“Now he told me he wants to talk to you again. He wants to make a confession, and also a donation to our church. All the profits he made on his fake-butter scheme.”
Ernest gaped. He dropped the fully dissected croissant onto his plate. “Of course! I’ll make another visit to his house this after—”
I shook my head. “But he wants to do it in secret. He still doesn’t want his girlfriend or anyone else suspecting. He wants to meet you at the theater tonight, after closing, at midnight. And you’re not supposed to let anyone see you arrive.”
He blinked at me. I could tell the idea of a middle-of-the-night meeting scared him a little but excited him, too. “Midnight,” he said. “Tell him I’ll be there.”
*
I didn’t work on Sundays—my parents didn’t want me to—so I had to call Mike to tell him the news. That might’ve been for the best. By now I was so full of nervous excitement I didn’t know if I could keep the act going if I talked to him in person.
“Ernest’s agreed,” I told him. Even though Mike couldn’t see me, I still tried to hold myself like a femme fatale, sitting in my desk chair with my legs crossed, winding an imaginary phone cord slowly around my index finger. “I said he should rendezvous with you at the theater tonight at midnight. I told him you’d be waiting with the money behind the curtain in screening room one. I’ll meet him at the door and bring him to you.”
“Okay.” The fear made Mike’s voice crack and wobble. “Jesus, how am I going to explain all that missing money to my parents?”
“They’re gone for the whole summer, right? So you can make the money disappear in the books somehow, can’t you?”
“I guess. And Ernest swears he’s going to let this drop once I pay him? Like, forever? This’ll make it disappear?”
“Yes,” I said. “He swears.” I gazed at the photo of Lauren Bacall on the wall above my bed. Her face, beautiful but strong and angular. I’d torn the picture of Mike out from under it weeks ago. Crumpled it and thrown it into the trash. “And Mike,” I said, “if you really want to make this disappear, there’s one more thing I think you should do.”
*
That night I snuck out of the house at eleven fifteen and hurried to the theater by foot. Mike had just locked up for the night. On the floor of his office, we counted the money one more time and stuffed it into a black duffel bag. Then he stationed himself behind the red curtain in screening room one. Just like I’d advised, he wore a button-down shirt, unbuttoned halfway, and a splash of cologne. He’d put some product in his hair and in his billy-goat beard, too.
Before I left him, I said, “Tell me one thing, Mike. It wasn’t all bullshit with me, was it? You did like hanging out, didn’t you?”
He looked confused at first, but then his face eased into a smile. He gave me a wink, and for a second, he really did look like a young Humphrey Bogart. “Sure I did.”
“Thanks. I just needed to hear you say that.”
I went to the theater’s back entrance, the one that led directly to the parking lot, and let in Ernie, who was just as punctual as I knew he’d be. I led him into screening room one and all the way to the narrow backstage area between the curtain and the movie screen. Mike stood there smoking a cigarette with his shoulder leaned up against the wall. He looked just like he had that first night when he and I met back behind our houses. Except he was a lot more nervous now.
I didn’t stay. I had one more thing I needed to do. I went back to the theater lobby, and this time I headed for the front entrance, stuffing my paper hat on my head as I went.
Rochelle stood there, an eager grin on her face, along with even more makeup than usual. She wore a tight red dress, and her cotton-candy hair looked extra poufy. In her hand she clutched the “ticket” I’d printed and hand-delivered to the Morettis’ house earlier today. I’d told her Mike had sent me. It had been her day off, but Mike still had work to do. The ticket read: Good for one admission to a night at the movies you’ll never forget. Come to the theater tonight at midnight.
“This is so exciting!” she bubbled as I let her in and slid behind the snack counter.
“A Diet Coke,” I said. “Isn’t that your drink?”
“Uh-huh. And a box of Milk Duds, please.”
“An excellent choice.”
I pushed her treats across the counter and walked her into screening room one. I sat her down in the middle of the middle row, in the very same seat where I’d sat during my date with Mike.
“He’ll be right here,” I whispered. “He’s just getting everything ready for the big show.”
I started to go, but Rochelle grabbed my hand and peered up at me through big, shiny eyes. “Thank you, Cody. I mean it. You’ve already made this evening so special.”
I felt a pang right then. I admit it, I did. Rochelle really was a sweet girl. At least a couple times a week she’d get us all a Burger Bucket at the Burger Barn for lunch. She’d always let me have as many burgers as I wanted and never let me pay her a dime. For that matter, Ernie was a good guy, too, in a judgy, hyper-Christian sort of way. I suppose I should’ve felt some solidarity with him, considering I was 99 percent sure he was a closet case just like me. But I couldn’t let any of that stop me. A femme fatale wouldn’t. To get what I wanted, I had to be ruthless. I was a chubby homo living with his Christian nutjob parents in goddamn motherfucking Hellville, West Virginia, and I had no other choice.
I made my way to the front of the theater, off to one side, and peeked behind the red curtain. I flicked a switch on the wall. The curtain hummed open, revealing Mike and Ernie with their mouths locked together, a desperate grimace on Mike’s face, Ernie’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, his arms thrown wide open and his fingers wiggling, like he was falling from a great height.
The picture only lasted a second. A scream cut through the room, and they lurched away from each other. Mike whirled around to squint at the house.
“R-Rochelle?” he sputtered. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She was already rushing down her row and up the aisle, her hands over her mouth. He jumped off the stage and sprinted after her. I’d pulled back into the shadows at the side of the room so he couldn’t see me.
Ernie didn’t notice me either. He stared after the others, his fingers still wiggling, his face red with confusion and mortification, before he hurried out through the emergency exit on the other side of the screen.
And then I was alone. Which left me plenty of time to grab the black duffel bag from the stage and, with a swing in my hips Lana Turner would’ve envied, sashay out of the theater.
“Damn!” Tino said. “Boy’s got a dark side. Who’d have thought?”
“Did you really steal that money?” Jenna asked.
Cody didn’t seem to know how to react to all the attention.
David was laughing. “No way that happened. But you’ve got a hell of an imagination. I bet I could make a movie out of that. We should film it when we’re out of the Bend.”