Free The Big Bamboo by Tim Dorsey

closing now. But no, we can’t go home ’cause you can’t pick a snack!”
    Mark thought his eyes were playing tricks the way the man vaulted the counter from a standing start. Ford jumped in front of the enraged customer and put his hands up in surrender. “Free pretzels! Your friends, too! Anything you want! We’re just going to throw them out anyway!”
    The customer was still breathing fast. “If he apologizes.”
    “What!” said Mark.
    “Mark! Shut up!” said Ford, then to himself: “Dammit, all I wanted to do was go home and watch
Training Day
.”
    “
Training Day
?”
    “Yeah, I saw
Bad Lieutenant
last night so I was going to follow up.”
    “Can’t believe you fuckin’ said that!”
    Ford hopped back and raised his hands again. “Don’t hit me!”
    But the man was smiling now. “Those are two of my all-time favorite films!”
    “It’s the same movie,” said Ford.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Watch ’em back-to-back.
Lieutenant
was a little-known character study. The
Training Day
people must have recognized revenue potential and added the missing commercial pieces.”
    The customer looked up at thin air, visualizing. He nodded. “You know, you’re right.” The customer put out his hand. “Pedro Jimenez.”
    Ford shook it. “Ford Oelman.”
    “I love movies,” said Pedro.
    “Me, too,” said Ford.
    “Come on!” Mark nagged. “What’s taking so long?”
    “Shut the hell up!” yelled Pedro. “I haven’t decided about you yet!”
    Mark raised his broom as a defensive weapon.
    Pedro turned back to Ford. “So why aren’t you in them?”
    “In what?”
    “The movies. Why are you working here?”
    “What are you talking about?” said Ford. “You don’t just
decide
to be in movies.”
    “Not lead actor,” Pedro said with a laugh. “There’s a million other jobs. I mean, you love movies, and you’re in the film capital of the universe. But you’re working in a pretzel shop? Shoot,
I’m
in movies.”
    “You are? What do you do?”
    “Props department at Vistamax across the street,” said Pedro. “But I’ve been there long enough that sometimes I get to be a standby carpenter. That’s what I used to do, hammering studs under the hot sun, but now I build movie sets in air-conditioning. Pays a hell of a lot better, too. And I’m that much closer to my dream.”
    “What’s your dream?”
    “To act. Ever since seeing
The Wild One
. First I wanted to be a
serious
actor, so I moved to New York and started auditioning off Broadway. Three or four days a week for six months, memorizing lines, rehearsing in a cramped apartment with my roommate, but the closest thing to a real part was when I got hired as a toy soldier at FAO Schwarz. And I even lost
that
role.”
    “What happened?”
    “The whole time I’m working there, I’m thinking, Don’t be an ingrate. You came to New York to act, so act. I kept repeating in my head, ‘You’re a soldier, you’re a soldier…’ One day I hear these security guards yelling: ‘Stop! Stop! Shoplifter!’ This guy goes running past, and I think, Hey, I’m a soldier, so I run out the door and chase him up Fifth Avenue in my uniform and those big rosy circles on my cheeks.”
    “That got you fired?”
    “No. But then I caught the guy. Can you believe it? Who would have thought, running in that big hat with the chin strap? Tackled him on the corner of Fifty-seventh.”
    “So
that
got you fired?”
    “No. But I was Method acting.”
    “And?”
    “I bayoneted him. It was just a rubber bayonet, but the tabloids couldn’t resist running the photos those tourists took. The store said it wasn’t exactly the image they were going for. That’s when I came out here and took the job in props, which led to the standby carpenter gig.”
    “What’s a standby carpenter do?”
    “Say some spoiled director changes his mind and wants a door where there’s a window. You got thirty minutes.”
    “See any stars?”
    “All the time. They’re