One

Tess Fitzgerald was wet, and it wasn’t in a fun way.

‘Oh fuck me!’ she cried (again, not in a pleasurable context) as she looked up at the source of her wet hair. The ceiling in her office was leaking. Scratch that. The bloody thing was coming down.

‘Fi!’ she yelled as she stood to watch the water turn from a drip to a full leak over her cluttered desk. ‘FI!’

The door opened, and Tess’s little sister popped her head in. ‘Yeah, what’s… Christ!’

‘Christ is right. It’s a full-on biblical fucking disaster. Get the ark boarded because we’re buggered!’ Tess wailed. She backed away from her desk, which was rapidly becoming a water feature.

Fi’s mouth hung. ‘What do we do?’

‘Go and pull the fire alarm for a start,’ Tess told her.

‘But The Bicycle Thief is in the third act. Antonio is just about to nick the bike!’ Fi said.

‘Not on my watch!’ Tess yelled back, not sure what she meant. She might have lost her mind. If she had, she didn’t want it back.

She ran past her sister and out to the foyer, where she found the little glass box that started the fire alarm.

She pressed it with her thumb, snapping it inward. She’d never had to do it before and wasn’t sure what was going to happen. But it did exactly as it was meant to, setting off an alarm and the sprinklers.

People began to pile out of the cinema. The old projectionist, Jerry, popped his salt-and-pepper head out from the door of his booth. ‘What’s all this?’ he demanded. ‘Is there a fire?’

‘The plumbing’s leaking,’ Tess explained.

He looked flummoxed. ‘So you decided to add more water?’

‘It’s causing the roof in my office to come in. I don’t know where else might be damaged. I just need everyone out.’

He sighed. ‘I think it’s a bit of an overreaction. I could have just turned off the film and asked them to leave.’

He might have been right about that, but what good did it do to tell her that now? ‘Jerry, I don’t need your bloody backseat driving. Just get out.’ She turned to the crowd, leaving the 1.15 viewing of The Bicycle Thief at a too leisurely pace. ‘Everyone, out!’

Everyone soggily hustled out, grumbling as they went.

Tess headed for the basement. She found the main water valve and turned it stiffly off with a groan of exertion and rage.

She went back upstairs and out the main entrance to find about fifty people waiting on the beach that sat across the road from The Eclipse Cinema. Tess jogged across the road and turned to the art deco building to look at its battered frontage. She’d been thinking the place needed a lick of paint when she could afford it. But this was beyond the capabilities of paint. This was a disaster.

Fi walked over. ‘I counted against the ticket numbers. Everyone’s accounted for.’

Tess sighed. ‘That’s something. Wait, where’s Dylan?’

‘Oh,’ her sister said. ‘I forgot him!’

It was easily done. He was the laziest member of the small staff and not always easy to find.

Tess ran in and jogged around until she found the mop-headed teenage boy asleep behind the popcorn counter. ‘Dylan!’

He didn’t move.

‘Dylan! God damn it!’ Tess said, giving his leg a nudge with her foot.

‘Mum, I’m not going to school. I’ve got Covid,’ Dylan said, sitting up.

‘, I’m not your mum. Two, get up, we’re evacuating the building. Three, have you really got Covid?!’

Dylan rubbed the sleep from his eyes. ‘Nah, just muscle memory kicking in.’

‘Good. Most of the clientele is elderly. It would be something close to manslaughter to come in with that.’

‘I don’t even come in with a slight headache,’ Dylan pointed out.

Tess had to admit that was true. ‘Get out. The place is flooded.’

Dylan asked nothing further, and they walked back out.

‘You found him,’ Fi said, relieved.

‘Curled up like a bloody kitten behind the popcorn counter,’ Tess said with an eye roll.

She turned to look at the customers standing on the beach.

‘What are we going to do now?’ Fi asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Tess said.

‘I mean, we need a plumber, right?’ Fi asked.

‘Yeah,’ Tess said. ‘I can call in the usual company. But they’ll just give me a quote. This is a huge job. Nothing will happen today.’

‘But the building insurance will cover the cost?’

‘Yeah. Probably.’

‘What do you mean “probably”?’

Tess looked at her sister like she’d grown a second head. ‘It’s an insurance company. They’ll try to stiff me.’

‘Don’t be such a pessimist.’

‘Fi, if I want to be pessimistic during a catastrophe, then I will be,’ Tess told Fi flatly. She hated it when people tried to talk her out of facing reality. She lived there. She couldn’t have moved out if she wanted to.

‘You were like this when the coffee machine broke,’ Fi said with a dismissive hand wave.

‘That machine had been here for fifteen years. It was practically a death in the family,’ Tess said with feeling.

‘But it’s not as bad as when the speakers blew out during Breathless, right?’ Fi asked uncertainly.

Tess looked at The Eclipse. ‘That was a loose wire. This goes way beyond that.’

‘The insurance will be fine, anyway. I think they might even come through with the cash fast if we explain the urgency.’

Tess stared at her sister in true amazement. Oh, to live in her world. ‘Yes, I’m sure, Fiona. When they find out people don’t know what happened at the end of a seventy-year-old movie, I bet they’ll snap into action.’

Fi looked wounded. ‘Tess…’

‘Fi, I’m sorry. OK? I’ll sort it out. Leave me to it,’ she said to her sister with a forced smile.

She thought about what needed to be done. First things first, she called 999 to inform them of the disaster. They assured her that someone would arrive within half an hour to assess the scale of the situation.

As she hung up, she looked at the huddled crowd. She spotted a few familiar faces from the community. Among them was the most ubiquitous face, Gloria, an older lady who came in constantly and was never happy. Tess dreaded her reaction to all this.

‘Hey, thanks for your patience,’ Tess said to the crowd. ‘We’ll have things sorted out as soon as possible, but it won’t be today. Keep your stubs, and we’ll make good on them with another screening when we reopen.’

The community members nodded sympathetically and began to disperse. Except Gloria. ‘When?’ she demanded.

‘When what?’

‘When will you reopen?’

‘I don’t know, Gloria,’ Tess said tiredly.

‘I’m going to complain.’

‘You’d be complaining to me. Which you’re already doing,’ Tess told her.

‘Your mother would never have let this happen!’ Gloria hissed and waltzed off.

Tess sighed.

‘I hate to be a parrot, but do you think we’ll be able to reopen soon?’ Fi asked, hopefully.

‘We’ll see,’ Tess said, trying to match the tone—she missed.

She didn’t know how bad this was yet. But if life so far was anything to go by, it was gonna be a massive pain in the ovaries at a bare minimum.

The two sisters watched as the last of the moviegoers left and the emergency vehicles began to arrive.

Tess took a deep breath, steeling herself. Though she didn’t know what the true scope of the damage was yet, she had this funny feeling she was fucked.