“That’s no excuse. You promised you’d take me to Christmas Caper.”
“And I did,” he said. “This is it.” He waved his arm to show the passage. “Welcome to Theater 28.”
“This isn’t a theater,” I said.
“You’re right,” he said. “Come on.” He grabbed my hand, led me down to where he’d set the popcorn and 7-Up. “Have a seat, and I’ll explain everything. Come on, sit down.”
I sat down on the floor, my back against the carpeted wall, my arms folded belligerently across my chest, and he sat down across from me. “That passage outside splits in two and goes into the theaters on either side,” he said. “If I hadn’t reached out and pulled you in here, you’d have turned and followed that dogleg into Theater 30 and Lethal Rampage.
“And if you’d turned the other way, you’d have ended up in Theater 26”—he jerked his thumb toward the wall behind him—“where Make Way for Ducklings is now showing, a fact you wouldn’t have discovered until you’d sat through fifteen minutes of previews, at which point you’d have thought you’d somehow gotten in the wrong theater, and go tell the usher, who’d tell you he was sorry, but you’d missed the start of Christmas Caper and he couldn’t let you in, but that there might still be tickets available for the seven o’clock. A neat trick, huh?”
“But why—?”
“They have to have a last line of defense in case a determined fan makes it past all the other firewalls. That hardly ever happens, but occasionally somebody does what you just did—can’t get in, buys a ticket for another movie, and then tries to sneak in to what they originally wanted to see.”
“Why don’t they just not put up a marquee for it?”
“They tried that, which is what made us suspicious in the first place, so they had to come up with an alternative plan. Which you see before you.”
“Us?” I asked.
“Oops, I almost forgot,” he said, scrambling to his feet and going to retrieve his jacket. He put it on, came back, and began searching through its pockets.
“Now what are you doing?” I asked.
“Trying to get this made before Lethal Rampage hits another quiet stretch.” He frowned at the red Coca-Cola cup. “You did get 7-Up, didn’t you? Not Coke?”
“I got 7-Up.” I handed it over to him. “You’re not making a stink bomb out of that, are you?” I asked as he pulled out a flask and poured a brown liquid into it.
“No,” he said, patting his pockets some more and pulling out a Terminator 12 commemorative glass and then a baggie full of lemon slices.
He poured half the 7-Up-and-brown-liquid-and-ice mixture into the Terminator glass, added a lemon slice and a sprig of mint from his breast pocket, reached inside his jacket, pulled out a stalk of rhubarb with a flourish, stuck it in the glass, stirred the mixture with it, and handed it to me. “Your Pimm’s Cup, madam,” he said.
“Just like the ones you made the night we watched Ghost Town,” I said, smiling.
“Well, not just like them. These are made with rum, which was all Tom Cruise’s Cocktail Bar had. And when I made the Ghost Town ones, I was trying to get you into bed.”
“And what are you trying to do this time? Get me drunk so I’ll agree to help you do something else illegal?”
“No,” he said, sitting down next to me. “Not right now, anyway,” which wasn’t exactly a reassuring answer.
“I got the photos,” he went on, “which is what I came for, and, thanks to you and that awful Dora T-shirt”—he raised his Coke cup to me—“I’m a lot less likely to get caught smuggling them out. But it’s still too risky to do any more investigating till I’ve gotten them safely off the premises.” He took a leisurely sip of his drink.
“Then, shouldn’t we be going?” I asked.
“We can’t. Not till Lethal Rampage is over and we can blend in with the audience as it leaves. So relax. Drink your Pimm’s Cup, have some popcorn. We’ve got—” He stopped and listened to the din coming through the wall for a moment, “an hour and forty-six minutes to kill. Enough time to—”
“Tell me what’s going on, like you promised you would. Or are you going to tell me that’s classified, too?”
“As a matter of fact, it is,” he said. “And you’ve already seen what they’re doing—covering up movies that don’t exist.”
“But why? Most people don’t even care about the movies part.”
“Oh, but they do. They think they’ve got a hundred to choose from, and that’s what makes them come all the way out here on the light rail and stand in security lines forever. Do you think they’d do that just to buy a bag of popcorn and an overpriced Avengers mug? How long do you think Baskin-Robbins would stay in business if they only had three flavors, even if they were the most popular ones? Look at your friends. They may have spent today shopping and eating and—”
“Picking up guys.”
“And picking up guys, but if somebody asked them tomorrow what they did, they’d say they went to the movies, and they’d believe it. The Drome’s not selling popcorn, it’s selling an illusion, an idea—a giant screen with magical images on it, your girlfriend sitting beside you in the dark, romance, adventure, mystery …”
“But I still don’t understand. Okay, they have to maintain the illusion, but it’s not as if they don’t have any movies. You said there were only four or five movies here that didn’t exist, and they already show some movies on more than one screen. Why not just show X-Force and The Return of Frodo in one more theater instead of making movies up?”
“Because they’re already showing X-Force in six theaters as it is, and Starstruck just announced they’re building a chain of 250-screen Super-dromes. Besides, I don’t think the moviegoing public’s the only people they’re trying to fool.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you’re a film company, this could really work to your advantage. If your movie’s behind schedule, nobody gets fined or fired for missing the release date. You release it anyway, and then, when it’s finished, you put out the DVD and stream it, and nobody’s the wiser. Which, by the way, is what happened to Monsoon Gate and what I think probably happened to Christmas Caper. You can’t release a Christmas movie in February. It’s got to come out in December or you’ll lose your shirt. Figuratively speaking.”
“Which means it might show up on the Net in a few months,” I said.
“Yeah, and if it does, I’ll watch it with you, I promise.”
“Do you think that’s what happened to the other movies?”
“No. The Ripper Files never came out, and neither did Mission to Antares or By the Skin of Our Teeth. And why spend millions making a movie when you can do a three-minute trailer instead, pay the Dromes to block people from seeing it, and pocket the difference? The shareholders wouldn’t even have to know.”
“Which would make it fraud.”
“It’s already fraud,” he said. “And false advertising. There are laws against selling products that don’t exist.”
“Which is why they don’t sell the tickets online,” I said. “But if they’re criminals, isn’t what you’re doing dangerous?”
“Not if they don’t know I’m doing it. Which is why,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper, “we need to sit here quietly, eat our popcorn”—he scooted closer to me—“and watch the movie.”
“What’s it about?” I whispered.
“This guy who’s investigating a conspiracy when who should turn up but his old girlfriend. It’s the last thing he needs. He’s trying to stay invisible—”