The Last Days of Video

by Jeremy Hawkins

  He saw the heads of nearby congregants turn in their direction. One man with close-cropped white hair shook his head and scowled.

  But Jeff didn’t care.

  He smiled back at Alaura, and he gave her a little wave.

  “I go to church once a month or so,” Alaura said. “Different churches. Methodist, Catholic, nondenominational. Sometimes I even drive over to Raleigh or Durham. Leave early, cruise the streets like a gangster”—at this she giggled irresistibly for a moment—“until I find a church that strikes my fancy.”

  Jeff nodded, blissfully confused. Alaura had removed the cap with the veil and her high-collared church coat, revealing a more Alaura-typical band tee shirt. But who are the Ramones? Jeff wondered. They were walking slowly down College Street, from Tanglewood Baptist in Appleton toward Star Video, where they were both scheduled to work at noon. It was the first week of September, and a break in the heat promised by the Weather Channel had never come to pass. It was over ninety degrees. They passed the huge antebellum houses of the Historic District, each adorned with silver Historical Society plaques, their perfect lawns bursting with dahlias and gladiolas and daylilies, clearly competing with one another in some heated bourgeoisie gardening competition. Then Jeff and Alaura crossed the concrete bridge over the pottering strip of Nile Creek, lined on both sides by smooth boulders and weeping willows, and they moved into West Appleton, which seemed a world away. They passed dingy student apartment buildings, a locally owned organic taqueria, a locally owned deep-fried sandwich shop, and several other restaurants with patios chattering with activity—students and locals who hadn’t gone to church, which Jeff could tell by their grubby clothes and hungover expressions—everyone drinking frosty pints and laughing, not a care in the world.

  Once again, Jeff was struck by how happy and relaxed everyone was . . . happier and more relaxed than he ever seemed to feel.

  “I went to church as a kid,” Alaura was saying. “Usually alone. Sprinks only had two churches, one Baptist, one Methodist. But I guess I always found church, I don’t know, intriguing. The search for truth, et cetera.”

  Jeff nodded again. “We always go to church.”

  “You and your parents?”

  “Me and my momma.” Jeff quickly corrected himself, “My mother. She’s real religious.

  “Not my daddy. His is the Church of Coors Light Almighty. He’s not a bad drunk or anything. Just an always drunk. He’s a good man.

  “My mother’s a good woman. She’s . . . pretty strict, I guess. Didn’t want me moving down here. But I think she’s doing okay about it.”

  Alaura nodded. “So your parents are divorced?”

  “Um . . . um,” Jeff stuttered.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, struggling to recover his composure. “Uh . . . yes, my parents are divorced. My dad . . . I don’t really know him.”

  “I never knew my mother,” Alaura said.

  A pause.

  “So,” Alaura said softly. “College must be a big change for you.”

  Jeff looked up and around the town, at all the activity and happiness. He smiled. “This place, Appleton, West Appleton, it’s a different world—”

  Then they saw Blockbuster, and another silence fell between them.

  In the course of only a few days, the building had completely transformed. It had been retrofitted with royal blue paneling along the outside, the parking lot had been paved dark black, and the walls inside had been painted a glossy, antiseptic white. At this rate, Blockbuster must be opening soon, maybe within a few weeks, or even a few days.

  Both Alaura and Jeff stared at the building as they walked past, but neither spoke a word. Star Video quickly appeared, moments later, on their left.

  “So what the hell happened to your lip?” she finally asked.

  “Um . . .” but Jeff’s voice faltered again. For some reason he couldn’t remember the lie he had prepared. Like last night when the café girl’s sweet laughter had incapacitated him.

  He didn’t want to lie to Alaura. But he also didn’t want to risk his job by incurring Waring’s wrath.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You probably don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Um?

  “A man of mystery, I can dig it. By the way, I saw that you checked out Killing of a Chinese Bookie a few days ago? By Cassavetes? That’s awesome. What did you think?”

  All at once, Jeff’s nervousness redoubled—he didn’t want her to know he had hated Chinese Bookie, hadn’t even finished it. That it had been dull and sort of amateurish and kind of morally gross—all those strippers and drinking and gambling, not to mention the Chinese bookie, who apparently gets killed, though Jeff hadn’t made it that far before passing out.

  “It was okay,” he muttered.

  “Okay?”

  “I mean . . .”

  “No, Jeff. Never pretend to like a movie that you didn’t like. But when we get to the shop, I have to show you something.”

  “Huh?”

  “Part of your movie education.”

  In Star Video, Alaura and Jeff relieved Rose, who had opened that morning and who had been watching Looney Tunes on the store’s central TV.

  As she was leaving, Rose stopped at the door, turned back, and said, “Have a nice day, Jeff.”

  Surprised, Jeff looked at her; this was the first time she had ever spoken to him directly.

  He smiled awkwardly to her in farewell.

  “Here,” Alaura said, breaking his attention from Rose. “You need to watch this. Cassavetes.”

  She inserted a VHS tape into the store’s dusty player.

  “Our DVD of this is scratched,” Alaura explained. “It’s awesome we still have it on VHS.”

  “Oh,” Jeff said. “Is that why we still carry videotapes? And are we ever going to start carrying Blu-ray—”

  “Waring’s noncommittal on Blu-ray. It’s fucking annoying. But let’s talk about this movie, Jeff. It’s Cassavetes.”

  “But I just don’t think Cassavetes is for me,” Jeff admitted. “I’ve watched some of his movies, but I—”

  “Say that too loud, and Waring’ll fire you.”

  “What? Is Waring here?”

  “I don’t know. He’s probably passed out in The African Queen.”

  “Oh.”

  “Cassavetes is maybe a little too indie for Waring,” Alaura said, rolling her eyes. “A little too fast and loose for his tastes, but he still—”

  “His tastes?”

  “Classics,” she explained. “Old movies. That’s his jam. He’s got wide-ranging tastes, of course. You’ve probably noticed he knows more about movies than God. But I’m not sure that he’s actually enjoyed any movie made after 1979.”

  “But didn’t Cassavetes make movies, like, back in the sixties?”

  Alaura shrugged. “Jeff, you need to watch this. I know you love movies. That’s why I hired you. And you’ve got a more-than-decent foundation of movie knowledge, enough to help most customers—”

  Jeff: giddy with gratitude.

  “—but you have a ton to learn. I’ll give you the same lesson that Waring gave me, and the lesson that my boyfriend fell asleep during.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Pierce thinks Cassavetes is overrated. Not visually stimulating.”

  “I just think his stories are, I don’t know, boring.”

  Alaura shook her head. “They’re not boring. They’re different. First off, his dialogue.”

  “But I mean . . . I didn’t like the dialogue.”

  “Watch.”

  On screen, two men walked on a beach, Peter Falk and some other guy, and a few young children ran around them. Jeff had watched this particular Cassavetes movie a few days ago, A Woman Under the Influence. But he could not remember this scene, must have dozed off or zoned out.

  OTHER GUY: What a day, Nick. I haven’t been to the beach without my wife in years. We used to live in the water
when I was a kid. “Fish,” they called me. I was thin, see. Lips all blue. Shakin’. I was always lookin’ for girls. My kids, they’re all grown up now. My brother, Marco, he’s a college graduate. Communist. Couldn’t keep a job. Too many big ideas. Reads too much. I say let the girls read. They love to read. You know what I mean?

  FALK (angry): Okay! Let’s enjoy ourselves, okay?

  OTHER GUY: Okay.

  Alaura pressed pause, and the VCR whizzed to a stop. “Nick’s in a bad mood,” she explained.

  “Which one’s Nick?”

  “Columbo.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “His wife is crazy, and he accidentally injured this guy at work. He’s had a really, really shitty day. So, what do you think?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of the scene, silly.”

  Alaura smiled beautifully.

  Jeff chuckled nervously. “It doesn’t make sense what the other guy is saying.”

  “What doesn’t make sense?”

  Jeff looked at the TV screen, static trembling now over a frozen long shot of Falk, running on the beach after his daughter.

  “Let me watch again,” he said.

  Alaura rewound the videocassette, paused it expertly at exactly the right moment, and played the scene again.

  After, Jeff said, “I mean, his sentences don’t fit together. Talking about fish. His brother the Communist? ‘I say let the girls read.’ What does that mean?”

  “Have you ever read a transcript of a real conversation?” Alaura asked. “No one talks like they talk in movies or books or television. In real life, we constantly make mistakes. Speak in fragments. Self-edit. Go back to the middle of a sentence and start again. Follow a new train of thought.”

  “Okay?”

  “That’s what Cassavetes does. He writes more like people talk. All those pauses and random observations are intricately scripted. That other guy, Peter Falk’s friend, he’s yammering, trying to fill space, because Falk’s in a terrible mood. Falk just injured a guy by accident, so his friend is nervous, saying whatever comes to mind. Cassavetes doesn’t write Hollywood dialogue. No one actually sounds like Aaron Sorkin writes, you know?”

  Who’s Aaron Sorkin? Jeff thought. “What’s wrong with Hollywood?” he said, suddenly a bit defensive, though he had no idea why.

  Alaura’s body quaked in silent laughter—one of her many disarming expressions. “Nothing’s wrong with Hollywood, Jeff. But that’s just one way to do things. It depends on the movie.”

  “Oh.”

  “Let’s watch it one more time.”

  They watched the scene one more time.

  “The other thing is the actors,” she continued. “Cassavetes didn’t direct his actors at all. Never gave them advice, even if they begged for it.”

  “So?”

  “So if Peter Falk said, ‘What’s going on in this scene, John Cassavetes?’ then Cassavetes would answer, ‘You’re standing here, and she’s standing there,’ and he would stare into Peter Falk’s eyes, like this.”

  Alaura stared intensely into Jeff’s eyes.

  Jeff’s diaphragm wrenched in terror, and he looked off at the floor.

  “Nondirective directing,” Alaura explained. “That’s what it’s called. That’s how Cassavetes got those strange, realistic performances.”

  “Oh.”

  “Didn’t you watch the commentary on Chinese Bookie? Or at least Google it?”

  “No.”

  Alaura shook her head like a disappointed parent. “Watch it with the commentary. And find a book. There’s tons at the Ape U library.”

  “Okay.”

  “But don’t get too into film theory. Because, to put it politely, those guys sometimes miss the fucking point. Still, with good movies, you have to put in effort.”

  She ejected the videocassette, then inserted a DVD into the store’s other player. It was the early-2000s indie thriller Losers. But instead of selecting a scene, she played one of the special features—Match Anderson, the young director of the film and, as Jeff had learned, a North Carolina native, was being interviewed on stage at some film festival. Anderson wore a wrinkled brown jacket, and he had dark Steve Buscemi circles under both eyes. The no-name, nonunion actors from the film sat to Anderson’s right, and a bodiless voice asked them questions.

  “Listen to what he says about movies,” Alaura whispered. “He really gets it.”

  “Who?”

  “Match. Match Anderson.”

  Jeff looked at her strangely, then back at the screen. Match Anderson, in response to a question that Jeff had not heard, said:

  “I’ve lived in movies since I was a kid. For me it was television. The movies on late-night television and the sitcoms and everything all the way down to the micro-narratives of commercials. I wrote out the plots. Seriously, when I was kid. I wrote out what happened scene by scene in M*A*S*H and Married . . . with Children and music videos and fucking bubblegum commercials. They all tell stories.”

  Reaction shots of the actors. Jeff glanced at Alaura—she was smiling at the television.

  “We all lived Losers, okay?” Match Anderson continued. “This movie nearly killed a few of us, and I think everyone appreciated the toll it took on me. It’s so much work, making a movie. Maybe that’s a useless platitude, but it’s so much fucking work, it’s hell, and you don’t know if in the end what you’re doing is any good. Though this felt good, didn’t it?” Sincere nods from the actors. “It felt right during shooting. And maybe that’s all you ever have. That’s all I had. I had a lot of work and a feeling that we were doing something good.”

  Reaction shots of the audience: snooty, cerebral approval.

  “Watch,” Alaura whispered.

  “But that’s not what I’m trying to say,” Match Anderson muttered. He frowned and rubbed his temples with his thumbs, apparently distraught, it seemed to Jeff, to his emotional core. “That doesn’t answer your question. Shit. What am I trying to say? Why are you listening to me? I can’t talk about movies. No, I can’t. Here’s what I’m saying. What I’m saying . . . there isn’t enough time in life, enough room in the artist’s life, to get everything out. To film even 5 percent of what it is to be human. Because there’s so much variance, so much drama and absurdity. So many shades of meaning, so many versions of emotion, and so many moments . . .” Match Anderson leaned forward, gripped the arms of his plastic chair. His eyes watered. “The amazing moments! Moments upon moments. There’s no time, no words, no images to describe, to capture, even to summarize what it is to live, what reality is. No matter what, we fall short. All artists fall short. Filmmakers especially. No matter what, our attempts fail. Only briefly, very briefly, do movies succeed. I mean, sometimes you have to question this entire filmmaking enterprise, don’t you? Your first principles as an artist? And at best, if you’re really looking at it closely, if you’re really being honest with yourself, an entire movie might intersect once or twice with what I’m talking about. With reality. Or with truth. And it’s futile, isn’t it? Our brains are too small. And if we don’t have a clue how to live, how can we make movies about life?” His voice cracked into a whisper. “The answer is we do the best we fucking can. The best we fucking can.”

  The audience erupted in applause.

  Match Anderson looked at them, wide-eyed in surprise.

  Then he stood and left the stage.

  The screen went black, and Jeff felt an indescribable ache in his chest—he did not understand the crazy speech, nor why Alaura had played it for him, nor her obvious fascination with this particular director. He turned to ask for an explanation.

  But she was already ejecting the DVD and starting another movie.

  This moment of silence, he realized, might be the perfect opportunity to tell her about the bicycle gang. How he had intervened and rescued Waring, even if he’d also chickened out and gotten punched in the face like a coward. But it would be simple—just tell her. There was no reason to lie. He could ask her
to keep it a secret. He knew she would agree. Alaura was cool like that. Waring would never now.

  But then he noticed that, for some reason, Alaura’s expression had turned soft and distant, like she was about to cry.

  He wanted to talk to her, but he had no idea how.

  WHY FIDELITY

  Pierce, Alaura’s boyfriend of two months, began gathering and packing his possessions while she slept. He removed his toothbrush from the bathroom, his CDs from the stereo case, a quarter bag of barbeque chips from the kitchen cabinets, and he slipped it all into an orange duffel bag.

  Awoken by the whistle of a zipper, Alaura climbed out of bed. She wiggled into a long E.T. and Michael Jackson tee shirt (an original) and walked into her living room.

  “I need caffeine,” she said. “How much did we drink?”

  “Um?”

  She looked at Pierce—he stood by the couch, fully dressed, and stared at the duffel bag at his feet.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Packing.”

  “Looks like you’re already packed.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Why?”

  “School started, like, three weeks ago,” he said.

  “So?”

  “So I’ve got portrait studio this week.”

  “So?”

  “So I have to go.”

  “You have to go?” she said.

  “I need to go.”

  Alaura walked into the kitchen space of her small apartment and found a diet green tea in the refrigerator. Three quick sips. Then she flipped the “On” button on the Mr. Coffee, turned back to Pierce.

  He stood there, not saying anything, in her tiny and shabbily furnished living room. At twenty-nine years old, she knew she should have a nicer place. One with a porch or at least bigger windows, one without undergrads living above, below, and on either side of her. She should have a larger television, and a better computer, and window blinds that weren’t plastic and warped and cracked. Her movie posters should at least be framed rather that hung with that blue adhesive gunk on that cheap 1970s wood paneling. There was a reason she brought very few men back to her apartment—Pierce had been one of the only exceptions.