Whitechurch (17 page)

He loved movies, introduced movies himself from up on his stage. And he bought the movies. Word was that bachelor Nestor spent almost every dime he made from the fifties to the eighties collecting the prints of films he played. He didn’t spend anything on dates, he said, because his whole life was a date. I met him one time in the library, when I was looking at his book. He sat down next to me, flipped it back to the beginning, and we leafed through it together. He never said a thing to me.

“Jeez,” I say, “I guess this really is an important film, if god himself tells you to shut up.”

For a while, everybody is cool and into it. Darren McGavin is creepy. Kim Novak is sweet. And as for Sinatra, he may not look like a contemporary Hollywood heroin casualty, but he sure convinces you that
something
is bothering the crap out of him, and that’s good enough. For a while.

But the Whitechurch Film Festival Jury is not very tolerant. They’d really prefer
Trainspotting
.

“Choose whiskey,” one of the guys yells at celluloid Frank, as if he didn’t have enough problems already. “Choose the Mafia. Choose the toupee. Choose to sing ‘My Way’ fifty million times—”

“Choose to shut the hell up,” Nestor’s voice booms, and immediately you can feel the change in atmosphere.

I try to remember the last time I actually saw something worth getting into a fight about. Nothing comes to mind. Lots of nothing comes to mind, and this moment fits right in.

On the screen, Kim Novak soldiers on, desperately trying to talk to deranged Sinatra through his apartment door.

Off the screen, Chellie King is standing next to me, practically emitting sparks, as she wills the crowd to love a movie they are not going to love.

“Put the Stooges back on,” one of the college guys says, and the way he says it sure sounds as if bar service has not been discontinued at that table.

“Th-th-that sounds like a g-g-good—”

“The Stooges
are
on,” I say. This is bothering me suddenly. This is bothering me
so
much that I have trouble understanding it myself. I’m grinding my teeth because I did not see it coming. Being small, that’s okay. I know small. I do small. I live small, and that’s fine. Pathetic is not. Stupid things happen, and good ideas fail. That’s routine. It’s the way you react that proves whether or not you’re a schmuck.

It occurs to me that, for all my lack of action, I am not a patient individual.

“We-want-the-Stooges!” comes an anonymous call from somewhere.

And I am surrounded by schmucks.

“We-want-
Trainspotting
!” comes the response from the other side of the room.

“We-want-cider!” add the college guys, laughing louder than required.

“Quiet over there, we’re trying to hear the shitty movie,” another schmuck says.

Then, Adam Everly does what I should be doing, if I was the kind of person who did things.

Adam Everly stands. “Should we beat them up?” he says, very grimly.

It is a pathetic moment, but more beautiful than most. Adam Everly, god love him, couldn’t beat up old Nestor if it came down to that.

The lights go up before Adam Everly gets tough. Nestor is screaming up in the booth, and doing some kind of violent thrashing around. The image on the screen looks crazed, first there, then sped up, slowed, stopped, torn away. I jump to my feet.

“That is
it
!” Chellie yells. “We are closed now. Show is over!”

“That is right!” Nestor yells. He is standing at the back of the theater, the front of the restaurant, which is what it will be from now on. Nestor is in his eighties, bent over to about five feet tall. He’s got uncombed, weirdly yellow hair that grows on the sides but is also dragged across the glistening top of his head. “I knew I shouldn’t have done this. You are too ignorant. You young people, this
town.
Too stupid. Don’t deserve my fine films. Don’t understand nothing unless people are cursing and fucking all over the place. Should have burned my theater like I wanted to. It doesn’t deserve this. Get out now. Get out!”

Nestor appears to have forgotten that he doesn’t own the theater anymore. When nobody responds, nobody speaks or moves, he clutches his big tin film canister that looks like he could be carrying a bicycle tire inside, pulls it tight to his chest. He turns and storms off, but with his bad leg only half of him is up to storming, while the other side drags along behind.

I take a step to follow him, because now this seems important to me. I want to say something, something maybe like I like old movies, Nestor, or Remember me and you and your book and the library, Nestor? But I hear myself. I hear how it sounds. Nestor would probably clock me with the big canned
Man with the Golden Arm.

He has managed to freeze time though, Nestor, even if he’s frozen it less than he’d like. The college guys are collecting their gear and pulling out. The other unsatisfied filmgoers are taking advantage of the diversion to slip away, with only small mutters of “Thanks,” and “Night, Chellie” as they scramble to find someplace that is still selling cider.

Chellie King does not seem sorry to see people go. She is all business as she starts collecting glasses and dishes off a table. Until tears slalom down her face, drop to her chest, disappear into her magnificent velvet dress that almost matches her sad old crumbly theater. The curtain will now smell like tandoori forever. She looks up, comes to her friends’ table and tells them to beat it.

“We should help,” Adam Everly says.

“Course we’re going to help,” I say.

Chellie reaches out and squeezes my forearm. “Go away. I want everybody to just be gone.”

I look down at my arm where she has squeezed me. “Oh, ya, that was pretty intimidating. Guess I’ll run away now. How ’bout you, Adam, you scared yet?”

“I’m gonna g-g-go hide in the kitchen,” he says. He smiles big, pleased at his successful rare shot at humor. “I didn’t really need to stutter that time, Chellie. I f-f-f-faked it for you.”

Chellie covers her face with her hands, but peeks over the fingertips. Her eyes are smiling, and still weepy.

Adam Everly disappears into the kitchen to work on his specialty, cleaning things. A dish shatters. “I got it,” he calls. “Don’t worry there, I g-g-got it under control.”

Chellie drops her chin to her chest in exasperation. She starts laughing for real now.

“You don’t have to do this, guys,” Chellie says. “It’s my mess, not yours.”

There’s another smash in the kitchen. “It’s all right,” Adam calls. “I got that.”

I make a dramatic sweeping gesture toward the kitchen. Then I continue around, covering the theater, the front door, and Whitechurch beyond. “It’s
our
mess. Don’t worry about it, this’ll be fun. It’s
gotta
be more fun than the movie was anyway.”

Chellie goes and locks the door. She has sent her two waitresses home, but with her new assistants, the place is nearly clean by the time she picks up her broom. I take it away from her. “Go sit down,” I say. “Boss don’t sweep. Proprietress don’t sweep. Hostess don’t sweep. And anybody wearing a dress like that don’t sweep.”

Chellie grips the broom with both hands for a moment, while I do likewise. Then she grins, lets go, leans forward, and kisses me on the lips.

Chellie disappears into the kitchen, leaving me clutching the broom handle for support. A few minutes later she walks back into the room, which is cleaner than it has been since Nestor took care of it. She’s towing a one-gallon jug of hard cider and Adam Everly. Adam is balancing a tray of pilsner glasses.

The strain is evident on his face.

“Come on, Adam,” I say quietly, as if something serious is riding on this. “Come on, come on …”

He makes it, and this is cause for celebration.

“Come on, gentlemen,” Chellie says as Adam sets down the tray of wobbling glasses. “Quittin’ time.”

She fills all three glasses to the top, sets them down in front of the three chairs, and the cleanup crew members sit down in front of them. We raise our glasses. The glasses hang there. What, after all, are we supposed to toast, really? Chellie had a great idea, for the wrong population. She is more certain than ever to bolt town, leaving us a hell of a lot uglier and more ignorant than we already are. We probably put the final nails in the coffin of Nestor, who only ever wanted to show his people a decent flick in a class joint, make it date night all the time, but who is probably right now sitting in the middle of a technicolor bonfire in his living room with
Wings of Desire
and
Duck Soup
and
The Great Escape
making a blue chemical flame that will eat up his drapes and himself.

Feels like something, though. Something, probably, is happening here. A toast, then.

“To White Rabbit,” I say.

Chellie is a bit puzzled. “Um, the song?”

Adam Everly is not puzzled. “Is this really necessary?”

“No,” I say. “Not the song. The athlete. The thoroughrat. White Rabbit, son of Gray Ghost and Silver Fox. Fastest rodent ever to wear racing silks, and not too shabby with a knife and fork, either.”

“He didn’t use c-c-cutlery,” Adam Everly says. He starts out serious, then even he recognizes the absurdity and starts laughing. And toasting.

“I have no idea what you two are on about, but I’m thirsty.”

Chellie downs fully half the glass, gasps, then speaks her piece. “See, if this would have worked, I maybe could have stayed. Y’know? Stupid town needs something … Nestor’s right. It’s an ignorant place.”

“I don’t think it’s a bad place,” Adam Everly says softly.

Chellie dips her nose way down low to give him a hard down stare. “That’s it,” she says, “no more alcohol for you.”

“Same old story,” I say. “I’m talking about a champion. We could have brought glory to Whitechurch with White Rabbit. But it’s all politics, isn’t it? My rat showed just a little too much style … so they shot him down. Just like Kennedy. And you, Chelle.”

Chellie doesn’t see the comparison between our personal failures. “Shut up, Oakley. I’m serious about this. We could have, if this worked, done this a lot. It’s a nice little stage up there. Isn’t it a nice little stage up there?”

“That is a great dress,” I say.

“It is,” Adam adds, then quickly buries his nose in his drink.

“Which?” I ask. “The stage or the dress?”

Adam blushes. “The d-d-d-d-d …”

“Thank you,” Chellie says. She reaches across and squeezes Adam’s hand. “We could have done the movies, then maybe, you know, a comic, maybe a play … poetry nights. Can you imagine it, a nice poetry night here, a nice, like, poetry night, with wine and cheese and like, a poet, right here?”

I probably should answer. But honestly, a poetry night …

Chellie splutters out a laugh. “Me neither,” she says.

“I keep losing Oakley’s Lotto money,” Adam Everly contributes.

Chellie jumps up out of her seat and dashes to the kitchen.

“Now look what you did, Adam. Your story was the one that finally broke her.”

He looks worried. He looks about to run after her until she comes trotting back out carrying a bag.

“This was to be the nice finish of a nice evening,” she says, handing around fortune cookies. “I was going to give one to every customer, for a laugh.”

“So, it’ll be the nice finish to a crap evening,” I say.

“Thanks, Oakley. Hope you get the death cookie.”

As we struggle with the cookies, Chellie King pounds down a whole glass of cider.

“Ignorant town,” she says, “I hate this ignorant goddamn town,” smashing her cookie more like a walnut. Her voice drops low, almost loses itself. “I don’t want to leave it.”

“What does yours say?” Adam Everly asks Chellie brightly.

“It says, ‘You live in an ignorant goddamn town with the world’s shittiest Chinese food.’”

Adam smiles. “I don’t think it really says that, Chelle.”

She relents. “‘Things are looking up for you,’” she recites.

“See now,” Adam Everly says. “
There’s
an omen if I ever heard one.”

I have just wrangled mine open. “‘Things are looking up for you,’” I say, tossing the cookie fragments onto the table. “Big omen. Adam Everly, you’re the last contestant.”

This, apparently, is big pressure for Adam. He gets very jittery, taking a big gulp of his drink. He works the cookie open as if he wants to just bend it, not break it, so it can be reused. “‘You will c-c-come into a sudden f-f-f-fortune.’” Adam pauses, rereads it, smiles, sips, sits back pleased.

I have, as I have had frequently of late, a sudden unkind spasm. I get unkind spasms even though I am not, really, unkind, and it is in fact one of the most important things to me, to be not unkind. To know that I am not. But the spasms do come, like a nervous disorder.

I reach over and snag the fortune from him. “Wait, it says ‘Continued on next cookie.’” I grab another, crack it, read, “‘And you will blow the fortune on a boatload of bootleg soapsuds.’”

Adam goes all righteous. He sits up proudly in his chair, sipping neatly from his drink.

“At least I try, Oakley,” Adam Everly says. “And I’m not s-s-sorry, either.”

Chellie King slides her chair right up next to Adam Everly’s and throws an arm around him. They look at me defiantly, as if their schemes have actually
succeeded
.

They are quite a pair.

“That’s the spirit,” Chellie says. “If at first you don’t succeed, and all that rigmarole.” She stands. “I like your style, Adam Everly. You win the door prize. Take me home.”

Adam Everly may yet swallow his tongue. “I, I, I, I, live the other way,” he says.

She ponders that. “Well, good for you,” she says. “Living that way is fine too.”

Adam Everly doesn’t seem to care much what she has said, as long as he is out of harm’s way.

“Will
you
then?” Chellie says, walking around to my side of the table. She is leaning late-night close to me. I can feel her breath on my cheek and nothing else over any other part of me.

I don’t suppose anyone is surprised when I say, “Course, Chelle. Course I’ll walk you.” Because most of the time “yes” is my word. Acquiescence my mode.