The Last Projector

by David James Keaton

  “I was playing Joust,” Larry shrugged. “I guess I ran off the screen.”

  “No kidding,” the leathery man said in a voice that made no judgments. “Joust, you say? Is that one of those games out there in the lobby, where they’re riding the horses? I’ve played that one, I think.”

  “No, they’re riding birds.”

  “Right. Birds. I’ve played that, too.”

  “You have?” Larry’s ear for dialogue was listening close. He wanted to soak up every word, find or force all the meaning he could. “Did you win the game?”

  “Nah, just wasted a quarter. I mean, what’s that game all about anyway? I can’t believe that these guys don’t stop all this madness and step off their ostriches and…”

  “And talk seriously about how weird it is that the borders of their world keeping sending them back to the same place?!” Larry finished his sentence, excited to be on the same page.

  “Uh, right. Or maybe just shake hands and be friends,” the leathery man laughed. “So, do you like my posters?”

  “Oh, yeah. But the only movie of yours I’ve seen is The Thing,” Larry admitted sheepishly.

  “Ah, yes. I’m going to have to frame that poster one day,” the leathery man said. “In fact, John Carpenter himself was in town doing a Q&A at the more reputable drive-ins, claiming that particular movie was an AIDS allegory. But we know better than that. Don’t let that hot wire test fool ya.” Then he whispered like it was a secret, “To tell you the truth, I was going to have Mr. Carpenter sign this poster, but I didn’t want him to touch it. I’m a bit obsessive about them.”

  “Did you think he had AIDS?” Larry asked, panicked, thinking about green monkeys and green flies and that motherfucker Ronald Reagan doing nothing about it, and most of all, every movie he and Ronnie made but wished they hadn’t.

  “No,” the man laughed. “But he had these yellow fingers. I’ll bet he smokes. Hell, have you ever seen him? It looks like he’s made of smoke!”

  They stared at each other a moment.

  “Can we all just put down our lances for a second?” the leathery man finally said.

  “Can we?”

  “You bet. Hey, can I ask you a question though? Is that movie you’re holding onto for dear life from Mr. Gold? I heard we were doing a switchover, but I didn’t think it was happening just yet.”

  “Switchover? What? The speakers?”

  “No, you know,” he said from the corner of his mouth. “The dirty movies.”

  “Um, I think so.”

  “Well, we’re always the last to know!” the leathery man smiled, disappointed but unsurprised. ‎”And I’m the last to go. Most people forgot about us, this noblest of vocations. And they forgot about this building, too, the guts of every operation. In all those old photographs of drive-ins, you never, never, never see the bunker. Everyone ignores the bunker, where the movie comes from, dang it, in favor of the screen. Right here is where the real-live movie gets spit out! It’s just like everybody’s obsession with those big cooling towers on nuclear power plants, the least important but most visually interesting part of the system. But the ugly little bunkers on both of these sites really hide the ‘reactors,’ the power source, and that’s where the real danger lies.” He stopped suddenly, reaching for Larry’s movie reel. “So, that’s for me then?”

  Larry hugged his movie close, like a baby, but then held it out.

  “Maybe. Sort of. Not really. More for me really. So… who are you again?”

  “I’m the last projectionist. Don’t be afraid, son. You see that screen out there? It doesn’t have many nights like this left in it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The Last Projectionist’s voice got a little deeper.

  “If you shine too many movies on a drive-in screen, they’ll burn into it forever. Like silhouettes at Hiroshima. So if that’s gonna be the last movie, it better not just be some dirty movie. It better be goddamn good.”

  Larry offered up his baby, relaxing his grip. He knew it was more than that. But Larry’s hands were empty, and the movie was already gone.

  Then he felt like confessing stuff for some reason, and he told the projectionist his version of everything that had happened to him that day. His version left out the murders, of course, and maximized the rights over the wrongs. Maybe it was his years of directing commercials, but, impossibly, Larry sold him.

  So the Last Projectionist told him his real name, something unremarkable really. And he told Larry that he didn’t really need Larry’s movie, that he already had Jack’s copy. And he told him about the movie he’d just missed. Spunkwater, it was called. Takes place in the near future, he told him, but also years ago. About a guy who rapes three women, a mother, her daughter, and her daughter. “Mother sisters everywhere,” he explained. And he told Larry how he thought it was going to be the last movie anywhere ever, so he took a pin and scratched his name into the credits so he could be in it, too.

  “Look,” he said. “Right there where it says, ‘Derek the Orderly.’ That’s me. Seemed like a good name to chose. If it’s one thing I am, it’s fucking orderly.”

  Larry felt a little safer, blinked slower. Like his hard work was done.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I guess I’m more of the Last Projector than the Last Projectionist, if that makes any sense.”

  “Not really. You mean you think other people are as uniquely fucked up as you?”

  “What? Are you saying you’re just like me, boy?”

  “Uh, no, not really. Not all all.”

  “Fine. I’ll put your movie on,” the Last Projectionist said.

  “I thought you already did,” Larry said, not feeling so safe again. He stared at the man, waiting for him to put his thumbs into his overalls like they did in the movies sometimes, but he never did. Instead he reached out and grabbed the reel spinning on the machine with one giant, red hand. It squeaked in protest as The Last Projector tap, tap, tapped one of the cells.

  “There’s your name, too. See that, Jack? You’re one of the paramedics.”

  “I was a paramedic once. How did you know?”

  “Were you good at it?”

  “I’m better at this.”

  “I can see that,” The Last Projector said, letting the reel spin again.

  “Seriously. Pornography is important. Did you know that porn is the reason for the vast majority of our technological advances? The first thing printed on a printing press was the Bible. The second thing was porn. It’s why you have a job.”

  “And what a job it is. I thank you for that. Can you think of any other place on Earth besides a movie where such a crowd will not only sit in silence, not only sit in reverence, but they won’t think of anything else or wiggle in their seats? Churches can’t even make that claim. And what church lets you stay in your car? Until they start doing that, a drive-in will have everyone beat. Judging by the noise outside, though, maybe it’s not always going to be like that forever.”

  “Yeah, no, it’s fucking pandemonium out there. I think the reverence days are over.”

  “But you were good at your other job, too, weren’t you, Jack? There’s always that.”

  “Well, you’ve heard of doctors with a God Complex, right? I was the first paramedic with a Dog Complex.”

  “But not the first with dyslexia.”

  “Nice.”

  “I love it.”

  “Are you really going to put on my movie?”

  “I said I’d put it on. And I’ll put it on. I’ll put on all your movies. It’s my last day anyway,” he shrugged.

  “It’s everyone’s last day.”

  Three years ago. Jack’s apartment.

  Jack and some EMS trainees are having a party. Two guys on the couch are taking turns on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, trying to beat each other’s time in the stolen-ambulance mini-game. In the corner, two girls argue over crossed arms. The Scanners soundtrack is on the record player, and Jack keeps sc
ratching the needle back to the beginning.

  There’s a heavy knock on the door, and Jack gets up to answer. One of the trainees on the Playstation tucks a joint into his pocket as Jack opens the door, and several men in SWAT-team uniforms quickly enter. One of them carries a long rifle with a scope, and this man closes the door gently behind him. One of the other men puts a hand on Jack’s shoulder to hold him secure while he nods for the others to spread out, studying the walls of all the immediate rooms. Someone pauses the videogame during a destructive high point - the ambulance in mid-air, the protagonist running amok, fire everywhere.

  “We need to map out your apartment,” one of the SWAT team says.

  “What?” Jack says. “Why?”

  “There’s a potential suicide across the hall, and we need to know how this apartment is laid out in case we have to go into that apartment fast.”

  One of the girls gets in his face, arms still crossed from her earlier argument.

  “This is completely unacceptable,” she begins. “I need to see some kind of–”

  “All the apartments in this building are identical,” another officer forcefully interrupts.

  This won’t take long. We’re trying to save a life here.”

  “I can see that,” the girl scoffs, tapping the bottom of her glass for the last stubborn ice cube. “With all your life-saving equipment and all.”

  Jack steps between them and gives the SWAT team a “go ahead” shrug. They continue their visual mapping of Jack’s apartment, pointing out corners and making notes on the same kind of notepad Jack used to use for his horrible poetry back in undergrad. One stops to admire the scene on the television screen.

  “I hope you get inspired to run around my street in your underwear with a chainsaw,” the officer sneers. “Watch what happens.”

  Jack blinks in surprise.

  “Are you talking to the television, sir?” he asks the officer sarcastically, and the SWAT member quickly walks away.

  After they map out Jack’s apartment to their satisfaction, there’s apparently some time to kill, and three of the SWAT team stand in the middle of the party and begin practicing restraint and submission techniques. As they pretend to disarm themselves over and over, everyone at the party watches with confused half-smiles. Finally, one of the officers answers a call on his radio, and they quickly gather their gear to leave.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” Jack laughs.

  “Those motherfuckers watch too many movies about themselves,” the girl with the ice cube giggles. Jack notices her for the first time, and smiles.

  “Who is across the hall committing suicide?” she asks, clearly not concerned.

  “His name is Larry something,” Jack says.

  “Now that’s a terrible name,” she laughs.

  After an hour or so of waiting for some sort of action in the hallway, the party-goers get tired of peeking out the door, and the party winds back up. The guys from the couch start imitating the SWAT guys disarming maneuvers, every so often barking cop voices at the videogame avatar to “watch its attitude” when it pauses to ignite digital police officers with a flamethrower. Then, after rewinding their song one last time, Jack goes to lock his front door, just in case there are any more surprises. And that’s when the sound of a gunshot smacks him in the face like a fish. He looks around and realizes no one else heard it. The needle scratches backward on the LP without Jack touching it, Howard Shore’s string section in mid-frenzy.

  Another gunshot, then a rip and a thud, not unlike someone’s grocery bag bursting open. After a moment, Jack turns up the music.

  The next morning, Jack tip-toes through the sleeping revelers and finds himself standing in front of the door across the hall, now covered in a mad tangle of crime-scene police tape. He checks the door, finds it unlocked, and steps inside. He relishes the feeling of the yellow criss-crosses snapping around him like a finish line.

  The apartment is completely empty, except for a television with a broken screen sitting on a milk crate. In the shattered glass of the screen, Jack sees a flash of the girl from the party, the girl with the ice from the night before. She’s filling the open doorway, naked, but when he turns, she’s gone.

  On his way out, his foot bumps a rolled-up canvas bundle in the corner. It looks something like a child’s sleeping bag, but across the side, white stenciled letters spell out, “S.W.A.T.” Jack throws the bundle over his shoulder and jumps when something metal clangs inside. Heart pounding, he reaches inside and pulls out the jumble of rods and crumpled canvas. He shakes his head, embarrassed when nothing more dangerous than a small chair springs into existence at his feet like a disappointing magic trick.

  He leaves the chair in the center of the room and walks out.

  Three years later, no one ever comes back to get it.

  Jack leans back in the chair, kicking the bag out of his way. At some point, he changed the word “S.W.A.T.” to “T.W.A.T.,” which still gives him a laugh, but otherwise the apartment is exactly as the police and former tenant left it that night of the party.

  Jack stands and walks to the closet. On the floor inside are several hospital charts and files: results for allergy, blood, and paternity tests. And stuck to the inside of the closet door are the photographs of about twenty dark-skinned women sleeping in hospital beds, names scrawled on some of them. One is labeled “Jacinto Ramirez.”

  All the faces have X’s through them, except for Jacki’s. The remaining pictures cover the walls completely, except for two squares where photos are missing. Jack touches the empty spaces with a confused expression. Then he slams the door and quickly walks across the hall to his other apartment, the real apartment.

  Once home, he puts some tomato soup in the microwave, then jams six pieces of bread in the toaster and two more on top. Jack owns the largest toaster in production, but it’s barely enough for the carb-loading his high-stress, high-energy job routinely demands. Due to this diet, and especially the action-versus-inertia ratio, paramedicine was one of the least healthy professions.

  A girl comes out of the bedroom rubbing her eyes, a lathered toothbrush sticking out of her mouth.

  “You still live here?” she asks around a mouthful of foam.

  “Sort of,” Jack mumbles, still staring at his toaster. He considers moving it across the hall with his T.W.A.T. chair. “You done in the shower?”

  “Yep! Pity though. I get all of my best ideas in there. Guess what I decided to do!”

  “Shut up. Everyone always says that,” Jack sighs. “And if that were the case, why is it all I ever come up with in the shower is trying to turn my dick into a wristwatch?”

  “That’s the one thing I miss with you always gone these days,” she laughs. “Not the ‘watches,’ but your long showers. Oh, and all the soap sculptures you’d end up leaving in there.”

  “You liked those, huh?”

  “I liked your series of Laryngoscope blades you’d make, back when you were still quizzing me for the tests.”

  “Pediatric, infant, and neonate! The differences were subtle, too. Well, about as subtle as you can get with soap. Good eye.”

  “No, they were perfect. You helped me pass the test. To be honest though, they looked a bit like those old Magill blades the vets use, but, hell, it was fun when the soap was still asking me questions in the morning before the quiz. Kept me sharp.”

  Caught up in the memory, Jack puts his hand on hers. Her hand is cold, as always, even when she’s not eating ice. She moves her hand away and grabs a handful of envelopes off the top of the refrigerator.

  “Here, your mail is piling up.”

  “Thanks.” Jack tries to avoid her eyes.

  “Don’t you want ‘em?”

  He says nothing.

  “Well, maybe you should take a peek, Jack,” she says. “Besides not paying shit on any of our bills, looks like you owe money across the hall, too.”

  “What?”

  The toast pops up like a gunshot
, and Jack finally looks at her, startled. He snatches the bills away and chews on a piece of bread while she pushes past him to spit in the sink.

  “No wonder you aren’t paying us,” she says. “We thought you were squatting over there, but the landlord stopped by and said he talked to the bank and, based on the credit card number you gave to put a hold that suicide apartment or whatever, he figured out you’ve been using different credit cards and different names to hold these units indefinitely. Something about backing out at the last minute so it never gets rented?”

  “What? No, I-”

  “Sounds like the worst scam in history! Why would you even do it?”

  “I’m not. I mean, he’s wrong. That’s not why.” Jack spits a piece of stale bread past her into the sink.

  “The landlord also said you must be doing this to store something over there because you’re never going to actually move in, or move out, or move on or whatever the fuck it is you’re doing.”

  He walks to the sink to flush down the bread, and she turns him around by the shoulders. “Jack, everyone wants to know exactly what the fuck you’re doing.”

  He shakes loose.

  “So what is it?” she asks. “You building a mountain out of chicken wire and mashed potatoes to land a spaceship? You got meaningful quotes all over the walls? Heads in the freezer? One of those serial killer shrines with newspaper clippings and candles and yearbook photos of your third-grade girlfriends?”

  Jack tries another corner of toast to buy some time between questions.

  “No?” she asks. “Am I close?”

  He chews and stares at her. He eats almost the whole thing, and when she’s walking away, he finally speaks.

  “Hey, thanks for fixing the letters on my bag, by the way. They were fading.”

  She turns with her hands on her hips, mirroring his smile like infants learning social skills. Jack slaps the bills back on top of the ‘fridge, causing a tower of dog breed books and field guides to trees to tumble over. Still staring at her, he reaches into the freezer and takes an ice cube out of the tray to suck on. She shakes her head, puts her toothbrush behind her ear, then takes the ice cube away from him.