Hancock 10:15

Jake goes to his car to get some quarters, but I am unaware that we’re going out. We’d looked at showtimes earlier, but hadn’t really made any plans.

I flop down on the recliner. Alicia sits on the floor watching TV as she cuts and pastes together homemade cards. “Are you guys going?” she asks.

“What?”

“Are you guys going to a movie?”

“I don’t think so,” I reply.

Jake, wearing my black hoodie, chimes in from the kitchen. “Were not?”

I’m a little surprised. “Oh, are we going? I didn’t think we were going.”

I guess this has become a bit of a ritual for Jake and I. He comes back from work late Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning, and we go to a movie Wednesday night. He already has a dollar fifty jangling around in the pocket of my hoodie.

We head for Kmart, the black hole of hope, hoping to get in before it closes. As we pull up, the lights are still on inside. We park and jump out of the car—Jake, ready to bolt through the automatic doors as if being chased by men with guns, like that scene in The Fugitive. “Hey, I think I see Biggie in there,” he says, referring to the overweight teenager who is always working the customer service desk. I’m about to lock the car when Jake turns around.

“They put carts in front of the door,” he says and reluctantly puts his hand back on handle of the car door.

As we pull out of the parking lot, I offer other suggestions: gas station, Shopko. But we pass an Albertson’s and I pull in.

The candy selection is surprisingly small compared to Kmart’s, considering that Albertson’s is a grocery store—that mainly sells food—and Kmart is not. Jake grabs a box of Milk Duds and a box of Mike and Ikes, disappointed that they don’t stock Good ‘n Fruitys.

At the theater, standing in front of the ticket counter, Jake gives me his dollar fifty in change and I push my bills through the glass: “Two for Hancock.” It always feels weird buying two tickets for myself and another guy, a feeling that is reiterated as I hand two tickets to the man standing at the ticket-taking podium.

He’s not one of the usual teenagers. He looks to be in his early- to mid-forties, with a second-hand suit and a cheap silk tie with no discernable pattern. He looks at us and mumbles in an accent I can’t quite place. All I catch is the number “nine” as he gestures down the hall to his right.

Tonight it’s hard to find two seats together that aren’t broken, but Jake and I find two seats that are bearable and settle in, chewing on the Mike and Ikes, which lose their appeal after a second mouthful.

There’s a promo for a new Knight Rider TV show playing, which looks dreadful, then Kid Rock comes on screaming a song that amounts to little more than a commercial for the Army Reserves. Flags waving, smiling soldiers, and little children smiling into the camera after being saved from one disaster or another by a smiling soldier holding a waving flag.

The movie starts as usual: blurry, out of frame, and gargling soundtrack. But it fixes itself within a minute or so and the lights dim. I pop a Milk Dud in my mouth and take in the beautiful chaos of the dollar theater, late on a Wednesday night.