The Last Days of Video (31 page)

Celia turned and walked away.

Jeff was a lot of things, but he wasn't a total idiot. He stood up, zeroed in on Celia Watson's amazing figure, and advanced through a neon stream of bar lights and faces and laughter.

He heard Delaine call out behind him, “Go get her, champ!”

Which was followed by a room-wide whip of laughter.

Jeff followed Celia's path out of Hell's exit, then up the stairs to street level. A moment later, he deposited himself against a brick wall in the dark alleyway above the bar.

Celia's tiny, hourglass form consumed his entire field of vision.

“Hi there,” he said.

“I thought we could have some privacy up here,” she said.

“Privacy. Sweet.”

Jeff looked around. They were standing in what was little more than a brick cave. A ratty juniper tree sprouted from a small patch of earth to his left. A Dumpster to his right reeked of shrimp.

“So what's
The Buried Mirror
about exactly?” he managed to pronounce.

Celia rolled her eyes. “I really have no idea,” she said. He pulled her into sharper focus. She was standing less than three feet away from him. “I was actually hoping you could tell me.”

“Huh?”

She ran a small hand through her long, perfectly styled blonde-white hair.

“Things have been kind of bizarre on set,” she said. “Has your friend Alaura said anything about Match?”

“About Match?”

“I mean, if it was just a weird screenplay, but the director was acting like a sane person, then I don't think I'd be worried. But it's like he's on acid, all the time.”

Jeff found himself laughing, which he knew was inappropriate, given the situation.

She placed the tip of her forefinger on his lips. “Hush,” she whispered. “You don't have to say anything if you don't want to.”

“What?”

“But will you do me a favor?”

Anything! he thought.

“If I take a picture of the two of us making out,” she said, “will you post it on your Facebook page?”

Now laughter would have been appropriate, but Jeff couldn't laugh. He looked down at Celia Watson. He noticed that she was holding an iPhone. And she was nibbling again on her lower lip.

“Make out?” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Take pictures?”

“Yes.”

“I think it would be physically impossible for me to say
no
,” Jeff said.

A second later, Celia Watson had pulled Jeff down by his shirt, and she was sticking her small tongue into his mouth. At first Jeff staggered, but then he gained control of his senses, and he took Celia into his arms. Her mouth was cool and minty. He worried, for some reason, about smearing her makeup. He heard a clicking sound, which he determined to be her phone, held out at arm's length and capturing photos of their tryst. He heard blood rushing through his ears. He reached down and, like he'd seen in movies, placed a hand on the small of her back. He pulled her against him.
He wanted to pick her up. He wanted to take her to bed. He felt her teeth on his lower lip, just like she had been nibbling on her own.

Then she pulled away.

“This is perfect!” she said. “You're a good kisser, by the way.”

Jeff's eyes opened. Celia was looking down at her iPhone. She was scrolling through the photos she had just taken.

“These are
awe
some,” she said. “Thanks, Jeff.”

He was giddy that she remembered his name, though his body felt ripped apart because he was no longer touching her.

“You wanna kiss some more?” he said, not caring how stupid he sounded.

“Oh,” she said, and she looked up from her phone. “Well, the thing is, I have a boyfriend.”

“What?”

“Zac Efron, the actor? I'm sure you've heard of him.”

“Oh,” Jeff said, nodding as he took this in.

Celia was now performing for Jeff a pitying look, but she spoke politely, sincerely: “I'm sorry, Jeff. The thing is, my agent and I thought it would be a good idea to, you know, put some pictures of me partying out on the Internet, you know? Because I'm about to do this adult movie, with sex in it and everything. I need to alter my image. But I don't want anything more.”

“No,” Jeff said, looking down at the scuzzy alleyway under his feet. “No, that makes total sense.”

“So if I e-mail you these pictures, will you post them for me? I mean, I doubt it'll even make
Entertainment Tonight
, but we should still try, right?”

Jeff nodded. He felt his soul being shredded. He gave her his Ape U e-mail address, and he looked down at her as she sent off an e-mail with the pictures attached.

Then she turned to walk back into Hell.

He called out to her, “Celia!”—three syllables forced into a desperate, descending plea.

She turned back.

But Jeff realized, as he had feared all along, that he had absolutely nothing worthwhile to say to Celia Watson.

They stared at each other for a long time.

Finally he blurted: “So I hear Match Anderson is hallucinating. Weird, huh?”

Celia Watson eyed him with her huge, famous eyes. “What?” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“Match Anderson is seeing things. Like a crazy person.”

“What do you mean?”

Jeff thought about it—yes, this was all true. He was not making it up. “I overheard Alaura talking with my boss,” he explained. “After you guys left Star Video yesterday.”

Celia nodded. “And?”

“And Alaura said that Match is, I don't know, seeing the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock.”

Celia's eyes widened. “Is that fucking true?”

Jeff managed a nod.

She stepped toward him. He froze. She reached up with both hands, placed her palms gently on his checks, and guided him down. She kissed him, this time with her mouth closed, this time soft and sweet.

Then, before he knew what was happening, she had turned her back to him again—he wanted her to stay, he wanted to put his arms around her. But his mouth had gone limp and useless.

A moment later, she was gone.

Jeff closed his eyes, phased into another dimension—all he wanted was to hold her. Maybe lose his virginity, sure, but just holding Celia would have been enough.

He stood in the alleyway, wobbling like a flagpole in the wind.

•
  
•
  
•

Two a.m., Star Video.
The bodyguards mumbled downstairs while Waring and Alex Walden sat in
The African Queen
, drinking. Walden smoked a fat cigar, and they watched
Charade
, starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, because three times that evening Walden had pronounced the phrase “Cary Grant was a god.” So Waring had listed as many Grant movies from Star Video's catalogue as he could, and when Walden had confessed that he hadn't seen
Charade
, Waring had guffawed and said, “You're fucking kidding me, you've never seen
Charade
?”

So they watched and marveled and laughed together at the immaculate banter between Hepburn and Grant.

Later, Waring caught something on the screen.

“Hey,” he said, and like an old pal he elbowed Alex Walden, who had just nodded off to sleep.

Walden snorted awake.

“Looksie who it is,” Waring said. Using the remote, he rewound the movie a few seconds. Hepburn and Grant, over coffee on a Parisian riverboat, were engaged in yet another witty exchange. Their young waiter, whose head slid into view only for a moment—a moment barely long enough for Waring to capture with the “Pause” button—was George Walden, Alex's father.

“Shit,” Alex Walden said, sitting up straighter. “I didn't know he was in this.”

Waring watched Walden. The actor's face was oddly blank, but there was a crumpling of the skin below his mouth—Waring had seen this expression before, in countless movies: this was one of the subtle ways Alex Walden conveyed sadness.

“I didn't know he was in this,” Walden repeated.

Then his head rolled back onto the couch cushion, and his eyelids fell shut.

Waring lit a cigarette, his last of the night. He removed Alex's smoldering cigar from his fingers and set it in the ashtray. Then a boozy tide rocked him forward until his elbows rested on his knees.

How, Waring wondered, had Alex Walden not known that his own father had an uncredited role in
Charade?
It was exhilarating, he thought, to have been the one to deliver this information.

But there are always truths rippling beneath the surface, clamoring to break into our awareness, yet we do not see them. Not all movie revelations are bullshit plot devices. And again Waring thought of that plane ride, twelve years ago, how he had bitched and moaned to the guy sitting next to him about how
unreal
it was for his wife to have left him—and he thought about the hotel room—why rehash this now?—Waring did not know. It was probably because Star Video might be saved and Alex Walden, celebrity, was Waring's new drinking buddy—it was probably because for once, if Waring let himself, he could feel good—but what fucking right did he have to feel good?

In the hotel room, drunk, after the disastrous interview in Charlotte, the phone rings. The caller is Waring's wife. He tries to hide that he is overjoyed to hear from her, but she has called with single-minded purpose—and with false excitement he begs her to go right ahead, to explain everything, especially the “Dear John” note currently residing on his hotel bed stand, transported with him from New York, read hundreds of times. She explains. She tells him that she has wanted a divorce for years. She tells him that he has failed her in every way. She hates his drinking and his constant television watching. She tells him he is horrible in bed and that she has seen a doctor and
he
must be the one who is infertile. She tells him his money isn't enough. And finally she confirms what Waring already suspects, that she has been sleeping with his former boss, Ethan, and that is why Ethan had him fired, and that she is moving in with Ethan, and they are starting a family right away.

The emotion of the moment was painfully vivid—he'd rarely recalled it through the years, he'd successfully avoided reliving it, but it had remained unaltered, sharp, noxious. His wife. Helena. They hadn't spoken since the divorce.

But what if Helena could see him
now?
Sitting in his wonderful, crappy video store?

She would laugh at him. She would take one look at Star Video and roll her eyes and laugh and thank her lucky stars that she had gotten out while the getting was good. The only person who thought this crappy video store was wonderful was Alaura, whom Helena would also, he knew, dismiss with searing displeasure.

No one cared about Star Video. There had been no community movement to save his store. Like his marriage, the video store's time had passed.

He nursed the hurt of it.

He sucked hard on his cigarette.

What was he supposed to do with his life?

Everything in the universe—technology, finances, local government, everything—was pointing him away from Star Video. But he had no idea
where
they were pointing. He looked off into the black space of his shop—the dusty warehouse ceiling, the rectangular gridded lights, all of it dark.

Then his attention turned again to
Charade.
Beautiful Audrey Hepburn, the most enchanting creature ever to live.

A dream blazing in the darkness.

MATCH POINT

At six a.m. that
morning, there was a knock on Match Anderson's hotel room door. Match was showering in preparation for that day's big shoot, and when Alaura answered the knock, a young male intern asked her to come downstairs on an urgent matter. Alaura dressed quickly, followed the intern, and was led into the small conference room where she had been reunited with Match a week before. And like a week before, she was instructed to sit and wait.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. Twenty.

Finally a woman wearing a slate-colored business suit entered, and she introduced herself as a [name of film studio omitted] executive—Alaura did not catch the woman's name or her specific title at first. But the woman meant business. She was short and boney, had the sunken cheeks of a corpse or a vegan—a female Harry Dean Stanton. Alaura was too confused to be scared.

“You've been spending a lot of time with Mr. Anderson?” asked the executive, who stood stiffly in the middle of the small room, arms crossed, looking down at Alaura.

“Yes,” Alaura said.

“Sleeping here every night?”

Alaura gulped. “I don't think that's your business.”

“I'm the executive producer of
The Buried Mirror
, so everything is my business.”