Small Town

There were other useful maneuvers. The best seats, from the Carpenter’s point of view, were on either side against the wall, and at the rear of the theater. This did not put you all that far from the screen. In the old days, when screens were much larger and movie houses cavernous, it was a different matter. But you were as far away as you could get, and unless the showing was a sellout (and it wouldn’t be, unless you’d made a gross error in your film selection) there’d be no one sitting near you, neither to the side or immediately in front.

Because screens had gotten smaller along with the theaters, you might not be able to see too well from where you were, and if you’d been lucky enough to find a foreign film, well, you could forget about trying to read the subtitles. But entertainment wasn’t the point. A secure and restful environment, that was your prime consideration.

The tricky part came when the picture ended. You couldn’t just stay in your seat and wait for the next showing, because they’d clear the house and walk through the length of each row, picking up at least some of the popcorn tubs and candy wrappers left behind by the departing moviegoers. You could try saying you’d come in halfway through the picture, he supposed, but he wasn’t at all sure that would work; worse yet, it invited attention, and that was what you most wanted to avoid.

What you had to do was plan. By the time you bought your ticket, you already knew what film you’d go to after you left the first theater. Today, for example, the Carpenter had been one of the first at the box office, one of the first to take a seat — in the rear, of course, and against the right-hand wall — for a showing of a film starring Clint Eastwood. He dozed through the commercials, dozed through the coming attractions, and dozed on and off through the picture, opening his eyes each time gunfire roused him and checking his watch before drifting off again.

When one such check showed only fifteen minutes before the film was scheduled to end, the Carpenter left the theater, having to disturb only one person, a tiny little woman perched on the aisle seat. Anyone who noticed him leave at that point in the film would take him for a man who had to go to the bathroom, and the Carpenter did precisely that. Nor was the visit undertaken purely for purposes of deception; the Carpenter could have held out until the end of the film, but welcomed the opportunity to relieve himself.

Having done so, he went to the refreshment stand and bought popcorn, then headed for the theater that was next on his list, where a film based on a Henry James novel was scheduled to begin in twenty minutes. The timing was right, and he couldn’t imagine that any film based on anything by Henry James could draw a young audience. Carrying his popcorn, mingling with other people with the same destination, the Carpenter did not look like someone sneaking into a second film that he hadn’t paid for. He didn’t see how it could occur to anyone to stop him and demand a look at his ticket stub, and of course no one did.

The commercials and coming attractions were the same ones he’d seen before the first picture, and indeed ones he’d seen repeatedly in recent days. He found them comfortingly familiar. And the feature film, once it started, was wonderfully soothing, with no gunfire to rouse him, or even voices raised in anger. The interruptions had played a useful role during the Eastwood movie, but now the Carpenter was perfectly willing to doze right through to the end. Two films would provide him with all the sleep he needed.

He closed his eyes and settled in to enjoy the show.

Your two worst enemies on a stakeout were your bladder and your brain.

The first was obvious. Sit around for hours on end, and sooner or later you had to take a leak. Even if you were a camel, the time came when you had to go. If you were in a parked car, you brought a jar along, hoping when you used it that nothing happened in midstream, that you didn’t get caught in a firefight with the jar in one hand and your dick in the other. And, since things rarely happened that abruptly, and often didn’t happen at all, you were generally okay.

If you didn’t have a car to sit in, if you were in fact out in public view on a park bench, a jar wouldn’t help. You’d be better off getting on all fours and lifting a leg against a tree, hoping they’d take you for a funny-looking German shepherd. So what you had to do was desert your post, and that was acceptable when you had a partner who could watch twice as hard in your absence. When you were alone, well, it meant that for a while there was no one minding the store.