Batman Came Up and We Were There for Forty-Five Minutes

July twenty-fourth. I do not remember who brought up the movie first. I think it was Simone, because she said something during sidework about how she had her ticket already and I said me too and then somehow we were outside in the parking lot for the better part of an hour having a full argument about whether The Dark Knight Rises was even going to be close to The Dark Knight and I genuinely lost track of time.

The thing about Simone is she has opinions the way some people have furniture, they are arranged carefully and she knows exactly where each one is. Her position was that the original is untouchable and anything that follows it is competing with a fixed point. My position was that Nolan earned the benefit of the doubt and also that the trailers alone were doing something. We went back and forth. She made a numbered argument. I made a gesture that may have looked like I was describing the size of a fish I caught. We sat down on the curb at some point.

The debate has moved to the curb. This is serious.

I do not know who took these photos. One of the other servers favorite walked past and caught us and just kept shooting, which, honestly, fair. We looked exactly like what we were: two people who had just worked a dinner shift and were now loudly settling something important in a parking lot in July. The lot lights were doing that thing they do at dusk where they are just barely on and the sky is still holding the last bit of blue. It was warm in the specific way summer evenings are warm when you have been inside all night and then step out and realize you missed it.

She got me. I'm not saying what she said but she got me.

She did eventually say something that made me laugh and concede about three inches of ground. I am not going to say what it was. The movie comes out this week and I think we are both going to end up right about different things, which is usually how it goes with Simone. I have started to find this a feature rather than a problem.