“What do you mean you need to go?” she finally managed.
“I mean, I think it’s time—”
“Wait,” she said, and she raised her palms as if signaling a car to stop.
“I’m sorry, Alaura.”
Her eyes began to burn. She let her arms drop and said, “Are you trying to break up with me, Pierce?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
“Yes.”
She saw that his face was calm—beautiful tan skin taut over square jaws. His hands were jutted in the pockets of his wrinkled, paint-covered pants, and a sandaled foot nudged against the duffel bag.
She walked toward him, placed her hands on his cheeks.
“No,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t, Pierce.”
“This isn’t working,” he said.
“What?”
“Because I’m not happy.” He eased away from her. “We’ve only been together a few months, and we’re arguing.”
“But we’re not arguing,” she said.
“Yes, we are.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are.”
She stepped toward him again, pressed her hands to his chest, guided him onto the couch. She sat on his lap, laid her arms over his shoulders.
“Wait, Pierce. This doesn’t make sense . . . talk to me . . .”
But he hesitated. She felt the muscles of his shoulders stiffen, and they exchanged a glance that, if caught on camera, would have conveyed no information because their expressions were virtually flat. But a communication passed between them nonetheless. And she remembered how he had held her last night, spooning her after sex—she knew that in his mind, that moment, the way he had squeezed her tighter than normal before falling asleep, had been his farewell.
But one last fuck hadn’t been out of the question.
She stood up.
“You basically slept here all summer,” she said, her voice now frigid, channeling a generic indifferent bitch from the movies: Annette Bening in American Beauty, Goldie Hawn in Overboard, Bette Davis in, well, everything.
“And it was really fun,” he said.
“Fun?”
He squinted a little, grimaced—he knew he had misspoken.
She set her hands on her hips, spoke with mock pleasantness:
“Yes, loads of fun.”
“I had a great summer. A really great summer.”
“I get it, Pierce.”
“You do?”
“Absolutely. I’m your manic pixie dream girl, summer edition.”
He frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“What the hell, Alaura? I’m not trying to be a jerk.”
“I’m sorry, is this upsetting you?”
At that, Pierce stood up. He shook his head vigorously. “You know what? Whatever. I tried to be nice. But I’m done. All you ever want to do is drink and watch movies. There are other interesting things to do, you know? Oh, and don’t even get me started on Waring. That psycho. I don’t trust that guy, and you shouldn’t either. I mean it.”
What the hell was he talking about?
“You need to get—a—life!” he whined with ridiculous, childish menace. “Oh, and let’s watch another Match Anderson movie for the fifth time and talk about how wonderful he is, blah blah blah.”
She almost sobbed, but she swallowed it. “Fine, Pierce.”
“I never promised you anything,” he said. “I’m only twenty-three years old, okay?”
“I’ll definitely keep that in mind.”
“And if you want the truth, Alaura, you’re just too . . . just too . . .” and he waved an upturned palm at her crappy apartment, at the ten hanging plants, doorway beads, wallpapered indie-movie posters, three ornate crucifixes. In the same motion he included her, from head to toe, and she knew he meant to indicate how obvious it was that her tattoos and punk hair and age and probably the width of her hips did not fit with his grand plans for the future.
She crossed her arms. “By the way, your Star Video membership is cancelled, dickhead.”
“I’m not a dickhead, okay? I’m sorry. Leave it at that.”
“Get the fuck outta here.”
Pierce picked up his duffel bag, walked toward the door.
And though she knew she would regret it, she ran at him—as pathetic as Scarlett running after Rhett. She cursed, spat, struck him with her fists, fists that, upon contact, opened and grabbed at the soft black fabric of his hemp shirt. She pushed and pulled at the same time. But it was almost like she wasn’t there—his trajectory never wavered, he shook his head and laughed in cruel annoyance, frankly not giving a damn, and in a few seconds, he was out the door, his sandals clucking down the steps toward the parking lot.
She lay on the carpet and curled into a ball.
“Idiot,” she said.
Mr. Coffee hissed. She poured a cup, returned to the carpet, leaned back against the wall.
A moment later, she noticed she was crying—but she forced it away.
She took her antidepressant. She took her antianxiety. Then she decided to meditate; it had been months—a year maybe—but perhaps meditation would help. At first she attempted vipassana, tried and true. But soon her mind wandered from her breath to images of Pierce, now her ex-boyfriend, to how he painted shirtless, to his spontaneous handstands, to his diatribes on obscure artists and theorists, and of course to how stupid it had been of her to say “I might love you” last week, after only a few months together, even though she might have meant it.
She tried the Osho meditations, focusing on the gap between breaths, imagining a blue crystal beneath her nose. Then a shamanic incantation, without success. Then the bits she could remember of the Mishnah. She even considered a few Sun Salutations . . .
But her hangover was too heavy for any of it.
So she gave up. She stared at her popcorn ceiling. A low-angle Citizen Kane shot. Charles Foster Kane, after being caught in an affair with what’s-her-name (the crazy opera bitch) and losing the election, walking around his newspaper office. Waring had taught her, years ago, that Orson Welles had famously achieved the extreme low-angle shot by cutting a hole into the studio floor, and the wide lens had distorted everything further. The shot is all curved ceiling, like the roof might fall, or like the ceiling is the warped stage upon which Welles acts with what’s-his-name (his friend who hates him). And all the campaign posters. “Kane” all around him. Ks everywhere. Surrounded by his own failed self-image.
She tried to think of another word that started with K, but for the life of her, she couldn’t conjure a single one.
I’m going crazy, she thought. So she found a three-quarter-inch roach in the ashtray, turned on Turner Classic Movies.
She had met Pierce in a grocery store, not a bar, a novel accomplishment that added legitimacy to their admittedly short relationship, which, as she thought about it, was sadly one of the more successful in her life. He was young, but he was a grad student, and he seemed smarter than average, and polite, and built solid like a wrestler, and he was shopping at Whole Foods in Appleton. Lots of meat—organic steaks, flounder cuts, long clips of chicken legs. Pasta, rice, peanut butter, deli bread. Rather boring fare except for the three six-packs of exotic beer. He would not admit until a month later that he normally shopped at Food Lion in West Appleton “because of the prices,” and not for another few weeks (in an offhand remark) that he had only gone to Whole Foods that day “to look at the ladies.” He actually used that word, ladies. What kind of ladies? Alaura asked. Ladies like you, he said. But she knew what he meant. He meant edgy tattooed ladies. And yoga ladies. And hipster ladies. Or the older women. The sexy organic moms. The business-suited Raleigh lawyers. Basically, ladies who don’t shop at Food Lion, where all the snooty artists in town bought their shitty fucking beer.
And there was Pierce’s friend, Tony, who had
visited West Appleton a few weeks ago. Tony was an economics undergrad, and he was a loud frat boy, which had all but confirmed Alaura’s suspicion that Pierce himself had once been a frat boy, or a wannabe frat boy, and that his current persona as a starving artist was, quite likely, a gross affectation. This theory explained a lot—particularly his brand-new Subaru station wagon, his loft condo, the Amex card he bandied about, and the family photograph on his fancy new iPhone of him with four other attractive and well-adjusted citizens standing before a large log cabin. “It’s where we spend Christmas,” he had explained with unpersuasive embarrassment. Hearing that, she had wanted to jump out of her skin; she’d never had luck with rich boys.
But he was also very, very sweet. A tremendous smile. He listened to her like no one else ever had. And he was gorgeous. So it couldn’t really be that bad that he had money, could it?
But another warning sign: though Pierce was a technically talented artist, his paintings were lewd and pretentious—lizards copulating with snakes, snakes copulating with birds, monkeys drinking tea and diddling one another under miniature tables.
Fuck!—she should have fucking known. God, her life was fucked. Was she going to turn depressed again? Would she have to battle again with her shrink to tweak her medications, lie again that she did not drink more than one drink a night?
Actually, a glass of white wine sounded like a great idea.
Her phone rang at two thirty.
Could be one of her friends. But she wouldn’t answer. Maybe tomorrow, go out for drinks with the girls—but not today. Not even if it was Constance, who had warned Alaura from the beginning that Pierce was bad news. And definitely not if it was Michelle, who now had three kids and a huge house and a husband built like a Viking god.
Maybe she could hang out with Karla, her best friend. But it wouldn’t be Karla calling. Karla never called first; Alaura had accepted that. And anyway Karla had been incognito for weeks, off at that life-training place in Raleigh that sounded weird even by Alaura’s spiritual-seeker standards—the Reality Center it was called? But maybe Alaura would give Karla a ring anyway, soon, because Karla was not the kind of friend you let slip from your life—she was a successful metal sculptress, she was beautiful, she attended weird life-training things, she lived in a renovated farm house, she ate homegrown vegetables, she seemed to get everything exactly right—
Alaura checked her voicemail—just Waring bitching that she was late for work.
Waring, who was probably running out of money. Selfish asshole.
As she hung up the phone, Alaura’s gaze came across the screener DVD of the movie Chop Shop sitting on her purple end table. She picked up the show box. Studied it. More often than not, advance-released DVDs like this were terrible movies . . . essentially junk mail from film companies hoping to convince you to buy their worthless crap. But Chop Shop had been a critical success, and it was directed by Ramin Bahrani, who’d been born in North Carolina, and the film had not shown in either of Appleton’s dinky theaters. It might be a good renter if she decided to order multiple copies. But she had to watch it to know.
So she poured a second glass of wine and thought, What a relief, to have a decent movie to watch.
Two hours later, Alaura resolved to go into work looking good. So she pulled on her best bra and a tight and ratty tee shirt and fingerless gloves and a red plaid kilt, cemented her hair up and back in crazy anime spikes à la Dragon Ball Z, and she did her makeup heroin-chic, with sick dark eye shadow like Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner.
So she was feeling tough and sexy and a tad drunk as she drove down College Street in Waring’s unregistered Dodge. The car was a rusty, hissing monster that Waring parked behind the store and that Alaura had begun “borrowing” two weeks ago in retaliation for the ear-tongue/fight-with-Pierce incident. She hated driving this clunker, but all in all, she wasn’t feeling half bad about things when she saw—
Blockbuster had opened for business.
She pulled the car to a stop, flipped on the hazard lights. She examined the place. Glared at it. Shit. This wasn’t possible. That huge Blockbuster sign had only appeared a week ago. Now the place was open! She had watched them laying the carpet, constructing the shelving, carting in box upon box of DVDs, all of it coming together precisely and without a hiccup, like a color-by-numbers painting. Still . . . it couldn’t have happened this fast. It just couldn’t!
But it had. At least twenty-five customers milled the aisles. Mostly college students. The store looked bright and inviting, with cool splashes of blue and yellow everywhere. Flat-screen televisions, visible from the street, displayed trailers for new and upcoming releases. A decently sized selection, from what Alaura could see. But no VHS tapes in yellowing plastic cases, of ancient titles not otherwise available on DVD. And likely no Independent Film or Documentary sections. Certainly no Anime section. No Criterion section. No pornography. No African Queen. And no eccentric employees with tattoos and refined movie tastes. Only ignorant vanilla undergrads wearing matching uniforms—those goddamn navy polos.
“Fucking wankers!” Alaura bellowed in her best Trainspotting brogue, and she gunned the Dodge toward Star Video.
When she entered the shop, the floor was empty. Jeff stood behind the long counter watching Harold and Maude, slack-jawed, a wild look of pleasure on his face. Handsome Jeff, tall Jeff, frightfully young Jeff—his lips moved as if he were conversing with the television. On screen, Bud Court screamed, and Ruth Gordon fell through a trapdoor. But Alaura ignored the movie because she hated to enter scenes, especially interesting scenes, midstream.
“Has it been this slow?” she said, flipping her purse under the counter.
Jeff snapped to attention. “Oh, hi. Yes, ma’am.”
“How much have we done?”
“About two hundred dollars.”
“Fuck a monkey.”
“The new Blockbuster opened,” he said in a low voice, and Alaura noticed that, today more than ever, Jeff averted his gaze from her. She hoped this was because of her unparalleled beauty.
“I know,” she said. “I saw.”
“Blockbuster was on campus today, handing out free rental coupons. They’re giving away PlayStations and Blu-ray players.”
“Christ.”
“Alaura!” Waring yelled from The African Queen.
Alaura sighed—already she was exhausted by Waring. “Time to face the music,” she said, and she dragged herself up the loft’s spiral staircase.
Through the blue-gray fog produced by Waring’s fuming cigarette, Alaura could see that he was drinking a beer and reading a fat hardback book, while High Fidelity played on The African Queen’s flat-screen. Waring looked up from the book, which Alaura knew would be some film-history text or celebrity biography, and his face slackened into shock and awe.
“Hello, nurse!” he said as his eyes scanned her up and down.
“Oh Jesus, shut up.”
Then Waring’s expression twisted quickly into an and-where-have-you-been-young-lady grimace.
“Sorry,” she said as she plopped onto the couch beside him.
“Sorry for what? For being late? Yes, I’d say late.” He coughed into his fist, then turned his book face down onto the loft’s cluttered coffee table. “In the meantime,” Waring went on, “I’ve been stuck with Blad, aka Captain Annoying. Have you seen his employee picks? He actually picked Bring It On.”
Alaura shrugged but did not remove her gaze from the movie, enduring her midscene entry.
“Blad is Jeff’s new nickname,” Waring informed her. “You look amazing, by the way.”
“I asked you to be nice to him, Waring. And Bring It On is a good movie.”
“It’s literally impossible that Bring It On is a good movie. And I am being nice to him. He still has a job, doesn’t he? Which reminds me, I might have to fire Farley.”
Alaura’s face tightened, but she quickly released the expression, hoping to leave her makeup undisturbed. “What’s the problem
now?”
“Listen,” Waring said with sudden theatrical Waxian urgency. “Farley was just up here filming with some little digital camera thingy. First of all, him being in The African Queen with his, well, girth and everything, is not exactly safe. Which he knows. Which I’ve told him. And when I asked him what he was doing, he said, in that wheezy voice of his, ‘Uh, I’m getting footage for some stupid documentary about modern technology and the state of the video store industry and some other crap.’ He’s out there now. Filming, not working. So clearly I should fire him.”
“Not like you care, Waring, but Farley’s in school for documentary filmmaking.”
Waring reached for the remote and paused High Fidelity.
“You’re over three hours late,” he said. “And you didn’t call.”
She took the remote from him, pressed “Menu.”
“Is something wrong?” he said.
“No.”
“Why are you so late?”
“No reason. I watched Chop Shop.”
“And?”
“And it’s fucking incredible. I think it’ll be a good renter, so I’m ordering ten copies.”
“But something’s wrong.”
“Why is Jeff’s nickname Blad?” she asked with a curl of annoyance. “That’s not even a word.”
“Blad is fun to say, that’s all.” He squinted at her. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong with you?”
“No, I’m not.”
Alaura felt him staring at her for a long time.
Then he smashed out his cigarette in the overfilled ashtray.
“Whatever,” he said. “Sorry you overslept or your life hasn’t turned out the way you wanted or yadda yadda yadda. Stay up here if you want. I was watching this High Fidelity thing again. Something about it is just . . . not . . . good. I mean, the book was good, I read it back when the movie came out, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s because John Cusack looks so stocky. He’s sort of built like Edward G. Robinson—”
The Last Days of Video Page 5