Soon, we fell into a rhythm of taking care of ticketing and cleaning between films, and the boring logistical stuff during shows. Noah walked me through everything, and was surprisingly patient and thorough for a guy who seemed not to give a shit about anything but himself, or at least that was his reputation. The night sped by that way, Noah and I working in tandem.
Finally, the last showing let out, and we went through the theaters together, sweeping up dropped popcorn and throwing away drinks. People always wondered why movie theaters had sticky floors, and I could say confidently it’s because the workers don’t get paid enough to really scrub, and the patrons don’t care what they drop onto the ground.
That first night, I found three dollars, a pair of sunglasses, a half-eaten orange, and an open condom wrapped, but strangely no condom. Noah laughed and said he once found a set of false teeth. I didn’t believe him, but he swore it was true.
We worked in tandem, sweeping up and spraying down the seats with industrial Febreeze. We started with the smallest theater, and ended with the largest. All told, it took us about an hour, although we weren’t exactly thorough in our cleaning. The place was still new, and it hadn’t gotten much traffic yet, so we felt pretty confident in letting it slide a bit. At the end of the night, Noah and I collapsed into the front row, sitting side by side, our cleaning supplies forgotten on the floor in the aisle.
“Well, your first shift is done. How was it?” he asked me.
I shrugged, looking up at the giant silver screen. “It was okay, I guess. About what I expected.”
“Yeah, working in a movie theater is pretty much the same everywhere.”
“Except most places don’t have a crazy manager like Miss H. What’s with her name, anyway?”
Noah laughed. “I’m pretty sure it’s a stage name.”
“Really? Huh. That makes sense.”
“Speaking of names, why did your parents call you ‘Linda’?”
I looked at him sideways, trying to size him up. “What kind of question is that?”
He grinned, and could probably tell that I was suspicious. “I mean you no harm, promise. I just like to hear the story behind people’s name, sometimes.”
I nodded, appeased for the time being. I was constantly on guard for when he would decide to be a dick again.
“Well, my mom named me after Linda Blair.”
He gaped at me, obviously recognizing the name.
“You’re fucking kidding me?”
I laughed and nodded. “Yep, crazy, right?”
“Your mom named you after the girl from The Exorcist! She practically named you after Satan himself.”
Noah howled with laugher, and I grinned at him. I had heard it all before, but it felt particularly funny coming from him, though I wasn’t sure why. For whatever reason, my mom was an enormous fan of The Exorcist, and got it into her head that she would name her first girl after the main character. Unfortunately for me, my father didn’t have much of an opinion one way or the other, and so I was stuck with the name of the possessed girl’s actress, Linda Blair.
“What about your name?” I asked him, once his laughter died down.
He shrugged, looking up at the screen. I studied him in profile, and my breath caught in my chest. It struck me again how handsome he was, and doubly so in the half-dark of the theater, looking up at the enormous screen with a strange, faraway expression.
“My mom liked it.”
“Where’s your mom now?” I asked.
“Died of cancer when I was pretty young.”
I turned white, immediately regretting asking him about his mother. I should have been more tactful, but I had simply assumed his parents were divorced. So many Hollywood kids came from divorced parents.
“I’m sorry Noah, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s okay. Happened a while ago.” He was looking off into the middle distance, and I would have given anything in that moment to be inside his head.
“Did your dad ever re-marry?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
He laughed at that, and came back into the moment. We locked eyes and I imagined, maybe for the hundredth time, what his lips tasted like.
“After my mom died, maybe a few months later, my dad started his endless string of girlfriends.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, basically, if you’re halfway decent looking, connected, and rich, it’s pretty easy to find a certain kind of girl to date you. My dad has probably gone through a few hundred of them over the years.”
Gross. Like father, like son. Noah didn’t exactly have a nice, wholesome family background. I guess that made sense. Most Hollywood kids were a little messed up somehow; my mom always said it took a special kind of ego to get involved with the film industry.