Taking a refreshment stand
This happened at a now-defunct repertory house in Chicago, the Parkway, many years ago. I wish I could remember the movie that was playing. I can't.
A large man, rolling walk, almost resembling a Latino Sumo wrestler, entered with two brown paper grocery bags. That was never a problem. Little old men would come in with their Walgreens prescription bags. Little old ladies with their cloth bags of used books. We drew the line at kittens. One old woman wanted to bring in her kitten and would become confused when told she couldn't. "Mousy be good. Mousy good kitty." Uh-huh. There was a methadone clinic across the street, and that part of the city - Diversey and Clark - still held its share of the walking wounded.
So the big guy. His grocery bags. The theater thrived on its foot traffic, unique in Chicago, so we didn't think anything about it. A hot-headed employee caught a whiff of steamy fresh food during the first feature and looked around for the scent. (He later had a multi-year run as a TV shill for an awful commercial barbecue sauce.)
Our steamroller buddy was the source, of course. The food was the first tip, but then the small, light sound of aluminum shearing... away from a TV dinner tray.
Dinner was in the first bag. About ten or twelve Hungry Man dinners. (He had eaten most of them before the next Inciting Incident.) In the other? A couple tubs of ice cream. Premium saltines. And a big Tupperware bowl filled with homemade pudding. Hot Head wants to make brownie points with the Regional Big Boss, who was in town that day. I tell him it's a bad idea, because Muy Grande is a big man and there could be trouble.
I watch the drama through one of the glass ovals on the double doors leading into the theater. Muy Grande is a couple rows down on the aisle.
Hot Head says, "Hey you can't eat that in here!"
The man's shaggy head is outlined against the screen, along with a measly-looking little chicken leg.
"Eat WHAT?" he erupts, waving the tiny, greasy baton, but standing his ground. The first rumble of trouble: "I not eating anything!"
Bellowing ensues on both sides. The man insists he had paid for a ticket and it is nobody's damn business what he does in the dark.
Hot Head slings some rhetoric around, only aggravating Muy Grande more. Muy Grande then slings his bags around, knocking the Tupperware full of pudding against Hot Head's temple.
Hot Head runs. Knocks me out of the way to lock himself in the ticket booth. Muy Grande runs out of the theater, runs to the street, where he can see into the ticket booth. Hot Head makes faces at him from behind the glass.
Big Man. Big Palms. He slams them simultaneously against the plate glass window. It shatters. Hot Head scatters.
Muy Grande chases him around the lobby. He finds an industrial-sized floor broom and chases him some more. The cops come. "Crazy man! Crazy man!" he yells as they cuff his hands behind him.
Hot Head is white as a sheet. "If you eat my ice cream, you get sick!" Muy Grande yells at us all.
I get to clean up the ice cream and the Hungry Mans that he left behind. I refuse to touch the pudding.
by Ray Pride
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.