Missing Reels (11 page)

“Ceinwen, what are you doing?” Lily was standing a couple of feet behind him. How could she just appear like that? Talmadge claimed she used broomsticks. Matthew shifted his umbrella and stuck out his right hand, for all the world as though Lily were a person who responded to ordinary human politeness.

“Hello,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember me—”

She let his hand dangle in the air. “I remember. Seems like you’re here on a different errand this time.” Had Lily heard him joke about her? Maybe not, she didn’t look quite that mad, though she was stalking past him to the far counter, hands on her hips.

“As a matter of fact, I did come back for something else.” He scanned down the counter and reached over for a stack of the metal bangles. “Thought I could use some of these.”

“Great. I’ll ring them up. Ceinwen, can I have a word with you first?” She walked over and tried not to cower. “I don’t know anything about your personal life and I want to keep it that way,
capisce
? So make your dates outside of work. Store’s closing. I came to tell you to clock out.”

Okay. That could have been much worse. Lily walked behind the counter and picked up the bangles, then set them back down. “These are three for a dollar. You’ve got ten here.”

He frowned at the bracelets in deep disapproval, as though they were an exam from a particularly blockheaded student. “Oh. So you’re saying …” He tapped his finger against his chin.

“You need either one less,” said Lily, with slow sarcasm, “or two more.”

“I see now. Let me think.” He fanned out the bangles on the counter. “Hm.” He held up a couple to the light. Lily shifted her weight to one leg and folded her arms. “Well.” He picked up one, set it down, picked up another and handed it to her. “One fewer, please.”

“Fine.” She practically slammed it back on the display.

“Thanks. Awfully glad you could suggest a solution.” Ceinwen put her hand over her mouth. Lily spotted her and barked, “Are you going to clock out or what?” She retreated to the clock room, disappointed that she was going to miss the finale.

When she stepped outside he was waiting, umbrella up and shopping bag in hand. “She’s thrown me out, and no mistake. I won’t be stopping by again, I think. Unless you really do decide you want to get fired. At which point I’ll be happy to help.”

She pouted. “What if someone wants to buy
eleven
bangles?” She had her own umbrella, but she ducked under his.

“You’ll have to find a pencil, I suppose.”

“Courant is too good for house calls. I get it.” With no discussion of destination, they started walking west, toward Washington Square Village.

When she woke up the next morning, she discovered he’d stacked the bangles on the bedpost.

S
omething about Matthew going to mass had lessened Jim’s disapproval, although wisps of it trailed around the apartment. Talmadge still spent the occasional evening with George, and one night, as she lay in bed reading, he came in singing “Lili Marlene.” And she heard Jim say, “I’ve got an idea. How’s about somebody around here goes out with a man who doesn’t have a girlfriend, how does that sound?”

“You’re free these days, aren’t you? Should Ceinwen and I fix you up?”

“Great, a mathematician,” said Jim. “Because my life isn’t boring enough.”

“George has a brother.”

“Strange as this is gonna sound, I prefer to date men who are actually gay.”

“I don’t see the problem here,” said Talmadge. “Less competition for both of us.” And he shoved off behind his screens, having switched his tune to “Black Market.”

That was the only time Jim came right out with anything. Otherwise, he watched Ceinwen walk in, or watched her get ready to go out, and reminded her to call if she wasn’t going to come home, so they wouldn’t think she’d been kidnapped by that weird guy on the corner of B and Seventh. Talmadge told her he’d decided Matthew was all right, unless he tried to talk her out of condoms or into a nun costume. If that happened, she was to consult him on exit strategies immediately.

They still went to see Stefan every week, and Talmadge wasn’t trying to get out of it anymore. That didn’t seem like a good sign.

Unlike the guitar player, Matthew called when he said he was going to call, and warned her when he had to work. He worked a lot, trying to make up for the wasted time working on a busted proof with Harry.

They fell into a pattern right away, of three nights a week, which nights depending on whether or not he needed to stay at the office. She didn’t see him much on Friday or Saturday nights; not only was she usually too tired after the store’s busiest days, but he really did go to mass on Sunday morning. They frequented cheap restaurants, and Matthew rarely let her pay, though she often felt guilty about it.

Sometimes he cooked for her, always meat or fish, complaining if she didn’t finish her portion, which she almost never did. His apartment had a small balcony, and she smoked her cigarette there after the meal, leaning on the railing and blowing plumes of smoke over the rundown garden next to his building.

The place was almost as large as theirs, one big living room, a kitchen separated by just a counter, and a bedroom. The furniture was a few pieces Donna had made Harry bring over because, she said, “we have too much here anyway,” and some things Matthew bought second-hand, on Waverly Place and on Second Avenue.

He didn’t have a TV, a fact of which he was way too proud, she thought, so at his place they talked or they played strip poker or Trivial Pursuit. One night they decided to make it strip Trivial Pursuit. She nailed all the movie questions, of course, and more than held her own with history and literature, but she got only about half the science, and was so hopeless at the sports questions that he accused her of playing to lose.

Some nights they just went to bed early.

She went to Courant to see his office, a small space just off the sixth-floor elevators, with a chalkboard on one wall that was always filled with equations. On later visits she asked Matthew to explain them, but that was hopeless, so she had to settle for learning Greek letters—she liked the look of the sigmas, with equations stacked on them, top and bottom—and learning a few ideas, like the gambler’s paradox and the prisoner’s dilemma.

Harry was usually around, and he always had somebody’s revival schedule on him, urging Ceinwen to go even if Matthew couldn’t. There was a French New Wave series at the New Yorker, they needed to see
Breathless
and
The 400 Blows
and
Les Bonnes Femmes
. How about Walsh, how about Wellman, check out Ophuls, how much Lubitsch have you seen, how about this Fritz Lang. See here Matthew, you want macho, I’ll give you macho. Sam Fuller. Anthony Mann. John Huston double feature at Theatre 80. Ceinwen’s seen
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
and
The Maltese Falcon
, but you haven’t and you need to shape up, my friend. And silents, any kind of silent.
The Big Parade
,
Way Down East
,
The General
,
Seventh Heaven
,
Pandora’s Box
,
Battleship Potemkin
,
Wings
. These were the basics, Harry told her, she could fill in the rarities later.

Matthew fell asleep during
Sunrise
and she needled him endlessly about it. Then she fell asleep during
The Trial
and Matthew crowed for days. He loved
The Fallen Idol
and when he left the office for a minute to talk to a student, Harry lowered his eyebrows and cackled, “British repression. Of course he liked it.”

Several times she told Harry she should return his books. He asked if she was still using them, and when she admitted she was, he insisted she hang onto them and brought her more. Mack Sennett’s
King of Comedy
, King Vidor’s
A Tree Is a Tree
, a book called
Shattered Silents
, about the transition to sound.
A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen
, with what seemed like hundreds of photographs of movies she’d never heard of.

When they went to a silent movie, she scanned the credits for an Emil or a Miriam; on nights she didn’t see Matthew, she checked each fresh book, and still she came up empty. It was possible the photograph was from a play, but Ceinwen didn’t think so. Miriam didn’t work in theater until after the war. She knew for sure Miriam had been in Hollywood in the early thirties, so why not the late twenties, too?

The search had become a habit, like turning to the middle of a movie book to see the photos first. She didn’t like the idea, but maybe Miriam was in movies, and Emil wasn’t. Maybe Emil was a waiter at the Brown Derby. She knew she was keeping it up out of sheer stubbornness; she was seeing much less of Miriam, and when she did, the greeting was back to square one, as though Miriam had never asked Ceinwen about her dress.

They went to see
Broken Blossoms
and she loved it. She took him to Downtown Beirut afterward, figuring the bar name would give her extra in-the-know points, but they wound up arguing so heatedly over the movie she wasn’t sure he had even noticed how debauched the place was. He asked if she didn’t think the movie was a little melodramatic, and wasn’t it creepy to have a grown man in love with a little girl, and they went on for almost three hours, lingering over the last drinks until the bartender brought them their tab without asking. They decided to go back to Avenue C; we can make a game out of keeping quiet, she told him, thinking that sounded racy. And when they arrived at the building, there was Miriam, getting out of a cab. It was way past midnight, where on earth had she been?

“Thank you,” said Miriam, as Matthew held the street door for her. It was still broken.

Too much wine had made Ceinwen frisky. “Hey Miriam,” she said, a little louder than she should, waving her arms in Matthew’s direction like she was trying to sell him at the store. “This is my friend Matthew Hill. Matthew, this is my neighbor Miriam Gibson.”

Miriam hesitated, but he put out his hand and said “How do you do.”

She took it. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Matthew,” said Ceinwen, her voice so announcer-sparkly she could have been introducing a Miss Mississippi contestant, “is here all the way from London.”

“You don’t say. Welcome to Avenue C.” That had to be a joke, although Miriam’s face was impassive as ever.

“Thank you very much. It’s great to be here.” Matthew was pretty well lit himself.

“Glad you’re enjoying it.” Nice going, Matthew, you almost got a smile. “Where in London?”

He stood to one side and they let Miriam take the stairs ahead of them. “Putney.”

“I don’t know Putney, but I did go to London once, after the war.”

“What did you think?” asked Ceinwen, hoping Miriam would come out with a zinger.

“Oh, people were very nice.” Come on Miriam, you can do better than that. “We were staying with friends, and I’m afraid what I mostly remember is rationing.”

“Before my time, of course,” he said, “but I’ve heard a lot about it.” Miriam stopped at her door and said “good night,” but at least she didn’t say that she didn’t want to keep them. As they started up the last flight, she saw Miriam pause to watch. She’d never watched Ceinwen take the stairs before.

She’d left the light on in her bedroom, or maybe Jim had turned it on for her. As they tiptoed in she whispered, “I think she’s beautiful, don’t you?”

“Mm, your neighbor? For a woman that age, yes, I suppose she is.” He threw his coat just past the bed. “Do you know what she used to do?”

“Not really,” said Ceinwen.

“She seems interesting.” He reached up and pulled the string on the overhead.

By late November she was trying to mix things up, but it was hard without money. She talked Matthew into going to Chinatown, to a hole in the wall Talmadge had told her about. Everybody knew if you wanted good food in Chinatown, you had to go someplace a bit dirty and try not to picture the kitchen. When they got there, it was so run-down he tried to talk her into going down the street, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She craved noodles.

She told him Talmadge didn’t come here anymore because he got kicked out. He’d brought a date and tried to order chicken’s blood tofu off-menu, and when they wouldn’t serve it to him he made a scene and accused them of discriminating against Caucasians. Matthew said even his Chinese colleagues thought that dish was disgusting, so why did Talmadge try to order it? She said she imagined he wanted to impress his date, who was straight.

“Surely that would make his date bi.”

“Oh no. Talmadge told me
nobody
should ever date a bisexual.”

He started to say something, stopped, then settled for, “Didn’t you say the man he’s seeing now is straight?” She nodded. “Why this odd, ah … pattern?”

“There’s different theories about that.”

“Such as, he can’t tell?”

“He can tell all right.” Since Matthew appeared wrapped in thought, now was a good time to lay down her chopsticks and subtly reach for a fork.

He said, “Fear of AIDS?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Has he been tested?”

“Jim has. Negative. Talmadge says he is very in tune with his body and he’d know if there was an alien force inside it.”

The corners of his mouth appeared to be fighting an alien force themselves, but he said only, “I take it that’s a no.”

“Yes. A no.” He was pushing his noodles around in a way that seemed disapproving. Defensively, she added, “I know it’s obvious he’s just scared. Jim told him so to his face.” He fished out a piece of chicken with his chopsticks and chewed as though he were expecting it to chew back. “I don’t think that has anything to do with his love life, though. If you ask me, it’s fear of commitment.”

Matthew laid down his chopsticks, began, “Ceinwen,” then stopped.

She sucked in a stray noodle; the Chinese ones never would wind all the way around the fork. When she finished, she said, “What?” He didn’t answer. “Go on, say it.”

“Does Talmadge strike you as normal?”

She was annoyed. “Of course he’s normal. What a thing to say.”