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Oh my God, he’s so infuriating sometimes. “I’m at my job, Jimmy.”
For the first time since he pushed into the theater, his eyes cast down in thought and he starts doing that thing with his mouth—I can’t tell if it’s biting the inside of his cheek, sucking his own tongue, or working something out from between his teeth.
I come up closer to him. “Seriously, man, what are you doing here? Y’know I can’t just mess around on the clock. I need this job. This isn’t some … blow-off thing to me.”
“Yeah, it is,” interjects Vince from halfway across the lobby where he’s playing basketball with balled-up trash and a trashcan.
With a sigh, I lower my voice and come really close to Jimmy, close enough to smell his deodorant. “Jimmy, can we put a rain check on hanging out for now, please?”
From the tightened look on his face, he’s mighty unsatisfied with that request.
Still, I press on. “I know I’ve not really been around much …”
“We’ve put a rain check on our friendship for a whole week.”
“I know.” I peer over my shoulder at Vince, who’s still pulling napkins out of a nearby dispenser, crumpling them up, then tossing them at the trashcan. He pumps the air with his fist every time he makes one in. I turn back to Jimmy. “This is the first week at my job, so it’s all kinds of … hectic. I can’t focus on much else.”
“Too busy to focus on your best friend’s broken ankle?”
My eyes flash. “Really? It’s broken?”
Jimmy smirks, lightness returning to his eyes. “It could be.”
I’m convinced he enjoys toying with my emotions sometimes. This is the same guy who woke me from a dead sleep at two in the morning freshman year because he nicked himself while trying to snip off a loose thread from his sleeve. “I can see bone! I cut myself to the bone! Do I need to call 9-1-1?!” I’d had worse paper cuts than that.
Still, I might complain a lot lately about Jimmy’s big spotlight obsession, but there’s also something weirdly endearing about it. Because even when he woke me up, I bandaged his finger for him, talked him down, and assured him it was just a minor cut. “Ugh, I hate blood, I fuckin’ hate blood,” he kept saying, and I just chuckled to myself, rubbed him on the back, and stayed up with him until he was alright, despite my being tired as hell.
Yes, I think he occasionally overdramatizes his issues for the attention. Yes, sometimes it’s more obvious than other times.
But in the end, I find I don’t care as much as I maybe ought to.
Maybe I even kinda like how much he needs me at times.
Suddenly, Jimmy relents with a sigh. “It’s sprained, that’s all. My foot will be better before the Spruce Ball, don’t you worry one bit about that. I already had my mama and Billy both flip out when they heard about my dumb ankle.” He gives a cheesy wink, then nods toward the door. “Now you gonna show me a projector or what? Surely you got at least a few minutes to blow off, right?”
I glance over my shoulder at Vince. Ever the eavesdropper, he has all but completely stopped his trash-themed basketball game to pay attention to us. When our eyes meet, he gives me a shrug and a nod, more or less permitting me to fuck off for a bit.
My heart’s light the next instant. I give Jimmy a smack on the arm. “You’d better still be able to keep up on those crutches of yours!” as I head toward the door that leads upstairs.
Jimmy blows air out of his lips, then hurries on behind me, hopping half of the way.
We blow off more than just a few minutes. I don’t even pay attention to the time as I show off all my recently-acquired film and projector knowhow, pointing out and identifying (with chin-lifted confidence and prestige) each part’s name that I recall. “This part right in the middle of the film platter is called the brain,” I expertly tell Jimmy, “which feeds all the film into … here, come ‘round to this side … which feeds into this thingy here, around these gears—you gotta make sure the tension is just right—and then …”
Over and over, I keep telling Jimmy not to touch this, or not to touch that, or to keep away from this or that because he’ll lose a finger. “It’s way, way hot to the touch,” I warn him when he gets too close to one of the projector lamps, “so you better stay back.”
I love being the expert for once.
I’ve got Jimmy’s attention right in the palm of my hands.
Jimmy and I end up at one of the projector windows, through which we can peer down into one of the auditoriums, or watch the movie up on the silver screen. It’s like the two of us are in a secret back row behind the back row.
