The Meadow 115 leads, squandered in towns like this. The curtained door gives that thrill of stepping into some secret. Into rooms reserved for those who paid their dues. I fold back the curtain like dodging a bullet. Wall mounts faked as torches strive and ember. I swim in blue-green darkness, haphazard blown bulbs group the space into patches of pale shadow. Islands of seats like hunched shoulders fade from pools of smoke. Music plays, almost below hearing. I exhale and hear my lungs slack off. I’m not alone. Never usually someone patrols the early show. Early show people don’t need looking after. The woman moves from the pit by the screen with awkward purpose, falters on the long, shallow stairs. Not a regular usherette—she wears full uniform, her short hair stretched in a tail. She looks one of the immigrant farm girls whose hands bleed morning to night. Her torch becomes the only thing I see—flicks my face and over my shoulder, checking there’s no one else. “It’s unreserved.” The voice behind the glaring light comes from miles away. “Sit where you want.” “Where’s good?” She flicks the beam behind her—all I see: a distant, milky circle. “Screen’s that way. Sit where’s good for the screen.” Usually take the back row. I like when no one can reach and tap my shoulder. But the way she’s arranged with her torch on the stairs, going back would be like getting harried into position. Come down two steps, but really it doesn’t matter—place so empty, everywhere’s bad as the rest. Start to move into a row—her torchlight bouncing across seats worn bald by years of hands gripping hold at the closing titles. The seats have white-plate numbers on screwed black disks—maybe one time people asked what number’s good for the screen. Keep waiting the curtain to crinkle, a slug of air from the door, someone else to move in and the night to become ordinary.
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