Missing Reels
This edition first published in hardcover in the United States in 2014 by
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Copyright © 2014 by Farran Smith Nehme
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ISBN: 978-1-4683-1078-8
For Jad, Zane, Alida and Ben
“When John was twenty-one he became one of the seven million that believes New York depends on them.”
—K
ING
V
IDOR AND
J
OHN
V. A. W
EAVER
,
The Crowd
, 1928
1.
T
HE WOMAN HAD LIVED IN THE BUILDING SO LONG THAT IT WAS HER
own name, Miriam Gibson, on the buzzer label, and not some forgotten former tenant. She must have been in her seventies, but she was the most beautiful old lady Ceinwen had ever seen. Her face was barely lined, with fine features and pale brown eyes; she wore her hair coiled at the neck. Miriam stood straight. She wore tailored dresses and suits with scarves, everything perfectly pressed and matched. None of the elastic Ceinwen had quietly shuddered over as Granana wheezed around the house.
Miriam lived on the floor below them. Talmadge, Jim, and Ceinwen hated the climb to their place so much that if someone forgot to buy coffee or cigarettes on the way in, it would take half an hour of arguing to decide who had to run to the bodega. Miriam climbed slowly, but when she reached her door, she seemed no more ruffled than if she had just crossed the hall.
Their apartment was a sixth-floor walkup, but it had two real bedrooms and a double living room with a large alcove that could be closed off with screens for another roommate. There were no closets.
Ceinwen had moved in with Jim and Talmadge early that spring. Jim had the side bedroom, Ceinwen the back, and Talmadge was behind the screens. Ceinwen and Talmadge worked at Vintage Visions, an antique clothing store on lower Broadway where Talmadge was the star floor salesman, and Ceinwen was queen of the accessories counter by default. When they met, Jim had been working there, too, but now he had a better job managing a tiny costume jewelry store on the Upper East Side.
She told herself that living with two men made Avenue C safe, even if Talmadge was short and Jim was skinny. It took only a month to learn which hours were fine and which demanded a cab, which buildings were normal and which should be passed at top speed, which men deserved a greeting as they bought beer in the bodega or sprawled all day on the stoop and which ones were best dealt with by a sudden interest in something twenty yards down the street, no matter how emphatic their cries of “Hey, Blondie!”
Miriam, with her good clothes and comings and goings, worried Ceinwen. Weren’t old people apt to get mugged, especially if they looked well-kept? But after a couple of months, it became clear that the other locals treated Miriam with the same brusque respect she showed Ceinwen.
Ceinwen, though, got less of a greeting from Miriam than the stoop-dwellers did. Every time they passed each other in the dank, cramped lobby, she marveled at Miriam’s ability to stroll by with a nod on a good day and indifference on a bad. “Boy, is it hot out there,” “Could you believe how long the street music went on last night?,” “Great scarf”—all of these were met with “yes,” “no,” and “thank you” as Miriam continued to walk to wherever it was she went.
“Whoever heard of an old lady who doesn’t want to talk?” she wondered to Jim. “At the nursing home the problem was getting them to stop. All you had to do was say ‘Did you see
Nightline
last night?’ or ‘So when do you think they’ll finally fix that stretch of I-55?’”
“This is New York, honey. Not Yazoo City.”
“Or if you were really desperate, I mean
really
, you could ask how the nurses were treating them.”
“And yet,” said Jim, shutting his book on his finger to mark his place, “like I said, this is New York. Even the old people have actual lives. That’s the beauty of this town.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “So Mr. Rodriguez over at the Thrifty Mart wanted to tell me all about getting his mole removed on account of he’s got such a full life.”
“Maybe she’s just a bitch.” Jim opened his book again. “Why do you care?”
“She seems … interesting,” she muttered with false hesitation.
“Ever thought,” asked Jim, “that’s she’s got nothing to say?”
Together they had suffered through the summer without air conditioning, the heat drilling through the roof and the fans searching for a breeze that wasn’t there. But the first Saturday in September the heat broke, and the sun no longer fought through the haze. Ceinwen touched up her roots that morning and put on a new dress. Talmadge dated it to the mid-thirties: dark blue silk, ruffles at the hem, and a matching fabric belt. It had cost half a week’s salary and brought her cash supply down to a truly dangerous level, but it was cut on the bias and she thought it was pure Jean Harlow. And she was sick to death of antique dresses with a missing belt.
Talmadge was on the morning shift, Ceinwen didn’t work until the afternoon. Jim was upstairs in the apartment trying to scrape paint off the transoms. Ankle straps adjusted, red lipstick blotted, she clacked down the last flight of steps and into the lobby, where Miriam was getting her mail. The day held too much promise to be marred by courting a snub, so she set her eyes on the street door, which had a busted lock. Her last attempt to discuss this fact with Miriam had produced only, “I have a deadbolt.”
“Young woman.” The voice came just as Ceinwen opened the door. Miriam was locking her mailbox. “I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Ceinwen.” Miriam had, of course, never asked her name, but Ceinwen had gotten used to social lying back in Yazoo City.
“Ceinwen.” Miriam repeated it like she’d said “Mary.” “Would you mind my asking you a question? If it isn’t inconvenient. I can see you’re on your way out.”
“It’s all right, I’m early for work.” Now she was lying, too, but this was important. Miriam speaks! Sentences! And she had a great voice, low-pitched and classy, almost like Audrey Hepburn. She let the door swing shut.
“Forgive me, but I had to ask what you’re wearing.”
“It’s antique.” Miriam liked the dress. It had been worth going broke before payday.
“So it
is
old,” said Miriam.
What kind of a comment was that? As a matter of fact, lady, this dress is way younger than you. But as usual, Ceinwen’s Southernness emerged when least convenient. Hit by an urge to be rude to an old woman, what she came out with was, “It’s a collector’s item.”
“I see. You collect old clothes.” This was said in the same carefully neutral register that Ceinwen had used when discussing plate collecting with Granana’s pals at the nursing home. Knowing she was being patronized stung Ceinwen into her sales spiel.
“I work at a store that sells vintage clothing. I like vintage for the beauty and the style. It’s your own little personal bit of history,” she said.
“Depression history. Ah.” Miriam nodded as though this explained everything. Before Ceinwen, whose Mississippi training did have its limits, could reply, Miriam continued, “I was just curious why you always seemed to be in costume.”
“It reminded me of Jean Harlow.” Why did she have to defend 1930s clothing to a woman who’d worn this stuff when it was new? At least for once she didn’t have to explain who Jean Harlow was.
“Did it really. Then I’m afraid the effect’s incomplete.” Miriam was smiling. Sort of. Had she smiled at Ceinwen before? Did she smile at all? She had no smile lines, so maybe not. Ceinwen remembered that her bag was from the sixties and pulled it closer. “She didn’t wear bras,” continued Miriam. “Or slips or underwear. A dress, shoes. That was usually it.”
Hard to say which was more extraordinary, the information or the source. Granana occasionally had brought up the topic of Ceinwen’s underwear, but she would have had a word for a woman who just never wore any. “Well, I don’t want to keep you. Good-bye.”
As Miriam walked away Ceinwen managed to say, “It isn’t a costume. It’s a
look
.”
Miriam turned and really smiled this time. “It’s very pretty. I’m just not used to seeing young girls in old dresses.” And vanished up the stairs.
Ceinwen roared down the streets avenue by avenue, pausing to light her last cigarette in a doorway. It was fifteen minutes past one when she reached the store, and she hotfooted it along the sides to avoid the customers, down the length of the entire sales floor. After clocking in, she checked herself in the wall mirror that hung in the tiny back room. Sweat shone on her forehead, wet patches bloomed under her armpits, and she’d gotten herself into this state in order to stand in a lobby that smelled of urine and converse with an old woman who was insulting her taste.
The store was crowded, and she eased behind the long counter, in search of an activity that might make her look as though she had been there since one o’clock. She opened a case and began to straighten necklaces.
“Ceinwen,” a voice snapped. “Do you just not notice anything?” Lily was inches away. Her eternal black dresses and black hair always made Ceinwen think of the thunderstorms she used to watch rolling in over a field back home. Except you could always see a squall coming from far off. Lily dropped on you like a chicken hawk.
“Notice what?” She scanned the counter quickly; there didn’t seem to be a new shipment.
Lily came closer. Ceinwen hated having her space invaded, and she stepped back. “The note. In the clock room. Go back and look.”
She shut the case and walked to the clock room to check the walls. The only note she saw was the sign-up sheet for time off. She went back to the counter, where Lily was pushing a sale. “Lily,” she said, “I signed up for my vacation slot last week.”
Lily whooshed down about a foot from the customers, just far enough to pretend they weren’t supposed to overhear. “I meant the time card,” she said, loudly. “The note on the fucking time card. Go back right now and look at it.”