Missing Reels (27 page)

Matthew opened the cover, tore the paper off the pad and pushed it across the table to her. “Don’t forget this. I’ll pay up.”

“Let me put on my coat and we can go.” She folded the paper and put it in her pocket.

“Wait here. I need change for the tip.” He was already halfway to the cashier. She decided to put on her coat and pretend they were almost ready to leave. When he got back to the table she was standing beside it, scarf around her neck and bag hooked over her arm. He sat and leaned his back against the wall.

“You’re going to stand? You’ll block the waitress.”

“We’re leaving, aren’t we?”

“No. We are not. What was that about?”

She sat down. “Paul is a film professor.”

“You don’t say. Not a lift operator?” She put her purse on the table and spotted a small thread coming loose from the stitching. “You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie. You don’t tell me everything either.”

“You most certainly did lie.” So much for his taking that bait. “That first day we had lunch, I asked if you’d read history. And you said, ‘I didn’t go to college.’ In so many words. And you’ve never said a thing to correct that.”

“It was just a semester. I didn’t think it counted.”

“It counts. I think you know it counts.” She tried to pull off the thread and the stitching unraveled some more. “If I’d known you better I’d have known you were lying. You’re bad at it. Is that why you picked film, not acting?” The guitar player yelled when he got mad. Matthew’s voice got quieter, but meaner. “Are you going to tell me about this?”

She checked her watch. 7:30. “I got accepted but I didn’t think I could go because Granana was sick. But then she died and left me some savings bonds and an account she’d been keeping for me. And it was just enough for a semester. So I went. For a semester.”

“And you dropped out?”

Sure, that was exactly what she’d wanted to do. “Of course I didn’t just drop out. I didn’t have the money.”

“What about financial aid?”

Lord, this was tiresome. “Yeah, what about it. Spent half my time at that office. Most frustrating thing I’ve ever been through. That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it before, and I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“Your father couldn’t pay for anything?”

“No.” He was bringing up Daddy? What happened to the Matthew who just let things drop?

“Why not?” She’d pulled the stitching loose along about two inches of the flap now. He pushed her bag to one side of the table. “You couldn’t get financial aid, but your father couldn’t pay for anything?”

He wasn’t going to be satisfied until she came out with the whole thing. “No, he couldn’t. He hadn’t paid taxes in a while and everything he inherited went to pay them. Except the farm and the house in town. Those made him look pretty good on paper, even though he was always broke. They care about what you’ve got, not what you owe. And getting forms out of him was like pulling teeth because he was still all paranoid about the IRS. Plus they wanted to know why one minute I could pay and the next minute I couldn’t. And I finally did get some aid, just not enough. I got enough to cover half. Maybe a little more. Didn’t matter how I juggled it, I couldn’t make it work. So I said all right, later, and I got a job so I wouldn’t have to go back to Mississippi. I figured maybe I could apply as self-supporting in a couple of years. But I haven’t.” She remembered her cigarettes and reached for her purse. “Cross-examination over?”

“Wait, you’re angry with me? That’s rich. You might have asked me about it. I’ve had to help students with aid this year.”

“Why would you know anything? Here they pay you. Back in merry old socialist England you didn’t have to pay a cent.” She pulled out a cigarette and lit up.

His voice got louder. “Socialist? Ever heard of Thatcher?”

“Wait, she’s persecuting Cambridge now? I thought it was just the Irish.”

“That’s all you Americans ever …” He stopped and let out a long breath. “Oh no. No, you’re not doing this. You’re not changing the subject, Miss Reilly. I didn’t design your bloody education system, so spare me the right-wing Southern belle act.”

“Well now, speaking of Southern,” she drawled. “College wasn’t exactly a common thing back in Yazoo City. Let alone film school. I know that’s hard for an upper-crust London boy to appreciate.”

“Oh for fuck sake, not this again. Upper-crust, too right. Me and Prince Charles, we’re
mates
.” He pushed her wrist to one side to get the smoke away from him. “What are you talking about? Did you ever try to get a job on a film, instead of standing around behind a counter all day?”

“I happen to be good at standing behind that counter.”

“Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be. Reading about James II. Memorizing every line of
His Girl Friday
. Spending all day saying ‘may I help you.’ Practically the same thing.”

“Oh, that’s not snobbish. Not at all.”

“You’re the one always dragging background into it, not me. I guess I’m supposed to agree that you fit right in at a shop. I’m sure that’s exactly what you’d like to be doing in twenty years.” His voice softened a bit. “Go on, admit it. That can’t be what you want.”

“What I want,” she said, taking her last drag, “is to make rent on time this month. And before that, I want to make it to Bleecker Street for
Children of Paradise
. If I cared about all this I’d have mentioned it in the first place.” She stubbed out the cigarette and stood up, but the thought of going to the movie by herself didn’t appeal. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t a good year, all right?”

He was still sitting. Finally he said, “All right. Have it your way. But don’t do that again.”

“Drop out of college?”

“Don’t lie to me.” He picked up his coat. “Or play dumb, for that matter. ‘Drop out of college?’ Not all men find that cute.”

It turned that out that seeing a movie, even a great movie, with someone who was still fuming wasn’t all that appealing, either. Like sitting next to Chief Scar from
The Searchers
. “Not only are you rich, you want to be loved as if you were poor,” said Arletty. Matthew’s expression never changed. She couldn’t tell if he liked it, and she couldn’t ask.

Somehow they wound up going back to his place and she decided to change in the bathroom. She had the old debate with herself about whether to wash off her makeup, and wound up doing it. She brushed her teeth, still getting pleasure from the fact that he’d never thrown away the toothbrush she left at his place back in November. When she came out in just her underwear, the light was off and he was in bed, breathing deeply; he almost never snored.

“Why have me over if you’re going to do that?” she said to his back, not bothering to whisper. She slipped onto the bed. “It isn’t enough to be mad, I have to go to your place and see you fall asleep because you’re mad?” The breathing didn’t change. He really was asleep.

She pulled up the covers and thought about the best way to track down a bunch of old people, until she fell asleep herself.

The sun couldn’t have been up long, the light hadn’t fully come in the windows; but yet again she couldn’t make herself get back to sleep. She went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water while she thought some more.

She walked back into the bedroom. Matthew was on his stomach, both arms under the pillow. Kings sleep on their backs, rich men sleep on their stomachs, Granana had told her. Ceinwen slept curled into a ball; she couldn’t remember what that meant. She braced her hands on the side of the bed, then threw herself onto it with a bounce that shook the entire mattress and brought Matthew up on one arm, hand to his eyes.

“What …”

“Oh god, I’m so sorry. I was getting back into bed and I tripped. I didn’t mean to shake the whole bed like that.” He collapsed back onto the pillow. “But now that you’re awake, I might as well tell you about this.”

“I’m not awake,” he said.

“I’ve solved the curse. Is that what you say in math?” She was pretty sure that what he muttered was “fuck me” but she continued anyway. “What do you use in math to break the curse of dimensionality?”

“Why?”

“Because I have it.”

“No, why are you talking to me?”

“Just tell me what you call it, what you use to break the dimensionality. Or solve it or counter it or whatever.”

He said something into his pillow like “mmhmshun.”

“What?”

He flipped onto his back. “Selection. Selection of features. Are we done?”

“That’s exactly what I have. A selection.” He was staring at the ceiling. “I’m selecting Emil’s print. The one he kept. Miriam said the place was crawling with people the day he died, and she doesn’t know what happened to his print. That’s the one to look for. It was his original cut anyway, it’s the best one.” He put both arms over his face. “I can finish telling you about it later.”

She was opening the bedroom door when he said from underneath his arms, “The studio people probably took it and it was destroyed along with the rest of their library.”

“We don’t know that, do we? There were all kinds of people going through his house after he died, Miriam said so.”

“What’s the purpose of this?” He’d uncovered his face but his voice was almost a moan. “You can’t tell me it’s for Miriam’s sake. We offered to show her what’s left of her brilliant Hollywood career and she couldn’t be arsed.”

“She didn’t want to see a lousy two-minute clip.”

That got him up on his elbows. “Lousy? I like that, Miss Reilly. I put my academic credentials on the line—”

“I meant from Miriam’s point of view, not mine,” Ceinwen interrupted hastily. “Lousy, as in not enough. She does want to have the whole film back. She said so.”

“Then why hasn’t she looked herself?”

“It’s too depressing for her, obviously.”

“
Obviously
.” He sat all the way up. “You really are the worst liar I’ve ever met. You’re pathetically bad.”

“Listen.” She dropped all pretense of a gentle morning voice. “She said she wanted to see it and see if she was right, that it was good. That’s
exactly
what she said and I
told
you …”

“‘I’m so sorry Matthew, I tripped.’ Like hell you tripped, you little …”

She walked to the bed, slowly, and put her hands on the edge. “You little what?”

“I demand an apology. This instant.” She shook the mattress with all her might, until he threw off the covers and dove after her.

I
F SHE DIDN
’
T SET THE ALARM, AND SHE DIDN
’
T NEED TO GET UP, SHE
woke up around 7:00 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. If she needed to get up, but forgot to set the alarm, she slept until noon. So Ceinwen had set the alarm for 8:30. She awoke to Jim shaking her shoulder and the radio blaring. She squinted until the numbers on the clock cleared to say 9:08.

“Did I hit the snooze?”

“No, honey. It’s been going since 8:30. I finally came in to ask when the hell you started listening to Bartok.”

“What’s Bartok?”

“That’s Bartok.”

Her ears focused on four or five string instruments sawing along something that was definitely Not Beethoven.

“He’s a composer?”

“Yes. What did you think this was, the Thompson Twins?”

“I knew it was the classical station.” Matthew listened to a lot of classical music and that seemed to be all that Miriam listened to, but this wasn’t something Jim needed to know. “I thought it would be a nice way to wake up. Serenity. Ease into the day.”

“That’ll teach you to stereotype,” said Jim. “Do you mind if I switch this off?”

Her head was clearing. She was sure Matthew had mentioned Bartok. She remembered walking down some street in the Fifties after they went to the Carnegie to see
White Heat
, and he had pointed to a plaque on a building where the guy had lived. She needed to stick with it, obviously. Sometimes with Matthew’s music you didn’t get a real melody until later.

“Let’s just turn it down. I like it.”

“You do
not
.”

“I do.” She was going to need Matthew’s tidy mind, and if she was pestering him about her own obsessions it would help if he could squeeze in his own every once in a while.

Jim lowered the volume. “Does Miriam listen to Bartok?”

“I am trying,” said Ceinwen, reaching for her robe, “to broaden myself.”

“Then eat something,” said Jim, over his shoulder as he walked out.

She got dressed and slipped one of the copies of the monograph into her messenger bag. She’d intended the extra for Miriam, but she figured both would be useful, one clean, one to mark up. She switched off the radio. She wouldn’t see Matthew for another forty-eight hours, which should be just enough time to come up with a compliment. Challenging. Ugh. When somebody said that, you knew he just didn’t understand the movie. Different? God no, that didn’t even work when the necklace made the customer look fat. Bracing. Bracing had possibilities.

She bet Anna listened to Bartok. Anna probably brushed her teeth to Bartok.

She paused in the living room to check for her keys and noticed Jim and Talmadge were both there, drinking coffee and staring.

“Where are you going?” asked Talmadge.

The best approach to deceit, she had decided, was to latch on to the thing you could say truthfully and stick with that. Since she had a lot of lying on the schedule, she figured she could start with half-truths, and sooner or later she’d work her way up to humongous fibs.

“The library.”

“Meeting Pope John Paul?”

“No. He’s not the only of us who reads, you know.” Her keys were in her coat pocket. “Like I told Jim,” she said, “I’m trying to broaden myself.”

“Which one are you going to?” asked Jim.

“The library,” she said, impatiently. “Long steps. Big lions. Fifth Avenue and …”

“Fortieth,” supplied Jim.

“I was just trying to remember if I have everything,” lied Ceinwen.

“Looking up a movie?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

The R train came quickly for once and she got out at Times Square, glancing as she always did at the Victory movie theater and wishing it played old movies instead of porn. She sped past the horrid park in back of the library, averting her eyes from the people sprawled on benches and playing deaf to the calls of “Smoke? Smoke?” The first time someone asked her that in Washington Square Park she’d tried to hand the guy a cigarette. He got mad.