"Those things from the Fifties? Giant bugs and UFOs?"
"Yes. Especially the Shock Theatre package." He could see she did not know what that meant. No one did, these days. He shrugged dismissively.
She raised a hand, as if in grade school. "For me it was beach movies, Elvis. In neighborhood theatres. Oh, by the by, congratulations on your promotion."
"Thank you, ma'am." He flipped open a leather wallet and did a bit of prestidigitation. "Check out my new card."
Her eyes narrowed. They were potent at any volume. "You're not thinking of trading that for mine, are you?"
He looked up and fumbled for a response, thinking now that pulling out his card had been artificial, gun-jumping, stupid
"Because every man I've ever met has insisted on giving me his business card. A casebook of shitty and shallow relationships, summed up in a stack of paper rectangles. It's too goddamned easy to collect them." Some past hurt turned her gaze bemused, maybe wistful. She averted her eyes and extracted a cigarette case from a calfskin clutch bag.
He decided to wax Germanic about it, to cover his noise with a louder noise. Rather than stowing the card, he held it over the pebbled orange globe of the table candle. His name, J. ADRIAN FAIRCHILD, browned, smoldered, and then crisped left to right. The card stock was quality and took its time burning. He offered it to her.
Her eyes approved. "Apology accepted," she said as she held his hand to steady the flame, then leaned in with her filter-tip. They both watched the card eat itself, until it was a curl of black in the ashtray, its stored energy gone forever. The ashtray was identical to the silver nut dish.
"Fire mesmerizes," he said. "Like boiling water or snow on a TV screen. Or a cursor on a computer."
"Pyromania as recreation; now there's a blast from the past. Remember when you were a kid and set fires to see them burn? Fire was forbidden. Uncontrollable. That's why I liked to watch it."
"Not me. It was oppressive, undiscriminatingly destructive. It turned into a childhood fear I had to get over."
They traded enigmatic looks, instead of cards.
"You did, I see," she said, indicating his own pack of Winstons.
"A subtle acknowledgment of mastery over that old fear. How'd you come to smoke?"
"My parents told me not to, the way they told me not to play with fire."
Smoke puffed out with her mild laugh. "I always did the opposite of what my parents ordered. They ordered me to pray before bedtime and I retaliated by proclaiming myself an agnostic at the ripe old age of ten ... just as soon as I found the word in Dad's O.E.D."
"I invented my own private religion," he said. "A congregation of one. Let me tell you about it."
Dusk was bringing on a landmark night.
At the Hilltop Liquors magazine rack, Jason discovered that his long-ago fan letter to Famous Monsters had proven worthy of print. His legs shook and turned unreliable; this was literally the first time in his short life that anything this enormous had coalesced into printed history around him. He was ultimately forced to walk his bike partway home, pausing at every intersection to page back to where his name was writ large in bold black and savor his own words, inscribed with monkish patience months before, over and over, until what he had to say on his college-ruled paper was purged of the tiniest error. He had signed his name with a modest flourish, then written it again underneath in the same careful block lettering used for the body of the letter, just in case his fancy signature proved illegible.
He reread it a hundred times between the store and his driveway, throat dry, heart thundering, triumphant.
At dinner, his father misunderstood, over praising Jason for "getting published" as though cracking Uncle Forry's letter column was level with the achievements of Mary Shelley, or Bram Stoker, or Gaston Leroux. They had created brand-new monsters with their pens, monsters with names, monsters that had not existed before the writers thought them up. Jason found himself unexpectedly belittling his own accomplishment, just to press past his father's well-meaning lack of comprehension. His stepmother, who had bought him a copy of Freckles, which had collected dust for months on his bedroom bookshelf, thought the letter was "nice, dear" after wrinkling her nose at the photos of the Creature from the Black Lagoon throttling an oceanarium worker, and Lon Chaney Jr., as Mary Shelley's monster, carting off Evelyn Ankers. Jason's stepmother looked at the letter but did not see what Jason saw. To contravene her would be as self-defeating as brushing his teeth with cherry Coke. Parents could be so frustrating; between the two he could neither brag nor be humble.
Still, sundown came and his pulse quickened. Sometimes the best stuff in the world was not for sharing.
In monster movies, sundown usually signaled the start of the good stuff.
One critical factor of Jason's Friday-night logistics was adequate provisioning. He picked at dinner, leaving room for the goodies to be raided later. A cursory run-through of homework permitted him to dismiss school from his world for the next forty-eight glorious hours. The triad of upstairs rooms was already empty of his older brother, Marcus, who had trotted off to dinner with Monica McMillan and would be spending most of the evening attempting to plumb the mysteries inside Monica's skirt and blouse. She was one of Buddy McMillan's girls ... and if Marcus and Jason's parents didn't cool it with the embarrassing jokes, Jason might not ever have a future with Laurie, currently the youngest of Buddy's brood.
Two years back, girls would have been unthinkable.
Jason's parents liked to call the third upstairs room the "TV room" which was akin to calling Revenge of the Creature just another movie. To Jason its purpose was more sanctified. The TV Guide for this week had promised potent mojo indeed: The Mummy's Tomb, The Mummy's Ghost, and The Mummy's Nurse, all kicking off half an hour before midnight, with a Twilight Zone repeat.
Bulling through the haul from nine to twelve was the toughest; he knew that a triple feature that late at night would knock his body out too soon and he'd sleep through the crypt cave-in at the climax of the final Mummy film. But he was too agitated to nap. Napping was for little kids. The ability to stay up late was proof of incipient adulthood. Snooze now? No way. He passed the time boning up on Mummy minutiae.
Famous Monsters contained most of what he sought, augmented by Castle of Frankenstein (which he was growing to like better and better; here was a magazine unafraid to say a movie was a stinker from time to time or to print photos of naked women getting fanged by British bloodsuckers). For a balanced news view there were the second-string publications - Mad Monsters, Fantastic Monsters of the Films, Horror Monsters - and the Mad Magazine approach of For Monsters Only. Jason tended his pile of monster mags with the reverence of Egyptian supplicants for the dreaded Scroll of Thoth. He read again what an idiocy it would be to dare to break the Seal of the Seven Jackals, and the aroma and texture of the brittle pages of the older issues made it easy to imagine the smell and feel of Tana leaves.
The first Mummy of note was Im-Ho-Tep, Karloff, Thirties. While Jason maintained what he thought to be the accordant degree of respect for what Forry J had dubbed the classics, he favored the more dynamic monsters of the subsequent epoch. Universal Pictures, Forties, after they dropped the growling, propellored plane from their logo, when any monster in the gang could be depended upon to come lurching back for more. Kharis was who Jason preferred to think of when you said Mummy. He favored the idea of a monster who could kick butt despite obvious structural disadvantages. Kharis dragged one lame foot; his right arm had curled into a crippled claw and frozen against his chest; the conflagrant finale of The Mummy's Hand had welded his right eye shut forever. Kharis was a handicapped monster, for christsake. You could outrun him, sure, but he'd catch up while you were sleeping, the tortoise beating the hare, and Kharis never gave up or stopped, ever. Jason visualized a business card, gold, bordered in diamond-shaped Cleopatra eyeballs and bird-headed guys wearing skirts. Vengeance Our Specialty. Slow But Inexorable.
Kharis was implacable,
determined, and mean. He even strangled a German shepherd that barked at him once. The sound of a dog barking in the night could still suggest to Jason that perhaps Kharis had found some excuse to serve him with a personal termination notice, and perhaps he was shuffling silently up the front walk right now. Jason's stepmother would discover his wide-eyed, almost-twelve-year-old corpse at breakfast time. His father would exclaim that, why, those grayish marks on his neck look ... almost, well, like mold.
That had been the original justification for the fortress.
An important component of Jason's Friday night setup was raiding the TV-room sofa for cushions with which he constructed a sort of open-ended pillbox, facing the screen. It was superior to a mere monster blanket (not to mention more snug and certainly more grown up), and the fortress helped enclose Jason and his supplies within the influence of the picture tube and its monochromatic shadow plays. His tradition was to kill the lights and entrench with the sound turned down until the Twilight Zone faded in, just him, deliciously alone in the dead of night with his monster movies. Beyond the rearward limits of the fortress there was nothing to see, save darkness, a buffer between Jason and a world of retribution.
"Put that way, it really does sound like a classical religion," Kris said.
The bar traffic had gridlocked, and two uncollected empty rounds loitered on the table between them. His butted smokes were mingled with hers in the clamshell ashtray. Their tab kept their booth locked down during the lounge's prime trolling time, and they stood secure against assault from all corners. They held, oblivious to the fleshshoppe/slave-bazaar ambience and in spite of the clamor level. An inversion layer of smoke hung stubbornly and rendered all sights beyond three feet of the booth ghostly and nimbused, as though viewed across a moor clogged with swamp gas and St. Elmo's Fire. He had begun ordering water chasers to keep from dehydrating.
"Your basic coursework in classic monsters always reminded me of the hierarchies of Greek and Roman gods," he said. "More like the Egyptians, actually, where the roles were separate but equal. No real pecking order; no monster was especially more powerful than another. The focus is on the mythology of genesis and transformation; how they all got to be card-carrying monsters in the first place."
Her existence in the corporate mega-structure had been defined by ladders, and the idea of equal power equally portioned held a special appeal for her, whether it was among monsters or vice-presidents. "I heard the movie companies just invented a lot of that stuff - about how the Wolf Man only wolfs out during the full moon, or how Dracula can't hack sunlight."
"I thought you weren't allowed to watch those things when you were a kid." She laughed at something personal. Her smile involved her eyes every time, with an effect more soothing than any cocktail. "I don't know what sort of youngster you were, sir, but as I mentioned awhile ago, I generally considered any parental ukase to be a gauntlet cast down. I invented the most elaborate hookup imaginable for reading after curfew. My bed was tucked into a nook below a semicircle of cupola windows on the second floor of our house - a big old rambling coastal thing in Florida. By hanging my comforter between the edge of the bed and clamping it to the wall molding with clothespins, I made a lean-to. I sneaked a 25-walter into my bedside lamp; normally all my parents had to do was look out their window and see if the cupola windows cast any light on the lawn. My weak light bulb outfoxed 'em. If I heard them coming up the stairs, I could kill the whole outpost in ten seconds flat'
He nodded, mouth full, anxious to reveal his own version of the subterfuge she had just outlined.
"I had one of those rough-hewn wooden treasure chests, the kind you buy in Mexico? It was hasped with a cheesy brass padlock. Guess what I kept in it?"
"Doubloons?" Her lips encompassed a sliver of bar ice. It slid into her mouth. He could feel his own tongue cooling. "Human skulls? Some nasty-ass boy shit I'd rather not know about?"
"Lipton's Instant Iced Tea." He said it with newscaster gravity, as though copping to the sale of bomber specs to the Russkies.
Her glass hesitated midway. "You're not serious. You mean I'm sitting here chatting up a man who actually... "She pressed back from the table edge. It was like opera, in its way. "Omigod."
"Yeah, I know. Child molesting pales. Necrophilia is more forgivable. But I feel compelled to bare the true ugliness of my soul to you." He clasped hands over heart and sought divine sanction in the direction of the ceiling.
He reminded her of a bargain martyr. "You're starting to drip."
"No doubt. Anyway, I drank tons of Lipton's, more than any soft drink, and my measures in composing a glassful would shame NASA with their precision. If I didn't get my tea, I'd die. I powered it down by the gallon but mixed it one glass at a time. Some procedures you just don't rush."
"Or compromise - like the rules in monster movies."
"Exactly." He pulled the green olive off its pic, thinking of stakes and vampires. "My stepmother - Wicked Stepmom - took a dim view of my guzzling what she called 'caffeine product' on school nights. And water didn't make it - it wasn't a flavor. I couldn't sneak tea up to bed, but I could take a glass of water from that cold jug in the fridge. I made sure she saw me pouring that water and taking it with me upstairs at bedtime."
Child's mischief glinted in her steady return gaze. "You conned her. Because up in your room you had your pirate chest with the instant tea inside."
"That, and sugar, in carefully purloined margarine tubs, plus long-handled spoons I had to keep from the Dairy Queen. Napkins. I couldn't manage your light setup, but I did have candles and matches."
"You little turd. So you were probably up way past the witching hour, grinding your teeth to sleep."
He swatted this serve back. "While you were skulking around with your nose in ... what? Nancy Drew? National Velvet? Dick and Jane Hit Puberty?"
"Sherlock Holmes. When I found out the Speckled Band was a snake I nearly wet my bed. No sleep that night."
"What, no boogeyman alarms? No tucked-in sheets?"
She shook her head vehemently. "I hate that. Still do. I have to poke my feet out or I feel trapped. Another fault for the list: Hospital corners are too confining."
"Gee, I thought I was the only one. We ought to keep this to ourselves. The mob might lynch us by torchlight."
She surveyed the singles on the hoof. "My. Yes. Definite bounce-a-quarter-on-the-blanket types. All the men in here have the same haircut."
It was easy to laugh with her. "It's actually a vinyl skullcap they swap on a timesharing basis. Even some of the women are wearing it. See?"
They mocked the players around them. Kris had a way of holding in cigarette smoke that was terrifically contemplative. When her thoughts were organized and ready for articulation, the smoke would then stream out in gray plumes. "Well, despite all this peer pressure I think I still turned out fairly unimpaired." She executed a stiff little bow. "Thanks for not contradicting me. I really have to visit the Ladies."
He had always used cigarettes primarily for gesticulation elucidating some point with an unlit smoke, then pausing to ignite it, almost as punctuation. With no audience, he felt no need to enkindle a fresh Winston. He tapped it back into its hard pack. When she returned, he watched her cut through the lounge's bustle - great legs, to be sure. Traffic jammers. Her eyes favored him with another smile, as though they had shared a secret.
They talked rationales, and another Long Island iced tea was conquered. "My family moved all over the country," she said. "New classmates virtually every year. Families aren't tied to towns or states or even other family members anymore. People get divorced so routinely."
He saluted that. "Parents die."
"And there are no constants. Except the bad stuff— the disruptions, the adjustments, the constant restructuring of your life. Tough on a kid. Ultimately there's no one to really depend on, except yourself."
"And the Creature, and the Mummy, and Frankenstein's friendless Monster. They're weird looking, they're alienated
, they're picked on, and they're so dependable that when you're a kid it's almost blasphemy to think that Midnight Frights won't still be dutifully on the air when you're aged." He said the word with a comic downward twist of mouth.
"You know, it's funny. All those monsters in all those movies frightened me. Yet I kept their pictures, cutouts, taped to the wall where I could even see some of them in the dark. They scared me, sure ... but once the sun was up I couldn't wait to make sure they were still there."
"You didn't really fear then," she pointed out. "You respected them."
He lifted his Winston pack, drew, and fired up. "Is that intuitive, or are you just preternaturally astute?"
"It's both. Plus intellect, style, and great legs. Made me the success-hungry power bitch you see before you today. Your superior, I'd say, if it didn't make me want to start giggling." She did anyway, helplessly.
"I think you're right. Them, I respected. Loved, even." He could see the coal of his cigarette bouncing back from the lenses of her glasses, combining with the candle flame already living there, and the sparks of her inspirations, nebulae dancing in her eyes.
Whoa, back off on the gin for awhile! he thought.
"Family and friends might fall apart or move on or betray you, but those monsters were always there for you."
"Not always," he said. "But I agree. I was unusually forgiving where they were concerned. Those movies frequently lost track of their own rules. I compensated. Instead of being offended when the Wolf Man got offed with something other than silver, I made elaborate justifications. Sort of the way TV evangelists can twist a Bible verse to mean anything they want. Creative reinterpretation."
"Were you especially religious as a kid? Conventionally, I mean?" When she saw the sour expression cross his face, she said, "Oh. I see. Dumb question."
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