The Last Days of Video (16 page)

She had adapted to his cursing, and to his bursts of saliva, but not to his constant incredulity. Was it possible for anyone to be wrong about
everything?
She had spoken of her past drug problems, of watching too many movies, of her various religious wanderings, of her job, of Waring, and of her stupidity at recently falling for Pierce.

But did those things sum up her life completely?

“You are the architect of your own future,” Thom proclaimed. “So why do you work in a video store?”

“I told you, I . . . I . . .”

“I . . . I . . .” he said in mock imitation, then he paused for a centering breath. “Answer without thinking, Alaura. Why do you work in a video store?”

“I . . . I like movies.”

“And?”

“I like helping people. West Appleton is a nice town. People know me.”

“You believe people know you?”

“I . . . I guess so.”

“Shit,” he snarled, scowling at her. “We're trying to help you, Alaura, yet you resist. Are you saying that you crave popularity, that you crave approval, that you crave people telling you how sweet and interesting and unique you are? The hip, tough girl with tattoos . . . all of which makes me think that this video store is just a safe ego zone.”

Alaura fired Thom a look of warning. But he was now consulting his notes with disgust. He was going too far, and none of the hand holders seemed interested in defending her. Instead, her classmates murmured like bewildered yet hopeful congregants, and she
considered, for the fifth or sixth time, simply walking out. They had told her they would refund her money at any point, but she wondered if that was true, if there was some loophole in the lengthy contract she had signed.

Thom said, “Basil, the young man who conducted your entrance probe last week, told me that you hate your life.”

“He did?”

“Yes.”

“I don't remember saying ‘hate.'”

“That's what Basil reported.”

“Thanks a ton, Basil.”

“So,” Thom said, “why do you stand for the video store?”

“Stand for?” she asked. “I'm sorry, you're moving kind of fast, and I don't really understand all the terminology—”

“It means,” Thom said, gritting his teeth and looking over the class. “It means that you
stand
for it. That you believe in the video store so deeply that it defines who you are. I, for example, stand for the Reality Center because of the good work we do helping people realize their full potential. I also stand for the universal right of all people to exist. Do you understand?”

She did not. “Yes,” she said.

“We have all agreed that our full potential is simply an innate characteristic of our being. And we have all agreed that the modern, interconnected world offers us two distinct paths: one toward solitude and loneliness, and the other toward communion and evolution. You say you hate your life, Alaura, and you work in a video store. Why do you stand for the video store?”

“I don't know. I've thought about quitting, but . . . Star Video is a part of me.”

“Mmm,” Thom said, sounding not unlike Waring. “And if you had an infected appendix, which is certainly a part of you, would you hesitate to have it removed?”

“I . . . I don't know.”

“She doesn't know!” he said, smiling with satisfaction. “You're one big mass of ‘I don't know.'”

I will not lose my cool
, Alaura thought, and as quickly as she thought it, she began speaking—calm, even, like reading a grocery list: “Fine. I enjoy working there. I love it, actually. It might not be the best job, but it's mine. I'm good at it. Star Video is a cool place. It's a gathering place for film nuts. I mean, not like it used to be. There aren't as many regulars. But still. The store is culturally important, I really believe that. I believe in movies. I don't believe they're just about escape. Though I kind of see what you're getting at there.” She pulled her left arm across her chest with her right hand, trying to stretch out her back. “There's a chance Star Video might have to close soon,” she continued, “and I don't know what I'll do if that happens. It would be a disaster, for me, for West Appleton. I'm good at managing employees, and I'm good at dealing with my boss, who's totally insane. I know a lot about movies. Not as much as my boss, but I know a lot. I might not be a millionaire, but I'm secure.” She knew she might be lying, or at least half-lying, and that her country accent was emerging like blood at the edge of a Band-Aid. “I got a place I can call home while I sort out the rest of my life. I'm a very spiritual person, you see. I studied religion in school. You could say I'm on a spiritual quest, have been since I was a child.”

“Continue,” Thom said.

His voice was now smooth, laced with wind.

“My mother left when I was young. I never knew her. We weren't churchgoing. My dad and I. He was a good man. Is a good man. Always working. I started watching movies when I was seven or eight.”
Keep talking.
“We lived in a trailer by a river. Didn't always have a television. Every step, the whole trailer rattled. I would go to town and sneak into movies. There was only one theater. In retrospect, the movies were terrible. Six-month-old releases, never anything R-rated except a few action flicks. But I loved it, loved the
dream, the lights going down, the movie coming up.”
I haven't been to an actual movie theater in how long?
“My dad's good to me. I should call him more often. I should visit. I shouldn't be disconnected, like you say. I grew up close to here, like, thirty minutes from Appleton, in a podunk town, Sprinks, you've never heard of it. I loved the movies, even back then. My first boyfriend, he was a movie nut, too. I loved watching movies with him, at his house, on his big TV. His family was rich. But then he left, and my daddy encouraged me to leave, too, to get out of Sprinks, to go to college. I got into Appleton University. I'm done paying off my student loans. Anyway, as I kid, we didn't go to church, but on Sundays, I'd walk around town and peek in church windows. Listen to what they had to say. Since then, I've tried everything. But religions can let you down. Movies never do.”

Silence.

She looked at her classmates—several of them had tears running down their faces.

Why were they crying? In sympathy? In pity? And what was the difference between sympathy and pity? Alaura couldn't decide.

Then, strangely, the foreign sensation that the tattoos on her right arm were horrible scars.

“You're a very smart woman,” Thom said, away from the microphone, in a whisper meant only for her. “We can all see how intelligent you are.”

Alaura frowned, but she stared at this new, polite incarnation of Thom.

His chest hair beckoned her. His crisp white shirt glowed.

“But your brain is merely a mechanism,” he said, louder, for everyone. “It is not who we are. It is not our animus.”

“Okay?” Alaura said, again confused.

“Your brain is telling you that if you just think hard enough, work long enough, probe deep enough, then you will at some point discover some
thing
that will give you permanent bliss. But this is a lie our brains tell us, the Lie of Completion.”

That made sense.

“For example,” Thom continued, “you've mentioned your problems with men.”

Her brief comfort deflated. She had complained about Pierce and about her many other ill-fated relationships, though now she wished she hadn't.

“It is clear that you want a man in your life,” Thom said. “But it seems to me, and I don't think I'm wrong, that you expect once you meet this mythical man that all matters will be settled. But that is not progress, Alaura. That is not true communion. Instead, you're like the struggling writer who thinks, if I get my novel published, then everything will be okay. You're like the executive who thinks, if I make vice president, then I can finally relax. You're like—”

“I get the point,” she said flatly.

Thom reared back, suddenly enraged, his righteous homily exhausted. “You
get
the point? You get nothing! You hide behind your tough fucking image and your tattoos, as if they make you special, when in fact you are a deep dark hole into which you shovel alcohol and men and movies, hoping to fill yourself, hoping to avoid who you really are.”

“I thought I was a being of light,” Alaura said, lapsing now into full bitch mode.

“Why are you being defensive?”

“Because you're being aggressive.”

“What are you scared of?”

“I'm not scared, I'm annoyed.”

Thom's mouth dropped open like he had never heard anything so appalling.

“I have to pee,” she said.

“Not until we're done.”

“We've been doing this for an hour.”

“And you still can't be honest.”

“I am being honest,” she said.

“What are you scared of?”

“Honest. Scared. Words and words.”

“What are you scared of?”

“I have to pee.”

“What are you scared—”

She walked from the stage, stomped through a field of gasps, broke several links in the bunched, hand-holding circle.

At the exit of the conference room, a young man stepped in front of her. He was young, maybe twenty-one, and pudgy.

“You can't leave,” he said, his voice blurry and dumb. “The rules.”

She hissed nonsense syllables at him. He backed away.

In the bathroom, on the toilet, Alaura watched an aimless bug wander the tile floor: a pen point upon white tundra. Her heart rate slowed. She unclenched her teeth. She focused on her breath—a blue crystal beneath her nose—but still she felt on the verge of screaming.

She had been the first to stand before the class. She knew she was being made an example of. The others would have it easier. But this was only the beginning. If she returned to the conference room, she'd have to resume the stage. She'd have to face Thom again.

Yes, Thom was an arrogant prick. His holier-than-thou shtick was insulting. His hair, basically a mullet, was ridiculous. But the Lie of Completion? That was golden stuff. The appendix thing, too. He had some good things to say. She should not have lashed out.

But of course, that was probably his angle: to push her, soldier-like, to a breaking point.

If so, if Thom really wanted total honesty from her, then why not tell him her deeper, darker secrets? Why not tell him, for example, about Jeff, young Jeff, whom she had briefly, briefly considered seducing despite (and maybe, weirdly,
because of
) his age and his innocence and his fervent, puppy-like devotion to her? His attention felt nice—she couldn't lie to herself about that; it felt good to be idolized. Jeff had a religious bent like her, and like her, he
had been raised by a single parent in a nothing town. Jeff clearly needed help breaking out of his shell. He needed a real-world, freshman-year, mind-blowing experience. The kind of experience Alaura wouldn't necessarily, in a moment of weakness or generosity, be averse to providing.

Sometimes sex makes me feel better, and Jeff would probably appreciate me breaking off a piece
, she might say to Thom. And she bet Thom would get a real kick out of her sick attraction to an eighteen-year-old kid.

That was honesty, right? Her base impulses? Her incredible narcissism?

What do you think of that, Thom?

But why was she reacting this way? Why was she so angry? Thom was just asking her questions. Was it merely her own answers that were pissing her off? True, Thom's methods were annoying. She'd been around the philosophical guru block—his tactics were as tired as his wardrobe and his feathered mane.

But the core of his message, though she hated to admit it, was undeniable:

You are the architect of your own future.

Which, if true, meant she was a shitty architect. Fuck. It
was
true. There was no other way to look at it. She'd settled for a life of drinking and men and movies in a tiny college town. She blocked herself off from the world. She'd wasted her twenties. She'd waited passively for something better to come along, some
one
better to come along, to fix everything, to complete her. The Lie of Completion. She'd known that Star Video was a dead end for years. But she'd been too asleep to translate that knowledge into action.

And now, she had morphed into an awful cliché: the aging sassy tattooed sexpot. If she was her life's architect, then the structure she'd designed was a slumping, decaying deathtrap, unsuitable for human habitation.

Like the building that housed Star Video.

And like Star Video, she had no idea how to fix things.

When she returned to the conference room, her classmates cheered. They whistled and hurrahed. They hugged her all in turn. She did not understand their reaction, but still she made her way to the front of the room, receiving their genuine affection, bolstered by their compassion. Going to the bathroom, breaking the rules in this way, was seen as a great triumph. They were proud of her. Which was stupid, Alaura thought.