by Allen Zadoff
“Do you prefer front, middle, or back?”
“I prefer the ceiling.”
She laughs. A few people turn around and look at us.
“That option is off the table for tonight,” she says, “so I choose the middle.”
We shuffle in and sit down. I squirm, looking all around.
“It’s strange to be an audience member,” I say.
“For me, too. Every time I go to the movies, I want to be on the screen.”
“And I want to be behind the projector.”
“We’re freaks,” Summer says.
“We’re theater freaks,” I say. “That’s a little different than regular freaks.”
“Much cooler,” Summer says.
The lights go down, and the trailers start.
Summer leans over and whispers in my ear:
“We should be in rehearsal right now. Not watching a stupid movie.” Panic creeps into her voice. “What if the show gets canceled? What if I never get to do the role?”
“It will be okay,” I say. “I’m sure of it.”
I’m not sure of anything, but I feel like I have to be strong for Summer. It’s funny how that works. Sometimes being around a girl makes you act braver than you really are.
Summer sighs, and I feel her relax into the seat next to me.
The trailers end and Throne of Blood starts.
The first scene is a shot of an ancient castle enveloped in fog. Toshiro Mifune rides up out of the murk and shouts, “Open the gates!”
The title card flashes.
It begins.
Throne of Blood is based on the Scottish play, the one we don’t say out loud because it’s bad luck. In Kurosawa’s version, the Scottish king is a Japanese lord who goes power mad, plotting and scheming to find a way to become Emperor. It’s a story about ambition driving people crazy.
A little like our theater department.
Summer shifts in her seat, and our elbows brush against each other in the dark. I take a deep breath, and my nose fills with her delicious scent.
“What are you wearing?” I whisper.
“You mean my underwear? That’s a little personal, Ziggy.”
“I meant your perfume.”
“Good, because I’m not wearing underwear.”
“Shhh,” an audience member says.
“Just kidding,” Summer whispers, and elbows me in the side.
We watch the movie for a minute, then she leans over again.
“I don’t wear any perfume,” she says.
“Your skin just naturally smells of apples?”
She grabs her hair. “That must be my shampoo. Is it bad?”
“It’s great.”
She smiles, her face lit by the glow of the screen.
“Ziggy? Do you like how I smell?”
“Shhh!” the audience member says, louder this time.
“Sorry,” I say.
And I settle in to watch the film.
About twenty minutes into it, the image starts to shift on the screen.
“What’s going on?” Summer says.
“Maybe it’s a bad print,” I say.
“Oh,” Summer says.
After a second she says, “What’s a bad print?”
“I have no idea. I was trying to sound like a techie.”
She laughs, a loud peep that earns us another shhhh from behind.
A few minutes later there’s a scraping sound from the projection booth, and the film jams. For a second we watch the tug-of-war of frame versus screen, followed by a grinding sound as the projector shuts down. The screen goes black.
A groan passes through the crowd. Someone shouts in Japanese, and a few people laugh. Someone else jumps up and goes to find an usher.
Meanwhile, we sit in the dark.
At first I’m okay. Then my chest starts to tighten and it gets tough to breathe. I can hear myself wheezing, but I feel far away, my mind and body separated by miles.
“Ziggy?”
“What?”
My voice comes out in a gasp.
“Are you okay?”
I try to answer but I can’t.
My father is driving at night, his spotlight beams illuminating trees in the distance. I’m in the passenger seat next to him.
“What’s going on?” Summer says.
My father switches from high beams to low, the light now shining on wet pavement. The tires squeal as he takes a corner. I gasp and check my seat belt.
“What should I do?” Summer says.
I try to get back to the theater. If I can hold on for another minute, the lights will come on and everything will be fine.
But it’s dark now. Nothing feels fine when it’s dark.
I feel something brush my hand. It’s my father reaching across to me in the car. I yank my hand away fast. It’s not that I don’t want to hold my father’s hand. But if I let him touch me, I’ll have to feel him let go. That’s the part I can’t stand.
“It’s me,” Summer whispers.
I feel the touch again.
It’s warm. Soft.
Summer’s hand on mine.
I relax my arm, spread my fingers. Her hand slides into mine.
I look for my father in the car, but I see nothing.
The pitch-black of the theater.
I’m back.
“Are you sick, Adam?” she says.
I feel my chest relaxing.
“No. But don’t let go, okay?” I say.
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
She squeezes me tighter.
There’s some noise from the projection booth, and the film starts up again. The audience applauds.
I breathe and watch the movie, my body slowly returning to normal.
After a minute I shift my arm a little, thinking now that the movie is on, Summer won’t want to hold my hand anymore. But she hangs on.
We sit like that for what seems like a long time. Our hands start to sweat, or at least mine does. It’s hard to know who is doing the sweating when your hands are sealed together.
I try to watch the movie, but I can’t stop thinking how disgusting my hand must be.
Finally, I can’t stand it anymore.
I take my hand away and wipe it on my pant leg.
Right away I wish I hadn’t.
Summer shifts in her seat but she doesn’t say anything.
I sit for the rest of the movie, wanting to take Summer’s hand, wishing she would take mine, but neither of us doing anything about it.
LET US LISTEN TO THE MOON.
The other film still hasn’t finished when we walk into the lobby.
I say, “Maybe we should sneak in the back. Then we can pretend we saw the whole thing.”
“We’re either caught or we’re not caught,” Summer says. “We might as well enjoy ourselves in the meantime.”
“How do we do that?”
“We could take a walk.”
I look out at the street through the Film Forum window.
“Don’t worry, Ziggy. I’m not going to kidnap you.”
“It’s not that. I just haven’t been to the city in a long time.”
“Perfect,” she says. “I know the Village a little bit. There’s a great gelato place around the corner.”
She takes my arm and pulls me out the front door.
It’s past nine o’clock and the sun is down, but the city feels bright and awake. Montclair is a ghost town by this hour. But here the store windows are lit up and the streets are busy. I try to imagine living in place that’s never dark. It seems like paradise.
Summer and I get gelato and walk down the street together. It’s not full-on summer weather yet, but it’s warm enough that people are out and moving up and down the sidewalk. Even though it’s Wednesday night, the energy is exciting, like the beginning of the weekend. New York always feels like the weekend to me. Maybe it’s because Dad and I came on the weekends. Or maybe the city is just like that.
“What do you like about tech?” Summer says.
“Everything.”
“But what about it? Specifically.”
“The answer might bore you to death. Then I’ll have to explain to the police why there’s a body on the sidewalk.”
“I’ll tell you what. Start talking and if I’m bored, I’ll send up a warning flare.”
I think of all the reasons I love tech. The hard work. The feeling of being on a team with people you like. The way every situation is a riddle you have to solve, and you can’t just solve it any old way, because in tech, the simplest solutions are usually the best. So you have to be kind of ingenious about it.
And then there’s light.
I could talk about that for a week without running out of things to say.
“You’re not going to tell me?” Summer says.
“I’m trying. There’s so much. I don’t know where to start.”
“Tell me one thing,” she says.
“Illusion,” I say.
“What about it?”
“Think of a set. On the audience’s side, everything looks real and finished, but on the other side it’s raw—tape, screws, and wood.”
“I know what you mean. You can stand backstage and see both things at the same time.”
“We can, but the audience never does. To them it’s this perfect illusion. Maybe not perfect, but they believe it, right? What do they call that?”
“Suspension of disbelief.”
“Right. You know it’s not real, but you want to believe it is.”
“So you like fooling the audience?”
“Not fooling them,” I say. “More like taking them to another place. They go because they want to. And because the techies made them believe it. We constructed it.”
“What about the actors?”
“Right. You guys are there, too,” I say.
“No wonder the actors hate you,” she says, and she punches me in the arm.
“Why do you like acting?” I say.
“I always wanted to be an actress. Since I was six years old.”
“What did you want to be before that?”
“The daughter of an actress.”
I laugh.
“That’s why the role is so important to me. I have to prove I’m an actor, Ziggy.”
“But you are an actor.”
“I’m an actor in my bedroom in front of the mirror. I want to be one in the real world.”
“You don’t have to prove it to me,” I say. “I already know you’re good.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
I look at Summer, her face crimson in the reflection of a cigar store sign. I get this crazy feeling that we’re going to kiss. This is the moment.
I thought a kiss moment was a myth. I’ve seen them in the movies, but I’ve never felt one in real life before.
I feel it now.
There’s a long pause, both of us looking at each other like we’re waiting for something to happen—
Then a taxi honks. A foreign couple cuts between us, arguing in heavy accents about which subway to take.
The kiss moment passes.
Maybe it was never there at all. I can’t be sure.
“We should get back,” I say.
“Let’s run away to the city,” Summer says. “We’ll live in the Village and do theater all day and night.”
“But rent is, like, three thousand bucks a month here.”
“Dream, meet cold water.”
“Sorry.”
“You never thought of living in the city?”
“I used to. Not anymore.”
“What changed?”
“Everything.”
She stares down at the sidewalk.
“You seem like a sad person,” she says.
“I’m not sad.”
“I think you are,” she says. “Maybe you’re so used to it, you don’t notice.”
We turn the corner and head south onto Sixth Avenue. There’s a line of restaurants, each with a swarm of people outside, clinking glasses and laughing.
I keep thinking about what Summer said.
“I don’t feel sad when I’m with you,” I say.
“What do you feel?”
Before I can answer, we turn onto Houston Street. The actors and techies are standing in a big group in front of Film Forum.
“We found them,” Ignacio says into his cell as soon as he sees us.
The crowd rushes towards us.
“You didn’t answer your text. We thought you got kidnapped or something,” Johanna says.
“We were taking a walk,” Summer says.
The techies and actors split into groups, one centered around me and one around Summer.
“Where the hell did you go?” Reach says.
“We went to the Kurosawa film,” I say.
Reach glares at the cup in my hand.
“And you got ice cream,” Reach says.
“It’s gelato.”
“Son of a bitch! You know how I feel about gelato. It’s arrogant ice cream.”
I try to get Summer’s attention, but I can’t find her through the crowd.
“You dumped us for gelato,” Reach says.
“It wasn’t like that,” I say.
Grace watches me, her face blank.
“I want to talk to you inside. Right now,” Reach says.
He storms past Derek into the theater.
“Trouble in techie paradise?” Derek says.
“He thinks I blew him off,” I say.
Derek puts his arm around my shoulders and walks me a few steps away.
“I know why he’s upset,” Derek says. “This was supposed to be a team-building exercise, and you ditched us. That’s not cool at all.”
“Sorry.”
“I should be angry at you, but your little side excursion had an unintended consequence. You brought us together better than anything I could have planned.”
“Glad I could help,” I say with a little laugh.
But Derek doesn’t laugh. He steps up to me, his face two inches from mine.
“Go in there and make it right,” Derek says.
He points to Reach pacing back and forth inside the theater. I look at Summer outside on the sidewalk, surrounded by actors.
“Business before pleasure,” Derek says. “Help me get everyone on the same page for tomorrow’s rehearsal.”
“What rehearsal? Mr. Apple quit.”
“He did. But the show must go on.”
I study Derek’s face, looking for some clue as to what he’s planning.
Summer interrupts us.
“This is all my fault, Derek,” she says. “Don’t be angry with him.”
“Not your fault at all,” Derek says. “And no one is angry.”
Reach bangs on the window of the theater.
“Well, certain people are angry,” Derek says. He gives me a knowing look.
“We’re leaving now,” Johanna says.
“Wait up. I’ll walk you guys to the train,” Derek says. “Business first,” he says to me, and he joins the actors.
Summer and I look at each other.
“This is a mess,” Summer says.
Reach bangs on the theater window again.
“Summer!” Wesley calls.
“It was worth it,” I say to Summer.
I walk into the theater. Reach leaps on me.
“I can’t believe you,” he says. “You disappeared without telling anyone. In the city!”
“It’s New York. Not Baghdad,” I say.
“What if something happened to you? Your mother would kill me. My mother would kill me.”
I look out the lobby window. Derek has his arm around Summer’s shoulders.
“It’s bad enough you blew off your friends and fellow techies �
�,” Reach says.
He points outside. The whole crew is watching us.
“But you also lied to my face about that actor.”
“I didn’t lie.”
He looks at the cup of gelato melting in my hands.
“You said you’d drop it, and you didn’t. That’s called lying,” he says.
I look out the window again. Summer and Derek are gone along with the actors.
Reach sighs.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but girls like that don’t fall for guys like us,” Reach says. “At best we’re the funny friend. They cry and put their heads on our shoulders when they’re having problems. The next day our shirt smells like shampoo, and we think we got some.”
“You’re wrong,” I say.
But I can’t be sure. What if Reach is right?
“I’m trying to protect you,” Reach says.
“Who asked you to protect me?”
“If it weren’t for me, you’d still be up on that ladder.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“Who got you into tech in the first place?” Reach says. “Who was there for you when your dad—”
He stops himself.
The lobby is empty now. A man with white hair sweeps in the corner of the room.
“It’s not even the stupid actor. It’s the principle of the thing,” Reach says. “We used to be inseparable. We hung out after school every day. We played PlayStation.”
“That wasn’t so long ago,” I say.
“Dude, that was PS2! That’s, like, ancient history. I got an iPad. You haven’t even seen it.”
“Come on. We’re not ten years old anymore.”
“Since you left, I have to hang out with Half Crack.”
“He’s cool.”
“He sucks! The guy can’t even buy pants that fit. How am I going to trust him with state secrets?”
Reach points outside the window. Half Crack is picking his nose.
“It’s impossible to get you to do anything,” he says. “It’s been impossible for a long time, but I keep trying. I know you lost your father, but I lost my best friend.”
Anger flares inside me.
“Don’t talk about my father,” I say. “He has nothing to do with it.”
“He has everything to do with it. I spent a year trying to get you down from the ceiling, and then this idiot actor comes along, and five seconds later you’re eating gelato. You don’t even like gelato!”
“I like it,” I say.
“You told me you hated it!” Reach says.
“I never tried it before.”