After the last sold-out show of the weekend, I stood sentry behind the concession stand counter, pregnant belly pressed into the cash drawer, while the high school kid who helped out on weekends herded our pumped-up, arguing, theorizing, sugar-high, butter-fingered patrons out the double front doors, flung wide to street-lamp lit, movie-set perfect historic Main Street. I smiled and chirped, “Good night!” and “Thanks for coming!” one hand splayed on my belly, willing the baby to move, the other twitching to get at the money, all those crumpled fives, tens, and twenties, shoved into the drawer when the pushing, shoving, just-let-me-inside-lady line snaked clear to the corner, followed by the greedy, guzzling demand for expensive gourmet treats.
“All clear, boss,” the kid said, giving me a cocky salute.
“Check the restrooms?”
“Oh yeah.”
Did Carl wink at me? That lanky kid with the stringy hair had a crush on me. I guess I still had it back then, had something, even seven months pregnant.
I told him to lock up, then he could leave, that I’d do the final pick up in the theater. He’d said he had a late date, flushed pink telling me. It was already past midnight and I needed time to think, to wrestle with the money, all those dirty bills, to settle the books and make the deposit. Then I needed to walk home, to get off my feet, to feel the baby move.
I clicked off the front lights, yanked the cash drawer open and stuffed the contents into a dented tin box. Clutching the box under one arm, I shuffled across the lobby’s matted maroon carpet and locked myself inside the theater’s closet-sized office. Collapsing into a second-hand swivel chair, cash box cradled in my lap, I rocked side to side, pivoting on sweaty, swollen feet. I plucked a sweaty blouse from my throat, closed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths.
It was earlier that night, between the second and last shows, when I’d joined Carl in the dim-lit theater to lumber between rows of bouncy seats, pushing a broom to dislodge hidden trash—the tips of my sneakers invisible beneath my belly—that I slid in a butter slick and smacked my tail bone, hard. He’d helped me up, asked if I should go home, the whites of his eyes wide like he didn’t know this helpless, fat, beetle-on-its-back, version of me.
I’d said I was fine.
Now, alone in the stuffy office, fingers tacky with butter grease and soiled money, gut queasy with candy and ice cream for supper, I counted the tickets, then the cash, rolling crumpled bills flat on the edge of the scratched metal desk. Three sold-out shows, plus concession sales. Always the calculations. How many weekend shows before my due date? How much could I safely skim?
I tucked three twenties into my stretched-out bra, took a deep breath, snatched two more from the stack, an even hundred, a lot of money back then. I filled out the bank deposit slip, jotted a note to the managers, two young guys, friends, “another great night.”
My firstborn, jogged loose by that smack on the tailbone, was born the next day, six weeks early, an hour after Mount St. Helens erupted, apocalypse then. He has children of his own now. Whenever I drive through a small town, whenever I read about volcanos, whenever a lot of things, I’m 26, locked in a stuffy office, convincing myself that no one needs those tacky twenties more than me and my baby. More than anything, I want to tell those two young guys I’m sorry, that I was scared and I believed money would help. ◆
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