Efficiency

“Jay, dude, how long has it been since you slept?”

I shrugged. Ronny went back to piling his arms high with popcorn bags and sleeves of empty cups, all printed with the theater chain’s colorful logo. “Slept for how long? Cause if you count those thirty-second dozes, about two minutes ago.” He was getting an awful lot of stock to take back downstairs. “Do you guys really need all that stuff? It pisses me off when I’m counting it at night and there’s, like, ten times as much in the cabinet as you guys could possibly use.”

Ronny looked thoughtfully at what he had in his hands and started to put back one sleeve of each cup size on the shelf. “Not counting periods of sleep that are less than one full sleep cycle, which I think is supposed to be about an hour and a half, how long has it been?”

“About three days.”

“Looks more like three weeks.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“That whole sleep thing is played out, dude. Think about it. You can take a ten minute nap when you’re feeling sleepy, wake up, and you’re good to go. So this is kind of like an experiment. If I can wean myself off sleep, I can be like fifty percent more productive than most people for not sleeping a third of my life away. Efficiency.”

Ronny put the stuff down, like he couldn’t be fully engaged in the conversation with concession stock in his arms. “Why do you need to be more productive? You’re making damn straight A’s in college. Do you need more productivity for your six-dollar-an-hour pseudo-management job here at the old LaGrange 6? Cause to tell you the truth, dude, it doesn’t look like the experiment’s working out real well.”

“Of course it’s hard at first. Your body needs time to adjust. Like running and waiting for your second wind to kick in. And I’m not doing it for now, I’m doing it for the long term. No telling how long it takes for your body to adjust, so I want to be damn sure that by the time I graduate next year and start medical school, I don’t have to adjust to getting so little sleep. A doctor who doesn’t have to sleep ought to be in really high demand.”

“If you haven’t lost your mind by then. You should really stop.”

Stop.

Ronny picked the stock back up. “Try not to fall asleep when you’re supposed to start your movies. I hate it when those stupid middle aged white guys come up to me and chew me out cause their movie hasn’t started.”

I gave his bowtie a little straighten and patted him on the back as he walked past me to go downstairs. “Have fun down there with all the thugs.” The first full smile I’d managed in two days. Despite the arms full of stuff, he still managed to flip me off before turning and continuing on his way.

This whole sleep deprivation thing is not really just about being more efficient. Not the type of efficiency I told Ronny I meant, anyway, but efficiency like not dealing with this certain thing I did wrong. Efficiency like not having to relive it through nightmares like the ones I had the last time I slept three nights ago.

What did I do? Well, besides avoiding the nightmares, the reason I’m not sleeping is so I’m too tired to really think about it. But now that I’m already going there, it’s because I raped my girlfriend Alice Wednesday night.

Why did I do it? An even harder question. Out of frustration because we’ve been going out since December, and she still won’t have sex with me. Four months. Twice as long as the longest wait I’ve had since high school, and she’s not giving any indication of giving in. On top of that, we got into a fight and she really struck a nerve, and topped it off my slapping me and cutting my face with that stupid ring she wears. Then there was the alcohol, a whole lot of vodka. I can only guess how much by how empty the bottle was Thursday morning. It would be a lot easier if I could just blame how drunk I was, but alcohol doesn’t make you do things you wouldn’t do normally. The desire and ability to do those things was already there.

Enough of that. I’m not supposed to be thinking about it.

I wandered down to one end of the projection booth to start threading. I wish Ronny hadn’t had to go downstairs. Even though I’ve preferred being alone the last few days, it’s easier to stay awake when you’ve got someone to talk to. Upon arriving at projector number six, I started threading the print of Bringing Down The House through the brain on the top platter.

Three days of not sleeping. I thought it would get easier, but it’s just getting harder. Normally, I have to have noise when I’m reading or studying, like tv or the radio. I like to get more than one thing done at once. But now, even that’s not good enough for staying awake. I do as much studying as I can here at the theater in the projection booth, pacing up and down the long hallway, walking to stay awake. I still have to have the extra noise, so I also turn on the sound monitors on the projectors so that when I walk past each one, I listen in to a few seconds of each different movie. It distracts me enough that I can stay awake and do the reading.

That was part of the argument. That I’m always doing at least two things at once, including spending time with her. I mix my Alice time with drinking time, and often television time as well, as I did on Wednesday night. We were at my apartment watching reruns of Saturday Night Live on Comedy Central, me downing shots of vodka and her sipping from a bottle of water. She was telling me about some fight she’s having with her roommate or something, there’s one of those stories every week, and then doesn’t think I’m listening enough and starts bitching me out about always turning these nights with her into my drinking nights. I tell her that I only have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, so I have to get in my drinking and my time with her both on those nights, and then she starts going on about alcohol being more important to me than she is, and –

Damn it. I said I wasn’t going to think about that stuff.

I started walking away from projector six, realized all of the sudden that it was running, and turned back around to confirm that I wasn’t just hearing things. I barely remembered threading it, but now it was not only threaded, but film was rattling through it at twenty-four frames per second. I looked through the porthole. The screen was currently bright green, and the white letters on it told the few people who had arrived twenty minutes early that the following preview had been approved for all audiences. I pushed the stop button and the gears chugged to a halt. As the lights came back up, a middle aged white couple sitting near the middle of the auditorium turned around to look up at me to give me as annoyed a look as they could manage. As if I had just caused them a major inconvenience. I thought about flipping them off but ultimately decided against it. Saturday night is thug night, so if they thought they’d actually get to enjoy this movie tonight, they were sadly mistaken. That would be payback enough.

A lone girl with dark red hair sat near the front in my own preferred movie viewing place, five rows back, dead center. When you sit there, you’re close enough that the screen completely fills your vision, but no heads of people in front of you get in your way, and at the same time, you’re not so close that your neck gets sore from looking up.

After my near flipping-off of those customers from my least favorite demographic, this red haired girl turned around to look up at me, too. Once the lights finished rising, I saw that it was Alice.

I can’t believe she would come here. I mean, I’ve got my reasons to avoid her, but I would think she’d be just as eager to avoid me. So come to the place where I work? Come see a movie and sit in the place where I like to sit, the very place she complained about being too close? What was she trying to prove?

You know how when you’re really tired and driving late at night, or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it, and you start seeing things? Like a kangaroo standing by the road eating an apple? A green apple. Or a giant tinfoil monster walking up the median of the interstate? You see this thing and you feel a sudden panic as your sense of reality is shattered. Then you blink and see this strange sight for what it really is: trees, bushes, power lines, radio towers, whatever. That was what this was. First I had that moment of heart-pounding panic, and then I blinked and Alice became some girl I didn’t know who just happened to have similar hair. This made a lot more sense. Seeing Alice here was as likely as seeing that tinfoil monster, and even less likely than seeing that kangaroo eating its bright green apple.

I shrugged, a gesture of some sort of apology, and the girl turned back around.

I needed coffee bad. I’ve been living off the stuff the last few days. Real food makes you sleepy, but coffee makes you less hungry and wakes you up. A few more weeks of this and I’ll lose that little bit of belly that I’ve grown since turning twenty one in September and trading the gym time for beer time.

Sauntering down the projection booth hallway, I realized being this tired feels a lot like being drunk, but any aggressive tendencies you might have are kept in check by the extreme fatigue you feel. But you’ve still got that buzz-like feeling where you’re kind of distant from your own actions. A P.O.V shot in a movie that you have some vague control over. I’m producing The Jay Show and have my ideas about what direction it should take, but the director, producers, and cast of performers sometimes have different ideas.

You can’t drink alcohol if you’re trying to stay awake. Depressants bad. Stimulants good. I hope my theory about the second wind is right and that I’ll eventually be able to drink again. Instead of alcohol, every day now, my diet consists of an array of substances that are supposed to make you more energetic. Coffee. KMX. Amps. Monsters. Starbucks Double Shots. I stocked up on Yellow Jackets from the gas station a few days ago. The package says take two. I did that the first day. The next day three. The next day four. Ephedra, guarana, and caffeine - there’s so much of these things in me right now that a caffeine-sensitive person could probably get a buzz from standing near me if I was sweating or breathing hard.

The other assistant manager, Zack, was in the break room helping himself to some of my coffee.

“I’ll say this for your master plan thing, Jay: I’m enjoying there being fresh coffee for me up here all the time. I don’t know what I’ll do if you give up or by some miracle actually get to the point where you can stay awake without help from caffeine. I never remember I want the coffee long enough to wait for it to brew.”

I gave him as much of a smile as I could muster. “You’re saving some for me, right? If not, you better hand that cup of it over now. My temper’s on a hair trigger.”

“There’s plenty, man, don’t worry.” He took a sip and winced. “Jesus, that’s strong. I don’t want to complain, but Holy Christ. You could run a jet engine off this stuff.”

“Strong coffee is more efficient.” I filled my mug and drank it straight as soon as I had replaced the pot. I don’t notice the taste any more, or even how hot it is.

“Do you really feel as though you’re being more efficient on so little sleep?”

“Sure. I have time to do all my school stuff and then I have the time to do all the things people wish they had time to do, too the things that usually distract them from doing the important stuff. Sleep time, that’s just wasted leisure time.”

I’ve made an art of multitasking since I started college. You can almost always do at least two things at once. Eat while you’re driving to school or work. Run projection at the theater and do all your homework. Spend time with the girlfriend and drink. Combining activities like this frees up a lot of time. It’s the only way to keep your grades up and keep your scholarship to school while you work forty hours a week to make enough money to pay for your Trailblazer and support your alcohol habit and spring for the occasional dinner out with Alice.

If it wouldn’t make me fall asleep, all this extra time I’ve created would no doubt be spent with my friends Sam Adams and Mr. Boston. Instead, I spend it studying and watching tv. Ironic that most of the multitasking I did up until Wednesday was to free up time for drinking, and now that I’m freeing up even more time I can’t use it to do what I really want to do. I hope that after an adjustment period, I’ll be able to do more exciting things. But tonight I think I’m going to stay here at the theater and watch movies all night.

“What does Alice think of your experiment?” Zack asked. “Is the relationship more efficient?”

“We, um… I guess we kind of broke up.”

“You guess? Is that what this whole sleep deprivation thing is about?”

I hesitated. It was basically the same thing as saying yes, despite my ultimate response of, “Not really.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

No.

“Well, get to threading. It’s nine twenty. Natalie will be really pissed if any of this going without sleep thing causes complaints from customers about late movies.”

“Don’t you have some tickets to tear or kids to kick out or something?”

Zack raised the hand not holding the cup of coffee, an “I give up” gesture, and walked out.

I wandered around the projection booth with my cup of coffee for the next twenty-five minutes, threading projectors, trying to be more conscious of when I was starting them, at times even double checking with the schedule on the marker board before starting them.

Okay, so my job efficiency isn’t running at full capacity right now. But I’m giving up this efficiency for other kinds.

The Core is too frickin long, and it starts at ten, fifteen minutes later than the last of the others. So that left me with some time to kill before starting this last movie and going downstairs. I returned to the break room, poured myself the last bit of coffee, and sat down at the desk to drink it and try to stay awake.

My eyes were doing that involuntary shutting thing they’d been doing on and off since yesterday morning. I always thought that whole “Your eyes are getting heavy” thing that hypnotists say was just bullshit, but now I know it’s for real.

Staring down into my mug of black coffee, I think that it would be easier to just sleep and deal with that. Maybe it would get better over time.

“You know, I really don’t give a fuck about your stupid roommate problems,” I said to her that night. “I’m trying to watch the show.”

“You’re such a bastard,” Alice said.

“I thought you were a good little Christian girl. What are you doing saying words like that? Or is that religion thing just an excuse to string me along? You know, if we’re not going to do anything, how about you just leave?”

“I think I will.” She got up and started to leave. “Do you care anything about me at all? Or is it all about sex?”

“Pretty sure it’s all about sex. And since I’m not getting any of that, I guess there’s nothing there at all.”

She threw the half-full bottle of water at me. Her aim was bad and it just hit me on the arm. Still pissed me off enough to get me standing.

“You don’t care about anyone, do you? You just care about getting all A’s and keeping your scholarship and your job and stuff, about getting everything done, but not me. Right?”

She was leaving anyway. Fuck it. “Sure,” I said. “That sounds about right.”

That was when she slapped me. She’d been fidgeting with the damn ring again and had it turned the wrong way, I guess, cause it sliced through my cheek. I reached my hand up and touched the place that stung and brought my fingers away with blood on them. I remember thinking that this was going to be a pain in the ass to explain to people.

The look on my face must have scared her.

“Jay, I’m sorry,” she said, backing toward the door.

“You bitch,” I said, grabbing her before she could make a run for it.

I forced my involuntarily shut eyes open again. I must have been sleeping. Any time I doze off for more than a minute or so, this is what I see.

Zack was coming in the door to the room, and then Alice stepped into the room behind him. They both had this accusatory, angry look on their faces.

She had told him.

“Jay,” Zack said.

“She fucking told you.” I wanted to be angry, but I also wanted to hide, to quit, to go downstairs, clock out, and leave for good, with Natalie standing there watching me go and asking who was going to close, who was going to do the stock count.

“Told me what? What are you – Jay, it’s ten o’ five. You didn’t start The Core.”

I looked at my watch. It was actually ten o’ six. It had only felt like my eyes were closed for a second, not twenty minutes. When I looked back up, Alice was gone. She hadn’t been there at all.

I stood up quickly, and in the process, knocked over the coffee.

“SHIT!”

“Dude, go start the movie. I’ll clean it up.” Zack was already reaching for the roll of paper towels.

I hurried over to projector two and started threading it, my eyes occasionally doing that whole closing thing.

I spent all day Thursday and Friday waiting for the police to show up and arrest me. Staying awake on those days was easier because of the nervousness. Now it’s Saturday, and I figure if she was going to go to the police about it, she would have by now. Before I thought the worst part would be going to jail and losing that future medical career that I’ve been working toward all this time. Now I think the worst thing that could happen is someone I know finding out what I did. Like Zack.

By the time I started the movie, Zack was standing behind me.

“Who told me what?”

“Nothing. I accidentally fell asleep, and it was part of a dream.”

“That’s not what it looked like. You looked awake to me.”

Zack looked hurt. He and I have talked about everything the last few years. I mean, we’re around each other all the time. The stuff we can’t talk about with anyone else, we tell each other. No judgment. But I couldn’t do it this time around.

“It’s nothing personal,” I said. “I just don’t want to talk about it.”

He looked at me silently for a few seconds. My eyes closed again, but I’m pretty sure twenty minutes didn’t go by this time. When I managed to get them open again, Zack looked concerned.

“I’ll tell Natalie that the tail got tangled at the end of the last run and it was late because you were fixing it,” he said finally, and walked away.

Since I knew I wouldn’t feel like climbing the stairs an extra time, I counted the upstairs stock that Ronny had been raiding earlier before I followed Zack downstairs. Hopefully he would be in the office counting money by the time I got down there. And the chances of this were improved by the amount of time it took me to do the basic math that I don’t usually even have to think about, like the amount of gummi bears in four boxes of forty-eight or the number of large cups in thirteen sleeves of thirty. I started getting really pissed when I couldn’t do it in my head and had to go find a piece of paper for me to work out some of the multiplication.

Then, wouldn’t you know, I get downstairs and go to the cabinet where they keep the cups and popcorn bags that they bring downstairs, and it’s positively overflowing with stacks of cups, all of varying heights, and stacks of bags that are no longer wrapped in sets of twenty five and in stacks so tall they’re about to fall over.

“Ronny!” I yelled out. “What the fuck?”

Ronny, scrubbing out the popcorn kettle, jerked to attention.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know that Carrie got some stuff when I was on break.”

“Why didn’t you just bring it back upstairs?”

“Sorry,” he said again, shrugging at me. He went back to scrubbing.

A fat, middle-aged white guy came over to the counter. Ronny didn’t notice him, and all the other concession workers were in the back room cleaning the popper parts and other dishes.

God damn it.

“We’re closed,” I said.

“I just want to get a drink,” he said.

“They already took up the money, so we can’t sell anything else.”

“My movie just started. Ten minutes late, actually, and you’re telling me I can’t get something to drink?”

He was probably the person who came out and complained about his movie starting late.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“That’s the most asinine way I’ve ever heard to run a business.”

“Well, I’m sorry about that, but you complaining isn’t going to make us open up again specially for you. We close fifteen minutes after the last movie starts.”

The guy’s face turned red. I found myself hoping that he was having a heart attack or stroke. A pissy customer’s myocardial infarction would really brighten my evening.

“Well,” he said, “my movie started ten minutes ago, so you need to go get the money back and open up and sell me a drink.”

“No,” I said.

Ronny had stopped and stood there with the scrub brush in his hand, listening.

“I can’t believe this,” the fat bastard said, practically shouting. “I won’t be coming back here again.”

He stormed off.

“You promise?” I shouted after him.

The man came back. This is why I hate middle aged white people. Maybe it’s this way in other places, too, but in LaGrange, Georgia, this particular demographic usually comes from a family that’s been in this town for generations, which they feel gives them certain entitlements in any business in town. They always act like they own the place, and they get to tell you how it’s going to be.

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

“Jay.”

“Jay what?”

“Jay Harris.”

“Where’s your manager?”

Zack came up beside the man on the other side of the counter. “I’m a manager. Can I help you, sir?”

“Well, first my movie was ten minutes late starting,” he began.

Seven minutes, I wanted to tell him.

“And then I wanted to get something to drink, and not only do you people close your concession stand ridiculously early, but this young man has been incredibly rude.”

Zack looked at me. I shrugged, trying my best to be unapologetic.

“Jay, go upstairs,” Zack told me.

Since when was he my boss? But going upstairs meant no counting, so I went. As I got to the stairwell, I heard Zack apologizing profusely to the man and offering to give him a drink for free as an apology for both the situation with his movie and my behavior. If it wouldn’t have taken so much energy, I would have yelled out to Zack that he was doing that whole suck up to customer thing that we both criticize Natalie for doing so often.

I didn’t even make it up the stairs. I just stopped after climbing about three and then I sat down, propping my chin on my fist. My eyes closed immediately, opening again when I heard Zack open the stairwell door what seemed like only seconds later.

“All right,” he said, “Time to stop.”

“Stop,” I repeated.

“I covered for you on the movie being late, and thankfully Natalie was on the phone this whole time and didn’t really hear what was going on with that guy, so I covered for you on that, too, but that’s the last time. Go home and go to sleep right now. I’ll do the count after we finish with the money.”

“I’m not going to sleep.”

“I don’t care what you do. Just leave before anything else happens. But if you don’t sleep tonight, then you better call in sick tomorrow, cause if you try to work like this again, I guarantee it will be the last day you work ever.”

I didn’t say anything else, I just stood up and walked out. I would love to have slammed the door behind me, but every door in this place has one of those arms on it that makes it close slow. First opportunity to slam a door was when I got into my Trailblazer out in the parking lot, but no one was around to hear this slam. I didn’t see the point.

Having expended so much energy storming out of the theater, I decided to rest a little before driving home. Of course, my eyes ended up shutting again. I figured the coffee would wake me up again in a couple minutes, so I let the doze happen.

When I climbed off her, when it was over, we were still on the living room floor. She was crying. I think she cried the whole time, but I didn’t notice it till then. She started backing away from me, looking at me like I was a monster. I felt like one, and have since.

I woke up again, crying, too. It seemed like another crime, equally bad, for me to feel justified in crying, but I was too tired to stop it. I woke up this same way Thursday morning with the same image in my head, getting up from where I’d passed out on the floor. She was gone by then. I don’t know when she left.

I guess she was wrong. If I didn’t care about her at all, I wouldn’t feel so bad. Especially not now that it looks like I’m not going to be getting in any trouble.

I know that this whole staying up thing isn’t going to help. It’s only making things worse. Every time I remind myself why it is I have to stay up, I’m defeating the purpose.

I have to make it up to her somehow. But what are my options? Turn myself in? If she hasn’t gone to the police by now, it’s probably because she doesn’t want anyone to know. Telling the police for her probably won’t help in that. Call her and apologize? Like that would help any. She’d probably hang up. Go see her and apologize? She’s probably scared to death of me. Write a letter? There is no way for me to say anything to make this better. I took her virginity from her, and took it by force. That’s about as bad as it gets, like trying to apologize for killing someone or something.

It occurs to me that if I try to drive anywhere right now, it’s a guarantee that I’m going to fall asleep behind the wheel. I think I’ll take the long way home, since that road doesn’t have much traffic. Maybe I can manage an apology that at least tries to match up to the crime.

I cranked up the Trailblazer and started to back out, glad to have found the most efficient solution to my problem.