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feel in this job, and that’s alone.
    She squeezed in next to me, and showed me my tasks. How I’d keep track of how many tickets I started with in the morning, and how many I ended with in the evening. She taught me the combination to the lock. She slid open a small drawer underneath the countertop. Inside was a flask. She looked at me and shrugged.
    She said: It does help move the day along.
    I said: Well, well.
    Then it was ten all of a sudden and there was a line of people building up in front of the theater.
    She said: Don’t let anyone give you any trouble.
    She left me with a small paper sack, lunch for the day. I settled myself. My hips and chest and belly all shifted into some kind of position and I tried to sit up straight but I knew I’d be slouching by the end of the day. The train rumbled on by over my head again, a thundercloud rolling through. I couldn’t even hear myself think but what was there to think about anyway? It was just me and the line. Rosie was still standing there, off to the side, watching everything. She was smiling so hard I thought her face would split in two, straight down the middle, two cheeks floating off in the sky. She had rearranged me. I was a movable part to her. And now I was in this cage.
    I slid aside the front guard to the cage and slotted it into place. The whole of the line took a step forward all at once, like they were taking one big breath together. I looked at them all. Women holding hands with their little ones, a few sailors and soldiers, more than a few men in suits looking like they might be trying to sleep off their night out on the Bowery.
    Then I got a little dizzy for a second. It’s just a job, is what I was thinking.
    Finally, Rosie spoke.
    She said: This is Mazie, and she’s in charge now.
    And damn if they didn’t all wave at me and say hello.

Lydia Wallach
    My great-grandfather was responsible for the movie selection, staff management, concessions, and the care of the theater itself. Basically anything that was contained within the doors of the theater, he managed. And Mazie sold the tickets and handled the money, and if anyone got out of line, she also ran security. Rudy was a tiny, gentle man. I have seen pictures of him and he looks much shorter than everyone else around him. He had immaculate skin and hands, as did my mother, and I do, too. Look at my hands. Look at how tiny they are. [Holds up hands.] Those are the Wallach hands. So Rudy wasn’t in any place to be roughing up any of the bums. Also he was the child of intellectuals. That’s right, I always forget that part. My great-great-grandparents were Russian intellectuals escaping some sort of persecution I never quite understood, and they moved to New York when he was just a baby. He was just this fine, sensitive man, fair to everyone, and he wasn’t interested in any of that rough-and-tumble business. So I guess it happened quite naturally that it fell to Mazie.

Mazie’s Diary, February 5, 1918
    The movies make me sick in my gut.
    I knew this before and then I forgot but now I remember, oh buddy do I remember.
    I shut down the cage last night early. All day long I’m sitting there, wondering what’s going on inside. So I wandered through the theater. The high ceilings made the place feel like a castle out of a storybook, somewhere far away. Europe is what I was thinking, although what do I know of Europe?
    I wanted to watch the last show of Tarzan . I slipped into the theater, onto those bruised red velour seat cushions, soft under my fingertips. There was a romance to it, I could see it. All those rows of big, beautiful, round bulbs that lined the walls. Rosie shows up once a week and tells the ushers to dust the lights. Sweep and dust, dust and sweep, she repeats it. She should ask that gypsy of hers if she were a general in a past life.
    The movie was just starting, and everyone hushed up. At first I liked seeing all the animals, the giraffes and the lions and the snakes and the