The Last Days of Video (15 page)

Then Waring saw a sign near the front counter, surrounded by yellow light bulbs and designed to mimic an old theater marquee. The sign read:

So it was true. Et tu, Blockbuster? Going the way of Netflix!

Waring's stomach churned, and he considered the merits of relieving his nausea upon Blockbuster's floor. He took a deep breath. Then he crouched, removed a flask from his hip pocket, took a slug of bourbon.

When he stood up, he noticed a security camera clawing at the ceiling—it's insect eye zeroed in on him. He took a few steps. The camera swiveled to follow.

First he searched for
The Prestige
, but he found no copies in either Drama, Action, or New Releases (and there didn't seem to be a Why is Christian Bale Famous? section). Nor could he find
The Passion of the Christ.
Probably checked out, he thought, by one of those conservative nutsoes who used to picket Star Video's Porn Room years ago.

Bambi.
They must have multiple copies of
Bambi.
He saw a sign labeled “Kids,” walked there, found two
Bambi
show boxes.

He knelt to the floor as if to tie a shoelace, shielding his furtive enterprise from the camera. But when he tried to open the show box, it produced a tiny plastic groan and resisted his pull. He studied
the box. It was secured by a yellow, magnetic tab. Waring yanked at the tab, twisted it, but the damned thing would not come loose.

“Sir, may I help you?”

Waring's entire body shook.
Bambi
fell to the carpeted floor. Waring scrambled, hastily replaced
Bambi
on the shelf, and stood up.

“I was just looking for—” Waring began, but his voice seized when he saw the fiend who had addressed him.

It was the tall, dark-haired guy from that night a few weeks ago. One of the three bicycle-gang men. Their leader. He was tanned and muscular, his skin smooth and clear like he had never come within ten yards of a deep-fried sandwich. He was at least six inches taller than Waring, and he wore pressed khaki pants and a navy “Blockbuster” polo.

“I could have guessed,” Waring said, standing up. “So you're the owner?”

“Paulsen Crick, franchise operator,” the man corrected with a cool smile.

“Could have guessed that, too. I actually
own
an independent video store. Own.”

“Are we going to have a problem, Mr. Wax?”

“That's for you to say, cupcake.”

The man continued smiling—as far as Waring was concerned—like a villainous bastard.

“What were you doing to
Bambi
?”

“We're fresh out of
Bambi
, and I'm craving cartoon tragedy.”

“To give context to your own life?”

“Ouch,” Waring said, forcing sarcasm.

Crick was formidable. Not as easy to intimidate as most dolts.

“Have you been drinking?” Crick asked.

“Not to your knowledge.”

“You have quite a reputation in that regard.”

“If I drink, it's only in response to some people's aggressive tactics to drive out a longstanding local business.”

Crick laughed, mirthful pity spilling from his chiseled face.

“You really have no idea what's going on, do you?”

Waring shrugged like he couldn't care less.

“You will,” Crick added. “As I said before, your day of reckoning is fast approaching.”

“Good God, I honestly thought I'd hallucinated you saying that,” Waring said with a laugh. “Adios, dipshit. Oh, and these are for you.” He removed the camouflaged porn DVDs and tossed them on the floor in front of Crick, where they fanned out or rolled in every direction. “Someone dropped them off at Star Video. Make sure you put them back out on the floor.”

And Waring strode triumphantly out of the Death Star.

Outside, he found Jeff standing on the sidewalk.

“Killer job on lookout, Blad,” Waring snapped.

“I though you were right behind me,” Jeff said. “I saw that guy from the other night. Does he work here?”

“Thanks for the support, Jeff.”

They began the short trek to Star Video. Waring jammed his fists into his pockets, grumbled to himself. It was getting dark, and the air was unseasonably cool for late September. Or was he in need of a drink? Anyway, feeling that first chill of the year meant it was almost time for his biyearly clothing run, when he would purchase several identical sweaters and pants to wear for the entire season. Tomorrow maybe. He would go to the outdoor store in Browne Mill Mall that Alaura had mentioned. But no . . .

That shop, Quick Dick's, was also located in Browne Mill Mall. The fired customer, what's-his-name, Mr. Prick, he owned Quick Dick's.

And all at once, a few pieces fell together. Not the entire puzzle, only a vague outline. Mr. Prick and Paulsen Crick were friends. Biking buddies. And twice, Crick, franchise operator of Blockbuster, had insinuated that Star Video would be going out of business, or some other looming catastrophe.

Was a conspiracy afoot?

But how could they know the extent of Waring's financial problems? Waring didn't even know himself. The stock market was booming these days, or at least he thought he'd heard that. Maybe his stocks had ballooned despite his neglect. Maybe he had become a millionaire and didn't even know it.

No, Waring thought. That was just stupid.

Almost as stupid as planting pornography in Blockbuster.

Back in his office,
Waring cracked open a beer, drained it quickly. Then, on his desk, he discovered a stack of white tee shirts screen-printed “Cutters.” An unsigned note in Alaura's handwriting, which she must have written before The Corporate Visit, read: “Bought these. Wear one tonight. Part-timers, too. Found them last week on eBay for ten dollars apiece. Free shipping.”

Waring balled up the note, tossed it across the room.

“Ten dollars apiece!” he yelled at the ceiling.

How had it come to this? That spending fifty dollars on stupid movie tee shirts felt like it might break the bank?

And Alaura? What the hell was she doing? That was the worst part of all of this. She meant it, Waring knew. She was really angry this time. This time she was finally going to quit.

If Star Video didn't go out of business first.

He pounded another beer.

Yes, she would quit. Of course she would. It was only logical. She wasn't an idiot, like most people. She would flee this sinking ship, find a new job, find a new town, find a new boyfriend—some turd with a million dollars and a mountain climber's body—and she would marry him, and they would have sex, and she would never ever ever come to Waring again and say, “I need your help.”

He closed his eyes.

Immediately he is on the airplane again, on that last flight from New York over ten years ago. He sees the chubby guy sitting next to him, that orthodontist or veterinarian, and Waring begs the guy to drink with him, buys them little plastic bottles of liquor, tells the guy about his wife leaving. “Can you imagine that?” Waring says. “You come home, and all her things are gone? Can you believe that actually happens? That she could actually leave a note? On the day you lose your job, a job that you hated more than life itself, but still, it sucks to lose it, and you come home
that same day
to find a little folded note taped to the wall? Hey buddy, hey friend, can you believe that actually happens to people?”

Then he is in a hotel room. A week later. Lying in bed. Surrounded by bottles and darkness. In North Carolina, in Charlotte. Earlier that day, he bombed an interview for a job that would have paid him a third of what he made in New York, a job he probably would have hated even more than his last, so he has no idea why he even applied. He's been in the hotel for days now—in fact the interview was days ago. He's drunk, he's hungry, he hasn't eaten since yesterday, and he's trying to muster the energy to walk down to the lobby restaurant . . .

When the phone rings.

He looks at the phone, hears its piercing squeal, and he answers—

“Bullshit,” he hissed at himself, waking up, back in Star Video.

He opened one of his desk drawers. There he found a stack of account ledgers. All of them were blank. Looking at them, he remembered—in his first few years of owning Star Video, he had maintained rigid, daily accounts. The computer could do all of that for him, of course, but he had wanted a physical record. To feel his fingers running over the numbers. To have proof of the new life he'd built.

But at some point—five years ago? more?—he had stopped maintaining the ledgers. That would have been around 2002, which was the first year that DVD rentals had outpaced VHS rentals, and
was, in many ways, the peak year of the video store industry. Even from Waring's naturally pessimistic point of view, business could not have been better. Everyone in the world had purchased a DVD player. And everyone in West Appleton rented from his store. He was bringing in twenty or thirty copies of the biggest mainstream titles:
The Fast and the Furious, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, A Beautiful Mind.
Sure, there were hints of what was to come. Netflix was open for business, those bastards. And the damn studios were offering DVDs for ridiculously low sell-through prices—twenty dollars, sometimes less—instead of the traditionally high prices of VHS tapes—fifty dollars, eighty dollars, more—which had of course helped cut down Waring's bottom line, but which was also drawing customers away to Walmart and Target to buy DVDs. Oh, and lest we forget about the Internet, where he'd heard there was more free porn available than a night at the Playboy Mansion . . .

But still, business in 2002 had been churning along nicely. Waring, with Alaura's help, had built an incredible library of movies, and he'd grown the store from sixteen hundred square feet to over five thousand square feet, and he'd even made enough money to buy the entire building.

Maybe that's why he'd checked out. Because it had all been too good to be true.

Waring removed the ledgers one by one from the deep drawer. There were ten of them. All completely blank. He stacked them on his desk.

Then he saw his mother looking up at him. In the drawer, under where the ledgers had been, was a framed photograph of her. That headshot from her youth as an actress. He'd misplaced the photograph years ago. He lifted the picture, its heavy silver frame, and set it on his desk. The woman looking back at him was young, beautiful. Twenty-two years old. A dead ringer for Gene Tierney. But unlike Tierney, it was somehow obvious that the woman in this headshot was hoping, begging, desperate for stardom, and that this
desperation would lead to her downfall. She was moments away from being cast in a role that would never come, and years away from going to her final reward, those last years during which she would complain endlessly about all the movies she should have starred in, and she would pull Waring out of school, several times a week, and take him to the movies. Always the movies.

“There's your reason, Jeff,” Waring whispered.

He laid the picture face down.

From his MicroFridge he grabbed another lukewarm beer, snapped it open.

But he didn't drink.

Not right away.

Instead, he opened one of the blank red ledgers, sought out a pen, then picked up the phone to call his bank.

It was time to figure out where Star Video stood.

THE WRATH OF THOM

Alaura stood before her
forty Reality Center classmates, who were all holding hands and sitting together in a tight bunch, like kindergarteners listening to their teacher read
Curious George.
It was Alaura's first full day of the Basic Experience, and ten days since beginning her retaliatory “leave of absence” from Star Video. On stage to her left, and seated behind a shiny music stand, was the cofounder of the Reality Center, Thom Trachtenberg.

The man looked a bit like Ricardo Montalban as Khan in
Star Trek II
—all chest and feathery hair.

Alaura felt weak. The air was too warm. She had skipped breakfast, and they had not taken a lunch break. And she had no idea what time it was; watches were not allowed. She had been standing for at least an hour, answering Thom's pointed, personal, often rude questions and revealing more about herself to these strangers than she had to anyone in years—though she supposed that was the point of Reality.

“Why won't you be honest?” Thom asked for the fifth time.

“I am,” she replied again, rolling her tired shoulders, shaking out her hands.

“No. You are sabotaging your life.”

“I told you, I'm trying to live a
good
life.”

He raked her with an eye, and his voice rose: “Trying? See, you're wrong about fucking everything!”