Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Going to the Movies Essay

Outside the main entrance to the mall was a large canopy, high up. Broken, aged concrete lined the building. Straddling the doors were two square bases, where statues once stood. They made a great playground for two rambunctious boys; platforms for adventure. Faded, peeling green paint along the base, trees growing on top. They added to the air of disarray and neglect shared by the whole building.
Pushing aside the glass doors we would enter a vast foyer. The ceiling seemed to reach for the heights, belying the impression from outside. The hall was vacant, void of life. The only sound was the swish of the doors closing behind us, the echo of our voices and footsteps. The tile floor reflected a ghostly image of me staring up at me. He seemed just as excited as I was, and as alone.
Ahead of us, like the bow of a ship rising out of the waves, was a water fountain. It was oblong shaped, the walls on the lengthwise sections starting low then raising until reaching its apex at the points on the end. Cylinders with sprayers on the ends rose out of the water at differing heights. The water itself glistened under the lights, reflections of discarded change along the bottom. Directly above us was a mirror image of the fountain hanging down from the ceiling. There was always a haunting feeling around the fountain, of something perhaps forgotten.
The fountain sat in the middle of a T-intersection of the halls. To the left, the hall seemed to go on forever. Lining its edges were vacant storefronts, remnants from a more profitable past. Dingy, yellow colored glass lined a couple of storefronts. Others stores were barred by rusty chain drop gates. One, once a pet store, featured a fish tank built into the floor that customers would cross upon entering. It too was empty, inhabited only by creatures of our imaginations.
To the right of the fountain, along another hall, were usually the only other signs of life. Sometimes it was a couple heading for the same destination. Other times there was a line already formed at the door. Ignoring the urge to run and skip became even more difficult, even more so than when faced with the statue bases or the water fountain. Here the excitement of our intended visit only grew. Above the glass front in stark black and white were always two choices, the same as the number of screens the theater itself had. To the right the line terminated at a small desk, where a clerk would take our mother’s money and issue us our tickets.
Inside was semi-dark, the foyer illumination barely maintained by the lights overhead. The brightest lights were behind the candy counter, where the smell of butter and the dry roast of popcorn came from. The pattern on the worn and tattered floor would beckon me forward toward the next rooms. There was the soft murmur of conversation, the bleeps and bloops of the arcade machines set apparently at random through the room. Mom would buy us our popcorn and sodas and, snacks in tow, lead us toward our destination.
Rounding a corner on either end of the foyer was a short hallway, punctuated by a set of double doors at the end of it. Sometimes if we were running late to the show there would be the sounds of advertisements and previews drifting through the space in the middle where the doors didn’t quite meet. Walking through those doors led into the theater itself, a slanted room filled on either side of the aisle with row upon row of folding seats for the patrons and dominated at one end by a large, rectangular screen. Along the lengths of the sides of the room were floor to ceiling curtains, and it always occurred to my young mind to wonder if anyone would bother hiding behind a set of them.
The room sloped downward, the aisle being the only thing still carpeted, though the carpet was torn in places and sticky in others. The concrete floor where the seats were was not in any better shape, old gum and soda spills inhabited that space. The seats themselves when folded down might reveal a jagged tear or some loose bits of popcorn from a previous show. I did not much care about the shape of the building or the contents, after a few moments of waiting that seemed interminable the projector I could make out in that little square of light above and behind would start spooling up; the lights would dim; and I would be transported to a world far away from abandoned malls and dirty carpets. I loved that place.