"Hey, man!" barked a teenager behind him. "Get your friggin' popcorn and get outta the way!"
Remo looked over his shoulder. A latino teenager in a leather cap with no bill, a baseball jacket, no shirt, plenty of gold chains, ripped denims, and oversized basketball shoes with loose laces stood there, exuding defiance. Remo's even gaze, high cheekbones, and thin lips didn't impress him. His expression of hostile sullenness seemed to have been cast in iron at birth.
"I am trying to purchase popcorn," Remo said. "And it isn't easy."
"He said butter," the counter boy added, as if they were on a TV court show and the tough in the leather cap was the judge.
"That's not butter," Remo said more loudly. "It's flavored soy oil, and has the same effect as coating your stomach with 10W40." He pushed the huge cup back at the boy. "I want no-accent on the no-butter."
The counter boy looked like he was going to complain again, but he saw no pity in Remo's eyes, and no patience in the tough's. "Okay, okay," he said, dumping the soiled kernels into a plastic garbage can. The only thing that cost money was the cup anyway. He went to scoop out another wad of popcorn.
"No," said Remo. His tone stopped the boy in mid-movement. He looked up in annoyance.
"Not that stuff," Remo said casually. "That's got a monosodium glutamate and salt mixture on it." The boy looked down at the popcorn as if it were poisoned. "The yellow stuff," Remo explained.
"Yellow stuff?"
Remo turned to keep the tough informed. "They pour the stuff onto the kernels while it's popping," he said. "It's supposed to keep it fresh, but all it actually does is make you thirsty, so you'll buy carbonated fructose water, which will make you hungry all over again."
The hood in the leather hat looked him straight in the eye, his jaw jutting out. "You loco, man?"
"No," said Remo. "I used to work in a movie theater when I was a boy. I know this stuff."
What he wasn't telling them was that it had been this very theater where he had worked. As his employer might say: "That wouldn't be prudent." Even if a deep check of employment records couldn't possibly reveal the name Remo Williams. They had been pulled and burned long, long ago. After Remo Williams' death.
The Rialto Theater in Newark, New Jersey, had fallen on hard times since Remo left to become a Newark policeman. It had been shut down the last time Remo had been on lower Broad Street, but some brave businessman had refurbished it just within the last three years.
In that time the tile floors had cracked, the curtains had been ripped, the ceilings had grown dirty, and the lobby video games locked down with more chains than in an Alabama prison, but the remnants of its glory days were still there. No matter how many walls and increasingly smaller screens they installed to make ends meet, the Rialto still held memories.
Remo remembered seeing Dr. No, The Three Stooges in Orbit, Psycho, and Gorgo here. He remembered his high school dates clutching at his arm, and how he had clutched at their shoulders, waists, and chests in response. He remembered the cuddling and kisses. But most of all he remembered the huge heroes on the big screen, taking on every kind of villainy and blasting it into eternity without ever losing their hats.
"Take your damn popcorn and get the hell outta my way, man!" snarled the hood.
Remo looked into the teenager's dead, defiant eyes. The tough was practically begging him to try something. He wanted any excuse to blow off the steam of the streets.
It reminded Remo of his other life. He saw it behind his own eyes, as if it were one of the Rialto's movies. He remembered his trial for killing a pusher. He remembered the guilty verdict. He remembered the last meal, the long walk, and the cold strapping-in ritual at the electric chair, as if he had just come from it.
And he remembered the switch being pulled.
He remembered waking up in Rye, New York, at a sanitarium that looked like a cross between a computer factory and a high school. He remembered a tiny old man with wispy white hair and beard who could dodge bullets. He remembered the old Korean teaching him how to do it.
Remo saw in the teenager's eyes the reflection of what he had become. "Here," he said, grabbing the popcorn tub from the counter boy's hands and giving it to the hood. "On me."
The teen stared at him; first in surprise, then in distrust, but finally in grudging acceptance. "Needs butter," he grumbled, thrusting it back across the counter.
Remo leaned on his elbow on the counter. "By all means," he said, gesturing to the counter boy. "Slather on the soybean oil."
As the counter boy worked the antique butter pump, the latino youth sized up Remo. "You queer or something?" he spat.
"You're welcome," Remo said pleasantly.
"Yeah, yeah, gracias."
When the transfer was complete and Remo had paid, the hood trudged away and the boy behind the counter heaved a sigh of relief. "Do you know who that was?" he asked.
"No," said Remo. "Who?"
The boy looked at Remo as if he were an alien. Then his expression changed. Remo could see that the boy realized that was what this skinny white man most probably was-to this neighborhood. "Only Tarantula," he said. "Head of the Spanish Spiders, that's all."
Remo glanced after the hood in the hat with mild interest, but the teenager had already gone inside Cinema Three, under the sign that read TRANSFORMED TEEN TAEKWON DO TERRAPINS III: SHELL GAME.
"No kidding?" he grunted to the boy behind the counter. He leaned forward conspiratorially. "But now that we're alone, let's make a deal. I bet you've got an actual, honest-to-god popcorn-popping machine in the back. How much would it take for you to make me some with nothing on it?"
The boy looked at him with wonder, then greed. "Nothing?"
Remo made a small space between his forefinger and thumb. "Just enough corn oil to pop it," he said. "But no MSG, no salt, no oleo, and no magic yellow powder, okay?" He pulled out a ten-dollar bill.
The counter boy licked his lips. "It's going to taste awfully bland," he warned.
"That's okay," said Remo. "I'm not going to eat it. I'm only going to smell it."
The theater was already a cacophony of people shouting at the screen as Remo chose a row and carefully slid along the back of the seats in the row in front of it, lightly stepping on the sticky cement floor wherever there were no feet. The row's occupants were ready, even eager, to complain, but he gave them no excuse.
Remo sat down, placing the tub in the middle of his lap. He looked up at the screen. On the billowing, patched white sheet was the blurry image of four humanoid sea turtles in polyurethane and foam-rubber suits. The scene shifted to Central Park at night. It looked just like Central Park by moonlight-except for the ninjas in the trees. They were more plentiful than the squirrels.
Remo held the tub beneath his nose and took a big sniff.
"Ah, that's good!" he breathed, taking another long inhalation of popcorn aroma.
"Whatchu doin', man?" laughed a teenager beside him. "Think that stuff's coke, or something?" He turned to the man beside him, "Hey, Gomez!" he cackled. "Look at the anglo, man! He think the popcorn is some good blow!"
"You wouldn't believe what they put on it nowadays," Remo told him flatly. "It'll burn out your insides."
The boy laughed. "You're flyin', all right." He turned back to the screen. "Bitch is gonna get stuck now!" he shouted.
Remo looked up. Sure enough, the sea turtles' very human and very blond sweet young girlfriend had been surrounded by ninjas near the Alice in Wonderland statue. Just another night in Central Park.
"The bitch'll have to show them where to put it!" a raucous voice shouted. The entire house laughed. Except Remo.
"You don't mean they're going to soil that girl's virtue, do you?" Remo asked in a loud voice, his tone mock-concerned.
A voice laughed. "No man, they wanna pork her! Oink, oink, oink!"
"Imagine that . . . ."
Sure enough, just after the sweet young girl's shirt had been ripped a lone sea turtle showed up, and now the ninjas were circling him. Remo watched in a detached manner, wishing he could actually eat his popcorn.