, or popcorn – fills the theatre. It is beyond anything Andrew has ever smelled. The taste of blood on his tongue is nothing compared to it.
But more than this is the silence. For the first time in forever the DJ voice, the music, are gone.
New silence and new darkness. Andrew turns in time for a last look at his wife. Erin faces him from the rear of the theatre but looks over him, beyond him. Then it is too dark to see.
He falls backward into a front row seat. He cranes his neck for a good look at the screen. He’s waited so long, after all.
The lights are down, the audience is quiet.
The film starts to roll.