five
It’s probably almost time to change the film reel, so Owain turns back to the movie. He tries not to be distracted too much during work, but sometimes it’s hard, because he likes talking to his brother. Elwyn grew up with the same movie loving parents and inherited their dad’s love of horror and their mom’s love of old romances, and he shares Owain’s sense of humor and also likes hiking and sushi and other people’s dogs, although he got married right out of college (whereas Owain has been single for over a year, since he and the ex broke up, and hasn’t even thought about marriage) and studied ecology and conservation. He works for the southwest office of the Institute of Applied Ecology, which doesn’t pay much but which he loves.
Owain can relate.
After he changes the reel Owain gets a new text - Now she’s pinching me followed by a crab emoji. Owain snickers. He loves his sister-in-law.
Toast me with your green beer, Owain texts, and that’s the end of their conversation for now.
He takes another quick break before Leprechaun and spends the entirety of that movie actually paying attention to it. It’s silly in retrospect but he can almost see how it would have been scary when it first came out. It has a young and baby-faced Jennifer Aniston, which somehow makes it even more absurd. Owain likes watching famous people’s early movies, the work they did before they became famous, even when those early efforts are kind of bad. Not everyone can be Natalie Portman, making their debut in a Luc Besson film. Sometimes you’re Jennifer Aniston and your first movie credit is a dumb horror flick.
But the audience is into it, which is what matters.
By the time the movie is over and he’s closed up the projectionist’s booth, the lobby is empty of even moviegoers. How did Marcel run the card receipts and count out the register drawer so fast? Someone should be down here to wave the moviegoers out, even if it’s not him. Jerry, Jo, someone. And then the door to the ticket window opens and Jerry slides off the chair inside and tells Owain to have a good night.
There’s a piece of paper shoved under his door again, like there was Sunday night, but this time it’s just a note from Teddy asking him to bring beer to her party, and she knows it’s a Saturday night and he probably has to work but he can ask for the night off, right? Right.
“I told you I could come,” he says to the piece of paper. He even got the night off in exchange for working the day shift. He’ll remind her in the morning. For now, he drops the note in the recycling bin and writes “bring beer” on the invitation, which is still stuck to his fridge.
He watches an episode of The Mandalorian before bed, and in the morning he reminds Teddy that he already RSVP’ed yes to her party and she doesn’t need to remind him to take the night off, and does she care what kind of beer he brings.
It’s not for a week but he likes to be prepared.
It’s Friday, he’s got the late movies - his favorite shift, because the Oriental sometimes shows the weird ones late at night, and he always was a night owl - but he has time to do some important things, like go to the gym and do another load of laundry and get the oil changed in his car. What he does not do is have time to psych himself up for two important pieces of information - first, that his high school friend Hernan is coming out for a conference in a couple of weeks, and second, that his ex is coming to town for - of all things - the premiere of his documentary.
“Why’s he coming here?” Carolle asks. Her shoulder is not at all better but she hated being stuck at home, so Jerry said he’d give her a short shift and then she could see how she felt. So far she insists she’s fine.
“To piss me off, I don’t know,” Owain says.
“You do realize you’re not the center of his world,” Marcel points out.
“Yes, Marcel, thank you, I am aware.”
“What’s the documentary about?” Carolle asks.
“Being queer in prison. Actually queer, not situationally queer. He filmed a lot of it at correctional facilities around the state, that’s probably why he’s premiering it here.”
“Didn’t you break up a year ago?” Marcel asks. “And wasn’t he an asshole? Why are you following his life?”
“A year and a half,” Owain tells him, “he was, and I’m not. My friend Milena warned me. I don’t know how she knows, don’t ask.”
Milena texted him in the middle of the day, so he assumed she found out from either a student or another teacher. She likes movies as much as the next person, but she has even less incentive to keep tabs on the ex than Owain does, and she’s not a big fan of documentaries or movies about prisons.
“When is it?” Carolle asks. “So we know to avoid.”
“I don’t know, I don’t care, why did he have to come back here.”
When they broke up - and they didn’t even have to split their stuff, because Owain didn’t want to move in together, which was another point of tension - the ex moved down to Eugene, so at least they never had to worry about running into each other. But why did he have to premiere his prison movie here? Why did it have to be big enough that it was worth a premiere? He’d started working on it shortly before they split, traveling around to interview psychologists and to try and get inmates to talk to him, and as a person who loves movies, Owain is glad his ex finished his documentary. But as a person who was broken up with because he “just wasn’t as invested in the relationship”, and he “just wasn’t compatible”, he kind of wishes the documentary had crashed and burned and his ex never managed to finish it.
It’s petty, he knows, but he doesn’t really care.
Ugh, what if it’s good? His ex will be so insufferably smug. Although Owain isn’t going to see him, so it’s a moot point.
He needs to think about something more positive. Hernan’s visit. Teddy’s party. Getting to show the midnight movie. The midnight movies this month are weird culty scifi. When the schedule came out he called home just to let his mom know that March would be a great time to come visit. She said no, March was cold and wet and she’d wait until it was closer to summer, and if they wanted to watch weird culty scifi movies together, he could rent one. He laughed at her and told her no one rented movies any more, there were no more movie rental places, and if you couldn’t find something on streaming or didn’t already own it, you were out of luck.
She pointed out, reasonably, that he practically had his own movie rental place in his apartment, and who needed video stores when you had your own private Blockbuster?
He’ll watch Liquid Sky, tonight’s offering, and think about his mom. It beats thinking about the movie, which is terrible from start to finish, except for the scene with the one character talking about shrimp.
He really does love running the film for the late night movies. The folks in the audience can be a mixed bag - night owls who need something to do, movie aficionados, curious people - and there’s something kind of nostalgic about working an old film projector to show a movie from before the digital age to the late night weirdos in the city. He can see the audience if he leans against the window and angles his head just right - Jo told him that the window swings out, but he’s never been able to figure out how, and he doesn’t want to break it just so he can hang his head out of the projectionist’s booth to look down at the people coming to see the movie - and very occasionally, if something goes wrong, sometimes someone from the audience will yell up at the booth and tell whoever’s in there to fix the fucking movie.
words: 1274
total words: 7040
Owain can relate.
After he changes the reel Owain gets a new text - Now she’s pinching me followed by a crab emoji. Owain snickers. He loves his sister-in-law.
Toast me with your green beer, Owain texts, and that’s the end of their conversation for now.
He takes another quick break before Leprechaun and spends the entirety of that movie actually paying attention to it. It’s silly in retrospect but he can almost see how it would have been scary when it first came out. It has a young and baby-faced Jennifer Aniston, which somehow makes it even more absurd. Owain likes watching famous people’s early movies, the work they did before they became famous, even when those early efforts are kind of bad. Not everyone can be Natalie Portman, making their debut in a Luc Besson film. Sometimes you’re Jennifer Aniston and your first movie credit is a dumb horror flick.
But the audience is into it, which is what matters.
By the time the movie is over and he’s closed up the projectionist’s booth, the lobby is empty of even moviegoers. How did Marcel run the card receipts and count out the register drawer so fast? Someone should be down here to wave the moviegoers out, even if it’s not him. Jerry, Jo, someone. And then the door to the ticket window opens and Jerry slides off the chair inside and tells Owain to have a good night.
There’s a piece of paper shoved under his door again, like there was Sunday night, but this time it’s just a note from Teddy asking him to bring beer to her party, and she knows it’s a Saturday night and he probably has to work but he can ask for the night off, right? Right.
“I told you I could come,” he says to the piece of paper. He even got the night off in exchange for working the day shift. He’ll remind her in the morning. For now, he drops the note in the recycling bin and writes “bring beer” on the invitation, which is still stuck to his fridge.
He watches an episode of The Mandalorian before bed, and in the morning he reminds Teddy that he already RSVP’ed yes to her party and she doesn’t need to remind him to take the night off, and does she care what kind of beer he brings.
It’s not for a week but he likes to be prepared.
It’s Friday, he’s got the late movies - his favorite shift, because the Oriental sometimes shows the weird ones late at night, and he always was a night owl - but he has time to do some important things, like go to the gym and do another load of laundry and get the oil changed in his car. What he does not do is have time to psych himself up for two important pieces of information - first, that his high school friend Hernan is coming out for a conference in a couple of weeks, and second, that his ex is coming to town for - of all things - the premiere of his documentary.
“Why’s he coming here?” Carolle asks. Her shoulder is not at all better but she hated being stuck at home, so Jerry said he’d give her a short shift and then she could see how she felt. So far she insists she’s fine.
“To piss me off, I don’t know,” Owain says.
“You do realize you’re not the center of his world,” Marcel points out.
“Yes, Marcel, thank you, I am aware.”
“What’s the documentary about?” Carolle asks.
“Being queer in prison. Actually queer, not situationally queer. He filmed a lot of it at correctional facilities around the state, that’s probably why he’s premiering it here.”
“Didn’t you break up a year ago?” Marcel asks. “And wasn’t he an asshole? Why are you following his life?”
“A year and a half,” Owain tells him, “he was, and I’m not. My friend Milena warned me. I don’t know how she knows, don’t ask.”
Milena texted him in the middle of the day, so he assumed she found out from either a student or another teacher. She likes movies as much as the next person, but she has even less incentive to keep tabs on the ex than Owain does, and she’s not a big fan of documentaries or movies about prisons.
“When is it?” Carolle asks. “So we know to avoid.”
“I don’t know, I don’t care, why did he have to come back here.”
When they broke up - and they didn’t even have to split their stuff, because Owain didn’t want to move in together, which was another point of tension - the ex moved down to Eugene, so at least they never had to worry about running into each other. But why did he have to premiere his prison movie here? Why did it have to be big enough that it was worth a premiere? He’d started working on it shortly before they split, traveling around to interview psychologists and to try and get inmates to talk to him, and as a person who loves movies, Owain is glad his ex finished his documentary. But as a person who was broken up with because he “just wasn’t as invested in the relationship”, and he “just wasn’t compatible”, he kind of wishes the documentary had crashed and burned and his ex never managed to finish it.
It’s petty, he knows, but he doesn’t really care.
Ugh, what if it’s good? His ex will be so insufferably smug. Although Owain isn’t going to see him, so it’s a moot point.
He needs to think about something more positive. Hernan’s visit. Teddy’s party. Getting to show the midnight movie. The midnight movies this month are weird culty scifi. When the schedule came out he called home just to let his mom know that March would be a great time to come visit. She said no, March was cold and wet and she’d wait until it was closer to summer, and if they wanted to watch weird culty scifi movies together, he could rent one. He laughed at her and told her no one rented movies any more, there were no more movie rental places, and if you couldn’t find something on streaming or didn’t already own it, you were out of luck.
She pointed out, reasonably, that he practically had his own movie rental place in his apartment, and who needed video stores when you had your own private Blockbuster?
He’ll watch Liquid Sky, tonight’s offering, and think about his mom. It beats thinking about the movie, which is terrible from start to finish, except for the scene with the one character talking about shrimp.
He really does love running the film for the late night movies. The folks in the audience can be a mixed bag - night owls who need something to do, movie aficionados, curious people - and there’s something kind of nostalgic about working an old film projector to show a movie from before the digital age to the late night weirdos in the city. He can see the audience if he leans against the window and angles his head just right - Jo told him that the window swings out, but he’s never been able to figure out how, and he doesn’t want to break it just so he can hang his head out of the projectionist’s booth to look down at the people coming to see the movie - and very occasionally, if something goes wrong, sometimes someone from the audience will yell up at the booth and tell whoever’s in there to fix the fucking movie.
words: 1274
total words: 7040