He didn’t want to think about the funeral without Matt.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING
Paul Cornell
ANDY HAS DREAMS that aren’t appropriate for his age. Or that’s the weird thought he has when he wakes at four a.m., needing to go to the toilet. The words in that thought fall away as he heads to the bathroom. His mum had been in his dreams. She died when he was ten. Dad died when he was nineteen. Now he’s twenty-three. And a manager. But his brain, he thinks as he pisses, is saying he’s doing it wrong, even in his dreams. Some part of him is still in the box of his family home, long gone. That part is safe there. No, ‘safe’ isn’t the right word. As he heads back to his bed, back to sleep, he thinks, and it’s an uneasy thought, that he wishes the old house would sell, not just because he needs the money. He doesn’t like the idea of his family home standing empty. Then he’s asleep again.
* * *
Morning. Reset. He remembers some of the thoughts of the night before as he drives to work. He discards them. Meaningless. He’s the one who uses the master key card to open the doors at the multiplex. No morning shows on a Monday. He can get there when he likes, as long as everything is done before the matinee. He gets there early.
Monday matinee is the Gold slot, the pensioners slot, when over-65s pay half price. It’s one of the slots the company has been pushing on local radio, and the only one where that seems to have worked, because they now have a core group who always shows up and the audience is getting bigger, the only slot where that’s the case. Andy is worried about today. He finally went with Callum’s choice of movie. He’s not sure why. Andy has a policy of trying to include the staff in the handful of decisions that can be taken at the local level. Callum, whose job was to check the tickets and make sure customers went to the right screens, had been suggesting ridiculous choices for Gold, every week. Andy sometimes thought himself too stiff, too dull. Callum is the opposite. He’s always saying and doing stupid, attention-seeking shit. And he has such a sackable face. But Andy can never find a sensible reason to let him go. Callum had suggested Fifty Shades for the Gold slot, that shark movie with Jason Statham, a live Titus Andronicus from Stratford, one of those cheap Thomas the Tank Engine children’s features. He always makes the suggestion to Andy in private. And he always has the same slightly desperate look on his face. So Andy isn’t sure if the suggestions are jokes or attempts to trick him or just a weird way of reaching out, some honest uselessness. That last possibility keeps luring him, keeps getting him to sincerely ask Callum to try again. Every time he does, after Callum leaves the room, he feels he can hear the others laughing at him. One day it’ll work, that’s what Callum might be saying to them. One day I’ll trick him into doing it. It’s true the Gold slot is a tough one to pick for. You don’t want anything extreme, but at the same time you don’t want to patronize the old folks. When there’s a classic to download from Central it’s easy, but mostly it’s a question of picking something from the main rotation. Last week, on his latest attempt, Callum, while not quite hitting a hole in one, had at least got on the green. “What about Weyward House?” he’d said. Weyward House is an option that third-tier cinemas like Andy’s can take up. It’s the sort of thing that’s not really suited to an out-of-town multiplex, that only really plays well in city center locations, a cult folk horror movie from the 1970s, restored and extended, on a limited theatrical run. Crucially, it’s only explicit enough these days to merit a 15 rating. Which had tipped the balance in Andy’s on-the-spot decision making.
But now it’s the day of the Gold slot, Andy wonders if he’s just given in. If he’s finally been made a fool of. He says hello to Chloe and Megan as he opens the doors for them, looking maybe a bit too carefully at their smiles, seeing if they’re in on a big joke. How many punters were they going to get today? Would dozens of empty seats be a good punch line for Callum’s joke? A certain number of regulars will show up for anything. They told him that when criticizing what they’d just watched. Chloe and Megan work the main counter, so they have to take the hot dogs out of the freezer and have them steaming an hour or so before kickoff. Not that the oldsters eat many hot dogs. For some reason. Andy does a quick mental calculation, based on his vague supposition of when the hot dog was invented. Yeah, these guys probably ate them when they were young, but…this was a thing he was never going to get to ask and would never learn.
Mikey, the projectionist, hurries in. “Love it, love it,” he says, pointing at Andy. “We’ve actually got a classic here. Just for once. Site says it’s downloaded. Aspect ratio’s a little different, so we’ll be doing a little bit of the old…” He moves his hands out horizontally and vertically like he’s doing those old dance moves. “Love it.” He pats Andy on the shoulder before heading off to the locked room where he spends much of his time. Nobody likes Mikey much. When he first got here, Andy had wondered why, but he’s sort of getting it now.
Here’s Josh, with the beard, who works the coffee and ice cream. He gets most of the concession business for the Gold matinee. Josh is a few years older than Andy, and always looks like there’s someplace he would rather be. He nods. “Boss.” Which Andy had never asked anyone to call him.
From the doors comes a shout. Callum is there, waving. Andy lets him in. “Any of them here yet?”
“You’re eager!” calls Chloe.
“They’ll be swarming in, you be ready!” Callum gives Andy a wink that feels more aggressive than conspiratorial and heads over to grab a coffee before taking up his place at the ticket-check stand.
Andy looks at his watch, then goes and opens the doors. Sophie rushes in as he does so. “Sorry, sorry.”
“You’re fine.” Actually, she’s now officially late, but he tries not to count small infractions. Still, this has been her fourth time in two weeks. “But don’t make a habit of this, okay?”
Sophie is the only…person of color? His brain trips over the description. That might be the right thing to call her. “Black,” his old mum would have said, or worse. Sophie’s the only one working here. There weren’t many in the regular audience, either, and none among the oldsters, though the town center is…diverse, is that the word?
Sophie stops, closes her eyes for a second, raises her hand for a moment’s pause. Andy wonders if he’s being disrespected. But when she opens her eyes again, it looks like she really needed that moment. “Yes. Don’t worry. Sir.”
She actually means the “sir,” which makes him feel ridiculously awful. But he doesn’t quite know how to continue the conversation, especially with the others all looking at them now, so he just nods and puts on what he hopes is an encouraging smile.
* * *
Soon the old folks start arriving. And they are all old folks. Andy had wondered if maybe they’d get a couple of cinephiles. The numbers are actually pretty good. He makes eye contact with Callum and gives him an appreciative nod. Callum bites his lip as he nods back. Then Andy watches him return to scanning the crowd. Is this maybe not what Callum’s been hoping for? Is the joke maybe that they’d all stay away?
After a couple of minutes, as is his habit when he’s gauged the attendance is high enough, Andy goes to join Chloe, Megan, and Sophie on the ticket and food counter and opens up another till.
“I don’t know how you stay warm, look at you,” one old lady is saying to Megan, looking through her purse for exact change. Megan has a look on her face in return that asks why they always get into conversations with her. Andy kind of wonders why, too. Chloe is genuinely friendly toward the pensioners; she’s chatting away right now. Megan, though, can only go through the motions. Andy wonders if it’s something like cats going to sit on people they know are allergic. He finds that, while she’s looking in her purse, he’s been staring at the old lady’s face. He never knew his grandparents. His parents were never old enough to be like this. Her skin seems to have separated from what’s underneath like she’s a roast chick
en. Her facial blemishes are so obvious they look like minor wounds. There’s no attempt to conceal them. She wears whiskers on her chin, in public. Can’t she shave them? Doesn’t she want to? What’s it like to be inside that? He can’t imagine she’s just like him underneath, that she hasn’t noticed getting old. The way these people talk says they’re different. They spend a lot of the time actually telling his employees that they’re different.
“Do you mind?” says the old man Andy should be serving. He’s looking at him with an expression somehow half anger, half humor. “When you reach her age, you’ll take a while to find the right change, too.”
“But why is she bothering?” murmurs Megan, way too quietly for this lot to hear. She, like Andy, must have seen the credit card in the purse.
“Not at all, sir,” says Andy in his bright, meet-the-public voice, getting on with selling the man his ticket. “Nobody’s in a rush today.”
If he said that to the normal queue he’d get eye-rolling and people calling out from further back, but with this lot it seems to meet with general approval. The old lady, oblivious, finds her last coin and puts it on the counter.
Andy feels Megan’s hand tapping him on the arm. He looks across to see Sophie being accosted by one old man who’s speaking very loudly into her face. “Black coffee,” he’s saying. “I like it black. I can’t say that, can I, not to you! I like a bit of black!”
Sophie would normally be stoically getting through all this, but today she looks like she’s about to cry or answer back. Andy tells his queue he’ll return in a moment, goes over there, and lets Sophie make the coffee while he once more switches to forward facing. “No milk for you then, sir?”
The old man laughs and shakes his head. “You can’t say anything these days.”
“No, sir, indeed you can’t” is what comes out of Andy’s mouth, and it sounds like he’s agreeing, and he isn’t quite sure if he’s trying to be sarcastic or not. He takes the coffee from Sophie. Her hand is shaking. He hands it to the man. “Time for your break,” he says over his shoulder, and she’s off into the back without replying.
The old man now seems flustered that he might have actually done something wrong, but Andy calls Josh over to take on the till he’s opened up and quickly starts serving the woman who’s next in line, until the old man, still talking to himself, heads for the screens.
“And you know my friend Lucy,” one old lady is saying to Chloe in the queue beside him, “she’s just been on a cruise! Where do you get the money?!”
“I know,” says Chloe, smiling.
“And can I have a bag of those sweets, please? Oh, you know my friend Lucy I tell you about? She’s just been on a cruise!”
“I know,” Chloe says, and keeps smiling.
Andy looks at her, and they share slightly different sorts of smiles.
* * *
When the oldsters have all bought their tickets and snacks, and the brunt of them are being dealt with by Josh, who’s back on the coffee, and Callum at the entrance to the screens, Andy takes a moment to go into the back and find Sophie.
She’s slumped on a plastic chair in the staff area where the lockers with all the stickers on them are. She has her feet up on the table. She’s drinking some of the proper coffee. From the locked door at the back, which goes through to the projection booth, come the noises of the advertisement playing on Screen 12, where the Gold movie is. Mikey’s in the booth, but he won’t be able to hear them through all the padding. “Sorry,” says Sophie.
“Not at all,” says Andy, with his personnel voice, “I’m sorry you went through that experience.”
“I haven’t been doing great, I know. I need this job.”
Andy sits down. “You’re not expected to put up with abuse.”
“Being late, though.”
“Well, yeah. That might become an issue. Are there any ways you could improve your timekeeping about leaving home on a workday? Maybe you could change something?” This comes straight from a seminar Andy attended. The title of the seminar had been “Positive Enforcement: The Hidden Boss.”
Sophie closes her eyes again. “It’s my housemate. He…I think maybe I should say she now…they are going through so much shit. They just needed someone to talk to. But I was on my way out the door. I was the only other one left in the house.”
“If you want to go back home, I can give you a leave day.”
“No. I’m here now. I’ve done it now. Either way. I hope they’ll be okay when I get home. I guess.”
“Have you called…them?”
“There’s just the voice mail. She takes such shit. There was something new online this morning, it’s over and over, you know, people who don’t think she should…”
Andy is enormously out of his depth now. He keeps his serious face on and nods. “I’ll keep that in mind about you coming in. If you want to switch to evenings it’d be fine.”
“Can’t. I have my…I go to therapy on some evenings. For my PTSD. And I don’t want it to be like I’m running away from the old folks.”
“Nobody would think that.”
“I’m diagnosed autistic, I can’t really tell sometimes about people’s faces. Are you being as okay about this as I think you are?”
Andy wants to say he has no idea. But he settles on “yes.” Which seems to be the right answer. And results in a smile from her. He nods, gets up, and leaves it at that. He feels pretty sure Sophie will reappear in time for the end of the movie.
* * *
As soon as Andy heads back out into the foyer, Callum is immediately in his face. “Bunch of racist cunts,” he says. “Is she okay?”
“First off, safe-for-work language. Secondly, yeah, she’ll be fine.” Andy is surprised at this reaction. And pleased, kind of. He doesn’t want to give Callum time to bridle at the telling off. “Hey, your choice of movie really worked out.”
Callum looks away, shakes his head, walks off.
What is that about? He hears the door to the back opening and looks over to see Sophie coming out to her station, head down. The other women note this with wry smiles to each other, which Andy doesn’t really like.
The sound from the screen changes, a noise they all know in their bones, as the trailers stop and the movie comes on. Andy decides he should go and have a look. Callum is obviously up to something, but it’s vastly unlikely Mikey would be in on it, so it isn’t like he’s going to go and find porn playing or something, but…
He enters carefully, letting the padded door fall back against his shoulder first before it closes so it makes the least possible noise. The screening is packed. He always loves this feeling, being slightly back from an audience who are all looking forward. Mostly, they were silent. Sometimes he’d had to enter when there was too much noise and they’d had a complaint and he had to put on his sternest business face to warn a patron. Today is a weird combination of the two. This is a largely quiet and entirely well-behaved audience, members of whom, nonetheless, are talking quite loudly, and other members of which are equally loudly telling them to stop. That’s pretty standard for Gold audiences. He remembers the previous time he did this, on the first occasion he’d run one of these, just to get a feel for what this audience is like. Some of the talking is solo, whispered, repetitive. That could be a bit spooky, if it took you by surprise. Put this lot here in the dark and the voices came out. They were like the smallest kids, who also needed to talk their way through a movie.
On the screen, the opening scenes of Weyward House are playing out, idyllic images of a 1970s summer. Quite weird for a horror movie, quite relaxing. This is from years before Andy was born. But he can still feel a powerful sense of…what? Nostalgia? It sucks him in so quickly. This is good direction, good music, too. He’s feeling a longing for somewhere he’s never been.
The house he’s seeing on-screen is like his parents’ p
lace. There’s a cloudless, perfect, summer sky. Children in sleeveless jumpers and shorts are running through wheat.
Andy decides he’s seen enough. No, he’s decided it’s harmless enough. For this audience. Soon the horror must start, but the kind of movie this is tells him it can only go so far, be only so intense. Surely. And there’s the 15 rating. That’s the official verdict on the nature of life displayed on this screen.
It’s a bit much for Andy himself, though, for some reason. He heads out.
* * *
Robert De Haviland had been slightly apprehensive about today’s choice of film for his weekly cinema visit. And yet he’d given scant thought to not going. He likes the people he’s got to know on these afternoon excursions, and, dear God, it’s a chance to get out of his flat. The local newspaper had featured the poster for the film, a skull made from fresh vegetables, in a style recognizable from when he’d been a regular cinema-goer. And yet he didn’t recognize the title and could find only the smallest of references in his film guides. He’s hoping that, should things get too fraught on-screen, he’ll just be able to close his eyes and open them again for any sexy bits. This strategy has been successful for him many times in his life, a life in which things had become too fraught quite often. In the side of his memory, as it does once in a while, comes the smell of a burning car and the screaming of his boy. He takes a deep breath in through his nose. Long ago. All gone now. Downstream. That nice cinema smell instead. He loved scary movies as a teenager but became worse and worse with them as he grew up, increasingly afraid of being taken back to moments of terror. But what’s on-screen now is pleasant, well shot, peaceful. These are scenes of a world he knows. Every now and then in his daily life he catches glimpses of current music and fashions. He actually sat down to watch the Christmas Day Top of the Pops, and found it all much of a muchness, all blandly pleasant, but with all the acts obviously meaning things with their fashions, their makeup, their lyrics, that went past him. He’s smart enough to know when a meaning is present, and too old now to know what it is. When, with Sandie Shaw, for instance, back in the day, he’d been swooning at every inch on or off her mini or her haircut.
Final Cuts Page 13
