The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney Page B

Michael Oliver.”
    â€œMichael?” O’Malley said. “Hmm. You look more like a Heinz to me.”
    So that first day O’Malley made Wyatt a name tag that said HEINZ . This was back when you used a special device to punch letters into an adhesive plastic strip.
    â€œHeinz!” Melody said when she saw the name tag pinned to the lapel of Wyatt’s blazer. She was a ferocious-­looking black girl, cornrows and muscular forearms, who rarely ever stopped giggling. “What is that? Like the ketchup? What kind of name is that? I thought I heard every crazy white-­boy name there is. Heinz!”
    â€œHe’s Czechoslovakian,” O’Malley explained gravely. “A refugee from political persecution. His family makes sausage.”
    â€œIn the Sudetenland,” Wyatt said, because his sophomore history class had been studying World War II. O’Malley grinned, and in that instant Wyatt felt—­he could still feel it now, remembering the moment twenty-­six years later—­like he was home, like he’d come home.
    Wyatt had never seen cornrows before, not up close. He’d never seen a girl with forearms like that. Melody smelled like Strawberry Splash Bubblicious and popcorn grease. Everyone who worked at the theater smelled like popcorn grease. It baked into your pores like pottery glaze.
    The cashier, that first day, had been Karlene. Oh, Karlene. She was a talker. O’Malley would watch and wait until Mr. Bingham approached Karlene to check the box-­office numbers, and then O’Malley would slide over and ask Karlene a question designed to set her off. Hey, Karlene, how was your day off yesterday? At which point he’d slide back away and leave Mr. Bingham trapped there for the duration of Karlene’s never-­ending answer.
    Karlene was tall and tan and stacked, as they used to say back then, with a riot of frosted blond hair that made her look like a girl rushing the stage in a Whitesnake video. Rumor had it that O’Malley and Karlene had slept together a time or two before he started going out with Theresa. O’Malley refused to confirm or deny.
    â€œAlways respect the privacy of your paramours,” he told Wyatt once.
    O’Malley said shit like that all the time. Wyatt didn’t know where he came up with it.
    The girls at the theater, the cashiers and the concession girls, wore orange polyester uniforms that matched the doormen’s blazers. The hem fell just above the knee, and a zipper ran all the way down the front of the dress, top to bottom.
    Those zippers drove Mr. Bingham crazy. He tried occasionally to enforce the official Monarch Theaters policy of full zip, but the girls just laughed at that. It got hot in the concession stand during a rush, and the uniforms were already ugly enough—­no way was a teenage girl with any self-­respect going to compound the embarrassment by zipping all the way up to the neckline.
    â€œA free society,” O’Malley said, “cannot legislate cleavage.”
    â€œI couldn’t do it even if I wanted to,” Karlene said. “My boobs are too big.”
    She demonstrated: zip up, zip down, zip up, zip down.
    O’Malley, Wyatt, and Grubb watched. After a minute, Janella behind the candy case grabbed the soda gun and hosed them down with water.
    Once their shift ended, the girls changed out of their uniforms so fast you wouldn’t believe it. They used the cramped little room at the bottom of the projection-­booth stairs, across from the manager’s office, where Mr. Bingham posted the week’s schedule next to the clock and the metal rack of time cards.
    Karlene always changed into tight, acid-­washed jeans. She was a talker, a teaser, and a hugger. When Wyatt stocked the hot-­dog rollers, she’d tell him to stop playing with his wiener, and then, as everybody laughed, she’d give him an apologetic hug.
    Karlene was the second person