by Kris Ripper
I was in a strange mood Saturday. Contemplative, quiet, wishing I could be alone with my thoughts. It was almost impossible to drag myself into my clothes, face the front door, the stairs, the exterior door, where I hesitated, almost tempted to find someone to cover my shift. At lunch I’d found myself absently glancing at Togg’s site, which of course had no new updates, and it spoiled the rest of the afternoon for me.
Permanency. No new updates ever. Because the man behind the site was dead.
On a normal night I might have been able to kick the dark edge to my mood, except that night’s movie was Suspicion, and thinking about Hitchcock made me think about Philpott, whose favorite Hitch/Grant collaboration had been Notorious. I wondered what he’d thought of Suspicion, which predated Notorious by five years, and was a thematically different role for Grant.
None of it should have ended up in my speech, but I found myself standing at my podium explaining that I’d decided to dedicate this showing to Anderson Philpott, who’d liked both Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant, but who, I felt certain, would have preferred the original ending of Suspicion to the one they invented to save Grant’s image.
“Come see me afterward if you want to know how the film was supposed to end before the studio decided against it,” I said. “Enjoy.”
It had either been the perfect thing to say or a terrible thing to say; more people stayed and I ended up doing a sort of impromptu lecture in the lobby. Even the kids closing concessions seemed distracted by my rambling about the ways the film was different than the novel, the studio’s considerations for Cary Grant’s image (he was still under contract to them at the time), and the somewhat muddy facts of who actually made the call to change the ending.
So many people stayed to chat that I only got to see Keith and Josh for a moment as they were saying good-bye. Keith leaned in and whispered, “I’ll text you.”
Did he mean later that night? Later that week? I couldn’t ask, of course, so I nodded and smiled and turned back to whomever I was talking to.
Ed lingered to tell me he was touched by my dedicating the movie to Philpott. Obie and Emerson stood to the side eating the last of their popcorn until I had a second. When they approached, I saw why.
“This has been a shitty week, but I got a lot of work done.” Obie handed me the tie he was holding.
It looked black, but up close it was more indigo. Little lights flashed in from the edges, as if it were a catwalk.
“It’s not super on the nose, but it reminded me of you anyway.”
Clearly silk. Like all of Obie’s work, it looked like something from a fancy department store, not something he’d put together in his living room. I loosened the tie I was wearing and blessed whatever instinct I’d had earlier to wear purple.
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“He knows he doesn’t have to,” Emerson said. “He wants to try it on. And anyway, I don’t know dick about color, but I bet it’ll look great with that shirt.”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
It did. I could tell by glancing down, though I looked forward to getting in front of a mirror.
“What do I owe you? This is fantastic, Obie.”
“Oh, nothing. That’s stress tie-making there. I’m glad to be able to give some away.”
“You shouldn’t be giving them away.”
Emerson offered a grunt in agreement. “This is what we keep telling him. He has a PayPal thing on his site, FYI.”
Obie elbowed him.
“Thank you,” I told Emerson, making a mental note to transfer money into the account later. “Did you guys like the movie?”
“I liked the movie,” Obie said. “He wants to go home and see if the original ending is available online anywhere.”
“Of course, you’d have to know which of the supposed original endings you were looking for,” I said. “But good luck.”
I found Hugh looking at the White Christmas poster and almost didn’t say hello, which would have been rude, since he’d clearly lingered to talk to me.
“It suits you, you know. Talking to people.”
I rolled my eyes. Neither of us had siblings, but our families had known one another for a long time. He’d always been a little older, a little more detached and interesting. As a kid, I’d followed him around like a puppy whenever he was in the theater. When I was a teenager I’d wanted to talk like him, weirdly archaic inflections and cadences.
“I don’t know how it can possibly suit me when I hate it so much.”
He smiled, turning away from the poster. “Genetics, possibly. You’re sounding more comfortable than you did a few weeks ago.”
“I must be doing all right. I’m not as exhausted afterward.”
“Good.”
He didn’t speak again, but he kept looking at me.
“You really think I’m good at this?”
“Absolutely. Not a doubt in my mind, Cameron. It seems as if you spent thirty years getting to know yourself, and now that you do, you’re ready to take your place.”
“And my place is the theater in this analysis?”
“It’s wherever you want it to be. Whether or not that’s the theater is a question you have to ask yourself.” He tapped the frame of the poster. “I came that year, you know. First time since Mom died. Your mom gave me a huge hug and told me how happy she was to see me, and if I ever needed anything to call. And your dad made a show of shaking my hand, but he couldn’t help himself, so he hugged me too.”
“Did he cry?”
“He was a bit teary. You had the night off, if I recall correctly. You were reportedly at home juggling and muttering to yourself about what movies were best for spring.”
“Juggling is good for thinking,” I said.
“The car accident was three weeks later, wasn’t it?”
“Right after Christmas, yeah.” I sucked in a breath, and he reached out to put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m glad you said it directly. Leaving it unsaid is worse.”
“I can generally be counted upon to say things. You look good, Cameron. This is your domain, and you are certainly the heir to both of your parents.”
“Thanks. You coming back again next week?”
“You’ll be showing The Philadelphia Story?”
“No, next week is Monkey Business. The Philadelphia Story is the following week.”
“Ah. In that case, I’ll be back in two weeks.”
“I’ll see you then, Hugh. Say hello to your husband for me.”
He smiled. “I will.”
He was right. That was the kind of thing my parents would say. They’d always remembered to ask after husbands and wives and children. They’d always remembered to ask Mildred about her aunt, not her parents. They’d always remembered to ask Obie what he was painting or drawing or making. I’d never heard them slip up and ask after someone who had died (a fear I constantly had).
This was the fifth week of the film series, and while it hadn’t doubled movie attendance by any means, I could honestly say I was more comfortable now making small talk. I recognized more people, even on days that weren’t Saturday. For all those years I’d thought that maybe the rest of my family had a gift, a knack, for knowing people, that it was a skill I didn’t have, but now I had to wonder if by hiding in the safety of the ticket booth, I’d never tested myself. Sure, I knew our once-a-week regulars, but there were other people, too, who came frequently enough that it wasn’t odd if I was a bit more familiar with them.
After all the stories people told me about moments my parents made them feel important just by looking them in the eye and saying, “How’s your grandma?” or “I heard you got a new car,” you’d think it wouldn’t have taken me so long to realize that that was the way to keep the theater alive. The film series was only a vehicle to do the other thing.
Armed with this stunning realization, I lingered, resentment-free, with my stragglers, and actually enjoyed small talk without trying to make it into anything else.
Cameron: Probably. But I’d rather not.
Keith: Josh says I’m not allowed to kill people, even if they deserve it.
Cameron: Who are you trying not to kill?
Keith: Merin’s parents. But they SO deserve it.
Keith: Not joking.
Keith: They’re fucking horrible.
Keith: And we said Merin could stay with us, but the parents said no. Just to be dicks.
Keith: Oh. Josh says he thinks they were being homophobes. More than dicks. Or maybe they were being homophobic dicks.
Keith: They already said Merin can’t work here anymore, but we’re all ignoring that. They can’t do anything about it since M is eighteen.
Cameron: Why doesn’t Merin move out?
Keith: Because. I think maybe douche bag asshole parents still feel more parenty to M than, you know, supportive people with boundaries.
Keith: M says to wait until graduation. I had to walk away. M&J are still talking.
Cameron: You all right?
Keith: Fine. I’m making sandwiches. Well. I will be, when I’m done venting at you.
Keith: Sorry.
Cameron: No need to apologize. I don’t mind being vented at.
Cameron: I’m off at eight. Do you want me to bring dinner over to the center?
Keith: That sounds amazing. I’ll see you then.
I’d intended to pick up pizza or something, but I was in the grocery store for almond milk, to which I had an unfortunate addiction, and ended up collecting a sort of picnic of foods: French bread, grapes, two types of cheese, olives, and salami. I gathered roasted red pepper hummus and a bag of precut broccoli and cauliflower, then hesitated over an avocado and rejected it because it wasn’t nearly ripe enough to eat right away. I threw in chips and salsa at the last second and handed over my single cloth bag at checkout (which was almost not up to the job; I’d really only gone in for almond milk and bananas).
Of course, by the time I made it to the Harbor District, I’d decided I should probably go down the street and pick up something to order at one of the trendy little bistros on the far side of Water Street, where the city had been repainting and rebuilding and reinvigorating the neighborhood. But I didn’t feel like braving the lights and cocktail dresses, so I carefully picked up my bag and made my way into the center.
Merin was sweeping the floor of the kitchen when I settled everything on the counter.
“Dinner?”
“They fed me already.” After a second I heard the broom stop moving. “What’d you bring?”
“I honestly don’t know. I just started putting things in my basket and now I guess we’ll find out if any of it’s dinner.”
“You went to the store hungry, didn’t you?”
“In my defense, I only went in for bananas and almond milk.”
“What’s wrong with regular milk?”
I unloaded everything except the almond milk. “Nothing, if you like it. But at some point I realized it was basically the same thing as breast milk, except for cows, and it grossed me out, so I never drank it again.”
Merin’s eyes widened. “Oh sick. That’s disgusting.”
“What’s disgusting?” Josh asked, coming out from the office. “Oh damn. Look at all this.”
“Drinking breast milk is disgusting.”
“Um.” Josh picked through the groceries. “Is breast milk on the menu? Because if so, I pass.”
“I have almond milk, so no.”
Merin, face still twisted, shook his head. “Jesus. I can’t believe I never thought about it like that. You totally ruined milk for me.” He shot me one last disgusted glance and went back to sweeping. (It couldn’t be convenient to go around all day every day with a big, bulky parka on. But if the goal was to hide any semblance of a body beneath it, I had to admit it was doing its job.)
“You want a ride home tonight?” Josh asked him.
“Nah. Might as well put it off as long as possible. Plus, I’ll pass Sammy’s on the way. If he’s up, maybe I’ll go in and screw up milk for him.” He dumped the dustbin. “I’m saying bye to Keith.”
Josh waved, already opening the chips. “This is a feast.”
Even the way he opened a bag of chips was graceful, controlled. I fought a flush and made myself look away. “It’s not that much. I probably should have picked up something easy, but I was in the grocery store already and some of this started to sound good.”
“I’m definitely not complaining. Let me grab a cutting board and some knives and stuff.”
Between us, we had the food organized and mid-prep by the time Keith and Merin came back out from the office. Merin suffered to be hugged at the door and mumbled, “Lock up behind me” as he pulled the big slider shut. Keith locked it.
“Should I not be thinking of Merin as ‘he’?” I asked. “Merin reads as ‘he’ to me.”
“Merin should read as ‘he,’” Josh said.
“But when we offered—” Keith began.
“We offered, and it sounded like a favor, so Merin said no. But Cam’s not doing a favor, it’s an organic thing.”
Keith sighed, leaning against the counter. “It’s fucking complicated. But I guess I don’t think it hurts anything if you use ‘he’ since that’s totally what Merin secretly wants. If he just fucking told us that, we could help.”
“Babe, we can’t help everything. But you’re right. Maybe we start doing it subtly and let Merin get used to it. I mean, at this point I have to correct myself not to say ‘he.’”
“Or tell Jaq to stop saying ‘she’ all the time. Seriously.”
“She’s trying. She said it’s hard because when she’s got Merin in class she can’t switch pronouns from what everyone else is using.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Josh’s jaw tightened. “Because Merin would kill her.”
The words were so blatant they took my breath away. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Sorry.” He glanced over, toward the door, then back at me. “I think the problem is that the second he asks for it, the second he admits it’s important, it exposes too much that he can’t take back.”
“And it’s too revealing,” Keith added. “Asking for what you need always feels way too revealing. Or maybe I’m, like, projecting or something. Anyway.” He reached out for a grape. “Yum. I love every single thing I’m looking at right now. Except green olives. Yuck.”
“More for Cam and me.” Josh opened the jar. “Mm, delicious olives. You know what I should do? I should make you hold olives in various locations on your body until I feel like eating them off your skin.”
It was so unexpected, on the heels of such a serious subject, that the resulting full-body flush I experienced felt like an acute medical condition.
Keith responded by smacking his arm. “Twisted bastard.”
“I really am.”
After a moment, apparently realizing that I’d gone perfectly still, like a statue in the wake of Medusa, both of them looked at me.
“This one time,” Keith said, “he wrote a business letter on my chest with chocolate syrup.”
“Ha, yeah, that was hot. Keith had a crush on the dude I was writing to.”
“I did not.”
“You did too. You liked his mustache.”
Keith hit him again. “It was a handlebar mustache. I mean, how often do you see that in the wild, right? Plus, he was cool.”
“He was cool. Here, try some salami.”
“And that’s not a sex joke?” Keith took the slice, pairing it with cheese and a disc of bread I’d just sawn off the loaf. “Oh my god. We are kings right now. This is so delicious.”
“It really is.” Josh and I traded and I added a couple of olives to my sandwich.
The salt of the olives, the creaminess of the cheese, the bite of the salami. I’d done good. I chewed slowly, trying to enjoy every bit of it.
Keith
moaned. “This is amazing. Why do we never think to eat like this?”
“Well, if I plugged this into my app, it’d probably tell me it has about a thousand grams of fat in it.” Josh took another bite. “Mm. Worth it, though.”
“Like you need to worry about fat,” Keith mumbled, reaching for another slice of bread. “Maybe I should eat like this all the time. It’d make me buff.”
“If you lifted weights,” I mused. “Though this isn’t particularly high in protein, I don’t think.”
Keith raised his eyebrows. “Do you lift weights?”
“I don’t—I’m out of the habit. But in the past I’ve actually done a little bit of weight lifting.”
“Josh does.”
Josh obediently posed with his arms out and upraised, one still holding a hummus-dipped piece of cauliflower. “Three times a week, no excuses.”
“And he runs, too.” Keith smiled at his boyfriend. “Hottie.”
“You’re only with me for my looks.”
“I think we’ve pretty much proved that isn’t true.”
We continued with our snacks, sharing stories from the week. They didn’t fill me in further on the Merin situation, and I didn’t ask. When we’d made mincemeat of the food, Keith shook the crumbs off his hands and proposed a drive to the pier.
“You know it’s about to be freezing out there, right?” Josh asked.
“I know. We’ll bring coats. I just want to take a walk and like . . . feel something right now.”
Josh glanced at me.
I shrugged. “I don’t have a coat.”
“We have extras, as long as you don’t mind wearing a donated coat.”
I didn’t mind a donated coat.
We took the Volvo, which was bigger than Keith’s Golf.
“You know you’re serious about someone when you give up your car because he drives everywhere,” Josh said from the backseat.
“Remember I tried to talk you out of it? Then we needed to pay rent.”
“We mostly had rent money. And my parents would have fed us . . .”
“Yeah.” Keith looked in my direction, which I noted as I headed northwest on Water Street. “Josh’s parents are amazing. I mean, you met them. You can kind of feel how awesome they are.”