Rio Nido Forever
flash fiction by Ivy Finnegan
They met in the lobby of the tiny movie theater the evening before the Fourth of July. An action film was playing. She liked to support the theater when she was in town. It had only one screen, which meant she had seen many movies over the years she wouldn’t have otherwise seen. She drew the line at horror, but aside from that she would happily watch anything. She always bought the large popcorn. She considered it one of the great, underrated pleasures of life: eating theater popcorn for dinner and forgetting the world for two hours in the dark.
The man in line in front of her ordered the small popcorn and a box of Milk Duds. She watched him open the box and dump the candy into his popcorn and shake it up.
He noticed her watching, smiled. “You should try it.”
He was younger than her, that much was clear, but how much younger was hard to tell. She was 47, he might be 35 or 36 but was surely no older than 40.
She went back to the counter, ordered Milk Duds, dumped them into her popcorn, shook it up.
“The trick is to get one Milk Dud in every bite of popcorn,” he said, demonstrating.
She grabbed a few pieces of popcorn, a Milk Dud nestled in the middle. It was delicious. “Why did I never know about this?” she asked.
“Enjoy the movie,” he said.
She wondered if he was with someone, but lost sight of him inside the theater. She thought maybe he was one of those people who sits in the middle of the row, facing the screen straight on. She always sat on the aisle, left hand side.