So I waited by the entrance, watching the unplayed arcade games shriek and rumble, while he wandered off to find a manager. It would have been very easy at that point to slip down the hall and check out the theater, but I wasn’t in the mood to be chastised. The kid was already heading back toward me with a goateed man, his belly straining hard against his maroon, theater-issued button-down shirt.

“Let’s go have a look for those keys,” the manager said, not breaking stride as he moved toward the theaters. I caught up—he was moving pretty fast for such a large man—and walked alongside him.

“Sorry about this,” I said. “Must have just fallen out of my pocket.”

“That’s my guess,” he said. “The cleaning crew’s already been through, so we might want to check with them.”

“I was the only person in there,” I said.

“I understand that, sir,” he said. “If you think about it, it probably costs us more to present the film and clean up afterwards than you paid to see it. Pretty good deal for you, huh?”

That didn’t seem quite relevant, but I let it go. When we got to the theater, he stopped in front of the propped-open door and swept out his arm with an “after you” flourish. I climbed the auditorium steps briskly. The keys weren’t under my seat. I got on my knees and turned on the light on my cell phone. Nothing, not even a stale kernel of popcorn. I went down a row and repeated the search. Nothing.

“They’re not there,” I said. The manager had been standing against the wall with his arms folded, watching me.

“Are you sure you don’t have them on your person?” he said. “Did you have them on your person when you arrived?”

“I drove here,” I said.

“Have you checked inside your vehicle?”

“It’s locked.”

“Is there any possibility that you have locked your keys inside the vehicle?”

“I wouldn’t even know how to do that.”

“It happens all the time. Leave the keys in the vehicle, vehicle locks automatically, keys are locked inside the vehicle.”

“Can we talk to the cleaner?” I said. “I think he’d remember.”

The manager ran his hand over his mouth and down over his chin. How fucking busy could his day be? I’d worked in a movie theater as a teenager. When there weren’t any customers, there wasn’t anything to manage. He pulled a creased piece of paper out of his pocket and examined it.

“He should be in theater five, if he’s where he’s supposed to be,” he said. He turned and walked out, leaving me to follow him again.

“I appreciate your help with this,” I said as we walked.

“Well, it’s imperative, from a managerial standpoint, that this situation gets resolved to your satisfaction.”