Mouse Read Online Free PDF Page A

small viewing panes, one beside each projector, and the glass panels through which the projector beams entered the auditorium. There used to be a selection of old film posters on the walls to help lighten things up, make it feel less like a mausoleum, but Caldwell had ordered him to take them down. All that was pinned on there now were a sign banning smoking and a yellow health and safety poster filled with a veritable desert of dry text that no one ever read.
    Vince went through the morning ritual of working through the jobs on his list, wandering through the building, keeping the old girl ticking over as he liked to call it. Then he prepared for the Saturday matinee. A couple of shorts and a feature for the kids. Today it was an episode of Buck Rogers and another called Rocket Man – ancient black and white things – followed by an old black and white cowboy film. The kids loved it, though. Martin Caldwell didn’t. He had to go out on stage before the films started and pretend to be the kids’ uncle, make jokes, which he positively loathed.
    ‘Fucking kids!’ he’d say. ‘I’m not a fucking clown so why do they make me behave like a fucking clown?’ And he’d stomp away to his office as soon as he could.
    Vince liked it though. The kids called him Uncle Vince and waved up to his window and he’d wave back. Then he’d have to go down to the auditorium afterwards with a plastic bag to clear up any crap left over because the cleaners didn’t have to work on a Saturday.
    But Vince was particularly excited today because there was a new evening feature being screened and he was hoping that the woman would come in to watch it. It was her type – a bit of romance, a bit of adventure. So he couldn’t wait until the afternoon and the time of the first screening. He was disconsolate when he scampered down from his booth to the auditorium only to find her seat on the back row empty.
    ‘Hello, I’ve not seen you before,’ said a shrill voice behind him.
    He turned to see a young slip of a girl with a square tray of ice cream and lollies strapped around her neck, ready for the interval. She was a pale-faced thing, her skin peppered lightly with acne.
    ‘Are you new?’ said Vince, avoiding eye contact. ‘Not seen you either.’
    ‘I finished school this summer. This is my first job,’ she said in a whisper. Acne aside, the dark made her look quite pretty, thought Vince. ‘It’s so exciting, isn’t it? Are you Vince, the projectionist? My name’s Edith,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, I’m Vince,’ he said.
    ‘Aren’t you supposed to be projecting?’
    She unnerved him so he said that yes, he was, and dashed away to his booth. He peered down and saw the young woman. She looked up and waved energetically at him and he stepped back, out of view.
    Vince’s luck changed at the third and final screening of the day. She was there, sitting in the back row. He stood some distance away, lost in the dark near the exit, studying her, finding her more attractive every time he saw her, he thought. In his mind he was going over a variety of ways he might approach her, but they were all pretty frightening and each filled with disappointment and disaster. At least he could stand here in the dark safe in the knowledge he hadn’t been disappointed, the bubble of his dreams remaining intact and un-pricked. Better to be here with hope than talk to her and have that hope dashed. He couldn’t bear to live with the thought of rejection.
    Just before interval little Edith came up to him. ‘Hi again. It’s so exciting, isn’t it?’ Vince couldn’t quite make out what she found so exciting but she was definitely a live wire flushed through with it. ‘It’s a good film, isn’t it?’ she whispered.
    ‘It’s OK,’ he said, annoyed that his attention had been diverted. These opportunities wouldn’t crop up that often and she was ruining it for him. He had to be back in his box soon.
    ‘Oh, look!’ she said, pointing a finger at