The Manager Stopped My Courtyard Film And Locked The Projectors

I could hear a bad gear before I could see it.

Three clicks and a hush. That meant a tooth was missing from the take-up drive. A steady scrape meant something else, and cost more.

I was Naomi Fujita, forty-four, a Japanese American woman who restored film projectors in a shop barely wider than a fishing boat. I was short and broad through the shoulders, with straight black hair cut at my chin and a pale burn mark across my left wrist.

My workbench stood behind a shopping arcade in Wilmington, North Carolina. When the Cape Fear River smelled of wet wood, I opened the back door. When rain blew inland, I put a pan beneath the roof seam.

On screening nights, I hung a white sheet across the brick courtyard.

Admission was free. People left tips in a tin that once held sewing needles. Those tips paid for chairs, film rental, and the next torn belt.

That June evening, I had thirty-one chairs out.

Inez Salgado took the one beside my rolling equipment cage. She was sixty-three, Puerto Rican, and a retired utility electrician. She brought orange slices in a bread bag and could still name every turn in a wire route she had seen years before.

"Your little machine sounds hungry," she said.

"Three clicks and a hush. Replacement gear comes Monday."

"Same thing my knees say. Mine don't take deliveries."

I had set out the second projector when Harlan Pruitt stepped beneath the sheet.

Harlan was fifty-eight, a white man with a pink scalp, silver hair combed flat, and a cream linen jacket pulled tight over his stomach.

He managed the arcade for the company that owned it. He also liked an audience.

If the florist owed a late fee, he announced it by the mailboxes. If someone needed two days for rent, he held the envelope high enough for the whole hall to see.

"Before we begin," he said, spreading his hands, "we ought to thank the tenants who actually pay for tonight's electricity."

The orange slice stopped halfway to Inez's mouth.

I set my screwdriver down.

"My utility bill is paid."

"Your workshop bill, perhaps." He lifted a yellow paper. "But you've been helping yourself to courtyard power. One thousand eight hundred and forty dollars."

He said the amount again, slowly.

The flower seller, the tailor, and a woman holding two paper cups looked at me. Harlan had gone from shop to shop that afternoon, telling everyone there would be an important tenant announcement before the film.

"Let me see the meter readings," I said.

"Don't make this unpleasant."

"You wrote a bill. I asked for its readings."

He pointed to the outlet behind my cage. It had a blue ceramic marker beside it, the color of deep water.

I had paid to have that marker put there eleven years earlier. I remembered the exact amount because I had sold my father's old truck to cover the work.

Harlan knew about the outlet. He had never asked about the blue marker.

"That belongs to the arcade," he said.

"The wall does. The power arrangement is in my lease."

"Your lease permits a repair shop. It doesn't permit theft."

Someone drew in a breath. Through a window above us, an air conditioner rattled.

Harlan caught the cage door and swung it shut. Both projectors were inside, along with my lens case and the film reels. He snapped a brass padlock through the handles.

"Until the balance is settled."

"Those are customer machines. You can't hold them for your own invoice."

"Then I suggest prompt payment."

I tried the door once. The handles bent against the lock.

Inez stood, but I put my hand out.

"Please photograph that," I told her. "The handles, too."

Harlan smiled at the phones coming up around the courtyard. He thought they were being aimed at me.

"I invited these good people to hear the truth," he said.

"Then leave your paper with them," I said.

He taped it to my workshop door.

At the top, above the amount, he had typed UNAUTHORIZED POWER USE. Below that, he had written payment due within forty-eight hours.

The cocktail lounge he had opened at the arcade's front end glowed green through the passage. Its ice machine gave a low thump. My bench light dipped.

I noticed because I noticed sounds.

"Naomi," the tailor said, "do you want us to go?"

"I have to cancel tonight. I'm sorry."

I handed back the $126 people had left for chair repairs and the summer film fund. Some tried to refuse. I wanted a clean count of what the night had cost.

After the courtyard emptied, Inez waited while I closed the chairs.

"Don't touch the wiring," she said. "Not even to prove a point."

"I wasn't planning to."

"Good. I remember where that blue line went."

I went into the shop and reached behind a row of empty reel cans. My old lease lived there in a biscuit tin, beneath a folded installation diagram.

As I lifted the lid, an envelope slid under my door.

Across its front, Harlan had written: FINAL DEMAND.