The Last Days of Video (13 page)

“It does sound a little strange,” Dorian said.

“Jesus, I shouldn't have told you guys.”

Alaura had only stopped by Star Video to pick up schedule requests and to count change for the weekend. Though she'd skipped work all week, having gladly scheduled Waring for seven consecutive shifts, she could not completely suppress her near-maternal devotion to the store.

“Does it cost money?” Waring asked.

“Of course it costs money,” Alaura replied flatly.

She looked at Dorian, who wore a neon pink blazer, and whom Alaura knew to be unfailingly polite and understanding. He gazed
back at her with calm inquisitiveness, so she explained to him, more than to Waring: “It's not religious or anything. It's not a cult. They help you organize your life. Think positive. Experiential learning and all that.”

Dorian smiled what Alaura always thought of as his gay-Buddha smile.

“Do what you gotta do, Alaura,” he said. “As long as you're safe.”

Then Dorian picked up a stack of Tabitha Gray DVDs, which he was using to set up a special feature display near the front of the store, and he strolled onto the floor to arrange them.

“Dorian's clearly an idiot,” Waring said, standing up and approaching where Alaura was counting change at the Cashier du Cinéma. “And anyway, I think you're just trying to punish me.”

“That might be true.”

“What are you so angry about?”

She wheeled toward him. She stabbed a finger in his direction. “Are you
really
asking that?”

“I told you, I didn't throw a brick through Peckerdick's window.”

“That's not what I'm talking about.”

“What we've got here . . . is failure . . . to communicate.”

Alaura glared at him. She took a moment to collect herself. “You think I'm in the mood for jokes, Waring? After everything that's happened. You lied about your financial situation. You lied about your credit. And now we're on our own. We're screwed. We have no way to buy movies. So what's the point of all this now?”

Waring forced a snorting laugh that Alaura knew to be an affectation of disinterest.

“Alaura,” he said, “there's nothing to worry about.”

“Of course there is!”

Waring smiled falsely.

She pointed a thumb at her own chest. “
I'm
trying to do something positive with my life,” she said.

“Positive?” he said, wincing. “You know, this wouldn't be the first time you've fallen into some stupid religion in hopes of fixing your problems.”

“This isn't a religion.”

“When will you realize that you're just as miserable now as you were before all those religions?”

“I'm not miserable.”

“The Reality Center? What kind of name is that?”

“Whatever!” Alaura turned back to her change count, but she had lost her place. She raked her fingers through her hair, which lay flat and oily on her head because she hadn't washed it in days. “I can take it for what it's worth, Waring,” she muttered in exhaustion. “Maybe learn a few things that'll help me.”

“I don't like it.”

She sighed, shook her head, and looked back at him. Then she stepped forward to straighten the collar of his dirty checkered button-up.

She noticed his body stiffen. But he submitted silently to her attention.

A calm descended between them.

“I'll be fine,” she said gently when she had finished. “But it would be nice if you could just . . . not give me a hard time.”

Waring grimaced. He hesitated for a moment, then said:

“But it sounds so embarrassing.”

“Come on,” she pleaded. “Stop joking. Please . . . I really need you, just for a moment . . . to
stop being you
.”

Waring backed away from her. His eyes were trained on the floor. He sat back down on his director's chair. He turned to face the host computer.

“I'm really mad at you, okay?” Alaura went on. “You've been good to me. I was fucked up a few years back, and you helped me through it. I'll always be grateful to you for that. But I know that
you're aware of how completely psychotic you are. You're not like normal people. You're crazy, Waring. You
have
to know that.”

Waring: no response.

“Having an affair with Clarissa Wheat?” she went on desperately. “Not telling me about your money situation. I mean, shit. You have to know that's all really, really . . . crazy and self-destructive.”

“Fine,” he said in a low voice. “I understand. You have legitimate reasons. You're mad at me.”

He reached out and tapped the keyboard, one stiff jab at the “Return” key.

“I understand,” he said again, his voice even softer.

“You do?”

“If you want to go, then go.”

Alaura nodded.

She turned and walked toward the exit—she hadn't finished counting the change or picked up the schedule requests, and she wasn't going to.

“Good-bye,” she said, and she left the store.

Later that afternoon, when
Alaura entered the Reality Center conference room (windowless, clockless, gray), she found a group of thirty well-dressed Caucasians holding hands in a semicircle. Fifty or so other people—parents and siblings and friends—mingled inside the circle, all looking a bit dazed.

“Wind Beneath My Wings” played over loud speakers.

Weird, Alaura thought.

“This is wacko,” hissed Constance, gripping Alaura's arm—Constance had told Alaura point-blank after brunch that she wouldn't allow her friend to go alone into “some insane asylum,” thus inaugurating herself into an extended speaking role.

But the Reality Center was different than Alaura had expected. She had expected classrooms and PowerPoint presentations and Tony Robbins. Maybe guided meditation and macrobiotics. Or perhaps some Scientology-ish iconography. This didn't feel like that at all. The vibe in this room was very spiritual, but somehow not religious. A lot of hokey love in the air.

It reminded her of her favorite aspect of church as a kid—the church lock-in.

A small Asian woman with obviously enhanced cleavage led Alaura and Constance into the semicircle, and she instructed them to wait directly in front of Karla, a link in the chain of hand holders. Karla stood holding hands with two handsome men in their twenties, and her head was thrown back, like the rest of them, in cataleptic bliss. She wore a searing white business suit that called the transfiguration to Alaura's mind, and she mouthed the ridiculous lyrics along with Bette Midler.

On the walls around them hung a series of blue-on-white posters with simple slogans in bold letters:

THE FUTURE IS NOW

YOUR POTENTIAL IS YOUR REALITY

PROGRESS IS EVOLUTION

“Seriously,” Constance whispered, “this is fucking crazy.”

“Yeah,” Alaura said. “Those posters are pretty
1984
.”

“Whatever,” Constance said. “This is just fucking crazy.”

Alaura nodded. It was fucking crazy. But the cumulative effect of the hand holders (“graduates” they were called) was nonetheless impressive. These were real people, after all—not all of them could be loonies. Many of them seemed to wear Dorian's gay-Buddha
smile, totally at ease and confident, if not contentedly homosexual. Were they all as convinced as Karla that they had figured out their lives? Unshackled their egos? Figured out their future? Had they finally put everything in order?

Karla, of course, came from a rich family. She'd never had to worry about money. She only worked part-time jobs. The bohemian-sculptress lifestyle made financial sense for Karla, so it was also perfectly reasonable for her to venture on mental and spiritual escapades like this potentially crazy Reality Center. But in the diner, Karla had seemed so centered. So happy. In the past, despite her intense positivity whenever listening to Alaura bitch about her shitty life, Karla had also harbored, it seemed to Alaura, a certain latent displeasure with the world. At times she was prone to bursts of witty cynicism born of sublimated rage (a pose that other bohemian artists in town seemed to respect intensely, and her looks didn't hurt), and this complex disposition made its way into her sculptures, large twisting things that defied gravity.

But now, standing here, Karla seemed like a different person—a mightier person. Even swaying silently with eyes closed amongst a bunch of weirdoes, Karla was someone to be idolized.

Mercifully, Bette Midler stopped singing.

“Thank God,” Constance whispered.

“Hush,” Alaura said harshly.

“I can't take this. I feel sick. I think I have to get out of here.”

“Then leave.”

Constance took another look around the semicircle. “Maybe I will.”

“Go then.”

“You should come with me, Alaura. Please don't get involved in this.”

“Maybe I want to get involved,” Alaura said. “I can just take it for what it's worth.”

“But I've got a bad feeling.”

“And I've got a bad feeling about
you
.”

Constance's mouth dropped open—she turned and left the conference room.

Moments later, a woman's voice exploded over a loudspeaker: “Welcome, guests! The Reality Center would like to thank you for being here on perhaps the most important day of our graduates' lives. They have experienced one of the most exhilarating, frightening, and illuminating events they will ever experience, and now they are ready to reenter the world and help pave a new future for us all. You should consider it a singular honor that you have been chosen to share this momentous moment with them.” (
Momentous moment?
Alaura thought.) “Graduates, open your eyes!”

Karla opened her teary green eyes, and Alaura, feeling a bit like a misguided apostle, smiled. They embraced. Alaura felt her friend's body shudder against her, cold tears glazing her neck.

JEFF AND WARING'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE

It had only been
seven days since The Corporate Visit and Alaura's subsequent “leave of absence”—a term Jeff had thought applied only to doctors and professors—but during that short time, without her guiding hand, Star Video had begun falling apart. It was shocking to Jeff how quickly things unraveled. He would arrive for a shift to find that none of that morning's returns had been shelved, and though business was slow, this still amounted to fifty or more show boxes, not including pornography. Then, when Jeff had gone back to Waring's office to retrieve a roll of quarters, he'd found no change in the money box and had to pay back customers with dimes. New membership forms hadn't been filed for a week (though there had only been two). No one had swept the floor or battled the dust bunnies or taken out the trash. They'd run out of Jiffy Pop. And that Monday, the day before that week's new titles were to be released, Jeff realized that no one had printed up the New Releases handouts, nor had anyone updated the New Releases whiteboard positioned by the front door, which was the very first thing most customers looked at when entering the shop.