The Last Days of Video (23 page)

A NEW HOPE?

Alaura awoke with a
snort. Her face was pressed against cracked, tobacco-stained pleather—the backseat of Waring's Dodge. A cool breeze streamed through open windows and played on her forehead. Sunlight angled close to level. Late afternoon.

As the day reorganized itself, she realized that the car was parked on the rutted gravel driveway of Waring's house. She climbed out, stretched her fingertips skyward, and with arms aloft she saw that she still wore the dark blue suit coat that, along with matching pants and old-lady business flats, had cost her over three hundred and fifty dollars. Three hundred and fifty dollars she did not really have.

Then she remembered what had happened at the Reality Center, and a dull pain rippled through her abdomen.

She leaned forward, half-crouching, pressed her palms together between her knees. She groaned.

A minute later, still hunkered in this standing fetal position, she turned her head and saw, by the street in front of the house, a green and yellow sign hanging from an inverted wooden L. The sign read, “House For Sale,” and below that, diagonally, “Sold!”

She approached the sign, touched it to confirm its solidity.

Voices. Murmurs from Waring's house. His small sloping ranch, with its pinkish bricks and perpetually clogged gutters. Over the years, she had spent many drunken nights here, binge-watching obscure films or Hollywood crap or entire television series, talking with Waring, fending off Waring's harmless romantic advances, passing out on his couch. The slim concrete porch—she would sit with him for hours, stoned or hammered, listen to him complain about this awful customer or that awful movie, laugh at him without restraint whenever his wacky diatribes culminated in successful punchlines. (As the only genuine authority figure at Star Video, she resisted laughing at his jokes in the presence of other employees, but here, at his house, she let herself go.) And sometimes she even made
him
laugh, said something wily and provocative that caught him off guard, and his cranky exterior would break, and he would squeal like a child, a high-pitched giggle stunning in its sincerity, entirely gleeful, beer sluicing from the can in his fist.

But he had not been laughing lately. Nor had she. How long had it been? Months? Years? His drinking had increased, so had hers, and they had bickered more and more about stupid nonproblems. Their laughter had all but vanished.

She approached Waring's open front door. The murmurs rose, separated—it was not the television playing some movie, as she had assumed, but Waring and Jeff talking.

“These posters,” Jeff said excitedly. “
Billy Jack
? I don't even know that movie, but the poster's awesome. And the whole cast autographed
Apocalypse Now.
Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper. And he actually wrote
Larry
Fishburne! These should be in frames, Waring. The corners are all crunched.”

Alaura edged closer to the house, and she visualized Waring's collection of warped dry-mounted posters leaning against the wall near his couch, posters he had never bothered to frame, hang, or sell—
The French Connection, The Night of the Hunter, Sunset
Boulevard
, many more. Then she heard Waring grumble as if distracted, or disinterested, or both:

“Never got around to frames.”

“But you should.”

“Oh, I should, should I?” Waring said, now seeming to find interest, or annoyance, in the topic. “You should focus on packing, which I'm paying you good money for.”

“I wouldn't say
good
money,” Jeff retorted with a laugh.

Jesus
, Alaura thought.
Are they getting along?

“I see,” Waring said, a playful lilt in his voice. “No one's holding a gun to your hairless testicles.”

“Gross,” Jeff said.

“Alaura likes hairy men.”

“Huh?”

“Hairy chests, hairy bottoms, hairy balls. Bearded faces and genitals, that's her.”

Jeff laughed again, this time in disbelief—a mocking-but-friendly guffaw. “Do you listen to yourself?”

“My voice is the only entertaining part of this exchange.”

“I guess.”

“And anyway, if you had a chance with Alaura, you've missed it.”

Jeff seemed to mull this over for a moment, then he said, “Actually, Alaura and I hung out in her apartment, like, a week and a half ago.”

“Doing what?”

“We watched a movie.”

And Waring's voice rose to a mock-Shakespearean timbre: “A
movie
!?”

Then they both laughed.

Yes, Alaura thought, this is what I've gotten myself back into.

She tiptoed off the porch, returned to the Dodge. Inside the car, she found her new, expensive iPhone. She called Star Video's voicemail line, and she cringed as she listened to the strange resignation she had left that morning, only a few hours ago.

What the
hell
had she been thinking? Leaving Waring in the lurch. And quitting before even beginning to search for another job. After she'd just run up her credit cards again.

But the message had still been listed as “Unheard.” So quickly she pressed “5” to delete it. Waring would never know.

And all at once she thought, I want my mind back. I want to erase Reality. Waring had been right: once again she had gone wacko for some stupid ideology. Which meant it was time, she supposed, for a new tattoo, which had always been an integral step in deciding which facets of any kooky religion to retain or discard . . .

But why did getting another tattoo feel so . . . foolish?

Because she was too old for this shit. Because she was twenty-nine years old and had naively, idiotically believed that the Reality Center would present the final answers. That all the cogs of her life would fall into place.

And worse than that, she'd revealed her core weaknesses, once again, to Waring. She'd shown Waring that she was still that same stupid girl she'd always been.

Later later later, she thought. Think about it later. I'll figure it out. Maybe selling the house means that Waring is, against all odds, making some reasonable effort to save the shop. Focus on Star Video. She slammed the car door hard, so that the guys would hear. A moment later, they appeared on the porch.

Pointing to the “For Sale” sign, and switching at once into Star Video manager mode, Alaura said:

“Explain!”

Jeff continued boxing up
Waring's belongings while Waring caught Alaura up on Star Video's status—the grand conspiracy designed to purge West Appleton of its noble independent video store, the identity of Blockbuster's franchise operator, the Board of Aldermen meeting, the eminent domain hearing scheduled for October 29
(three weeks away), how Waring's house had sold in less than four days but for nowhere near the asking price, so he was still short a significant amount of cash—for lawyer fees, for mounting operating expenses, and especially for the recently revealed back taxes—even if he slept on the couch in
The African Queen
at Star Video, which Alaura quickly realized was the extent of his big freaking plan.

Waring concluded by morosely quoting the amount of cash he would need to keep Star Video open for the short term.

“Ten thousand dollars.”

Long pause.

“Ten thousand?” she said.

“And that's only for the next few months, roughly. With the higher rate we'll probably have to pay a new distributor, if we can even
find
a new distributor, the truth is, the store is losing money. I'm totally out of options.”

“Out of options?”

“I'm out of money.”

Her mouth parted slightly, and her eyes widened. “You don't have anything else hidden away?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all.”

“No.”

“Wow.”

“Brilliant,” Waring said, and he gazed with a deranged Joker grin at the bowed plywood roof of his porch. “She says ‘wow.'”

“I'm taking this in, Waring. You know, you've always been pretty secretive when it comes to—”

“I need ideas, Alaura. Costumes and two-for-one deals won't cut it. Jeff was suggesting we could put a café or a screening room or a popcorn machine in the shop. But obviously that's, I don't know, stupid.”

“It's not stupid,” she said.

“No,” he said. “You're right. It's not stupid. Blad's actually
been pretty helpful. But still, we can't put in a café without, you know, money.”

“So you're saying?”

“I'm saying the only answer is a cash infusion.”

“A cash infusion?” she asked.

“I need a shit-ton of cash that I'm under no obligation to pay back. Or I'll have to close Star Video.”

Alaura emitted a breathless curse.

“I concur,” Waring said.

They didn't speak for a few minutes. A chill passed over Alaura. As much as she had wanted to avoid the obvious, she'd known this day was coming. Only an idiot could look at Waring's tiny house, crumbling apart and unfit even for a squatter, and believe that he had the financial resources, let alone the wherewithal, to keep a struggling business afloat. To evolve in the ways he would have needed. Or even to accept Star Video's decline and fall with something resembling grace. She knew she shouldn't be surprised. But it was heartbreaking nonetheless. They'd both be set adrift in a world where everything they'd ever cared about, everything they knew, had gone out of style. The world was moving on. The future was now.

She glanced at Waring's pale face. He chewed on his cigarette, its strings of blue smoke trailing into the yard like the smoking caterpillar's hookah in
Alice in Wonderland.
He frowned. To the casual observer, Waring might look simply angry. But Alaura knew he was frightened, hurt, devastated.

Who is Waring Wax without Star Video? Where can the monster live if not in his own enchanted cave?

She reached out and placed her palm on the back of his hand. Without looking at her, he turned his hand over and clasped hers.

They sat like that for several minutes, holding hands, silent.

Later, after a phlegm-obstructed cough, Waring cracked open a new pack of cigarettes. He offered her one. Alaura accepted.
She had avoided all toxins for the past three weeks, and a cigarette sounded great.

“Oh, did I tell you?” he said after giving her a light. “I have a fool-proof plan for saving the shop.”

He was speaking, she knew, in his gearing-up-for-a-joking-bull-shit-rant tone. “That plan would be?” she said, humoring him.

A devilish grin flitted on his lips, though he still looked as tired as they both felt. “Well, filming in Appleton for that movie starts soon, right? And surely with just a smidge of their budget, probably what they're going to pay a two-line supporting actor, or one day of catering, we could save the shop. So after a lot of personal debate, and deep inner struggle, I've decided to bite the bullet and finally become an actor.”

Alaura was already a little dizzy from her cigarette, but still she found herself playing along, nodding, eyes wide like she'd never heard anything so brilliant.

“Am I right or am I right?” he continued. “I'd make a fantastic fucking actor. The comic relief. Tabitha Gray's snarky uncle or something, who gets murdered at the close of the second act. I can see my name on the poster. Alex Walden, Tabitha Gray, Celia Watson, and Waring Wax star in
The Buried Mirror
, a tale of something or other, intrigue and sex and other things—”

“Wait!” Alaura yelled, and her body jolted forward in the unsteady rocking chair.

Had Waring really just said . . . ?

“
The Buried Mirror
?” she blurted.

Waring's tone dropped. “For fuck's sake, Alaura, can't a guy finish a stupid joke?”

“Did you say
The Buried Mirror
?” she repeated sternly. “I'm serious. Is that the name of the movie filming in Appleton?”

“Jesus, yes,” Waring said. “That's what they said at the Board of Aldermen meeting.”

“Did they say the name of the director?”

Waring: palms flipped upward in incomprehension.

“Of
The Buried Mirror?
Did they say the name of the director at the Board of Aldermen meeting?”

“No, they didn't say the name of the damn director.”

But Alaura knew. She had not paid attention to his career for the last few months, hoping to save herself from the embarrassment/pathos/physical pain she had felt after seeing his last film,
Changeless
, a misconceived and overly long Buddhist-sci-fi thing that had been a critical and commercial flop. She hadn't wanted to witness the collapse of his Hollywood dreams, because even though they'd fallen out of touch, she'd of course been rooting for him all along. Both Hollywood and time had been hard on him. He had once been trim and handsome, but in the most recent photos of him she had seen, on the Internet, at the New York opening of
Changeless
, he had looked exhausted, worn down, jowly, and in fact, rather ugly. Of course she owned all three of his movies on DVD, and she'd watched them all again and again, even
Changeless
, which was quite terrible but not nearly as terrible as everyone said, and she still recommended his movies, even
Changeless
, to any and every customer at Star Video, trying to do her own little part to bolster his flagging career.