At the movies

‘You know, if there were a situation when we might bump into each other, I reckon I’m the kind of person James Spader might possibly be able to love and marry and live with happily ever after,’ she said.

She looked into the lolly bag. He had chosen all of his favourites – bananas, bullets, milkshakes – and none of hers – chicos, freckles, sherbs. It was true that when he had asked do you want any lollies she had said no. But still.

‘Yes, you are,’ he said, holding tightly to the bottom of the bag.

‘So do you reckon, if James Spader did happen to be in Adelaide right now, and he did happen to come to this movie, and he did happen to fall in love with me, do you reckon I’d go home with him?’

‘No,’ he said, reaching past her indecision and grabbing a banana for himself. She thought of making a joke about the price of bananas. Are lolly bananas expensive? she thought of asking. But the bananas weren’t worth the joke anymore. And anyway, this was the movies. Of course the bananas were expensive. Six bucks for a drink and a couple of lollies, and that’s on top of the fifteen dollars each to get in, because their membership had expired not long after their first child was born.

‘Really? You really think no?’ she asked. She looked at him, and when he looked at her, she did not have to look away.

He bit the banana in half before he spoke. ‘No, you’d still be going home in a metallic-coloured station-wagon.’ He put the other half of the banana in his gob.

She looked back into the bag, decided on a milkshake and pulled it out.

‘They never used to be square,’ she said. ‘They’re supposed to be cylindrical.’

‘They’re the imitations,’ he said. He scratched his cheek. ‘The pretenders to the throne.’

She unwrapped it. There was less wax on the paper these days. She put it in her mouth, chewed.

‘Tastes the same,’ she said.

‘Yeah, and they still get stuck in your teeth,’ he said.

And then the usher opened the door, and they said thank you to him as they walked in.