“Oh, fuck off,” I said once I was sure she’d hung up.

I tried to imagine my family into the action on-screen, Delmore Schwartz–like, but the goings on weren’t particularly applicable. My youngest sister was something of a revolutionary. She wore a tuxedo to her high school graduation. She started some kind of Dada art salon and poetry series, which was promptly canceled after one of her classmates read, in protest of the school’s social media policy (or something), an uncensored series of racist tweets she’d received. But I didn’t see my sister leading the insurrection against the Orwellian dictatorship. Her main personality trait was an unshakeable contrarianism, which was admirable, but it seemed unlikely to draw the masses to her cause. Once the rebels were on her side she’d probably start working with the generals.

The movie ended abruptly, in the midst of rising action, as the heroine raced down a hallway to confront … something. I’d known, dimly, that I was buying a ticket to a “Part 1,” but I still felt cheated. I suppose people took comfort in knowing that their favorite movie characters would keep coming back again and again, that the adventure never had to stop. It was the hot new stay against death.

I left the theater in a haze of discontent. It wasn’t that I cared particularly that I didn’t get to find out what happened. I just wanted that feeling of something coming to an end. Even bad old movies—especially bad old movies—insisted on the trumpets blaring, true love having been sealed or lost, THE END curling definitively across the screen. No need to walk out on the credits in old movies. They were at the beginning.

When I got outside it was cold, and mostly dark. My car was clustered with a few others now in the front of the lot, like animals keeping warm. I fished around in my pants pockets for my car keys. They weren’t there. I ruffled through my trash and receipt and change-filled coat pockets. Nothing. I felt the surge of panic that I always felt in the moment before I ascertained whether or not there was actually a problem. In this case, there was. I did not have my keys. I went back into the theater and went up to the kid at the ticket counter. I explained that I’d left my keys in the theater.

“Let me get a manager,” the kid said. His name tag said BENJAMIN.

“I was the only person in there,” I said. “I’m just going to run in and check.”

“We kind of have this safety protocol?” BENJAMIN said. “I kind of don’t want to lose my job?”