Blockbuster

by Richard H. Smith

  BLOCKBUSTER

  Richard H. Smith

  Blockbuster

  Text © Richard H. Smith, 2020

  Cover by María Novillo Saravia of BEAUTeBOOK, 2020

  ISBN 978-0-578-69433-7

  Published by Twice Told Tales Press

  Lexington, KY

  The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All Rights reserved. With the exception of brief excerpts as part of a published review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Blockbuster is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Also available in print.

  To

  Sung Hee

  Chapter One

  A shark, its mouth open and baring rows of jagged teeth, shot upward and closed in on a naked female swimmer. Someone help her, I caught myself thinking, almost saying aloud. This felt strange because I was looking at a movie poster, just arrived in the mail. But what a fantastic poster it was, seizing me in the primal gut and curbing my wish for a beach trip.

  The title read Jaws in bold, red letters.

  I placed the poster in the first frame customers would see when they entered the main theater lobby, smoothed each corner, and snapped the frame shut. In the mid-1970s, summers were a slow time for movie theaters, including ours in Durham, North Carolina. But Jaws would change this when it started in two weeks. The buzz about the movie was everywhere, and sell-out crowds were guaranteed.

  The stubby, rounded shape of Horace Bullock emerged from the door leading up to the manager’s office.

  “What do you think, Horace?” I asked.

  Bullock hitched up his lime-colored polyester slacks. He studied the poster.

  “Folks love getting scared, Nate.”

  “You know it,” I said.

  A hopeful look came over his scarred and vaguely piggish face. I knew what he was thinking. As theater manager he got a five percent cut of our concession profits, and for Bullock, movies amounted to how much popcorn, soda, and candy we sold. That was it, period. He’d told me this after he promoted me to assistant manager the previous year, the day after my high school graduation.

  Did Bullock know Jaws was a movie version of a best-selling novel of the same name? Probably not. And anyway, seeing people with books irritated him, got him riled. “Who do you think you is?” he had once asked, when he had seen me reading a book, Tarzan of the Apes. I had smiled with fake embarrassment and said nothing, figuring his question hid an inferiority complex better left alone.

  Milton Spicer, a high school kid scheduled to work that evening, strolled in with his usher jacket draped over a shoulder and a fluorescent green comb planted in one side of his Afro. He was twenty minutes late, and he pretended to ignore Bullock, who was standing near the entrance, coiled and fixing to pounce.

  “Boy,” Bullock said. “That’s the last time you’ll be late working for me.”

  Milton froze his lanky frame for a second and hurled his jacket in Bullock’s direction.

  “I ain’t your boy!”

  Ducking the jacket’s flight path, Bullock pointed his finger at Milton’s face.

  “I’ll call you boy any time I want. You’re fired. Now git. Move your butt out of here before I throw you out!”

  Milton, his eyes wide and flashing with anger, reached in his pocket, whipped out a folding knife, and flipped open the blade. He jabbed the knife at Bullock, who jumped back like a bloated cricket.

  “Hey, put that away,” Bullock said, his voice pitching higher.

  “What makes you think I want to work for your white ass?” Milton punctuated his words with long jabs.

  “Nate, call the police!” Bullock lurched back further. Milton advanced with stutter steps, reminding me of Muhammad Ali.

  Ignoring Bullock’s order, I raced around the concession counter and placed myself between Milton and Bullock. I kept light on my feet and watched the knife, ready to snatch Milton’s wrist and twist it behind him.

  “Milton, cool it, back off,” I said, our eyes meeting.

  I got along well with Milton, and I figured he wouldn’t hurt me. He lowered the knife, closing it with a dramatic snap. Lifting a fisted right arm, the salute of Black power, he pushed past the entrance doors into the early evening air.

  Chapter Two

  “Calling him ‘boy’ wasn’t a very good idea, Horace,” I said, thinking I had to say something.

  “Don’t give me that,” he said.

  There was no point in pushing it. I bit my tongue.

  Maybe I should have called the police. The knife, and the way Milton used it, was a scary surprise. And I didn’t want Milton working for us either. I’d been getting on him for cussing around customers. His militant streak worried me more. He resented that white students now attended Hillside, an all-Black high school before the court-ordered desegregation of the Durham city schools happened several years earlier. I’d overheard him say to a friend, “Cream in coffee weakens it. I hate white people.”

  I could understand why he felt this way, but I hoped he’d made an exception in my case. But now this knife. Where was it heading? His getting fired was for the best.

  Bullock checked his watch, as it was getting close to starting time for the first show.

  He said, “Where’s Hogan? Cain’t anybody get to work on time?”

  Phil Hogan was our projectionist. Like Milton, he reveled in arriving late, probably to annoy Bullock. But since he headed the local projectionist union, he came and went as he pleased.

  Hogan was full of puzzles. A large, middle-aged guy with a bulky strength, yet he walked with a faint wave of his hips, reminding me of Norman Bates moving up the stairs to attend to his mother in Psycho. His head resembled a cube, highlighted by a crew cut. His natural habitat had once been a Klan rally, but now he could jive talk like Shaft on a Harlem street corner. Hogan was halfway through a transformation, and the life-form poking out from the larva was a wacko species.

  Hogan’s ’57 Thunderbird glided into the parking lot and took a reserved space. He exited the car and ran a finger over a smudge on the front whitewall tire. He ambled his way into the theater and then toward the door leading to the projectionist booth of the main theater.

  Bullock bolted toward Hogan like he might tackle him. “What makes you think you can just come in when you want?”

  Hogan blew him a kiss, disappeared through the doorway, and snapped the door shut, locking it behind him.

  Bullock grabbed the doorknob and twisted it hard.

  “Hogan, you open this goddamn door.”

  He cussed one ugly word after another, ignoring the customers already in line for concessions. I’d had enough. I left the lobby and checked the projector in our second theater.

  This second theater had been added three years before, with a state-of-the-art platter system for showing the movies. Mostly automated, it was a natural threat to Hogan, who only took care of our older, bigger theater with its traditional, change-over projection unit. Why hire a projectionist if you could train managers to run the automated platters? This was the view of the theater chain owners. Projectionists were going the way of the dodo bird.

  The theater company trained Bullock in using the equipment,
and he showed me the basics too. While the projectionists’ union fought with the owners over who could run the new machine, Hogan refused to run it. Bullock sided with the owners and wanted Hogan fired. I didn’t enjoy being caught in the middle, but there it was.

  After checking the projector, I found space in my head to think again about Milton. For a kid of sixteen and the son of two high school teachers, he’d used the knife with disturbing ease. Yes, I was relieved to see him go. I knew combative tactics from my dad, who had learned them while serving in Korea. I kept in practice at the downtown YMCA, and I’d even found myself in a few unsought fights growing up in Hickory, one involving a knife. But taking that weapon away from Milton, with the natural way he handled it, might have ended badly. Bullock was a brain-dead racist, but I was happy Milton wouldn’t be with us anymore.

  When I returned to the lobby, Bullock had retreated to his office. Customers now clustered at the ticket window, a larger crowd than expected. But we’d manage without Milton if I pitched in where needed. Bullock could stay in his office for all I cared. We were set for the evening. Soon, I had started Rollerball while Hogan got The Conversation II going in the main theater. We entered the calm between the five o’clock and the busier seven o’clock shows.

  Chapter Three

  Carrie Jenkins, our best concession employee, lifted her face from the book she was reading, her bright blue eyes reflecting hints of her auburn hair. A dusting of freckles spread across her upper cheeks and nose.

  “Do you think Milton will come back after Mr. Bullock? That knife was alarming,” Carrie said.

  “It will blow over,” I said, trying to avoid staring at her. “I think he’ll stay clear of us.”

  “You were fleet of foot, getting in between them like you did.” She was impressed with what I’d done, which caught me off guard. But it made me feel pretty darn good.

  “I wasn’t worried about Milton,” I said.

  “But that knife.”

  “Yeah, that surprised me as well,” I admitted, still basking in her praise.

  “And Mr. Bullock has such a temper. Can he fire Mr. Hogan too?”

  “Phil does his job.”

  I was more worried than I let on. And more about Hogan than Milton. Hogan constantly aggravated Bullock, usually making him blow a gasket, like what had just happened. Bullock razzed Hogan about being a sissy, often calling him “Phyllis” instead of “Phil.” Hogan’s reactions confused me. Sometimes he shrugged it off, swaying his hips more. Other times, he turned red and agitated, as if he struggled with why Bullock would ride him in this way.

  Interestingly, as I had come to know them better, they seemed more alike than different. They were the same age for starters, around fifty-five. Both came into the world in the back of some turnip truck in rural North Carolina and achieved little education beyond grade school. Only Bullock, however, took an in-your-face pride in his ignorance.

  There was one other thing. Sex consumed them both. As far as I could tell, Bullock saw all women as burdened with hang-ups caused by abstinence, a problem best solved by him. He made the point more crudely when he shared this philosophy with me one slow evening. He kept a cot in the back room of his office for women he paid to prove his theory. As for Hogan, an unstoppable flirt, he came aglow like a firefly around every cute high school boy we employed.

  In any case, they despised each other, and I hated the danger zone this created.

  Carrie said, “You get along with Mr. Bullock. He likes you. I can tell.”

  “I don’t use big words around him.”

  “That’s the secret?”

  “Actually, I think it’s because I improved the way we make popcorn. He gets a cut in concession profits.”

  “That’s why? Really?”

  “That simple. Before I started, he had the kernels popped in advance, stored in bags, and reheated. I convinced him and the district manager to let us make it fresh, and with better oil and seasoning.”

  “We do make exquisite popcorn,” Carrie said.

  “One whiff, instant craving,” I said. “The popping sound helps too. Mr. Bullock noticed the difference in how much we sell. Kept me, keeps me, on his good side.”

  “And they require drinks and candy to go with it, right?” Carrie said.

  “You’re thinking like Mr. Bullock,” I said, pleased by the unexpected back and forth.

  “Uh-oh,” she said, a hand covering her mouth in a teasing show of concern. We both laughed. This was fun. How could I keep the conversation going?

  “Like the book?” It was Fahrenheit 451. I’d seen the Truffaut movie version on TV and had started the book, never finishing it.

  “It’s an easy read,” Carrie said with a shrug.

  “Watch out when Mr. Bullock comes down,” I reminded her. He didn’t like employees reading on the job, even during slow times, but I let it go.

  I added, “I bet he’d love a book burning.”

  “You’ve read it?” Carrie gave me a puzzled look, which I think embarrassed her, because she blushed a little. Why should she assume I hadn’t read the book and knew about the book burning in the Bradbury novel?

  “Sure, a while back, well most of it.” I didn’t mention Truffaut. It was from the movie that I knew about the book burning.

  One of our ushers, Billy Gossett, who had finished sweeping the main lobby, handed me a magazine across the concession counter.

  “Mr. Burton, have you seen this?” he asked. It was the Time magazine article about Jaws. “During a pre-screening, it says here that some people were so scared they ran out of the theater and threw up.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “The scarier the better for us.”

  “Yeah, and they ran back in. This will be dyn-o-mite.”

  I figured Billy hoped to get Carrie’s attention because he looked more at her than at me.

  “Love at first fright,” she said. I let out a spontaneous laugh, surprising myself in its intensity.

  Carrie was so smart. She had taken classes at Duke University where her dad taught history. She’d be starting college in the fall and heading to the University of Chicago. This impressed me, even intimidated me, since I had about as good a shot of going there as flying to the moon.

  Billy looked confused. Was I the only one who appreciated her clever comment? Maybe he craved her attention so much that, oddly, he missed it. Poor kid. No Casanova, he spoke in a squeaky voice when excited. Scrawny and cursed with acne, Billy had pimples on his pimples.

  I didn’t blame him for liking Carrie. She got cuter every day. But dream on. Perhaps a world existed in which he’d have a chance. Not likely, for him or me.

  And she had a boyfriend, Owen Becker, whose VW van I now spotted entering the parking lot, with its side panels decorated with psychedelic flowers easily passing an Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Owen found a space, and I studied him as he exited and approached the theater in his smooth, carefree way, his hands half-slipped into the front pockets of his low-slung jeans. Slim and good looking, with shoulder-length hair parted in the middle, he could pass for Jackson Browne.

  He entered the lobby, and I noticed the flecks of bleached gold in his hair from early summer visits to the Outer Banks, where I’d heard his oceanographer dad studied marine life. Owen was one lucky bastard.

  I thought about my own contrasting look in the cheap, black theater jacket and tie and the assistant manager pin I had to wear. The picture of uncool. At least I had an inch or two on him in height. But most people gave me curious stares when they first met me. I assumed it was the slight Asian slant to my eyes, which I got from my Korean mom. This jarred with my dad’s light brown hair. What was I, the stares seemed to ask. And unlike Owen, my smile didn’t enjoy the benefits of an orthodontist’s straightening. His teeth were too perfect to conclude otherwise. Sadly, the few times we’d exchanged words, I’d found him self-assured and sophisticated, the boyfriend you’d expect Carrie would have. He was also starting college in the fall, at Nort
hwestern. Had they picked schools near each other? I didn’t like him.

  I felt I was missing out, that theater work, or something close to it, was my lot in life. Carrie and Owen lived in a world of exotic advantages beyond my reach. Would I be watching from the dugout? Around Bullock, I wanted to sound ignorant. Easy enough. Around them, I had the opposite goal of sounding educated, for which there was no quick fix. But longing over other people’s advantages was foolish, wishful wanting. A man in hell would want a drink of water too, as my dad had been fond of saying. I could hear his voice.

  At nineteen, I wasn’t much older than Owen and Carrie, a fact I didn’t advertise. If everyone thought I was older, this probably helped me in my role as assistant manager. And anyway, events in my life had forced me to grow up fast, and so I acted older than my age. I had lost my mom when I was nine, and my dad four years later.

  I moved to Durham to live with my uncle after my dad passed, but I was on my own by eighteen, finding a room in an elderly woman’s place near downtown. It was in a neighborhood on the decline, and she liked my being around because she had suffered two break-ins. I kept watch over her property.

  This was about the time I started at the movie theater since it gave me the days free for school. I kept the theater job after high school and was promoted to assistant manager. I had hoped to start college right away, but having no financial help, I waited.

  Owen said as soon as he saw me. “Hate to tell you this, but you misspelled ‘starting’ on the marquee.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, hiding my irritation at his cool and confident voice.

  “Yeah, you did, man.”

  I couldn’t see from where I stood, so I moved to the far side of the lobby to check. Damn. He was right. Earlier, I had added a line to the marquee announcing that Jaws would be “STRATING SOON.” I had reversed the letters.

  “That was stupid,” I said under my breath. My face flushed, but I kept my back turned to everyone. I pushed through the nearest exit door.