The Picturehouse

The day the Rektor Pure was installed a few people from town came in to watch. There had been a billboard put up a couple of months prior at the freeway exit, emblazoned with "Rektor Pure - Coming to Bay Street Cinema August 29th. The cooler way to watch" and a picture of a smiling couple cuddled up in a cinema love seat (though neither the couple nor the love seat would ever be found at Bay Street). The company that owned the cinema had diversified into air conditioning around two years prior and had already rolled them out to many locations across the country. After one of the first super scorchers killed a couple of geriatrics and forced schools to close around 8 years ago, John remembered overhearing an executive explain “It’s all in cooling now, doesn’t matter what’s on the screen, it’s the air-con that puts bums in seats” and this felt like something of a personal slight to John who loved movies. He watched it happen though, and in the following years, as soon as the first too hot day hit in late September the lines in the box office began to swell.

*

The people who stood and watched it’s installation asked the tradespeople questions, like reporters for an imaginary newspaper on courthouse steps.

“Is it true it removes particulate matter as it cools?”

“Rektor... they’re Chinese aren’t they?”

Some made statements of protest.

“If they’d put money into getting these things into people’s homes maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

By this mess she could have meant any number of things. In any case, cool air in homes wouldn’t be the solution for even one part of this mess.

*

The kilometres of tubing and intricate network of cables that connected sensors and vents took 3 days to install and the day after it was finished they held a grand reopening. The cinema was busier than it had been in years, putting a great deal of strain on John and his staff who had to enlist the cleaners to help manage the crowds.

“Form one line please!”

“I’m going to miss the movie!”

“I’m sorry, hi there, what can I get you?”

The crowds had thinned considerably since however, as more and more people moved out of town and further south. Now it was just the cast of regulars, Rachels and Franks and Christinas and some people John didn’t have names for but saw every week. The cinema and its air conditioner was theirs and John was it’s attendant, the lighthouse keeper who watched over things. At least that’s how it felt to him sometimes.

*

Aside from its distinctive hum, the Rektor Pure let out a faint smell that hit noses like camphor when an old wardrobe is opened. While enough time spent in the box office could get you used to it, it was suddenly very apparent at points where the air flowed out more strongly than others. For this reason John tried as much as possible to avoid the entrance to cinema 4 and the landing before the service elevator because these were such points and the smell nauseated him. Sensitive to strong smells since childhood, an 8 year old John would request freshly cut freesias on the dashboard when driving long distances to stave off car sickness. He was privately proud of his eccentricity at such a young age.

Everyday at 8:00am when John opened the doors of Bay Street Cinema, the icy breeze of the Rektor Pure would rush out and flash freeze the sweat film coating his skin. Its familiar smell would then slip out with it as though it had been waiting overnight to greet him with puppy excitement. He tried not to focus on it, taking shallow breaths as he hurried to his office where he retrieved a laminated checklist and a marker. He dutifully ticked off tasks despite having performed them countless times and knowing their order by heart. At 8:01 he switched on the lights and pressed play on the music for the foyer (a collection of ersatz rip-offs of successful songs) before opening the magnetised doors to each of the 14 auditoriums and checking inside them for rubbish. Tick. Tick. At 8:15 he counted in the tills. Tick. At around 8:25 it was time to add oil, kernels and butter powder to the popcorn machine and flip its greasy switches on. "This is the bread and butter of our business". Tick. By 8:45 his increasingly inkless marker would have squeaked reluctant ticks into 28 of the checklist’s squares and at this point he made a cup of coffee. He then checked that all the digital cinema packages were loaded onto the server and ready to go for the first sessions. Tick. 9:15.

He relished in the brief moment he had to himself now, 15 minutes or so between people arriving and completion of his checklist, now wiped clean and ready for tomorrow. The hum of the Rektor Pure soothing him, he waited.

*

“What’s on today?”

John looked up from the point of sale screen, already knowing who the voice belonged to but still feigning pleasant surprise at finding a diminutive Rachel standing in anticipation and clutching a handbag scrawled in black marker bible verses. Powdery foundation coated her face with droplets of sweat forming on top, her eyebrows drawn on crudely in a shade far darker than her oily hair. A heart shaped locket adorned her neck, oxidised to a green hue that gave the impression it had been recovered from a shipwreck.

“Let’s see. There’s Never have I never,”

“What’s th...”

Before Rachel could finish, John began to read from the synopsis found on his screen.

“A group of teenagers are pushed to their limits when a drinking game gone wrong lands them face to face with the devil herself.”

Rachel pondered this in her childlike way, mouth agape and her eyes in a slight scowl that couldn’t be definitively attributed to her makeup or her expression.

“What else?”

“Returning: a recently widowed pilot must face his pas...”

“That one.”

“OK I’ll pop that through. Anything from the snack bar today?”

Rachel didn’t reply nor did John expect her to. He took a sweaty five dollar note from her hand and exchanged it for a paper ticket.

“Cinema five.”

Rachel had already begun to waddle away, a chip packet conspicuously crackling in her bag as she did. John watched for a moment as a section of skirt that was caught in her undies struggled to break free, then returned to the roster he had been working on.

Rachel was the only regular that John had to answer questions for and read the synopses for. It reminded him of a different time. Most people knew what they wanted to see when they came to buy their tickets and a lot of the kids would just sprint through the foyer into whatever cinema they felt like, excitedly pretending to one another that John might catch them and kick them out. He didn’t really care if they didn’t buy tickets. He knew it was hot outside and that the Rektor Pure was the real reason they were there.

*

John had mused on what would happen if the Rektor Pure ever broke down. The service-man, Greg, who visited twice a year to check on it, lived 8 hours drive away in Sydney. What if he couldn’t make it in time? What if it took days to get someone in to fix it? In some scenarios John had to single handedly evacuate the cinema as in a disaster film or fix the mechanical problem himself (in his daydream he had the skills to do so). John was scooping popcorn into a large black garbage bag when he heard it. The grinding noise, followed by a series of loud thuds. He put the popcorn scoop on a nearby counter. Silence. He cocked his ear like a dog, the sudden absence of a hum thick and heavy. He was alone in the cinema, the last sessions had come out ten minutes ago and he was about to do his last checks before making the journey home. John found the business card Greg had given him and dialled the hotline number printed on it.

“You have called Rektor, the cooling experts. For help with one of our cooling products press 1...”

John pressed 1 hurriedly and listened to the dial tone.

“Our office hours are 8am to 5pm weekdays, for emergencies please dial 000”

John put his phone on the counter and walked towards the room that the Rektor occupied. Already he could feel the cinema warming up. Even though it was 11pm it was still 40 degrees outside and it would stay like that overnight. He stepped into the Rektor Pure’s room and turned on the light. The smell overcame him, immediately causing his eyes to water. Burnt meat? It reminded him of the smell of the wallpaper steamer his dad had used to strip the walls of his childhood home. He covered his mouth and nose with the top of his shirt and ventured closer to the central component of the system. He saw white smoke rising out of it and sparks coming from the master switch. He ran back out to the foyer to get his phone.

*

“Is there anybody in the cinema?”

“No, just me”

“Good, well you’ll need to evacuate while we investigate the source of the smoke.”

“When will it be repaired?”

The firefighter laughed at this question.

“Not for me to say, mate. Definitely won’t be opening tomorrow though - this place’ll turn into an oven overnight”

“Oh, Ok”

The firefighter rushed him out the doors. He felt like he was in a dream. It wouldn’t be until a few days later that he’d hear about Rachel.

*

Rachel saw up to 5 movies a day, strolling from cinema to cinema vacantly to catch each one. John had found it sweet initially, assuming she had coordinated and planned around when films started and ended. Really there was no method to it, she’d happily miss large parts of a movie or sit alone well before the trailers and advertisements had begun, lifting her feet to allow John to sweep up crumbs. Occasionally, he would find her loudly snoring, having drifted off into a deep sleep. They said this is what must have happened.

When they found her, two days after the cinema had been shut down for the repairs, they thought she might actually still be asleep. John hadn’t gotten a chance to check the cinemas on the night the Rektor Pure broke down, if he had he probably would have found her, lead her out bleary eyed as he’d done before. At her funeral, attended mostly by people from the estate, John learned she’d been 43, around 20 years younger than he had thought she was. Only a year older than him.

On the day the cinema reopened, John went in a little earlier. He took shallow breaths to avoid inhaling the Rektor smell, completed his checklist and made his coffee. He’d neglected checking cinema 5 intentionally, a little disturbed by the thought of Rachel sitting there for those days and a little frightened that somehow, though impossible, she’d still be there to ask him why he’d forgotten her. After the Rektor Pure was repaired there had been a fumigation team come through, it took longer than expected to reopen as a result. When it came time for his 15 minutes of peace and quiet, he knew that he’d have to check it before the first patrons came in. He made his way to the door and stepped inside. The smell was sweet and synthetic and reminded him of urinal cakes, a brash sort of scent that boastfully covers up disgraced odours that nobody wants. He scanned the red seats in the dim lighting.

Everything was exactly as it should be.