Officer Gene Pruitt arrived at a quarter to eight, took a statement standing up in the lobby with his notebook against the Galaga cabinet, wrote down the names of four witnesses who had stuck around, and said, not unkindly, that he'd pass it along to the chief. Danny knew, and Mrs. Dunning knew, and Officer Pruitt clearly knew that the chief played golf with Royce Hadley every Thursday at Prairie Dunes. Officer Pruitt put his notebook back in his pocket. He looked up at the gold ceiling with the plaster sun in the center, its rays reaching out to the four corners, and for a second his face changed.
"I took my wife here on our first date," he said. "Nineteen sixty-six. Thunderball." He shook his head. "Hell of a thing." He did not say which thing he meant.
* * *
Danny didn't go home after the last show. He mopped, and then he mopped again, and then he stood in the dark lobby with the ghost light burning on its stand and the arcade cabinets playing their attract modes to nobody, the little Ms. Pac-Man chased endlessly by her four ghosts, and he heard the PRIVATE door open.
"Come up," Ansel said. "If you want."
In eleven months, Danny had been in the projection booth exactly twice, both times to deliver a message from Mrs. Dunning, and both times Ansel had met him at the top of the stairs and taken the message without letting him in. The booth was Ansel's the way the moon belonged to whoever was standing on it. Nobody went up there.
The stairs were narrow and steep and turned twice. The walls were covered in signatures. Danny hadn't noticed that the other times; it had been too dark. Now Ansel switched on a bare bulb at the landing, and Danny saw that the plaster from the floor to well above his head was covered in names, in pencil and ink and grease pencil and at least one in what looked like lipstick, names with dates beside them. Harold Fenske 1931. Marguerite Olin 1944. R. Delacroix '52. Bobby + Sue 1958 4-ever. Walter Greer 1963. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. They went all the way up the stairs and through the door at the top.
"What are these?"
"Ushers," Ansel said. He didn't stop climbing. "Sign your name when you make your year. Tradition. Cora started it."
"Who's Cora?"
But they had reached the top, and Ansel pushed the door open, and Danny forgot the question.