Puddin'(79)

When I get into his car, Malik hands me a fresh pair of socks. “You’ll need these,” he tells me.

“What are these for?” I ask. “Are we going bowling?”

His lips twitch for a second, like he’s second-guessing himself. “Would it be a problem if we were?”

I shake my head. “Only if you don’t mind getting beat by a girl.”

“Oh, so you’re a smack talker?” he asks. “Well—” His ringtone interrupts him. He glances down at his phone, resting in the cup holder. “I better get this,” he says as he pulls over to the side of a residential street.

“Hello?” asks Malik into the receiver.

I listen carefully, but I can’t make out the voice on the other end, so all I’ve got to work with is his one-sided conversation.

“Well, has he tried taking any medicine? . . . He just has to sit in a dark room and change out the reels. It can’t be that hard. . . . He’s sure he can’t? . . . Fine. Okay. Give me twenty minutes.”

Malik hangs up the phone and turns to me.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

“Yes. No,” he says. “I have to cancel tonight.”

“Oh.” I try to hide my disappointment, but it’s no use.

“It’s just there are only three of us at work who know how to change out the film reels in the projector rooms, and normally it wouldn’t matter, but one guy is visiting his internet girlfriend in New Mexico and the other guy is hung over. Or maybe he’s still drunk. I’m not sure.”

Malik works at the only movie theater in town, the Lone Star 4, if you’re not counting the drive-in. It’s one of the oldest buildings in town, too, so I guess it should be no surprise that it’s not equipped to play films digitally either. It’s a bummer not to go bowling, but I hate even more that our night has to end before it’s even begun. And then it hits me. “What if I go to work with you? Like, as your assistant.”

“You don’t want to do that,” he tells me. “You’ll be so bored.”

“Not as long as we’re hanging out.”

He blushes. “I guess there is unlimited popcorn in it for you.”

“Throw in some Milk Duds, and we have a deal,” I say.

“Done.” He holds his hand out for me to shake.

Malik parks around the back of the movie theater, near the employee entrance, and we trot up a dark, narrow staircase just inside the door.

I have been to this theater countless times, with its old, dusty Art Deco lobby and plush royal-blue seats, but a few years back, the drive-in on the edge of town reopened, and this place just isn’t quite as busy as it used to be.

“Okay,” says Malik. “It looks like Cameron got all the shows going, so I’ve just got to be here to change out the reels and do the late shows. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Not even a little bit,” I tell him.

“Let’s get those Milk Duds I promised you.”

I follow him through a tiny office and onto an even tinier elevator that drops us right into the lobby, which smells like butter and years of soda syrup soaked into the gold, red, and blue carpet.

“There’s no one here,” I say.

“Everyone’s in their movies,” he tells me. “The calm between the storms.”

“Trust me,” says a petite, older black woman behind the counter. “This place turns into a war zone in between shows. And you don’t even want to know what the floors of those theaters look like when we bring up the houselights.” She wears black slacks, a white button-up, a blue satin vest, and a bow tie made to look like the Texas flag.

“Cynthia,” says Malik, taking my hand, “this is—”

“Millie!” she finishes for him. “Darling, he has been singing your song for months now.”

A sharp gasp that comes out more like a laugh tumbles from me and echoes through the lobby. “Months, huh?”

Malik bites down on his lips until they disappear and his cheeks melt into a deep shade of pink. “Cynthia is my coworker.”

“And friend,” she adds.

He turns to me. “And general sentence finisher.”

Malik fills a large tub full of popcorn, pours us each a soda, and retrieves my Milk Duds from the glass case. I know this isn’t how our date was supposed to go and that this is just concession food, but something about this feels decadent. My mom never buys movie theater snacks. Instead, she sneaks in bags of sliced apples or, if she’s splurging, a SlimFast cookie-dough bar.

We take the elevator back upstairs and settle onto a small couch in one of the projector rooms.

“So should I be worried about you and Cynthia?” I ask as the ninth movie in an action-adventure car-chase franchise plays in the background behind us.

He cracks a smile. “I guess we’re not two people who you would expect to be friends, but you try spending half your summer here and not bonding with the closest set of lungs you can find.” He shoves a handful of popcorn in his mouth and washes it down with a swig of Dr Pepper. “But I’d like to think that me and Cynthia would’ve found a way to be friends even if I didn’t work here.”

“Is she married?” I ask. “Any kids?”

“Two kids. A daughter in Houston and a son in Fort Worth. She took a job here after her husband passed away.”