"Yeah," he said to the closed door. His face was burning and his neck throbbing. "We'll see."
He turned back to the bench and touched the power switch that would shut down the entire mechanism.
The projection gate was frozen on a single frame of film: a medium close-up of a woman with red hair. That would be Julie London. She was a kind of predecessor, he realized, to the great award-winning actress Annette O'Toole. Beautiful, he thought. Not the scene he had hoped to find, but a nice one in its own right.
He could not remember much about Julie London's acting; all that remained of her in his memory was a sequence of strong two-shots against a richly-saturated Western sky, her hair swept away from her white forehead as she lowered her eyes from a laconic Mitchum. Beautiful, and a face worth preserving. If he didn't, who would? Chances were none of her other films, a small, undistinguished handful, had been deemed worth saving by any collector. Look at that face, he thought, even as her hair appeared to fade into the muddy film base, more like an old dog's now than a woman's. Who cares? he thought wretchedly. Color is color, right?
He sat there with his finger on the switch, imagining the money boys, ex-agents and accountants and conglomerate sharks in three-piece suits, hustling figures like pimps. How much had they thought they were saving in the long run by using cheap film stock? Twenty thousand a picture? Thirty? One percent of the budget; less than that.
The long run. How long? A few weeks? A few months at most? Then burn the prints. Save one or two to work from, to copy in sixteen millimeter for TV or onto tape and discs, if they even thought of video then. Then burn the negative. What's the point of preserving it, with the silver in the film worth a hundred bucks an ounce or whatever it was worth back then? After all, who would ever want another theater print? Let's be realistic. What's the future of movie houses? He could hear their cynical voices. Old wave, new wave, cinema noir or cinema verite, the handwriting on the wallpaper or the shadow in the corner, it was all the same now: video graffiti. A pitiless joke plied on us while we were sleeping off the last few years, like those plastic hubcaps on the new Mini Mercedes he had seen cruising the Mall this morning. Too damned late, and what of it? And so on. In this way he allowed himself to slip deeper and deeper into introspection—until he remembered Rose Marie.
What had Roger said? That she was coming here? He knows more than I do, Joe thought. She could have called the store and I was busy. Or she said something about it over breakfast, and I forgot. It's possible. I've been working so many hours…
He reached for the phone, punched his home number. After ten rings he gave up. Not home. She forgot. Or I forgot—same thing. Or she's on her way here to meet me. That must be it.
"Roger?" he yelled.
As he stood, the frame he had stopped in the film gate warped, crinkled like cellophane and burned through.
This, he thought, is impossible. It had never happened before. In fact, the machine was designed specifically to prevent just such an occurrence.
"Shit," he observed.
He killed the power and wound back the reel by hand. Now he would have to splice it before making his video copy. There were probably other breaks in the film already, it seemed so dry and brittle. Well, it's only a frame. But what a frame. Probably the best close-up in the whole picture.
Roger knocked softly before entering.
Joe removed the film from the head and made the cut at once, while it was on his mind. The frame dropped out cleanly. He had caught it in time. One lousy frame. "Did Rose call?"
"When, today? I don't think so. Why?"
"I thought you said she was coming by for lunch."
"You know better than I would," said Roger. "Give her a call."
"She hasn't come by the store in six months."
"She doesn't like me," said Roger. "I knew it. Wives never like their husbands' friends. It's a principle."
"Bullshit," said Joe.
"Maybe you should call her anyway. Does she like nachos? We can smuggle her a plate on the same check."
"I already called. She's not home."
"Oh."
Joe dropped the melted frame of film onto the bench. It rocked there in the draft from the open door, crisp as a burnt tortilla chip. "Anyway. It's about time for you and me to lay down a liter of Margaritas." Joe wiped his hands and headed into the store. "Say good-by to Julie, Roger."
"Who? Oh, I get it. Is that her name? Okay. Good-by, Julie."
They walked through the store. Roger got his keys and made for the glass doors, where outside hundreds of overexposed, pastel shoppers milled about like extras on their way to or from their honeycomb apartments, endless as the constant procession of footsteps on the other side of the thin walls, wandering in and out of every shop but this one.
Joe passed racks of videocassettes. One whole wall was the Universal-MCA library, on sale. Pillow Talk, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Lover Come Back, Earthquake, Airport et al., Space Shuttle '90, Space Shuttle '91, etc.
He touched Pillow Talk. It had gathered a layer of dust you could spread with a butter knife.
"Take it easy, Doris," he said. "Try to be good while we're gone."
"Who?"
"Doris Day. If you can't be good, be bad."
Roger turned the sign around in the window. "Well, don't forget Mary Tyler Moore while you're at it," he said, playing along. "Ever since that nude scene in The Rosy Crucifixion…"
"Good-by, Mary," said Joe. "Auf Wiedersehen."
"And how about Sylvia Kristel in, what was it, Airport '79? 1 hope she can score some business while we're out."
"Good-by, Sylvia." Joe lingered over the tapes, cutting dust with his finger. "Good-by, Victoria Principal in Earthquake. Stay away from that Marjoe what's-his-name. He's no good."
"Victoria Principal," said Roger nostalgically. "She was definitely not from around here."
"And good-by, Jean Simmons in Spartacus," Joe said, "the bathing scene…"
"Was she in that? I remember Laurence Olivier…"
"Fuck Laurence Olivier. Good-by, Julie Andrews in Torn Curtain, under the sheets with Paul Newman!"
"Hitchcock eh? I remember Hitchcock. Well then, good-by, Tippi Hedren!"
"In The Birds? Aw, man, what about Suzanne Pleshette?"
"I was thinking Marnie. The honeymoon. I saw, that one."
"You got it. Good-by, Marnie."
"Good-by, Raquel Welch in, let's see, how about Indira?"
"That was Zoetrope. I'm only up to Universal."
"So?"
"All right, good-by, Teri Garr in One From the Heart! Good-by, Nastassia Kinski in Unfaithfully Yours! Good-by Patti Hanson—and Dorothy Stratton—in They All Laughed! Good-by, Genie Francis in General Emergency! Good-by, Goldie Hawn in So Cute, So Dead! Good-by, Lisa Marie Presley in The Priscilla Presley Story! Good-by to all of you! Good-by—"
Roger opened his mouth wide and let out a monstrous belch. "Good-by, stomach and intestines," he said, grinning dopily, "if we don't get over to the Jumping Bean pronto!"
"Let's go."
They hit the sidewalk in front and started around the fountain to the Mexican restaurant.
"Hold up," said Joe. "I want to check the 'gram next door."
"What for?" Roger shaded his eyes in the bright white sun and considered Joe nervously. All around them impatient shoppers elbowed past, loaded down with purchases. "You don't take that stuff seriously, do you?"
A teenage couple whizzed past, jerking to the beat of taped music from their shuttle shoes. The beat faded with them as they zigzagged away through the crowd, to be replaced by the piped-in dreck of middle-aged golden oldie seventies disco Muzak. "It's not that I take it seriously," said Joe. "It's just that—never mind." He backtracked to the Indects, Inc. storefront next door.
Today's message shimmered in the air in front of the window: another selected quotation from the pages of THE WAY OF THE WACH, copies of which were, of course, available inside. Joe centered his head to read it.
“‘Scuse me," muttered the boy without raising his eyes. He was reading the July issue of a science fiction magazine, MECHANICAL ADVENTURES. He was in a hurry. Obviously an intellectual, thought Joe; you don't see many of those around here.
"All right, all right, what's the word for the day?" Roger positioned himself reluctantly next to Joe. With unconcealed derision he read, “‘Today is the…’“
"It's not that I believe it," said Joe. "But I got in the habit of checking it out every morning, on the way in, you know? Don't you do that?"
"Waste of time," said Roger. "Like horoscopes, biorhythms, cookies with fortunes inside. They're selling fancy answers to people who can't eat it plain. Look what this one says. If that isn't—"
"I know. But have you ever noticed how it's always right? I mean, whatever it says each day seems to fit."
"It's an illusion, Joe, a projection. Let's get gone."
As far as he could see in either direction, the merchants of Mile Long Mall offered up the usual holograms of their wares. Within this window, a waiting room half-full of weary and curious shoppers reclined, their eyes lost in the oversized pages of Indects' own recruitment text, THE WAY OF THE WACH. A chance to rest your feet for free. At least they don't buttonhole you on the sidewalk and argue you to death like the Scientologists and cult evangelists. It's more like a Christian Science Reading Room, very low-key. Which is, I suppose, the way it should be—the Way of the Wach, whatever that is.
Before he left he got a good look at the day's message. It read: "TODAY YOU ARE ONE DAY CLOSER TO YOUR MEANINGLESS IMPENDING DEATH."
"Very nice," said Joe dubiously. A tremor passed between his shoulder blades. "I never noticed anything like that before. Wonder what it means?"
"Take my advice," said Roger. "Don't ask."
"Why not? You don't take that stuff seriously, do you?"
"I don't like the way some of them look when they come out of there. Their eyes are, well…"
"What?"
"It's bad for business, right next door."
"You never know," said Joe. "Nothing sells like disaster movies, for instance."
"What are you talking about?" Roger's face was uncomprehending. He gave up trying to understand his friend and looked ahead. "You're living in the past. Irwin Allen is dead. Come on. We need to lay up and talk."
"About what?"
"Nothing. Come on."
They threaded a path through the noontime foot traffic. There was Larry, gawking from the entrance to the Tiffany Twenty-in-One. He was standing beneath the marquee that advertised this week's fare. Theaters One and Two were showing Monkeyshine Memories with Sondra Locke, and a new Paul Schrader melodrama, You Can't Hide; Three and Four a pair of horror films, Wes Craven's execrable Don't Make Me Hurt You, and David Cronenberg's They. Five and Six had foreign films for the wine-and-tofu set—Bresson's incomplete The Good Thief, and Tavemier's The Running of Beasts. Seven had Peter Fonda's They Couldn't Believe Their Eyes, Eight another crowd-pleaser, Stephen King's comedy The Hoagy Man. Nine through Twenty were presently empty, having been recently recombined to accommodate the anticipated larger crowds for the next revival booking, which would be the ten-day Mitchum festival. Kicking off, Joe thought proudly, with The Wonderful Country and Fire Down Below, which he had finished restoring just last week. It was exciting. He waved.
"Hi, Lare!"
But Larry ignored him, gazing over his head to the parking lot. Joe crossed and sidled up under the awning of Moony Cob's Outback Smoking Shop.
"Something's going on out there." Larry strained his eyes. "Commotion, people yelling. Then some guy went tearing off like he had a rocket up his ass."
Roger joined them. "Must be that kid again."
"What kid?" said Joe.
"You know, the kid. He's always hanging around the crash-pad. I see him from a distance when I drive in. Never could figure what he was up to."
"Looked like he was ripping somebody off," Larry said, "the way he was shuttling ass."
"The shops, you mean?" asked Joe. "How would he get past the security tapes?"
"Cars," said Roger. "Don't ever leave your keys in the ignition."
"What would be the point?" said Joe. "He couldn't drive them out without the right Visa. If the card he sticks in the slot doesn't match, the gate won't open."
"I don't think it was a car," said Larry.
"Stuff in the cars, then," said Roger.
"Why would he be hanging around the crash-pad, in that case?" said Joe. "It won't take anything but automotive material. So he couldn't even be ripping off what people leave in their cars and selling it for scrap. Hell, that wouldn't be worth the effort, unless he's really desperate; the compactor doesn't pay jack shit. If it would take it, which it won't. It won't even take metal shopping carts. The Mall got wise to that little scam the first year, and GM reprogrammed the sensors."
"So he carries stuff out on foot," said Larry.
"I don't see how. Not with the COPters. Not if he's done it before. They would have caught him by now."
Roger was right. Already a whirling COPter had appeared in the bleached summer sky over the mirage of parking spaces. As they watched, an LAPD officer touched down on the blacktop, lowered his arm and began folding the spinning blades back into the handle of his nightstick. Baton, thought Joe. That's what they call them on TV, on T.H.U.G.S.
"He's had," said Larry.
"I can't believe I never saw him," said Joe.
"I can," said Roger. "You're always holed-up in back, playing with—working on your films."
"Speaking of which…" began Larry.
"You'll have it by the nineteenth," said Joe, "don't worry."
"I'm not worried about that. But I've been meaning to talk to you. You know, the gate wasn't up to par the last time, for the horror festival."
"You're telling me?" said Roger. "I put our cut in the bank. The autoteller flagged the account, the amount was so small. Something about a minimum balance or they cancel our VisaMall credit. Anyhow. We gotta go."
"It was the subject matter," suggested Joe. "I should have known that. But I honestly thought that there were enough people out there—"
"It's not your fault. I went along with it. But, shit, I just made the same mistake again with new product! Now I'm going to have to pull Three and Four before the week's up, guarantee or no guarantee. Golan's losing a bundle everywhere. You'd think they'd get it—you'd think I'd get it. That kind of picture's about as appealing anymore as dead babies on a stick. People want to see—"
"Right," said Roger. "Larry, we'll catch you on the way back."
"I would have booked They," said Joe.
"I know you would," said Roger.
"Who wouldn't?" said Larry. "After the Academy Awards—"
"Later," said Roger. "Lunch is only till one."
They left Larry babbling about the fickleness of the public, the unwillingness of people to leave their 'combs at night, even for a movie—especially for a movie—and so on in that vein. The last they saw of him he was climbing a stepladder to change the marquee, his head still wagging, as if trying to talk himself out of jumping.
Joe wished him luck. If he goes under, where does that leave the rest of us? The next nearest revival house was all the way out by MacArthur Park; word had it that that one was about to be subdivided into a Spanish-language multiple. Is it really so futile? wondered Joe. Do people forget so fast—all the people, everywhere in the greater L.A. basin and, one might infer, since this is the number one film market in the U.S., the whole plugged-in country? And on and on. Lately there was no end for him to this kind of thinking.
They turned in at the plate o
f steaming nachos, between Vitamin City and The Rubber Bisquit. You could almost smell the aroma. Roger passed his hand through the 'gram, winked and pantomimed sniffing his fingers. Joe's gut did a belly flop with a half gainer twist, righted itself and bobbed along on a tide of nausea. It was the processed cheese they used, he decided. It looked pale and stringy, like…what?
The Jumping Bean's lounge was dark. The waitresses wore imitation space stewardess uniforms and Aztec headbands which glittered in the strobing of a TV screen above the bar, between black velvet paintings of South American Indians in full feathered regalia. The Indians were pictured pointing solemnly toward what was supposed to be the Enterprise taking off or landing, one or the other, over Lake Titicaca. Roger led the way to a table in front, next to a window that faced the fountain.
Joe noticed the silhouette of a woman who was just now entering Indects, Inc. across the way. She was wearing the identical yellow silk blouse he had bought Rose Marie for her birthday. Probably got it at The Body Shot around the corner, he thought, same as I did. Seeing the woman, he felt his taste confirmed.
"I'm worried," said Roger, sliding over tuck-and-roll leatherette.
"So am I. The horror festival just wasn't fashionable. In fact it was distinctly unfashionable—that's the point. I understand now. People want to see what they can talk about at cocktail parties. It's that simple. And horror doesn't make for amusing conversation, apparently. Even if they're drinking Bloody Marys."
"Two Bloody Marys?" said their stewardess-waitress.
"No, no," said Roger. "Pitcher of Margaritas, two glasses. And two Specials. You serve food here in the bar, do you?"
"Yes, sir."
"As I was saying," Joe continued. "Not even Cronenberg's Oscar for Cities of the Red Night was enough to draw them in. They'd rather see more of the same. The triangular family, 'comb cohab, the ninety percent divorce rate, the Kiddie Lib Amendment—you know, stuff they can relate to without straining their imaginations. In other words, stories about themselves."
Red Dreams Page 19