Waiting For The Ending

Chapter Five

I stuck my spoon into my cup and scooped up the corn kernel that was the least infused with the masala mix as Sarah and I continued to wait for the problem with the projector to be rectified. The mix had an ominously strong after-taste that my mouth just wasn't intent on putting up with so I avoided it like it was the culinary equivalent of the plague.

"Did you see anything good lately?" Sarah asked, chowing down on the contents of her Styrofoam cup. "Oh yeah. There've been a couple of good ones coming out lately. I think I've seen all of them. Even the ones showing only in the new multiplex in the other district." I told her. "You watch a lot of movies." She pointed out. "Well yeah. They make me feel like I'm... more." I said, searching for another corn kernel that didn't have too much masala mix on it. "More what?" She asked. "Just more." I replied. "They give me characters I can pretend to be. And for a good two hours I can pretend I'm not... me. That's when I feel like I could do anything. Like I could spontaneously burst into song and pull off the most insane dance moves you'd have ever seen, like I could take on an army of sword-wielding skeletons and a living giant bronze statue, like I could be as suave as a secret agent, like I could woo the woman of my dreams. Like I could be cool."

"You think you aren't cool?" She asked. "Well yeah." I replied. "So, is being delusional a full-time thing for you or is it more of a Tuesdays-and-Thursdays-only type thing?" She asked me. "Do you think I'm cool?" I asked her.

"Hell yeah, I think you're cool. How many people do you know that snuck out to visit the theatre after midnight to see a movie that almost nobody else was going to see, at the age of thirteen!?"

"I can think of one other person."

"And they happen to think you're just as cool as they are." She said smiling.

"Why didn't you come see Hexley's last movie?" I asked her. The whole time I waited for those doors to open and for her to walk through. I thought maybe she'd show up just for the last twenty minutes at least, but she never came. I held out hope till the last second and even stayed through the credits. "It was almost as good as this one." I added. Her smile slowly diminished and she looked down at the corn in her cup, following which she stated her case. "I was doing a bit of soul-searching."

"What does that entail?" I inquired. "A lot of walking around at very odd hours when no one's around. A bit of contemplating here and there." "Is that why you walked in here that night?" I asked referring to the night of the premiere of Richard Hexley's first movie. "Did you think the theatre was going to be empty?" "Honestly, I was hoping for the opposite. That night was a little different." I remembered her trembling hands and rapid breaths in the cold of the empty theatre. "I think I was far past soul searching when I walked in." The moment she'd asked if she could sit with me and her rushing out after being overwhelmed by the morbidity on-screen, replay in my head.

"But for what it's worth, I am glad I sat next to you, even if it was for like five minutes. I am also very glad it was you in that theatre and not you know, Stanley Tucci from The Lovely Bones." Her plastic spoon scraped against the bottom of her Styrofoam cup and thirty minutes had gone by which meant the projector problem had been rectified by then too. It was time for us to go back in.

She was already in the process of unfolding her legs so she could stand up. Why couldn't I find the right words to say? They're just words. I thought to myself. You know words. Think of them. AND SAY THEM. NOW. I yelled at myself internally. "I find you incredibly enjoyable, Sarah!" I blurted out. She looked at me quizzically, tilted her head and smirked, "You're not too bad yourself old chap." "We've interacted with each other twice but I thought they were among the greatest interactions of my life so far." I go on. "I'm sorry?" She asked as the quizzicality on her face grew more intense. "And I know we haven't engaged in conversation with each other in over a year, but between both conversations all I've thought about is the conversations we could have been having and I thought you'd have come to Richard Hexley's second film considering how you thought the ending of his first movie was comforting but when you didn't, I felt so crushed and when the credits rolled and the possibility of you coming to see the movie was practically non-existent, I felt how empty the theatre really was. I'd been sitting in empty theatres for so long but that was the first time I hated being in one."

Her eyes had grown wide and any inklings of a smile or any sort of joy had been drained from her face. "And I guess, what I'm really trying to say more than anything..." I rambled on for roughly thirty seconds more before I arrived at the point I was trying to make, looking straight into her eyes the whole time.

There's a phrase that used to be widely used by couples, teenagers and people in older movies to describe whether they were seeing someone or were romantically engaged with another individual of their liking. 'I heard he or she is going with' or 'they've been going together'  were common phrases back in the day and are really just not used anymore. It wasn't 'going out with' or 'courting' or 'dating', it was just 'going with'. I liked how simple that phrase felt. That day, on the premiere of Richard Hexley's third film in that theatre that was still in the early stages of crumbling to pieces, at that incredibly late hour, using a combination of words that was relentlessly ineloquent and a lot more embarrassing than I would have liked it to have been, I asked Sarah to go with me.

She remained silent after I was done talking. She said nothing. And she didn't look like she felt the desire to say anything either. From the corner of my eye, I saw the masala corn vendor sink below the counter. In hindsight, he in all likelihood did this to escape the awkwardness that was then plaguing the waiting room. Sarah maintained her gaze. "Well?" I asked impatiently. She stood up, walked past me and then out of the waiting room.

I turned around and looked at the doors to the waiting room behind me. No one walked through. Right on cue the movie started playing again, its sound only just audible from the waiting room. I turned around again to take one final look at the waiting room doors. I waited a whole minute for them to be pushed open. They weren't. I stood up, went back in, sat down in my seat, watched the rest of the movie and left when the credits rolled. It turned out to be Richard Hexley's first critical flop with critics calling it a career misstep. He resolutely stood by it and considered it to be the most personal film of his career yet. Back then critics called the film sappy, indulgent and melodramatic, but even today, I consider it his masterpiece.