It smells of stale butter popcorn and has posters plastering the walls from decades before I was born. Noir films from the forties. Musicals from the fifties. Even blaxploitation flicks dating back to the seventies.
My head’s on a swivel as I study them all, intrigued and overwhelmed at the same time.
Killian knows his way around the theater. He leads the way to screening room five without any direction.
We’re some of the only people here this late at night. Oneof the few movie-goers I do see is some man in a rumpled trench coat shuffling out of room four with a guilty expression and a conspicuous stain on the crotch area of his pants.
I can’t help the snicker that escapes me.
Killian’s bought us a large bucket of popcorn and some sodas as we settle into seats near the back of the empty theater.
If it were anyone else, I’d be extremely nervous about sitting alone in a large dark room. But after the past couple weeks in the boneman’s company, my nervous system is calm.
It’s learned Killian is no threat; he would never hurt me.
The screen flickers to life to show us previews. It turns out they’re old trailers for movies that came out before I was born.
…which actually makes them even more enjoyable as I grab a handful of popcorn and watch a young Jack Nicholson hack away at a door with an axe.
“How often do you do this?” I ask around a mouthful of popcorn.
“Couple times a month. When I need to get out of my own head,” Killian answers. He stretches his legs out in front of him, his massive frame barely fitting in the theater seat. “Told you—bars and clubs aren’t an option. Anywhere other than the Banshee, that is. Too many people who want to fuck, fight, or take pictures for their damn social media. But nobody comes to a place like this except insomniacs and weirdos.”
“Which category do you fall into?”
“Both.”
The corner of my mouth twitches. “I think we have more in common than you realize.”
The movie starts with the title card and the year the film was made.
Al Pacino’s face fills the screen, young and intense and desperate, and within minutes I’m drawn into the story of a bank robbery gone horribly wrong.
But what I notice more than the movie isKillian.
He knows every line.
Every beat and pause. Every single moment of tension in the story.
I catch him mouthing the dialogue under his breath, lips moving silently in the darkness.
It’s startling as my gaze slides from the big screen to the big, burly boxer sitting next to me, and it dawns on me he reallywasserious.
He visits the Rialto late at night when he can’t sleep but wants to escape his studio. I can’t fault him for it. It’s actually endearing in a weird way that he’d choosethisover some trendy bar or club around the city.
“How many times have you seen this movie?” I whisper.
“Probably about a dozen.”
“And you still watch it?”
He shrugs, his eyes stuck on the screen. “Good movies don’t get old. Many of them you can watch a hundred times and still get something new out of it.”
He’s got a point. Though it’s been so long since I’ve watched a movie start to finish, even the ones I’ve seen multiple times would be unfamiliar to me these days.
When the credits finally roll, Killian asks for my opinion.
“So, what’d you think?”
