Night Film

by Marisha Pessl

  Staring across the platform, the neon light flat and bright, I wondered if I could manifest through sheer will her boots, her red-and-black coat—if she might come one last time, so I could get a clear glimpse of her face—decode, once and for all, the truth behind her.

  But there was no one.

  Even the sci-fi movie poster that had been there before—the sprinting man with his eyes scribbled out—even he was gone now, replaced with an ad for a romantic comedy starring Cameron Diaz.

  She just doesn’t get it, read the tagline.

  Maybe I should take the hint.

  113

  Days later, I packed away the Cordova research—what was left of it, anyway—shoved it back inside the cardboard box and the box inside the closet, Septimus quietly looking on.

  I took a mountain of dirty clothes to the dry cleaner, including Brad Jackson’s herringbone coat. But then, eyeing the sad thing slumped over the counter under piles of my button-downs, I had the sudden paranoid thought that it was the last shred of evidence, my last tie to the insanity of The Peak, and if Brad’s coat were cleaned and steam-pressed, encased in plastic with a paper draped over the shoulders reading, We Love Our Customers!—gone, too, would be my recollections. So I awkwardly pulled the filthy thing back out of the pile, and, returning home, shoved it in the closet behind Ashley’s red one, and shut the door.

  I wanted to see Sam. I wanted to hear her voice, have her hang heavily on my arm and squint up at me—but Cynthia never returned my calls, not once. I wondered if her silence meant she was working with her lawyers to petition for a new custody arrangement, as she’d threatened to do in the emergency room. Finally, my old divorce attorney called with this very news.

  “They set a court date. She wants to restrict visitation.”

  “Whatever she wants.” This appeared to jolt him, as simple acts of kindness did to attorneys.

  “But you might never see your daughter.”

  “I want Sam to be safe and happy. We’ll leave it at that.”

  I did secretly go uptown to check on her, one late December afternoon. The day was graying from the cold, giant snowflakes drifting, bewildered, through the air, forgetting to fall. I didn’t want Sam to see me, so I remained behind a few parked cars and a FreshDirect truck, watching the gleaming black doors of her school opening, the bundled-up children in coats spilling out onto the sidewalks. To my surprise, Cynthia was there waiting, and after she tucked Sam’s hands into black mittens, they took off.

  Sam was wearing a new blue coat. Her hair was longer than I remembered, secured in a ponytail under a black velvet hat. She looked more mature, too, quite seriously informing Cynthia of something about her day. I was overcome. Because I saw, suddenly, how it would always be for me, Sam’s life unfolding like slides in an old projector I’d always be clicking through in the dark, stunning leaps forward in time—but never the uncut reel.

  But she was happy. I could see that. She was perfect.

  When they crossed the street, I could make out only their blue and black coats. A surge of yellow cabs and buses flooded Fifth Avenue, and then I couldn’t see them anymore.

  114

  It arrived on January 4: an email from Nora inviting me to her New York theatrical debut at the Flea Theater in that gender-bending off-off-Broadway production of Hamlette. She’d done well in her audition and had won the lottery for all New York actors—an actual paying part. Granted, she was only Bernarda, one of two Elsinore castle guards (renamed from Bernardo) who appeared solely in act one, scene one, and she received just $30 per performance—but still.

  “I’m a real actress now,” she wrote.

  I went opening night, in a small theater. As soon as the lights went down and the heavy black curtain was noisily hauled aside, there was Nora in blue light, her blond hair in two long braids, climbing up to a rickety castle lookout tower made out of plywood. She was surprisingly good—infusing all of her lines with the comical, wide-eyed guilelessness I’d heard so many times. When she encountered Hamlette’s mom’s ghost (who in a strange costume choice was wearing a garter belt and white teddy and thus came off as a strung-out spirit who’d sauntered in from not purgatory but the Crazy Horse in Vegas) and Nora tripped and stumbled backward, naïvely announcing, “ ’Tis here!” and “It was about to speak, when the cock crew!” the audience erupted with delighted laughter.

  The play ran without intermission. When it was finally over—after Ophelio offed himself by throwing back too many Xanax, Hamlette finally had the nerve to off her bitchy stepmom, and, at long last, Fortinbrassa and her army of gal pals arrived fashionably late at Elsinore wearing nylon miniskirts straight from the Ice Capades—I remained in my seat.

  When the theater emptied, I was surprised to see someone else had remained behind, too.

  Hopper. Of course.

  He was sitting in the last row in the very back. He must have snuck in after the lights went down.

  “McGrath.”

  Like me, he’d brought Nora a bouquet of flowers, red roses. He’d gotten a haircut. And though he was still wearing his gray wool coat and Converse sneakers, he had on a white button-down shirt, which looked as if he hadn’t found it on the floor of his apartment, the circles no longer carved so deeply under his eyes.

  “How’ve you been?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Pretty good.”

  “You look good. Have you quit smoking?”

  “Not yet.” He was about to add something, but his gaze moved behind me, and I turned to see Nora stepping out from the curtain. I was relieved to see she was still sporting the old transvestite’s wardrobe—black leggings, one of Moe’s purple tuxedo shirts—that she hadn’t changed. Because New York could do that to you in no time, streamlining and sanding, polishing and buffing you into something that looked good, but like everyone else.

  Nora gave us the tightest of hugs and waved goodbye to her cast mates.

  “Bye, Riley! You were amazing tonight!” (Riley, a pretty bleached blonde, had played Hamlette and delivered “To Be or Not to Be” with all the gravitas of wondering, “To Text or Not to Text.”) “Drew, you left your hat on the prop table.”

  Nora, beaming, amped up on theater energy, pulled on her coat and suggested we all go grab a bite. As we exited the theater, she linked her arms through ours, striding down the sidewalk—Dorothy reunited with Scarecrow and Tin Man.

  “Woodward, how’ve you been? I missed you. Oh, wait. How’s Septimus?”

  “Immortal, as usual.”

  “You both brought flowers? You guys got chivalrous all of a sudden?”

  We went to The Odeon, a French brasserie on West Broadway open late. We piled into the booth, Nora staring at our faces like they were foreign newspapers she’d finally got her hands on, filled with the latest news from home.

  “You both look good. Oh.” She yanked off a glove to display the inside of her right wrist, across it a small tattoo of three words.

  Do I DARE?

  “So I never forget her.” She bit her bottom lip, glancing nervously at Hopper. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  He shook his head. “Ash would have loved it.”

  “I went to Rising Dragon for the tattoo. But that guy we talked to, Tommy? He moved back to Vancouver, so this other guy did it. It hurt like nothing. But it was worth it.”

  I’d completely forgotten Tommy, the tattoo artist. Then Gallo had sent him on his merry way, too.

  Nora took my startled look for disapproval. “I knew you wouldn’t like it. But it’s tiny. And I can cover it up with makeup. And before my wedding I can always get it lasered.”

  “What wedding?” I demanded.

  “One day. If I have one. But Woodward, will you give me away? I was thinking that I didn’t have anyone to do it.”

  “Yes. Provided it’s twenty years from now.”

  We ended up staying out until five in the morning, getting drunk and loud, leaving Odeon for some unmarked speakeasy in a Chinatown Laundromat where H
opper was a regular; leaving that for an after-hours club where Nora’s friend Maxine was a hostess; leaving that for some dive bar on Essex Street to play pool and take over the jukebox—playing Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (“This is our anthem,” Nora said, as Hopper, displaying remarkable dancing skills, spun her around the room). They told me what had happened in their lives since those two months we’d spent holed up together, chasing the truth about Ashley—and Cordova.

  Nora was fully committed to conquering off-off-Broadway—fitting in auditions posted in Backstage with a full-time job at Healthy Bakes. (Healthy Bakes, the brainchild of Josephine, Nora’s hippie landlord, was a highly appetizing vegan, sugar-and-gluten-free, macrobiotic cupcake shop in the East Village.) Nora showed us her new head shots, which featured her eyeing us over her shoulder, her hair straightened and cascading. Nora Edge Halliday, the picture announced in elaborate cursive. If the headshot had a voice, it would be a husky British whisper on Masterpiece Theatre.

  “Do you really need the Edge?” I asked her. “Nora Halliday is more than enough.”

  “The Edge gives it an edge,” said Hopper.

  Nora lifted her chin. “You’re outnumbered, Woodward. As usual.”

  She leaned over the pool table and, squinting with concentration, shot the cue ball. Three solids ricocheted into opposite pockets. Apparently, there was a billiards room at Terra Hermosa she’d never told me about.

  “I figure I’ll give it a good ten years to try and make it big,” she went on, moving around the table to line up her next shot. “Then I’m getting out while I still can. I’m going to buy a farm with hills and donkeys. Have some kids. You’ll both come visit. We could have reunions. Wherever in the world we are, we’ll come together this one amazing day.”

  “I like it,” said Hopper.

  “I have a boyfriend named Jasper,” she added.

  “Jasper?” I said. “He sounds like he highlights his hair.”

  “He’s a first-class person. You’d like him.”

  “How old?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “But an old twenty-two?”

  She nodded and glanced away, suddenly shy, and stepped around the table so I couldn’t see her face.

  Hopper, as it turned out, had been about to leave New York altogether when he’d received Nora’s email, so he delayed his departure by a week to have this last chance to see the two of us. He’d given up his apartment. He was heading to South America.

  “South America?” asked Nora, as if he’d said he was going to the moon.

  “Yeah. I’m going to find my mom.”

  In typical Hopper fashion, he chose not to elaborate further on this tantalizing premise, though I remembered something he’d said about his mom, that she was involved in some strange missionary work, the afternoon I’d first talked to him in his apartment.

  Nora nibbled her thumbnail, perched on the corner of the pool table.

  “And after that what are you going to do?” she asked.

  “After that …” He smiled. ”Something really good.”

  We ordered shots of Patrón and danced and reloaded the jukebox—my old man vintage music, as Nora called it, The Doors, Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” and Elvis Costello’s “Beyond Belief” interspersed with Hopper’s hip selections like Beach House’s “Real Love” and M83’s “Skin of the Night.”

  At every moment, I felt Ashley was with us, the invisible fourth member of our little party. I sensed we were all acutely aware of her, though we didn’t need to mention her by name. It was obvious Nora and Hopper had resolved her life and death in their heads. They believed in her without question, without doubt. She’d made the world all right for them, even better. They still believed the myth, I reasoned, the myth of the devil’s curse. They were still living in an enchanted world—Ashley, not struck with cancer, but a wild avenging angel, and Cordova, not catatonic in a nursing home, but an evil king who’d fled to the unknown. For the rest of their lives, they’d have this magical reality to turn to when their car keys inexplicably moved across the room, when they read stories about children who went missing without a trace, when someone broke their heart for no good reason.

  But of course, they’d think. It’s the magic.

  It felt as if we’d been to war together. Deep in a jungle, alone, I had relied on them, these strangers. They’d held me up in ways only people could. When it was over, an ending that never felt like an ending, only an exhausted draw, we went our separate ways. But we were bonded forever by the history of it, the simple fact they’d seen the raw side of me and me of them, a side no one, not even closest friends or family had ever seen before, or probably ever would.

  And in between the laughter and the jokes, the music, a long stretch of silence fell over us. We were sitting side by side on a wooden bench underneath a dartboard and a Coors Light neon sign. I saw the moment for what it was—the chance to tell them the truth.

  I stared at Hopper’s profile, his head tipped way back against the wall, the gold strands of Nora’s hair stuck to her flushed cheek, the words shouting in my head.

  You can’t imagine what she hid from us. It was the ultimate triumph of life over death—never to give in to her illness, never to stop living.

  It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Ashley had not been so delusional in the last days of her life, a truth Inez Gallo had been so eager that I accept. Maybe she, displaying that searing intuition for people and a heart not even Gallo could take away from her—maybe she’d somehow intended this moment. Perhaps she’d planned with her death, the three of us would find each other. It was why she chose the warehouse. She knew I’d go there looking for clues—and encounter Hopper who’d be wondering about the return address on the envelope. And why else would she leave Nora her coat?

  I realized the moment had drifted away. Hopper rolled off the bench, shuffling across the bar to put another song on the jukebox, which had gone silent, and Nora went off in search of the bathroom.

  I remained where I was. That had to be it.

  I’d tell them both the truth one day. But now, tonight, they could keep their myth.

  Hours later, the bar was closing, turning up glaring lights, erasing the mirage of forever. It was time to go. I was bombed. Outside, on the sidewalk, I embraced the two of them, announcing to the empty city—New York City finally a little drowsy and at a loss for words—they were two of the best people I’d ever met.

  “We’re family!” I shouted at the walk-ups, my voice half swallowed by the deserted street.

  “We heard ya, Aretha,” said Hopper.

  “But we are,” Nora said. “We always will be.”

  “With you two in it?” I went on. “This world has nothing to worry about! You hear me?” Nora, giggling, put her arm around me, trying to pry me off the telephone pole I was hugging like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain.

  “You’re wasted,” she said.

  “Of course I’m wasted.”

  “It’s time to go home.”

  “Woodward never goes home.”

  Filing down the sidewalk, we fell silent, knowing it was coming within minutes, our parting, knowing we might not see each other for a long time.

  We hailed a cab. That’s what you did in New York at the close of a night, cramming together into your filthy yellow stagecoach with the faceless chauffeur, who delivered you, one by one, relatively unscathed, to your quiet street. The night would be filed away somewhere, one day brought out and dusted off, remembered as one of the best moments. We piled in, Nora in the middle, her now-exhausted roses slung over her knees. Hopper was crashing on a friend’s couch on Delancey Street.

  “Right here,” he said to the driver, tapping the glass.

  The cab pulled over, and he turned to me, extending his hand.

  “Keep looking for the mermaids,” he told me in a hoarse voice. He lowered his head so I wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes. “Keep fighting for them.”

&n
bsp; I nodded and hugged him as hard as I could. He then kissed Nora gently on her forehead and climbed out. He didn’t immediately go inside, but stood on the sidewalk watching us drive away, a dark figure drenched in orange streetlight. Nora and I watched out the back windshield—the moving picture we had to keep our eyes on, reluctant to blink or breathe, as it’d become only a memory in seconds.

  He held up his left hand to us, a wave and a salute. And the taxi rounded the corner.

  “Now we’re heading to Stuyvesant Street where it intersects East Tenth,” I told the driver. “Close to Saint Marks.”

  Nora turned to me, eyes wide.

  “You told me where you live,” I said.

  “I didn’t. I purposefully didn’t.”

  “But you did, Bernstein. You’re getting absentminded in your old age.”

  She huffed, crossing her arms. “You spied on me.”

  “Nope.”

  “You did. I can tell.”

  “Please. I have better things to do with my time than worry about Bernsteins.”

  She scowled, but when the taxi pulled over in front of the brownstone she didn’t move, only stared ahead.

  “You won’t forget me?” she whispered.

  “It’d be physically impossible.”

  “You promise?”

  “You should really think about coming with a warning Do-Not-Remove-This-Tag. You’ll fall for her against your will, like it or not.”

  “You’ll be all right?”

  She turned to me, really asking it, worried.

  “Of course. And so will you.”

  She nodded, as if trying to convince herself, and then suddenly she smiled as if thinking of an old joke I’d made, one she was finding funny only now. She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. And then, as if some spell were about to break, she streaked out of the cab, door slamming, up the stoop with her leaden purse and arms full of roses.