He was a nice old guy that would shake a lot, and it seemed sad that his long life had come to an end in the middle of Turk 182. Only once did I try to wake someone up and fail. During the intermission I would mop the lobby, clean out the ashtrays, tour the aisles - politely awakening all the dozing grandparents just to make sure they hadn't died - and when the film started, I would read again. So that was my day: opening the theater with the manager, helping the geriatrics into their fold-out seats, starting the film, making sure the image was good and that no one was smoking or being too enthusiastic. At the opening of the shift, each usher was issued a flashlight, and since we weren't allowed to leave the auditorium - that was what Pepe called the theater - I'd read by flashlight. These we called "lawnchair shifts" because the audience was largely composed of neglected old folks who took advantage of the pre-five o'clock senior-citizen rates. I took as many weekday matinee shifts as possible. Despite these offenses, the most heinous crime in the myopic eyes of Pepe was smoking. I couldn't begin to count the unnatural acts and unreported molestations. One night, toward the end of that summer, for want of anything better to do, I jotted down a misconduct list composed of all that I had witnessed there: seven reported pocket-pickings, four robberies, one slashing (it barely broke the skin), and a pistol drawn (it wasn't fired). By the time the first year of ushering had come to a close, I was the longest surviving employee. The derelict possessed my basic features: my age - twenty-two my height - five feet, ten inches and my weight - a hundred and fifty-five pounds. After the incident occurred, Pepe embarrassed me by mentioning that while we were spinning around he couldn't tell who was who. When I broke loose, he propelled himself back out into the night with his own momentum. Trying to impress the boss on the first day, I ran toward him and unintentionally locked elbows we swung about in a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, as if in a square dance. Pepe, the owner, quickly pointed to a bum as he was barging through the back door. The only lasting memory of that virgin shift was the ejection of a wino. It read: "WE NEAD USHER!" I entered the theater and had a quick dialogue with Stan, the manager on duty, who hired me on the spot and wanted me to start that evening. It was about a week after my new-found residency, while passing the Saint Mark's Cinema, that I noticed a sign written in a distressingly angular cursive. Soon after my dismissal from my prep cook job, I moved in with her. She lived in the East Village, near the Saint Mark's Cinema, which is currently the site for the Gap. I was a prep cook, at one of those West Village singles dives, and I think the boss was jealous over Sarah she was one of the last waitresses there whom he hadn't screwed. Something honked at me, so I crossed the street, reboarded the packed F train, and returned to Brooklyn for the anniversary dinner.īefore I got canned from my first job, back in the early eighties, I had relations with a waitress who subsequently became a girlfriend. The anniversary of my relationship coincided with that dawning, and although that morning marked something that eluded celebration, it couldn't be forgotten either. But I could still faintly make out the small white crown of the Washington Square Arch at the very end. Cars zoomed forward, headlights still on, staying ahead of the changing lights at dusk they could make it all the way down without a single red light.Īt rush hour, the entire avenue was gridlocked. Seven years ago that day, as dawn rose, I remember standing in roughly the same spot watching as the traffic signals hanging over each intersection slowly turned yellow then red. The last time I was in that spot, seven years ago, there wasn't a person in sight. It was filling up with the evening rush hour crowd: men in trench coats, secretaries in tennis shoes, cabs in the crosswalk, cars honking, leviathan buses zooming inches, braking, zooming again, and bike messengers slicing through it all. I crossed Fifth Avenue toward the Main Branch of the Public Library, but paused in the middle of the crosswalk. I got out of work early that evening and took the F train to Forty-second Street. Recently we celebrated our seventh anniversary together with a decent dinner and a not dreadful film. I ended up living somewhere I once avoided, with a woman whom I genuinely once disliked. Because of a mechanical failure, the prediction was inexact. When I was in my teens, I made an appraisal of how comfortable my life could turn out when I became the age I am now. But for anyone who has lived in uneasiness, even for a short, memorable duration, it's a trade-off that will gladly be made. Perhaps the price of comfort is that life passes more rapidly.
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