The Last Projector

by David James Keaton

  “Who? The drive-in? Sort of.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means no.”

  “Then why are you nailing up posters around town?”

  “I didn’t nail anything. I’m just sort of doing them a favor, unsolicited.”

  “But…”

  “It’ll all make sense later.”

  “It better.”

  There was a rustle in the trunk and the dog crawled in a circle, attempting to get comfortable. It had taken to barking when they talked.

  “Okay, if we’re not gonna rename it, maybe we should at least feed it,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “We have to get it to trust us if we’re gonna get our collar on it.”

  Billy trailed off as he watched her messing with something in her purse, then the something clicked.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “An answering machine. My brother gave it to me.”

  “Answering machines don’t run on batteries.”

  She was silent.

  “Are you recording the news? Is that what’s on your tape bombs? News broadcasts?”

  “They got a little bit of everything. News, songs, us. All mixed together like a smoothie.”

  “Now I’m not so disappointed I never drank one.”

  “You realize Bigbeep’s not your nemesis, right? He’s your emesis.”

  “Huh?”

  “I thought you looked that up,” she sighed.

  “Speaking of, you never did tell me the difference between Jesus and the Karate Kid.”

  “Holding your right foot about nine inches higher off the ground.”

  “Good point,” he had to admit.

  “You know what I just realized? Either your horn’s fixed or we’re not screaming anymore.”

  “Were we ever?”

  She squeezed his hand. It was beautiful. It was like fucking Christmas. They drove silently for a while to get the barking to stop. In the distance, they heard Bigbeep yelling out the window of his cop car.

  “Hansel!”

  “Now that’s a good cop. Getting lost dogs out of trees.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she giggled.

  “Did you put up flyers about a lost dog named Hansel? I’m suddenly sure that’s what you’re doing.”

  “How dare you!” she said, slapping his hand. Then, “Probably?”

  Billy started to ask why, but stopped himself.

  “I’ll bet he shoots cats out of trees,” he decided.

  “Hey, did you see the supermoon last night?” Bully asked after a minute. “Last one of those motherfuckers was fifty years ago.”

  “Nope.”

  “Well you missed out. It was so bright, I couldn’t see the drive-in. Can you imagine some asshole celebrating their honeymoon on a supermoon?”

  “M-o-o-n. That spells ‘supermoon.’”

  “Hansel!” the voice was a little closer.

  “Isn’t there a crime somewhere, dude.” Billy muttered. “Get to work, supercop.”

  “I’m telling you, the moon was fucking huge.”

  “Was it?”

  “It was red as a baboon’s ass.”

  “Missed that.”

  “You couldn’t have missed it, even if you didn’t look at it.”

  “Why.”

  “We’re 60% water. It affects us no matter what.”

  “I’m not. I only drink coffee. A ton of coffee. I’m like a bag of coffee covered in skin. I drink water only accidentally. While swimming.”

  “I’ve never seen you drink coffee,” she frowned.

  “All bets are off when there’s a supermoon.”

  “Dogs must be 90% water. That’s why they howl at it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Hey, how’s your bike?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Hey! I thought of you the other night. Did you see that documentary on Evel Knievel? Where he tried to jump those sharks? Dumb ass was trying to cash in on Jaws.”

  Billy didn’t hear much after her words “I thought of you.” He had to bite his tongue to pay attention.

  “But Evel didn’t even do it really. During rehearsal, he wiped out, ran into the camera guy and put out his eye, then broke both his arms! What a freakin’ disaster.”

  “Whoa, he lost his eye? Like Escape from New York?!” Billy laughed.

  “No. Pay attention. His cameraman lost his eye. I think he was trying to ride his bike on water or some shit. Who knows. Fonzie jumped the shark pretty easy on Happy Days because he was on skis. That’s a lot easier on water. We’re made of water, you know...”

  “What a stupid stunt,” Billy scoffed. “That’s like saying you’re jumping starfish. They’re fucking underwater. Who knows what you’re jumping. You might as well say you jumped Moby Dick.”

  She laughed at this. “You know what you never see jump a shark?”

  “What?”

  “Sharks.”

  “Very true,” he smiled. He smiled more when he got her hand back. It was dry, cold. He loved it. “You know what even Evel Knievel never did?” he said. “Jumped a line of cars long ways. Now that would be impressive. Cars lined up end to end?”

  She took her hand away. “Why not just get more cars?”

  “Because jumping cars longways is like burying people in cemeteries straight up and down.” he said. “It’s way harder all around.”

  “Oh. But not as hard as jumping a supermoon.”

  “Probably right,” he sighed.

  “Could you do it? With that dirt bike?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Would you even try? You wouldn’t even try.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Where would you be able to get that many cars to line up?”

  She said nothing, but her hand was gone, and her eyes already held the answer. Billy desperately fiddled with the equalizer below her stereo, hoping it worked on her, too.

  The dog in the trunk struggled so loud they actually considered what they were doing. For at least a mile anyway.

  Determined, Billy had set out earlier that morning, all by his lonesome, to get that dog. He’d found that a “dognapping” was impossible unless the dog was really napping. And by napping, Billy really needed it unconscious. But if there was one thing a K-9 didn’t do when it was on duty, it was nap.

  Billy had been counting on Bigbeep’s dog being as incompetent as its master, only this fuzzy little fucker was all business. Even worse, this new dog seemed to have put a spring in Bigbeep’s step. Billy had been stalking him for a while, but watching him with the animal, he was amazed to see Bigbeep practically oozing newfound confidence in his authority. Something in his walk? Maybe something in his moustache. Scientists always claimed symmetry was power.

  Billy first tried one half-ass ambush around 8:00, calling in a bomb threat in order to get a bunch of K-9’s sniffing around an electrical substation, not really knowing how he was going to knock out the dog when he got there. He’d done some cursory research on tranquilizers, even bought a bag of Milk Bones and some bungee cords for his dirt bike in case he had to strap it to the handlebars, but eventually he’d settled for something a bit more low-tech.

  Unfortunately, the bomb squad had already cordoned off six blocks before he could get anywhere near the dog with his hammer.

  He’d rode around petulant for awhile, dreaming of stealing the dog, maybe turning Bigbeep into one of those “Unstoppable Revenge Machines” Bully was always going on about. Apparently the best action movies had one. He could have sworn it was the name of a song.

  While he’d killed some time, in a futile attempt to get his mind right for any possible adventure, he tried balancing a cap of mouthwash on his gas tank to see how far he could ride without spilling it. All the while, he imagined being one of the old, sweaty South Americans in the movie Sorcerer, trying to prove his resolve when it came to hauling boxes of explosives sweating out nitroglycerine. He had a whole case of the stuff. The first an
d last time he ever used the shit the way it was intended, his window was frozen shut and he ended up blowing it the length of his windshield in frustration, driving the rest of the way to school through a fog of minty haze. He missed looking at the world that way.

  He’d made it half a block before the acrid splash hit his chest, the wind running green rivers up his neck like an algae bloom.

  It didn’t bother him. These days, he was expecting all his planning to detonate in his face at any moment.

  He was on his tenth lap around the block when he started looking for the red flag he’d raised on a mailbox, where Bully had dropped her first flyer. He pulled it out. It was an ad for the drive-in, just like she’d said. He was stuffing it in his pocket just as a jingle for The Kid came on the tiny radio he had strapped to the crotch of his handlebars. The only time he could really hear it was when he was idling at stop signs, or peeking into mailboxes, so he didn’t catch most of it. But it was certainly a real jingle, not just the voices from the movie they’d marvel over later in the car.

  “Come down to The Spotlight Kid for this weekend’s Triple Feature of Terror! Terrifying Tots! You’re gonna need your own sitter because you’ll fall off the edge of your seat!”

  “What?” he asked the radio that morning. Then he pulled out the flyer Bully had crammed in the box and looked at it again.

  “The fuck?”

  It was an ad for a triple feature all right, only they didn’t seem quite as terrifying as the screams coming from his speakers. It read:

  “She’s Having a Baby, Baby Boom, and Three Men and a Baby.”

  “Baby baby baby baby baby,” he sang. “I fell from the sky…”

  He’d rode on a little longer, until the flutter of white under the windshield wipers on every parked car finally got his attention. Then he stopped and read one.

  “Lost Dog. German Shepherd. Answers to ‘Hansel.’ He can’t find his way home! Report any information to local law enforcement.”

  No way, he thought. A fine, German name for a dog though.

  He would never mock it again. It conjured up sniffing trails of breadcrumbs and all that good shit.

  He’d finally pulled over, clicking off another promo for the drive-in and thought about the last movie he’d seen, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He thought about people seeing Devil’s Tower in their toilets and mashed potatoes and then all converging on the same place. He felt like he was being left behind in some race, so he was very grateful when the inspiration finally hit.

  Back when Billy first burst into the pound looking for Shaft, unaware he’d already been put down, there was another German Shepherd in there that looked just like him. Which meant that this dog looked like Bigbeep’s dog, too. All those goddamn dogs, really. The big cop dogs. Identical strangers, every one of ‘em.

  So that afternoon, Billy borrowed his Bully, and her car, then dropped her off at Radio Shack to get more batteries. Then he drove straight to the pound.

  And just like he would have done a year ago, he posted bail.

  The animal jumped into the trunk like it was made for dogs.

  Billy laughed and scratched its ears for a second, before he slammed the lid shut. He knew trunks were really made for sneaking into drive-ins.

  Professional until the end, Larry made the mistake of trying one more time to finish the shoot.

  Joe Fuck was all business after the apology, so there was hope. Like most of the young bucks, no fluffer necessary, no crew turning their backs for a second, no sweet talking at all. Just sproing! Like a toddler’s arm finally finding the sleeve in a snowmobile suit. Never mind that the dumb immigrant kept saying “donkey style” instead of “doggy style,” Larry actually felt grateful for a second. Then he started to dwell on the implication of their unique skills. Again.

  Punks like him were so into the scene that they never got into the scene. Larry called this The Ultimate Paradox of Pornography.

  It was a way of thinking few could grasp, as it was directly opposite of the typical acting “methods” he would see bandied about his set by Hollywood wannabes, a tendency more common in the girls than the boys, who usually left their delusions at the door. Actually, any mention of Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski around Larry, or specifically the Stanislavski System, would mean a pink slip in that actress’s hand by the end of the day. And the fact that Larry used an actual pink slip in place of any written notice of termination did little to soften the blow.

  He bought slips in bulk, as his cast routinely fucked the lace on the lingerie as ragged as paper snowflakes.

  Suzie stayed down on Joe while Larry circled, fighting the urge to make what real directors called the “loser box” in the air with his forefingers and thumbs. Then Suzie started deep-throating Joe with those duck noises that were getting more and more popular these days, the steady stream of saliva rolling off her bottom lip, always coating their indifference with such a convincing façade of hunger. It made no real sense really, all that spit. Mouths got so confused with a cock in them, convincing the lips, teeth and tongue that the whole crew was seconds from chewing that shit. That saliva would soak the talent and any and all nearby surfaces. The mouth really did think it was dealing with food.

  And the noises. When Larry first heard the sounds coming out of his little organ-grinder monkeys, they were familiar but confusing, and Larry never could quite place the memory. That is, until his car stereo started eating his Frampton Comes Alive! Tape right on the squawking guitar wanking in “Do You Feel Like We Do” at ten times normal speed.

  Back in college, one of Larry’s film school buddies dropped out to take a closed-captioning gig, even typing out the subtitles for some of Larry’s own performers, or so he claimed. Supposedly, he’d captioning censored versions for hotel skin-flick channels. And sometimes this guy would e-mail Larry to complain about the dark turn Larry’s movies seemed to be taking lately.

  “Joe Fuck should be in Grenada, not in porn,” his buddy complained once. “I mean the country, not your car.” Then he went on to explain he’d had to add typing shortcuts to save time while tap, tap, tapping horseshit like that into a weary keyboard all day, and how hitting the letters “GG” used to conjure up “[girl giggling],” but now he had to use “[girl gagging]” because of Larry’s band of rutting psychos. “A dark day indeed,” he’d told him. Larry heard from the guy only one last time, when he lamented being forced to change his keyboard shortcut “VB” from “[vibrator buzzing]” to “[voice breaking].” He told Larry he quit that same day, but Larry didn’t believe him. It wasn’t that bad.

  From Larry’s experience, the girls might have voices breaking and tears in their eyes sometimes, but he knew they could encourage the sadistic bullshit that induced it.

  But damn it if Joe couldn’t perform. He’d heard rumors of fake rubber dicks with squeeze bulbs full of milk that other crews were forced to bring in to wrap up a shoot. He thought of those turkey basters as The Doomsday Button. If porn lost that much integrity, he was out the door. Joe kept the Apocalypse at bay. He could even “Ouroburos” on command, if the female bowed out or got lost on the way. This was Larry’s nickname for auto-fellatio.

  He looked Joe up and down, like Wile E. Coyote mapping out the meat on the Roadrunner. He had a new tattoo. Smack dab in the middle of his washboard abs and the railroad tracks drawn over them, a bit to the right of the angry rash where his bush used to be. It screamed:

  “I Love Fiona.”

  Unbelievable, Larry thought. Roxy and Suzie sure weren’t “Fiona.” And neither were their characters. Larry suddenly began to lose his mind watching Joe fucking Suzie with this declaration of “I Love Fiona” inflating faster and larger with each wheezing breath. He couldn’t think of a worse distraction for his film.

  Until he saw Suzie’s tattoo, across her lower back, of course.

  “Sammy,” it said simply, to anybody listening.

  Has anybody seen Sammy? Larry couldn’t take it.

  “C
ut!”

  Suzie stood up fast, ejecting Joe like a sprung diving board.

  “What did you call me?!” she yelled.

  “Huh? No, I said ‘cut.’”

  Suzie was standing so close to Larry, he could smell the hate coming off of her. She stood there glaring, bare foot tapping his shoe impatiently, nostrils flaring, lip quivering, while the gold charms on her necklace tangled and slung over her shoulder tinkled like coins. She pulled them back over her chest and fingered them nervously, a tiny pair of brass knuckles and a Tweety bird whose square Frankenstein-like forehead gleamed with as much sweat as hers.

  “Listen, Suzie,” Larry said, as soothing as he could muster. “With this ‘Sammy’ thing, we got, at the very least, a continuity error here.”

  “Wha-?” Her eyes darted around, looking for coke. “Who?”

  Larry looked her up and down. He remembered the first time a girl showed up to a shoot with an angry red tattoo on her arm, some dead nephew’s babyface, fresh from the needle, and how he was so mad that he turned off his camera and made her ride the guy for thirty-five takes just so she’d sweat enough to ruin the new ink on her shoulder. He felt guilty when he saw the splotchy holes in the baby’s mug a week later. But he didn’t feel guilty about it anymore.

  Larry straightened out her necklace, fighting the urge to pull the chain tight above her head so she’d look and listen just once.

  “The names! Your names! We got real names, fake names, characters names, and now you got names on your bodies? Just who the fuck are you supposed to be? Do you even know?!”

  “What are you talking about?” she yelled, foot tap, tap, tapping, loud as gunshots.

  Is her nose bleeding?

  Larry thought about how he could remove the blood later, just as they were adding blood in more recent movies. “Computer-generated imagery,” they called it. And he knew it would eventually ruin the world of film. He’d argued about it with Damon the week before as they watched the dailies and Damon rubbed Larry’s face in one of the “real” movies he was producing. Damon was pointing out where they’d be adding the splashes of red, and Larry tried to explain how computer-generated blood would do more damage to a movie than an actual death on the set. Damon said, “Well, Vic Morrow and those two kids would probably disagree with you about that one,” and Larry said, “No, they practically advertised his death when the Twilight Zone movie came out. If anything, it did more damage to possible sequels, I’ll give you that, but that’s time travel you’re talking about now.”