tightly together. Doris and Amelia tried to look disapproving of a woman who could be so rude.
Mr. Buckle got oilier and smoother, a sure sign in his case that he was angry. “You knew what your salary would be when you accepted your position here, Miss Monkman. You were informed.”
“Sure I was. But I wasn’t informed half of it would have to be ear-marked for dry-cleaning and new shoes. I didn’t know I was expected to dress like a Rockefeller on what you pay me.”
Mr. Buckle considered such remarks beneath reply. He simply bobbed up and down on his toes, as if he were pumping more pounds per square inch and more purple into his face. When it was sufficiently purple and swollen he turned on his heels and marched off. In retreat to his office he let fly one parting shot over his shoulder. “If shoes are beyond your budget perhaps you might manage to replace your stockings. There’s a ladder in one of yours.”
“Whyn’t you use it to climb up and kiss my ass?” invited Vera under her breath, just loud enough so that the others could catch what she said but Buckle couldn’t.
When Mr. Buckle’s office door closed on that first act of defiance, Frank and Maurice, Doris and Amelia all clustered around Vera, whispering excitedly.
“Atta girl, Vera. Doesn’t he know he got told!”
“What a nerve! The nerve of that man, Vera! Shoes. As if we could afford shoes! Just as easy as glass slippers!”
“The Rockefeller! Did you see his face? The Rockefeller really got to him. Boy oh boy!
“Remember your heart, Maurice,” cautioned Frank.
“Boy oh boy! Rockefeller right up his ass!”
“Let’s not be crude, Maurice,” admonished Frank. “Fair sex present.”
“Well, Vera said it, didn’t she? And so do I.
Mr. Buckle would have fired Vera right then and there if it hadn’t been for her one invaluable talent. Nobody could deal with a troublemaker the way Vera did and the theatre was situated in an area where troublemakers were not uncommon. If it wasn’t for her, the kids at Saturday matinees might have pulled the building down around their ears the way Samson had the Philistines’ temple. And when it came to the other insalubrious types you met running a theatre in this district – the drunks who argued with Cary Grant, the perverts who pestered unaccompanied ladies, the indecent couples who groped and writhed their way through an entire feature presentation – Mr. Buckle didn’t know how these would have been dealt with if it hadn’t been for that brash young woman.
Maurice certainly was of no use. The mere idea of confronting someone and ordering him to remove himself from the premises was enough to provoke chest pains so bad that the ticket-seller had to be sat down and given an Orange Crush. Frank tried but almost always made matters worse. Six trips to request some noisy chap to quieten down and the fellow grew louder with every visit. There was something about the way Frank walked and talked and breathed peppermint all over the rowdies which only whipped them up into further frenzies of misbehaviour. As for Mr. Buckle – quite early in his career he had got his nose broken when he tried out his high school principal’s voice on a young soldier. He avoided running any risk of a repeat performance.
No, when it came to giving somebody the bum’s rush, nobody held a candle to Vera Monkman. Mr. Buckle attributed her success to the same disagreeable qualities which disrupted his inspections and often caused him to regret the day he ever set eyes on the woman. These were cheekiness, coarseness, natural belligerence, and an outrageously inflated opinion of herself. In many respects, Mr. Buckle thought, Vera Monkman was a thoroughly hateful young woman.
At the first whiff of a disturbance Vera would swing into action, shoulders squared, mouth set, flashlight poised at the ready like a cocked pistol. Vera did not hesitate. She’d give them the high beam full in the face. As they sat blinded, shrinking behind an uplifted hand, she’d say, “Listen, pal, nobody paid good money to listen to you. They came for Clark Gable. They’re having trouble hearing Clark on account of you. So button it and give us all a break. Thank you or else.”
Then, snapping off her flashlight, she would wheel abruptly around and stride vigorously back up the aisle before they got a chance to answer. It was part of her tactics. Don’t let them get a word back at you. Above all, never plead and never argue. Show them who’s boss. If the disturbance resumed, back she went, this time to remove them. There were no second chances. She’d just reach down, grab them, and boost them out of their seats. Most rose without a whimper of protest, it was the element of surprise that did it. If they resisted, Vera quickly sketched what they could expect.
“Look, mister, you don’t want to get in a scuffle with me. I don’t embarrass. I’ve got lungs like a banshee and I hang in screaming bloody blue murder until the cops arrive. So it’s that or get up quietly and leave. You’ve got exactly five seconds to make up your mind which it is before I start in. One, two…” They usually hustled out of their seats by four.
Vera explained her method to Frank. “The most important thing is never to doubt they’ll come. If you do, you’re finished. They’re like dogs, they can smell fear.” But Frank couldn’t seem to get the hang of it.
Although everyone admired Vera, no one admired her quite the way Thomas the projectionist did. Thomas was an unusual young man. Not only did he project film, he also projected wishes. He had a genius for inventing stories and telling them to people who had reason to wish they were true. For instance, he informed Maurice that Mr. Buckle suffered from a secret heart condition much more serious than Maurice’s own angina pectoris. “You think you’ve got it bad? You’ll live to be a hundred because you take care of yourself. Have you taken a good look at Buckle lately? The man looks like he’s got one foot in the grave. Honest to God, he does. They don’t give him much longer, Maurice. Compared to him, you’re the picture of health.” To Mr. Buckle he confided that both Doris and Amelia adored the manager, found him kind and sympathetic and handsome in a mature, distinguished way. “If I were you, I’d be sure not to show one favour at the expense of the other,” counselled Thomas. “It doesn’t do to stir up jealousy at work.”
He encouraged Frank to get a hair-piece. “Why, it would take twenty years off you. Because, Frank, I have to tell you, that fresh, youthful skin of yours just doesn’t jive with those scraps of old hair. Really, it doesn’t.”
Thomas had no stories for Vera because he could not fathom what she might like to be told. Perhaps it was the mystery that prompted and stoked his ardour. Isolated in his projectionist’s booth he meditated on her constantly. Vera, for her part, hardly gave him a passing thought. If she did, it was to feel sorry for him. Sorry for his long, skinny neck perpetually inflamed with ingrown hairs, sorry that he believed wearing a bomber jacket could cover up the fact that he had been rejected for military service. (Frank laid the blame on a hernia.) Sorry that he talked so smugly and embarrassingly of his ambition to operate a small electrical appliance repair shop. “After the war is the Electrical Age. There’ll be a fortune to be made in that field. For the ones with the brains to get in on the ground floor.”
It never dawned on Vera that the bomber jacket and electrical shop were given such prominence for her sake. Nor that Thomas’s offers to walk her home after the theatre closed were anything but a courtesy extended by a shy young man who happened to be strolling in the same direction. So it took her entirely by surprise when Thomas proposed a date. If she had smelled it in the wind she would have prepared a tactful, graceful refusal. But she hadn’t and, caught without an excuse, Vera heard herself agreeing to have supper with him on Sunday, the one night they were free from work.
It was a wretched, excruciating evening, a disaster. Thomas had the taxi drop them off in front of one of the better hotels where he proposed having supper. There his courage failed. He knew he had enough money in his pocket to buy the very best, most expensive meals the dining room served, but did he know how to act in such a place? Was he well enough dressed? He ran his tie between his fingers and said, “I just remembered something. I knew a guy who worked in the kitchen here once. The stories he used to tell. I don’t think we want to eat here.”
So they set off walking in search of another restaurant. Thomas was in a quandary. He had boasted to Vera of the superb meal she had in store for her. “There are only three decent places to eat in town,” he’d said, “and Thomas knows them all.” Now he was in a dilemma: he had to deliver what he had promised but he was afraid that if he went into a really high-class restaurant he wouldn’t know how to behave and would end up making a fool of himself. So he dragged Vera through a hot, humid July night, searching for a restaurant splendid enough to impress Vera but not so splendid as to bewilder him. He would lead her into a hotel, determined this was to be it, and then on the threshold of the dining room he would be assailed by doubt and would hustle her away. His explanation for these sudden retreats was that the place was clearly not up to snuff, didn’t meet his demanding standards. “No,”
