Missing Reels

by Farran S Nehme

  The sun on the blinds was heating up the room, and when she awoke she raised them and opened the window. A breeze curled in, half warm, half cool. The clock said 11:38, and spring was here.

  The phone rang. She stuck her head out the window and breathed deep. It was probably for Jim or Talmadge, and they’d have left for work. Two more rings and the machine kicked in.

  “Ceinwen, pick up the phone. Now. This is important …” She picked up just as Matthew was saying “Where are you?”

  “Hi, I just woke—”

  “Get over here.” Panic. Matthew, in a panic. “They’re throwing them out.”

  She tried to walk with the phone to her room but the cord was tangled. “The films? Andy had them in storage?”

  “Yes of course the sodding films. All of them. The fire department is here and they’re going to throw them out.”

  “What, without—”

  “Don’t dawdle, don’t bother with make-up, don’t stand around deciding what to wear.”

  “Without even knowing what’s there?”

  “Stop talking to me. Get something on your back and come now.” He hung up.

  It couldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it happen. She threw on the first clothes she found and checked her purse for her keys. At the bottom next to them was Fred’s card.

  “Brody Institute for Cinephilia and Preservation, may I help you?”

  “I need to speak to Fred Creighton. Tell him it’s Ceinwen Reilly calling.”

  “Oh my goodness. Did he not get back to you? That Fred. He’s in the lab again.”

  “Get him out, please, this is an emergency.”

  “An emergency? Is someone sick?”

  “Tell him,” she yelled, “that this is a film preservation emergency, that some things may be lost forever and I need to talk to him.”

  She couldn’t tell if she’d scared Kelly or just puzzled the hell out of her. “All right. Hold on.” Ceinwen lit a cigarette. She tried to untangle the phone cord, but she’d have to unplug it to get the knots out. A film preservation emergency, wow, that was inspired. Nobody except another freak like her was going to be alarmed by that. She should have said she was bleeding to death. This is Ceinwen Reilly, I just cut myself on a reel of Four Devils …

  “Hello?”

  “Fred, thank god. I need you to come down to NYU.”

  “I was going to call you back—”

  “There’s a bunch of films that a collector was storing at Washington Square Village, and the fire department’s been called, and they’re going to throw them away.” Silence. Not even an “um.” “Did you hear me? I know for a fact that there’s some rare stuff down there and the fire department is going to throw it all out. You need to get down there.” She added, “Please.”

  “You’re, um, sure about this?”

  “I’m telling you, these are silents, I know these could be important films, and they’re just going to get rid of them, I don’t even know where they want to take them …”

  “Okay, okay. Calm, okay? Stay calm.” She couldn’t find the Kleenex or the toilet paper. “I’m, uh, not sure how much I can argue with the fire department, but I’ll go down there. Um, are we talking a lot of stuff?”

  “Probably a whole lot. Nitrate.”

  “Whoa. Nitrate? In Washington Square Village?”

  “Yes, Fred. That’s why they’re going to throw it out.”

  “Hey, don’t get mad, I’m on your side.” Silence again.

  “Fred? Are you leaving now?”

  “This, um, sounds like a legal thing.”

  “Hell yes, it’s a legal thing.”

  “Okay. So I should get Isabel.”

  “Bring anybody. Bring Kelly if you want.”

  “I don’t think I can. Somebody’s gotta stay at the front desk.”

  “Fred …”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming. Stall ’em for half an hour or so. I’ll be there.”

  On the last flight to the lobby she slipped, almost fell, discovered she was still holding her burnt-out cigarette, and tossed it away. On Avenue B she saw a cab, which was miraculous, and ran into the street hollering “TAXI!,” willing to play chicken if that was what it took to get him to stop. She slammed the door getting in and barked “West Third and Mercer.” And added something she’d always wanted to: “Step on it.”

  He couldn’t pull up next to the complex because a fire truck was blocking one lane, lights flashing. She paid up, overtipping, because she didn’t want to wait for change, and because he did kind of step on it. She bolted down Third Street.

  There was a crowd of people around the entrance. Firemen in their gear were bringing out reels and climbing the stairs to the garden, putting the films in the middle under a tarp. Another fireman was keeping people away. Matthew was off to one side, pacing. Harry was arguing with a man in a jacket and tie and a fireman’s hat.

  “You’re approaching this the wrong way,” Harry was saying. “This isn’t just a bunch of old chemicals nobody wants. Think of it more like, the Mona Lisa happens to be really flammable.”

  “I’m approaching this like there is a major, potentially explosive fire hazard in a building of almost a thousand residents, that’s how I’m approaching it.”

  “I agree, Captain, there’s no question of leaving it here.”

  “Thank you so much, professor.”

  “All we’re asking for is adequate time to get these films to a place that can handle them.” He gave Ceinwen a brief wave.

  “Unless you’ve got somebody lined up, as in this minute, that’s exactly what I plan to do.” She was trying to interrupt but they were going at each other too fast.

  “You may not be aware of this, but we do have a film department here at the university. Rather a well-known one in fact. And I’ve placed a call to Paul Becker, the department head.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He’s out. So then I tried to call William Everson, he’s over at—”

  “I have somebody coming,” Ceinwen finally shouted over Harry. “From the Brody.”

  “And what in the almighty hell,” said the fire marshal wearily, “is the Brody?”

  “The Brody Institute for Cinephilia and Preservation,” said Ceinwen, trying to make it sound like a big deal. “I’ve already called them and they’re coming down to see what they can do. They have a lot of experience handling nitrate. Safely. They can take it and store it, they have a whole facility uptown.” The marshal wasn’t looking impressed, so she added, “State of the art.”

  That made him no happier. “And when are these people arriving?”

  “They should be here any minute.”

  “They better be. And they better have some credentials, and some preparation, and some way to transport these things. Because in one hour, we’re sticking it all in barrels of water, it’s going in a fireproof truck, and we’re driving it out to a hazardous-waste dump.”

  “But not all of it’s nitrate,” Harry was protesting as she turned and ran over to Matthew. She could hear the marshal saying, “Look, professor, I know a lot of it is, and I’m not sorting through a couple of hundred goddamn film canisters …”

  Matthew pulled her over to a bench, away from the crowd.

  “Fred’s coming,” she announced, to show she was on top of the situation.

  “Super,” he said. “That’s all sorted then.”

  She scowled. “He’s bringing Isabel, okay? You at least respect Isabel?”

  “I’m scared to death of her, if you consider that respect.” He was watching Harry and the fire marshal, still at it.

  “Where’s Andy?”

  “He’s upstairs. Crying, I think. He got so upset he couldn’t talk anymore. I woke up this morning around eleven, I was awake all night thinking about that tinderbox in the basement, and then I hear this huge racket and there’s a fire truck outside. I went down to have a look, along with everyone else in the building. And the firemen and some NYU security people wer
e coming out of the basement and arguing with Andy. At first he was saying there wasn’t any nitrate, then they showed him a reel—”

  “Do you know which movie it was?”

  “No, Ceinwen, of course I don’t know which bloody movie it was. Andy claimed he’d no idea it was any different from his other films. They told him it all had to go, right now, and he said he was going to call a lawyer. And the marshal said go ahead. He said by law he has a perfect right to dispose of anything creating a distinct fire hazard, and he didn’t have to ask permission from anyone. That was when I called you. Then I called Harry.” Matthew gestured toward to the pile of film under the tarp, still growing as firemen were carrying it out. “They told me it was almost stacked to the ceiling. So many rows they couldn’t wedge themselves between them.”

  “I don’t understand. When you wrote to the super, what did you say?”

  “All I said was, we had reason to believe that storage space number 3B had a number of celluloid nitrate films. But I also …” He paused.

  “You also what?”

  “Tuesday morning I typed another letter and I taped it to the door of the firehouse. I wasn’t sure—”

  “You what?” she yelled.

  He put a finger to his mouth, then hissed, “Try to get this through your skull. He’s got tenure. I couldn’t be sure NYU would do something even if I said Andy was storing a severed head in a hatbox. I had to make sure the fire department saw the note and realized it was something that could blow up the building.”

  “Looks like they realized that, all right,” she said, as evenly as possible.

  He put a hand over his eyes. “I gather the letter landed with an old-timer who once had to put out a fire from nitrate storage.”

  When a man was this wretched, it wasn’t nice to point out his mistakes. In football they called that a late hit. “Did you get a look at the labels? Any of them?”

  “I think I saw Harry’s Crowd. That was it.” He glanced down at her legs. “Do you realize this is the first time I’ve seen you in jeans?”

  Her sweat-dampened hair was sticking to her forehead. She pushed it off her face and said, “I need a cigarette.”

  “I’d say it’s rather obvious they won’t let you smoke it here.”

  “I’ll walk over to Third Street.”

  “Your friend Fred better hurry up,” he called after her.

  She stood on the sidewalk, smoking, watching rubberneckers stream in and out. “I don’t care what they told you,” one student was saying, “that’s a drug bust.”

  She lit another cigarette off the butt of the first. Where was Fred? She was halfway through her third when a cab pulled to the corner and Fred and Isabel exited opposite doors, like cops hurling out of a squad car. Isabel reached Ceinwen way ahead of Fred; it was really something how fast she could move in those shoes.

  “All right,” she said, “who do we talk to?” She was carrying a briefcase. Ceinwen threw down her cigarette as she pointed toward the entrance, and Isabel barely broke stride. Ceinwen and Fred fell in behind her.

  “I know we’re late. Sorry,” said Fred. “Isabel said we needed some, you know, forms. And then I didn’t know where they were, and she, ah, wasn’t happy about that, and then, um, we had to ask Kelly …”

  One of the firemen told them the marshal was inside. When they got to the lobby, he was hanging up the doorman’s phone. The doorman had abandoned all pretense of caring who came in or out and had pulled up a chair to watch the activity. At the sight of the canisters under the tarp Fred let out a whoop.

  “Thirty-five millimeter. Just like you said. I love it.” He was tapping one sneaker-clad foot against the window.

  “I take it you’re in charge here,” Isabel was saying to the marshal, loud and with a side glance at Fred.

  “You take it right,” said the marshal.

  Fred set down his foot and leaned on the glass, hands positioned like he was doing a push-up. “Man, this bird’s even crazier than old Brody.”

  Isabel raised her voice a little more. “I’m Isabel Chung, and I’m the supervisory director of the Brody Institute for Cinephilia and Preservation.”

  “Never heard of you,” said the marshal.

  Fred had his face so close his breath was frosting the pane. “If he’s got a carbon-arc projector I’ll plotz.”

  Isabel turned her back to the marshal, gave Fred a look that caused him to stand up straight and drop his arms to his sides, and turned to face the marshal again. “We’re a film archive, and we’re here to see if we can salvage these films you’re thinking of discarding.”

  “Okay,” said the marshal. “If you want these things, I need some ID, for starters.”

  “I think you’ll find we have everything you need.” She pushed the doorman’s coffee cup and newspaper aside and unlatched the briefcase. Ceinwen looked at the straps and thought, real Hermès. What else would Isabel carry? “Here’s my work ID.”

  Fred inhaled sharply and said, “Oh shit.”

  “And here is Fred’s.” He exhaled. “That’s Fred Creighton, our head curator, over there staring out the window, for some reason.”

  “Did you see this, Isabel?”

  “Here is the documentation we have from the fire department regarding our nitrate storage facilities at 669 East 75th Street. We have all the necessary approvals. Here, since you mentioned a lack of familiarity, is a brochure with a brief description of the work we do at the Brody. If you’re interested.”

  “I’m not interested,” said the marshal.

  Matthew had entered. “That’s quite all right, you can read it at your leisure. We have our assistant at the Brody calling now for transportation from here to uptown. It may take a little while longer.”

  “Better not be too much longer. It’s warm today. If you know nitrate, I assume you know that’s not a good thing.”

  “We’re on it, Mr., ah—”

  “That’s Captain Sullivan.”

  “Captain. Our usual service has small trucks, and it may take two trips.”

  “Usual service?” whispered Ceinwen.

  “She’s got Kelly calling every trucking company in town,” Fred whispered back.

  “You can’t just throw this in a U-Haul,” the captain was saying.

  “We have our own steel containers for transporting nitrate. Those are also fire department-approved, by the way. The time factor will depend on getting the truck to pick up the containers at our labs, then getting them down here. So my suggestion is that you let Fred examine the canisters. Given his well-documented experience …”

  “All an ID tells me is he can look at a camera with his eyes open.”

  “But of course. Here’s Fred’s CV.”

  “Fred’s what?”

  “His resume. Right here. And here’s mine.”

  The marshal took out his glasses. “This isn’t gonna help him go through nitrate with his bare hands.”

  “You do realize, Captain, that movie projectionists used to do that all the time.”

  “Sure, sure, lady. They stored it under the sink. This is 1987. If he hasn’t got gloves he’s not going near it. And a mask. He needs a mask.”

  “Oh shit,” said Fred. Isabel unzipped her shoulder bag and took out a pair of gloves and a face mask.

  “Fine, knock yourself out,” said the marshal. “Meantime, you’re gonna need this guy’s permission to take his stuff.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t need anyone’s permission,” said Matthew.

  “I don’t need it. She does.”

  Isabel brought out some more papers. “I have some temporary forms here, pending a more formal agreement between us and Professor—”

  “Evans,” said Matthew.

  “Evans. Friend of yours?”

  “Good Christ no.” Isabel frowned at him. “Sorry. Andy is upstairs. Harry—another professor is trying to talk to him. 3B. I can take you up if you like.”

  Isabel put the papers back in her case. “
No need. I’ll go up myself. I’ve handled this sort of situation before.”

  “Has she?” Ceinwen asked Fred under her breath.

  “Um, no,” said Fred, “but I’m not worried. Are you?”

  Isabel left and the marshal resumed looking at the papers she’d given him. Fred put on his gloves and mask, and she and Matthew followed as a fireman escorted him to the center of the plaza. They pulled back the tarp. Fred looked at a label, gently opened the canister, set down the lid and pumped both fists in the air. “Hey, Ceinwen! IT’S NOT A HOCKEY PUCK!” She pumped her own fists right back at him. The fireman folded his arms and stared intently at Fred, as if wondering whether this man was safe to leave alone with a fire hazard or anything else. Fred spun on his heel to get a look at the rest of the canisters and gave the top of one stack a loving little pat, like it was a puppy.

  Matthew tapped her shoulder. “It’s Thursday.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Ceinwen. You work on Thursday.” She yanked up her sleeve. No watch. He checked his. “Five till two.”

  She whirled around. “Where’s my purse?”

  “You had it when we were in the lobby.” She ran to the lobby where the doorman was putting her purse in a drawer. She’d spent the whole day running, and for the first time ever, she thought maybe Matthew and Jim were right. She really did smoke too much.

  When she got to the store Roxanne shook her head and put up a hand, but Ceinwen kept weaving through customers, trying to reach the clock room. She saw Talmadge at the back of the men’s side, waving his hands too, then she stopped midway through the store when Lily came through the passage to the women’s side. And Lily stood there. Waiting until every eye was on her. Talmadge’s hand went to his mouth.

  “So you’ve decided to join us today,” said Lily.

  “I’ve been sick,” began Ceinwen.

  “Sick? You know who’s sick? I am. I’m sick of you.”

  “I can make up the time—” Talmadge’s hand had moved to his eyes.

  “I’m sick of you coming in any time you feel like it, I’m sick of you picking up men at the counter—”