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the moment where the stripper woman is forcing the hired-sunglasses dude to tell her who sent him to mess up all the chrome in her apartment where she sits in a towel and stares at a picture of her brother who was killed in a motorcycle accident, when Lila and I see this guy with his hands behind his back walking very slowly across the Sovereign carpet staring straight down like the chivalrous code of the wisdom of the ancients was encoded in stray kernels of popcorn that it was my turn to suck up before closing.
    “At this point,” says the woman who I’m beginning to remember was in the air force but was thrown out for insubordination, “we are departing for regions unknown.”
    This guy was not from Mercer Island. He was older than me. He was the age where chivalry has rewarded you, I hope I hope I hope, and he was carrying a jacket. When he reached the two escalators, he stopped looking at the carpet and looked at both of us, and then he did what I would have done, which is go over to Lila.
    “Hey,” he said, “has anybody turned in a pair of keys? Two keys, on a ring?”
    “Turned in?” Lila said, chewing her beautiful gum. “I don’t think so.”
    The guy frowned and then looked at me and I made a face to the guy like I don’t have your keys either. “Is there—could I check the lost and found or something?”
    “We don’t really have like a lost and found,” Lila said. “We have a box with some sweaters in it, behind popcorn. But nobody turned in anything tonight. Did you lose them tonight?”
    “Yeah,” the guy said. “I don’t know when, but tonight. Two keys on a ring. I can’t find them. I’ve been looking all over the parking lot and I went back to the restaurant where we ate so, um, I thought I’d try here.”
    “Sorry,” Lila said. She looked at this guy and shrugged just a little little bit. It was sort of a gorgeous sneak preview of the “Sorry” shrug supercombo that I would get some day if I actually bought the flowers and laid them at her gorgeous hardcore rap-star sneakers, and maybe that’s why I spoke up. Or maybe, probably, it was the jacket. Maybe it was the pretty dream of a time when my fireproof vest would be nowhere and if someone asked me, like at a party where everything is poured into real glasses, did you ever work at the Sovereign Cinemaplex, I would call across my chrome Manhattan place to my wife and say, “Lila? Remember like a hundred years ago when we used to rip tickets in half? This guy in the jacket wants to know about it,” and we’d all shout the healthy, excited laugh of people with ice in their drinks who can stay out as late as they want, a time in my life when sorry wouldn’t be good enough when I’ve lost my keys and I’m looking for them on the filthy floor and hoping against hope against hope for a chivalrous squire to say “What movie were you in?”
    “What movie were you in?” I asked. Yeah.
    The guy sighed. “That one with all of those skinny women kicking things,” he said. “You know, Kickass .”
    “ The Movie ,” I said, and I said it perfect. I know because the guy gave me a little smile like he and I knew the same perfect code of: this world is suckier than we are, and the best thing to do is keep moving and find your keys. The kickass rookie women smile at the famous guy the same way after the three of them break up a fight at the biker bar where they go to get to know each other over a product-placement beer by pounding this bandanna asshole against a heavy metal jukebox playing a song that was popular a million years ago when my parents roamed the earth free and loose. “Let’s get to work,” the famous guy says, and the women nod, like yeah I know, I know so well that you didn’t need to say it but you’re not at all geeky and overtalkative for saying it anyway. I walked over to Lila’s escalator and reached down to the flashlight they make us wear, clipped to my belt, bouncing along my thigh like a bonus helping