Missing Reels (3 page)

The hat women had left during the earring episode. At least they hadn’t taken the hats, which would have given Lily a reason to yell about security, along with punctuality and hygiene.

There were no more customers after that. They counted out the register in Lily’s office downstairs, Lily remarking that the last sale of the night certainly helped. Ceinwen clocked out and walked home, wondering if whoever wore her dress before had had the same kind of luck with it.

The winding stone stairs to the sixth floor might once have looked like marble before years of pounding feet had worn a slope into the middle of each. They weren’t that narrow, but they were steep even for the Lower East Side, and on a night like this she had to concentrate on not tripping. She was winded by the time she reached the top.

Jim was in the kitchen, cigarette dangling and coffeemaker going. How he could drink coffee all day and night mystified Ceinwen. She reached into a cabinet and grabbed a half-finished bag of Dipsy Doodles.

“Is that dinner?”

“Yep.” She reached into the fridge for some seltzer. “I can’t help it. Lily’s been killing my appetite.”

“You smoke too much and you don’t eat enough.” He ran his cigarette under the faucet and tossed it in the trash. “And what happened to your dress?”

He pulled at a side seam. It had ripped about two inches straight up, showing Ceinwen’s torso almost to the edge of her bra. She didn’t know when it had happened or how long she’d been flashing skin. For all she knew, this was why the Englishman felt sorry enough to lie for her. The little match salesgirl.

“Shit.” She was almost in tears. Jim looked alarmed.

“It’s not that big a deal, honey. That’s what happens with these old clothes. The fabric holds up but the thread gets weak.” He patted her shoulder. “Take it off.”

She thrust a hip forward and said huskily, “What are you saying?”

“Take it all off, baby,” purred Jim. He examined the dress again. “I can fix this. It’s right on the seam. I’ll do it now.”

“Thank you, Jim.” She undid the belt and the hooks on the side. Jim had seen her in her underwear or stark naked so many times that she didn’t bother with formalities. Dress halfway over her head she said, “Want to watch a movie with me while you sew?”

A sigh. “Oh, all right. I’ll mostly be looking at the needle anyway.” He took the dress from her and turned it inside out. “I might stitch up this whole side.”

“
The Ox-Bow Incident
? I just got it.”

He looked suspicious. “I read that in high school. It’s a Western, right?”

“More of a morality tale. Only,” she admitted, “with cowboys.”

“So a Western. You know I don’t like Westerns. Neither does Talmadge. And wait, it’s got lynching, doesn’t it?”

“Talmadge would like Anthony Quinn.”

“No.”

“Dana Andrews was handsome.”

“I’m not watching a lynching Western and that’s final.”

“How about
The Old Maid
?” He wanted to know the plot. Told that it involved Bette Davis’ sacrificial mother love, he demanded to look at her video stash himself.

Ceinwen followed Jim through the living room where Talmadge was realigning the couch. It was a low-slung, high-backed, mauve-brocade affair that Jim had found in the street one Sunday night. The couch was beautiful, in a Victorian whorehouse sort of way, but it was missing a leg, which was how it ended up in the junk pile. After the three of them had pushed it upstairs—an operation that took nearly an hour and pissed off every neighbor they had, except Miriam, who was out—Jim positioned two cinder blocks where the leg should have been. This worked, but the couch was a touch shy of level. When they sat on it—and it was the only sitting option in the living room, aside from some floor cushions—the couch slipped a bit on the blocks. Every day it had to be moved back, and Talmadge had taken over this task.

Pushing the couch into perfect harmony with the blocks had become one of his rituals. Talmadge had a lot of rituals.

“Oh looky, it’s another Ceinwen lingerie show.” Jim didn’t care if she wasn’t dressed, but Talmadge kind of did.

“I’m getting my nightgown. And a movie.”

“Which one?”

“I’m picking,” called Jim, who was already in her bedroom running his finger down the rows. “Ceinwen wants all the depressing stuff. Because she obviously had a great day and she wants to make it even better.”

“It’s called perspective,” said Ceinwen, grabbing the slip she wore as a nightie.

“It’s called masochism.” Jim pulled out a tape. “All right. How about this?”

“Yes!” hooted Talmadge from the doorway. “Marlene!”

She always sat in the middle of the couch where the back was highest; she pulled over an ashtray and propped her feet on the coffee table. Talmadge put in the tape and sat down with a pint of ice cream and a spoon. Jim went to work on the dress.

Ten minutes in, Ceinwen was blowing smoke at the ceiling and wishing she were on a train, reeling in the suckers with Anna May Wong. She felt so much better that she didn’t even mind when she remembered Marlene Dietrich’s name in
Shanghai Express
was Lily.

I
T WAS
W
EDNESDAY
. P
AYDAY WAS
T
HURSDAY
. T
HE RAIN STARTED SOON
after Ceinwen arrived, and there were few customers. When Lily told her to go to lunch, she laid her assets on the counter and totaled them up. $1.28 in small change and half a pack of Marlboro Lights. As expected, Ceinwen was broke.

She could stretch the cigarettes until tomorrow, but food—food presented a problem. There was almost nothing in the house; she’d had the last of the pasta that morning. Talmadge, she knew, was also broke. He had some ice cream in the freezer, but he’d kill her if she ate it. Talmadge’s ice cream was another nightly ritual. She could have hit up Jim before he left for work, but Jim seemed out of sorts, and she didn’t want to bother him. Now she was regretting that decision. She had enough for a cup of coffee and a buttered roll, and that was it until 9:00 p.m. and a second chance at Jim.

She swept the coins back into her change purse. Time for Smelly Deli. She looked out the door—still raining. She pulled her coat over her head and dashed across Broadway.

Smelly was the name they’d given Demeter Deli, because of its Pine-Sol fragrance, which varied only in intensity—sometimes it was strong, most of the time it was unbearable. Smelly was a defiantly ugly place with lighting that made everyone look green. There were a few rows of junk food displays and a counter that made huge, cheap sandwiches, so it was always packed with NYU students. There were a handful of tables and chairs in the back, and seats were hard to come by, but the rain had kept the crowd down a bit and Ceinwen found a single empty table near the bathroom. She uncovered her coffee, spread out the paper wrapping for the roll and began tearing off one tiny piece at a time, hoping the bits would expand in her stomach. The problem was not chewing everything at top speed.

“Hello there.”

That voice. Mr. Rule Britannia from Saturday night. His hair was damp and his shoulders were spotted with rain. An Englishman with no umbrella. “Is that place taken?” He had a sandwich in one hand and a Coke in the other. She would much rather have had Coke than Smelly coffee.

“Go ahead.” Too late to pretend she didn’t remember him. She didn’t want to be openly rude, but she didn’t want him watching her eke out the roll, either. He was running a hand through his hair and putting his jacket on the back of the seat.

“I never did introduce myself,” he said. “Ceinwen, isn’t it? Matthew.” He stuck his hand across the table as he sat down.

Both her hands had crumbs on them. She shook his hand, and he rubbed his fingers against his thumb to get the crumbs off. She was supposed to say something, and “Why are you people always named Matthew?” probably wasn’t ideal. Well, she’d be damned if she was going to say “Where are you from?” She wasn’t such a hick as to make a fuss over every accented jerk who said hello to her. Besides, she had an accent, too.

“You live around here?”

“Live and work. I’m at Courant. Over on Mercer.”

“What’s Courant?”

“NYU maths department.”

Ceinwen took a sip. There was always something off about the coffee at Smelly, like it had absorbed the pine ambiance. “You look kind of old for a student.” That was openly rude. For once she didn’t care.

“I’m a postdoc. Been here since June. I teach a class, and I’m working on some papers with a professor there.”

From the depths of her memory she dredged up the one question she could ask about mathematics that didn’t involve counting out a register. “Pure or applied?”

“Applied,” he said. “Probability.” She was eating this roll too fast. It was more than half gone. She tore off another bit and popped it in her mouth, so that he wouldn’t expect her to talk for another minute. He didn’t say anything, just started eating his sandwich. It looked like roast beef, and at the moment it was considerably more interesting than he was.

“That isn’t much of a meal,” he remarked. “Did you eat earlier?”

“It’s fine. It’s all I wanted.”

“Are you sure? You look a bit pale.” So he could be rude, too. Although maybe, unlike her, he wasn’t trying.

“I’m Irish. I’m always pale.”

“If you’re Irish,” he said, sticking a straw in his Coke, “by which I assume you mean Irish descent, why do you have a Welsh name?”

“
How Green Was My Valley
. The book, Ceinwen’s barely in the movie. My mother loved it.” Wait a minute. “You know it’s a Welsh name?”

“Yes.”

“Then how come you didn’t know how to pronounce it?”

“I do know how. I’ve even read the book.” He smiled. “I was trying to lighten the mood.” Down to one-quarter of the roll. Maybe she should just forget trying to stretch it out and gobble the rest so she could get out of here. “Did I?”

“Did you what?” And it was hard to make decisions while he kept looking at her.

“Lighten the mood?” He waited a moment, then, “Because it didn’t seem that way.” She chewed another piece. “It doesn’t seem that way now. I don’t know, I suppose I was expecting something else.”

She swallowed. “Like what?”

He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Like thank you.”

“Thank you.” She stuffed three pieces in her mouth at once.

“That was heartfelt.” Not only was he not smiling, this was pretty much a glare. “See here. You’re making it rather obvious you don’t like me. Did I or did I not save your job?”

She shrugged. “Probably.”

“Then please, tell me. How did I manage to offend you? You don’t like the looks of me? You wanted to get fired and I ruined everything?”

The roll was gone and the words boiled up and out of her: “You bought my earrings.”

He was lost. “You sold us your own earrings?”

“I mean I was going to buy them. I had them on hold. For myself. And that morning that c—
cow
I work for put them back in the case. And now they’re with your girlfriend. In
Modena
,” she added, with emphasis, to show she still knew how to pronounce it. And they didn’t even look good on her, she thought.

“I’m sorry.” He did look sorry. Good. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You saw my boss. Would you cross her?” You could smoke at Smelly, thank god. Ceinwen grabbed the metal ashtray and pulled out her cigarettes.

“No,” he said, “I don’t suppose I would.” She lit up and blew the smoke away from him. “Can’t you get another pair?”

“They’re one-of-a-kind. That’s this designer’s whole thing. Never the same design twice.” She took another long, slow drag.

“You know, you shouldn’t smoke while people are still eating.”

Granana had always told her the same thing. She stubbed it out. “Sorry, I just do that automatically when I’m done.”

“Why don’t you eat something with me, then.” He put a sandwich half on the paper in front of her. “Here. I can’t possibly finish this.”

“I’m not hungry.”

For the first time, she was holding eye contact. His eyes were blue, and little lines fanned out from the corners. “That’s odd,” he said. “Because you’ve been staring at the sandwich ever since I sat down.”

She looked down; it was roast beef. She took a bite so big she knew she’d left lipstick on her chin, covered her mouth with her hand and spoke behind it. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“For the record,” she said, finally swallowing, “I don’t think there really is a health regulation about pierced earrings. That’s just Lily’s thing.” God this sandwich was good. Maybe he wasn’t as irritating as all that, even now that he was trying not to laugh. “My friend Jim runs a little jewelry store uptown. They let everybody try on everything.”

“Germ freak. She seems the type.”

“I think she’s paranoid about AIDS.”

That killed the talk for a moment. It always did.

“So,” he said, “did you read history?”

He asked the strangest questions, and he never looked away. “Like when, last night?”

“Sorry, I meant your major. History?”

“I didn’t go to college.” Ugh, a pickle. She drew it out of the sandwich and looked for others. “I work at Vintage Visions full time.” He was feeding her, and trying to be friendly, but if he followed up by asking her what she
really
wanted to do, she was leaving and taking the sandwich with her.

“But you read history books, on your own.”

“Sure. I like them better than novels. Well, I do read novels sometimes. Old ones.” Three more pickles. Did anybody want that many? Had he asked for them?

“So you sell jewelry and you read history and old novels.” He’d pulled his straw out of his Coke and was chewing on the end. “And hats. You sell hats.”

Put like that, it sounded skimpy even to Ceinwen. “I also go to the movies a lot.” She realized she was sucking the mayo off the side of a finger. Granana wouldn’t have liked any part of her table manners today.

“Mm. Popular movies?”

What? “I don’t try to pick the ones that people hate.”

Everything she said was funny to this man. “As opposed,” he said slowly, “to art-house stuff.”