The butter pump

One plunger stroke releases whatever the pump feels like releasing: sometimes a thin stream that clears the tub and lands in the tray below, sometimes a thick amber rope that catches the top layer of popcorn and goes no further. Eight such pumps, operated in sequence, show no reliable relationship between plunger travel and volume dispensed; a full stroke and a half stroke often produce results indistinguishable to the naked eye, a fact the machine keeps to itself rather than printing on any visible gauge. The topping is butter-flavored rather than butter, a distinction the pump has no mechanism for making and no obligation to disclose. Beneath the spout sits a shallow tray, stainless and faintly sticky, catching whatever misses the tub, emptied on a schedule set by smell rather than any posted interval. Repeat customers develop private technique, some pumping twice before the tub is even in position, others requesting the spout be angled toward the bottom layer, a request the fixed fitting cannot accommodate no matter how it is phrased. The topping's temperature shifts across the day, warmest at matinee open when the reservoir has been heating since the doors unlocked, thinner by the last showing, when the tank runs low and the final servings pull mostly liquid, pale gold, from the bottom.

Doreen Fitch