I did as he said, pulling my top off over my head—he was right, it did reek of gingerbread—and putting the T-shirt on over my singlet.
It was too tight, which I suspected was part of the plan, and looked even worse on me than it had on the hanger. “You could have at least had me get something cute,” I told him when I found him in the shop next door, trying on Risky Business sunglasses.
“No, I couldn’t,” he said. “What’d you do with your top?”
“I put it in the bag,” I said.
“Good. Come on,” he said, taking it from me and steering me out of the shop, back toward Gusteau’s, to a recycler. He dropped the bag in.
“I liked that top,” I protested.
“Shh, do you want to go to this movie or not?” he said, leading me through a maze of balloon artists and tattoo laser techs and kiddie rides and candy stores to the lobby.
He stopped just short of it. “Okay, I want you to go over to the kiosk and buy a ticket to Dragonwar.”
“Dragonwar? But I thought we were going to—”
“We are. You buy a ticket to Dragonwar and then—”
“One ticket? Not two?”
“Definitely not two. We’re going in separately.”
“What if the machine tells me I have to buy it at the ticket counter?”
“It won’t,” he said. “Once you’re inside—”
“Or what if they say I can’t go in yet?”
“They won’t do that either,” he said. “Once you’re inside, go to the concessions stand and buy a large popcorn and a large 7-Up with two straws, and go down to Theater 17.”
“Theater 17? But Dragonwar’s playing at Theater 24.”
“We’re not going to Dragonwar. Or to Au Revoir, Mon Fou, which is what’s showing in Theater 17. You’re not going into any theater. You’re just going to stand in the doorway of 17. I’ll meet you there in a couple of minutes.”
“And you promise we’ll see Christmas Caper?”
“I promise I’ll take you to Christmas Caper. Large popcorn,” he ordered. “Large 7-Up. Not Coke.” He jammed the Goose Girl cap down over my eyes. “Theater 17,” he repeated, and took off through the crowd.
“Based on a true story … but you won’t believe it!”
—At the Movies
He was right. No one got in my way or spilled a felony frappe on me or stopped me to give me a free pass to You’re Under Arrest, and the usher didn’t even glance at me as he tore my ticket in half. “Theater 24,” he said, and motioned to the right. “End of the hall,” and turned his attention to a trio of thirteen-year-olds, and I went down the plush-carpeted hall.
There was no sign of Jack, but he could be hiding in one of the recessed entrances to the theater or past the point halfway down where the hall took a turn to the right.
He wasn’t. I stood outside Theater 17 for longer than a couple of minutes and then walked slowly down to 24, where Dragonwar was playing, but he wasn’t there either.
He got caught trying to sneak in, and they threw him out, I thought, walking back to Theater 17 and planting myself in the recessed doorway.
I waited some more.
Still no sign of Jack, or of anyone else, except a kid who shot out of Theater 30 and down to the restroom, banging its door loudly behind him. I waited some more. I would have gotten my phone out to see what time it was, but between the giant 7-Up I was cradling in my left arm and the enormous bag of popcorn, there was no way I could manage it.
A door slammed farther down the hall, and I looked up eagerly, but it was just the kid, racing back to 30, obviously determined not to miss a second more than necessary of his movie. I wondered what it was that was so riveting. I moved down the hall a little so I could see the marquee above the door.
Lethal Rampage. And next door to it, on the marquee above Theater 28, Christmas Caper.
“The cast is terrific!”
—Goin’ Hollywood
That rat! Jack had told me it didn’t exist, and yet here it was. And all those problems I’d had, all those people who’d gotten in my way, weren’t Drome employees hired to keep me out. They were just moviegoers like me, and the things that had happened were nothing more than coincidences. There was no conspiracy.
When are you going to learn you can’t trust a word he says? I thought, and if he’d been there, I’d have taken great pleasure in dumping the 7-Up—and the popcorn—over his head and stomping out.
But he’d apparently gotten himself caught and thrown out of the Drome. If he’d ever intended to come. And I was left, quite literally, holding the bag. And now that I thought about it, Nick Nolte had done the same thing to Julia Roberts in I Love Trouble—sending her on what else?—a wild-goose chase. With real geese.
I’ll kill him when I find him, I thought, and started back toward the entrance, fuming, and then stopped and looked back at Theater 28. I had come to the Drome to see Christmas Caper, and it was right here, with the 4:30 showing due to start at any minute. And it would serve Jack right if I saw it without him.
I walked back to the turn and peeked around the corner to make sure no one—especially not somebody on the staff—was coming and would catch me going into a different movie than the one I had the ticket for, and then hurried over to Theater 28 and pulled the door open. That was no mean feat given the popcorn and the 7-Up, but I managed to get it open far enough to hold it with my hip while I sidled through.
It was pitch-dark inside. The door shut behind me, and I stood there in the blackness, waiting for my eyes to adjust. They didn’t, even though there should be some light from the movie screen, or, if the previews hadn’t started yet, from the overhead lights. And weren’t these hallways supposed to have strip lighting in case they had to evacuate the theater?
This one obviously didn’t, and I couldn’t see anything. I stood there in the darkness, listening. The previews had definitely started. I could hear crashes and clangs and ominous music. It must be a preview for one of those shot-totally-at-night movies like The Dark Knight Rises or the Alien reboot, and that was why I couldn’t see, and in a minute, when a different preview came on, there’d be enough light to find my way by. But though the sounds changed to laughter and the muffled murmur of voices, the corridor remained coal-mine black.
I was going to have to feel my way along the passage, but I didn’t have a free hand to hold on to the wall with. Or to fish out my phone with so I could use its lit screen as a flashlight.
This is all Jack’s fault, I thought, stooping to set down the 7-Up so I could get my phone out of my pocket. I flipped it open and held it out in front of me. And no wonder the passage was so dark. It went a few more feet and then turned sharply to the left in a kind of dogleg. If I’d kept going, I’d have run face-first into a wall.
That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen, I thought, trying to figure out a way to hold on to my phone and the 7-Up. There wasn’t one—the cup was too big around—but if I could just make it past the dogleg, there should be some light from the screen to see by. I put my phone back in my pocket, felt for the cup, picked it up, and started down the passage again, counting the steps to the wall.
“Four … five …” I whispered. “Six, sev—”
And was grabbed abruptly from behind by a hand around my waist. I yelped, but a second hand was already over my mouth, and Jack’s voice was in my ear. “Shh. In here,” he whispered and pulled me, impossibly, right through the wall.