“What is all that?”
“Journals. Papers. Monographs. You name it. I suppose any one of us could have an office like this, if we never threw anything away. See that cabinet against the left-hand wall? He keeps the windows open year round, and one day it fell over …”
“Are you looking for me?” Andy was calling to them from the opposite end of the hall.
She stepped back from the door, but Harry didn’t budge as Andy hustled toward them. “Of course we are. What else would we hope to find in there?”
Andy’s eyes no longer bulged as much. She supposed she was seeing his normal face. “I’ve thought of you several times since Thanksgiving, Ceinwen. I’m delighted to see you. Did you want to ask me about something?”
She opened her mouth and tried to remember a Vilma Banky movie, but Harry was on the case. “The Wind!”
“It’s actually a bit better today, Harry. I told you at the staff meeting that I need the windows cracked in there.”
“Not that wind,” said Harry, “The Wind. Seastrom. Ceinwen just saw it.”
“How absolutely wonderful. I envy you, seeing it for the first time. Where did you go?”
“The Regency.” Oh brother, here we go.
“Not bad, not a bad space at all, and they respect the speeds, although the sound system, I must say …”
“I was telling her,” said Harry, “about your poster from the film’s original release. We thought we’d stop by and see if she could have a look.”
“I don’t keep my collection here. You know that.”
“To be honest, I don’t know exactly what you do keep in there, my friend. Well,” continued Harry, as Andy’s mouth tightened, “if you’re in the office, I’m sure it’s important.”
“I could chat for a minute. If Ceinwen’s free.”
“I’m so sorry, but I have to go. It’s my day off and I have some errands.”
Andy’s eyes seemed to recede. “Some other time, then.”
Harry walked her to the elevator and gave her another squeeze, still chuckling over Andy, and told her to come back any time. She was almost all the way through the lobby when someone called, and she turned to see Andy speed-walking to the front desk. How had he gotten down that fast? Seven flights, that was a lot of stairs.
“I’m glad I caught you. I have an idea. If you’d like to see The Wind poster”—he paused a bit longer than usual—“I’d … be …”—stop, a struggle to get the next word out—“happy to have you come over and take a look. I live right down the street.”
“That’s so nice of you. I’d love to, but today—”
“Oh, I don’t mean today. Any time.” Pause. “I could serve lunch.”
She’d rather listen to Roxanne talk about rent control. Ceinwen prepared to say something about Stefan, how her roommates needed her around and would for a long time, when she thought of Andy’s office and remembered Harry saying what a movie collection the man had. Stills, posters, books, magazines, the films themselves.
He could have anything in that apartment. Nine reels of The Crowd. Or maybe something really obscure.
“Did you have a particular day in mind? Because I’m off work again tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” said Andy, “would be perfect.”
When she pushed through the revolving door, she had a pink telephone slip from the receptionist’s pad in her pocket, with “1:00 p.m., 1 Washington Square Village, Apt. 3B” written on the back.
2.
THE RADIATORS WERE BANGING. JIM WAS DRINKING HIS COFFEE IN front of the local news. “High today 23,” he announced. Ceinwen decided on tights under pants; she didn’t want to dress up for this lunch, anyway. The wind hurt her face; she stopped at two delis on the way, warming up while faking interest in the ramen selection.
She had her long velvet scarf wrapped around her head, and tried to convince herself the effect was Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago. But when it was this cold and the scarf was wrapped this close to her face, it was more like I Remember Mama. The wind tore across the driveway between the buildings until her eyes streamed. She put her head down and stared at the pavement, figuring she couldn’t collide with anybody because most people had the sense to be indoors. She was halfway to the entrance when she heard her name.
Matthew was hatless and gloveless, wearing just his coat, collar folded up to protect his neck. His nose was red and he must have been even colder than she was. He was crossing to her.
“I was just going out. I have office hours.”
“Don’t want to miss those,” she said. “You’ll ruin your ratings.”
“My hours are different this semester, the day changed,” he said. “We can walk over together, if you’d like to talk.”
He thought she’d come to see him. He looked happy. For a second, she felt such a surge of joy she could have dropped everything for five minutes spent walking with him to his office. Then another gust of wind hit her eyes, and the impulse was gone.
“I’m about to be late myself,” she said, and started to walk again.
“For what?” He’d maneuvered so she’d have to walk around him.
“I’m having lunch.”
He backed up a step, but he was still smack in front of her, the lines on his forehead deepening slightly. “I didn’t know you knew anybody else in the building. I mean, except Andy.” She stared past him at the building. He stuck his hands under his armpits and moved too close. “You’re never here to see Andy?”
“You probably got a big line of students over there already, so you better get a move on.”
She moved again and he shifted again. “I’m trying to talk to you. Have I got this right? You’re going to Andy’s flat to have lunch?”
“Are my lunches any of your business?”
“Who else is going to be there?” Like Granana asking about a Saturday night party.
“Just me,” she said. “And I have to go.”
As if to stand more casually, he shifted a leg into her path. “Now see here.” Calm, teacherly tone. “I know you’re oblivious, or so you like to pretend, but even you must have noticed how he was acting at Thanksgiving.”
“You mean before or after you invited him to sit next to me?”
“At a table with two dozen people, Ceinwen.”
Her scarf was sliding off her hair and her nose was starting to run. The longer they stayed out here the worse she was going to look. “You got some nerve, you know that?”
“I’m giving you advice. As a friend.” Slightly sharper version of the office-hours voice. She snorted, but wasn’t sure whether he thought that was just her nose. “There’s not one female postdoc at Courant who’ll let Andy into her office and close the door.”
“So that’s what, one woman?”
He didn’t like that at all. “Two. Two women with common sense.”
She yanked her scarf back up on her head and felt her hair bunch. “He’s not nearly as weird as you claim he is. He’s just this uptight little man who likes to collect movie stuff.”
“That uptight little man probably outweighs you by a good five stone.”
“God, you’re ridiculous. What, he’s going to attack me? He won’t stop talking long enough.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying you’re putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation.” He blew on his hands.
“Well aren’t you just the soul of chivalry, Mister Hill.” She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her nose.
“We’ll both freeze to death out here before you see reason,” he snapped, then stuck his hands in his pockets and shifted back to Professor Voice. “I’m not saying don’t talk to him. Talk to him at Courant or something.”
“I want to see his movie collection. Satisfied?”
“Then bring Harry.”
“He doesn’t like Harry. Jesus Christ Matthew, you’re such a priss.”
He pulled out his hands like he wanted to punch something, but all he did was lunge at her and shout. “
You haven’t the sense you were born with. How in god’s name do you manage?” She stepped back and he lunged again. “I don’t know how you hold a job. I don’t know how you pay rent. I don’t know how you cross Astor Place without fainting because you didn’t eat breakfast. You smoke a million cigarettes and you walk around in your little silver-screen fog having mental conversations with Greta Garbo or whoever the fuck is obsessing you at the moment, and common sense never once enters into anything you do.”
Seemed he’d been saving that up for some time. That was all right by her, because she’d been saving up some things, too.
“I never asked you for advice and I never will. I’m managing just fine. I make my own living and my own decisions. What the hell would you know about it, anyway? When did you ever have to work a real job?”
“Right.” He was still yelling. “Academia is the last bloody word in luxury.”
“And as for me not having common sense,” she slammed on, eager to play her trump, “who is it yelling at me at the top of his lungs practically right outside Andy’s window?”
“He can’t hear us, Ceinwen,” he said, his voice back to normal. “His apartment faces Third Street. You also have no sense of direction.”
“I know where the entrance is and I’m going in.”
She made for the door as he hollered after her, “You want a nice chat about old movies? I’ve got the perfect one. The Collector.”
She swung into the lobby and paused just inside, tossing through her bag for another tissue. The Collector. Ooh Matthew, nice work, coming up with a genuine sort-of-old psycho-kidnaps-girl movie just like that. She patted the corners of her eyes, trying not to wipe off the liner. Except Samantha Eggar is a redhead, you—
The doorman at the desk called, “Hey, you just missed him. Walked out five, maybe ten minutes ago.”
She wiped her nose, squeezed the tissue into a ball and looked at the fingermarks on it for a second until she trusted herself to speak. “I’m here for 3B.”
He was confused. “3B? In this building?”
“Yes,” she said, reminding herself it was not this man’s fault she was fantasizing about hurting one of the tenants. “3B. Evans.”
“Evans?”
Was she speaking Albanian, or what? “Evans. Andrew Evans.”
With a small, none-of-my-business head shake the man announced her and said, “Go on up.”
Her lipstick had dried out, and before she pressed the elevator button she dragged out her compact to touch it up. As she snapped the top back on the lipstick, she was certain she caught him looking at her with an expression she thought a doorman should have learned how to suppress. But it was so fast that by the time she had everything back in her bag, he appeared to be rearranging pens in his desk drawer.
The doorbell gave a muffled clang and a beaming Andy was there in seconds. The door opened directly into a huge room decorated in the same style as his office, Late Compulsive—stuffed with bookshelves, papers piled on top of file cabinets, dozens of poster tubes leaning in a corner. There was very little furniture but what little there was, was invisible, lost under towering stacks of folders.
“I use this room primarily for storage, as you see. I always say, the most precious commodity in Manhattan is space.”
“Harry says films take up a lot of space.”
“Ah. Yes. I don’t keep those here.”
There was a couch only half-covered in small mountains of paper, an old chair facing it, and a card table placed between, probably brought out of a closet for the occasion. Andy was saying he wasn’t much of a cook—just as well, he probably kept file folders in the oven—and he had ordered from Empire Szechuan, which he thought was quite good for a chain, and he hoped she liked fried rice and egg rolls. She sat on the clear half of the couch while Andy fetched the food and paper plates from the kitchen.
She’d tried to act like this wasn’t a date, but Andy was certainly working to turn it into one, fussing to get the right amount of rice on the plate, asking if she wanted chopsticks or a fork, going on about the relative merits of area takeout and delivery speeds. At least she didn’t have to say much, although his subject matter didn’t lend itself to questions. She decided to steer the conversation away from fortune cookies.
“You sure have a lot of movie stuff.” Andy floored the gas pedal before she could add a thing, telling her about a big collector’s convention near Syracuse, about some place called Ohlinger’s over on 14th and how bad their selection of silent stills was, about other collector events, about bargaining, about deals he’d gotten.
Wasn’t he going to show her anything? “So you have a poster from The Wind?”
“Oh, of course. You wanted to see the poster. I think you’ll be pleased with it, it’s very typical of the period.” He took out a wet-nap from the Empire Szechuan bag, wiped his hands and made straight for a stack of poster tubes. He pulled out the poster, held it up for her, and she leaned in to look at all the writing. She reached out to feel the paper and he pulled it back slightly. Then he rolled it back up and asked what she had seen lately. She knew he meant silents.
“The Thief of Baghdad. Anna May Wong was gorgeous, don’t you think?”
Andy went off on Raoul Walsh and was suddenly on another side of the room, taking part of a stack of folders and putting it on top of another stack, and pulling out a folder that was full of stills. He hadn’t searched at all, he just knew where it was.
“I’ll hold these up too, since you’re still eating.” He displayed the photos like flash cards, barely giving her enough time to take in Douglas Fairbanks on the flying carpet before Anna May was there in her slave costume. He put the stills back in the folder and reassembled the stack. He perched on the edge of his chair, so far toward her it seemed he might slide off.
“You know, The Eagle is on at the Thalia this weekend. Valentino and Vilma Banky, I don’t know if you remember me mentioning her.” He leaned in. “They had a magnificent screen partnership.”
“Gosh, really? I’m so disappointed. I work on the weekends, you know. Nights too.”
The doorbell sounded. Andy gave a start and Ceinwen found herself doing the same. No. Had to be the super or a neighbor or something.
Another ring. He went to the door. From where she was sitting her view was blocked by the stacks of folders, but she could hear everything, including Andy’s soft, unenthusiastic greeting. The other voice got louder as it came further into the room.
“I’m late, I know, sorry. Had to cancel office hours and couldn’t seem to get hold of Angie. Don’t know if it was lunch or she was just out.” The top of his head had appeared over the stacks. She focused fiercely on her paper plate. “Wound up going over myself, then some of them wanted to talk anyway, and I had to reschedule so they wouldn’t get themselves worked up about it. Finally put up a sign to say ‘bugger off.’ Nicely, of course.” She picked up an egg roll and took a bite. “Hello, have you been here long?”
“Ceinwen didn’t mention you were coming,” said Andy.
“We weren’t sure I could make it, were we?” She chewed. “We didn’t think you’d mind my tagging along. Ceinwen told me she was coming here to talk about silents and look at some of your, ah, holdings and I just invited myself. Couldn’t pass up a chance like that. It’s extraordinary, I never thought much about old movies until I came here, but she and Harry have me hooked. Can’t seem to get enough.”
She had spent eighteen years of her life in Yazoo City. And even if she wasn’t much good at it herself, she’d always assumed Southerners were the undefeated champions of social lying, able to tell straight-faced absolute whoppers about how the farm was doing, how the food was, how your hair looked, how your wife looked. Now she reflected, as Matthew nudged some papers aside on the couch with more deference than he’d probably show a cat, that she’d been wrong. The English swept the table.
He sat down. “Chinese?”
“It isn’t pastrami,” said Ceinwen.
She felt a little sorry for Andy. He knew this wasn’t on the level, but he didn’t have the equipment to fight off a frontal assault of British. “I only placed orders for two,” he said, “but there’s some left. Would you like a plate?”
“No idea this was a food occasion, or I wouldn’t have eaten. Had a sandwich before I left for Courant. I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as good. Did you get tea with it, by any chance?”
“No,” said Ceinwen.
“Pity. I don’t suppose you have any lying around, Andy?”
“I might.”
“Hate to be a bother.”
Pause, as Andy tried to grasp what was being asked. “You’d like me to get you some tea?”
“Super. Ceinwen, how about you?”
“No thanks.” She grabbed a box and forked some more rice onto her plate. Andy stood for a second, then headed for the kitchen.
Matthew surveyed the rows and rows of folders, the bookshelves, the poster tubes, the stacks of loose papers and magazines, and said, “This is more or less precisely what I was expecting.”
“I thought,” she whispered, “that you were expecting to find me locked in a closet.”
He’d stood up and was opening folders. “You’re not very enterprising, just sitting there with the fried rice. Have a look around, isn’t that what you came for? What’s this?” He held out a sheet of stiff paper with a picture on it.
“It’s called a lobby card.”
“Queen of Sheba. Seen that one?”
“It’s lost.” She hated to admit it, but he had a point. She should at least see what was on the bookshelves. She crossed to a point on the shelves as far from him as possible, wondered how she could manage to see Andy’s bedrooms, squelched the thought, and felt her inward shudder turn into a burst of fury. “How was St. Moritz?” she hissed. She looked at his profile and told herself she couldn’t stand the sight of it. “Snow nice and deep? Chalet comfy?”
Missing Reels Page 16