by Brian Hodge
"Actually it's his mother's garage in the Valley."
"Uh, maybe you should tell him about refrigeration."
"He'd have to rent a meat locker. You see the size of these cans? His 'comb's full. He sleeps in his car." God help him, thought Joe. And God bless him.
"Can you do anything with it?"
"I've seen worse," said Joe bravely. "Remember Johnny Guitar? Or An Affair to Remember, with Cary Grant and—?"
"No."
Joe sighed. "Well, it's the same process. Tape transfer, computer enhancement."
"What's left to enhance?"
"I can restore it if the emulsion's intact. Then UCLA runs off a 'gram from our tape, same as always, charges it to the copyright owner—MGM now; I looked it up. They'll pay for the thirty-five print back, too, as long as they get to keep it. There's an AFI tribute to Mitchum coming up, which ought to make it worth something. Anyway, Larry should have it in plenty of time for his festival."
Roger smiled down indulgently at his partner. "Guess what? We're out of blank tape."
"Then open a factory cassette. One of those Betas that never sold. A Chorus Line, Thirty Years of the Tonight Show, Stallone in Streetcar—you know, dust collectors. I'll erase it and—"
"Then we won't be able to return it for credit."
"Screw the credit."
"It takes money to run a business," said Roger slowly, as if explaining to a child. "It takes inventory on the shelves to generate cash flow, to balance our expenses, Joey, our hobbies. You understand that, do you?"
Joe swiveled his chair around. The film continued to clatter through the Moviola, Alex North's theme to The Wonderful Country continued to lilt sweetly out of the speaker at his back, violins trilling through the distortion like drowning canaries.
"Do you understand, Roger? This is not anybody's God damned hobby. Let's not even talk art. Let's talk money. You want to talk money? I have a deal with the Twenty-in-One. We have a deal. We split fifty cents on every dollar that comes through the box-office, after they make back their nut. No distributor fees to pay, as long as it's a one-shot and the studio gets back a new print. That means—"
He cut himself off. He listened to what he was spouting; it grabbed him by the short hairs.
So this is how it started for Mayer and Cohn, he thought, for Jack Warner and Adolph Zukor and Dino De Laurentiis. One upon a time they were probably in love with movies too, with the way it feels to be part of a light show séance in an auditorium full of buttered popcorn dreamers. Until the day somebody gave them a long, cold look at the ledger. A wave of self-loathing passed through him. He shook his head and shuddered.
He shut off the film transport. The strings wound down and died on an extended chord. Let it go, he thought, as the sound of footsteps began again on the other side of the wall.
"Sorry," he said.
"Forget it," said Roger, vaguely embarrassed. "We've had this conversation before. I know what you're saying. Don't worry about it." Roger stopped in the doorway. "Anyhow, let me know about lunch. This might be a good time. There's nobody up front. But," he added gently, "it'll pick up this afternoon. You'll see." He winked.
With great care he closed the door behind him.
My God, thought Joe. The way he respects something that doesn't even matter to him personally; if that isn't a virtue I don't know what is.
He deserves better from this business. He's put a hell of a lot more into the Video Pit than I have. I'm pulling him down—pulling us both down. But my part of it will pay off, I swear it will. I'll put in more hours, find some killer prints nobody's seen in forty years, not even on TV. There have got to be enough people who care out there to support what I'm doing. It's just a matter of reaching them.
"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 a
bout 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.
At that moment a careless pedestrian bumped into him, shoving Joe into the display so that the message field blurred around him. Joe regained his balance and pulled out of it as a precocious, ectomorphic boy wearing collector's item antique horn-rimmed glasses, his face buried in a printout, stepped around him and through the hologram.
“‘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—"