Missing Reels (34 page)

Jim mouthed, “Let. Him.
Apologize
,” and disappeared.

“I was being childish. Really, it’s none of my business if you have to call off something.” That didn’t sound good. “I was more disappointed than I would have been ordinarily” (what was she, one of his students?) “because I’m leaving in a week or so.”

The chipped paint on her wall slid out of focus, like the camera was telling her someone was about to faint. “Leaving?” she said. “Leaving New York?”

“Leaving for spring break.”

“Oh.” Waterskiing, maybe.

“I thought you knew it was coming up.”

“No, I don’t keep track of school holidays. Since I’m not in school.” She prayed he hadn’t noticed the tiny crack in her voice.

“No reason you should, I suppose.”

“Where are you going?” She put her hand over the receiver so she could get a deep breath that didn’t sound like a sob.

“USC.”

West. The opposite direction. She summoned a vision of Lauren Bacall and tried for a lower key. “Meeting someone there?” Hopeless. She just sounded hoarse.

“Maths professors.” She covered the receiver again and gulped air like someone had taken a pillow off her face. “Busman’s holiday.”

Tears had rolled all the way to her neck. No Anna. He was working. She took her hand away. “I understand,” she managed. “Publish or perish.”

“Precisely. There’s a couple of profs there who have a computer program I think I can use. So that’s what I’m doing. For ten days. Starting Wednesday.”

“You’ll be busy,” she said. Her voice wasn’t so bad anymore, so she added, “Too busy for anything else.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. I have two years here in the States to get as much done as possible before I start applying for tenure track. I won’t have time to drop by the film department and reminisce about the late Professor Gundlach. I don’t want to be rude, but I do want that up front.”

“I’ve never complained when you needed to work, have I?”

“No. To be fair, you haven’t.”

“I’m sorry about tonight.” She was now, anyway. Very sorry. “Do you have another night? Before you go?”

He let her wait, then said, “Monday?”

“That works. Monday’s a bad night for digging up graveyards.”

A small, slight laugh. But a laugh. “Monday then. Good luck with … whatever you’re doing tonight.”

“I’ll tell you Monday.”

“Then why not now?” He didn’t sound annoyed or formal anymore. He sounded like Jim had earlier, on the couch.

“It’s just that, I’m afraid you’ll think it’s a bad idea and … then you’ll explain why. And that will make me nervous. More nervous.”

She mopped up her face with the edge of her sheet. He said, quietly, “Is that what I do?”

“Sort of. Sometimes.”

“Like that fellow in the Katharine Hepburn movie.”

“We’ve seen a few …”

“She’s an athlete, and he’s a big blond Aryan type. Whenever she’s playing, he talks to her and says all the wrong things and before you know it, she’s off her game.”

“
Pat and Mike
.”

“That’s the one,” he said, softer still.

“Never,” she said, matching his volume. “Nothing like him.”

“Good.”

What were they waiting for? “See you Monday?”

“See you then.”

S
HE WAS SUPPOSED TO MEET
F
RED OUTSIDE, BUT SHE SAW NO ONE.
She poked her head in the door, the doorman looked up from his desk, and she ducked back out because she didn’t know Steve’s last name or the apartment number. She walked back toward the curb and took in the building: tall, set well back from the street, concrete trim, plate-glass windows, shrubbery along the front. She heard a voice say, “Hey.” She looked down the sidewalk one way, then the other. “Hey.” Louder this time. She stepped to the curb and edged between two parked cars, trying to get a look at the street.

“
Ceinwen
. I’m over here.”

Fred was walking toward her from the direction of the plants. She had been looking at that spot not two minutes before. “Were you standing behind the bushes?”

“I wasn’t
behind
the bushes, I was
next
to the bushes. Um, have you got an extra cigarette?” He set down a duffel bag on the sidewalk while they lit up. As he exhaled he said, “Thanks. We can’t smoke up there. Steve, ah, Steve is asthmatic. Hates cigarettes.”

“Good to know.” His whole body was rocking slightly, side to side. “I hope you aren’t nervous or anything.”

“No, of course not.” He had an overhand smoking style, very 1940s, except people back then held still when they smoked. “I just, you know, want this over with as soon as possible.”

They smoked silently, and she resisted the urge to put her hand on his shoulder to stop his swaying. “Looks like a nice building.” Fred shrugged. “Has he got a lot of stuff stored up there?”

“I guess,” said Fred, with a sidelong look. “All I saw was, um, the living room. Pretty clean.”

She was giving him the wrong idea again. “I was just asking because I went to another collector’s place, and you wouldn’t believe how crowded it was. Barely enough room to sit. Glad Steve’s place is normal.”

“Uh, hold on a minute there,” said Fred. “Didn’t say it was normal.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

Fred looked at his cigarette, which was almost down to the filter. “I’m not sure, but, um, I think his decorator must have been Tod Browning.” He took one last drag, and with a graceful overhand toss he threw the cigarette toward the street. It sailed between the cars and landed straight in the gutter. He bent down to get his duffel while she tried to imitate his throw. Her cigarette landed a good foot short of the curb. She looked back to see if he had noticed, but Fred was facing the door, still twitching.

“All right,” she said brightly. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Once in the elevator she racked her brain, trying to remember more Tod Browning.
London After Midnight
, check,
The Unknown
, check, but he’d done sound movies too, famous ones. Why was she blanking? Nerves, must be. She didn’t want to ask Fred and make a stupid mistake, like she had with Topo Gigio.

When they reached Steve’s door, she waited for Fred to ring the bell, and saw that he was hugging himself. She reached across him and pressed the button. Footsteps sounded, Fred hugged himself harder, and Steve opened the door.

“Good evening! Freddie my man, how it’s hanging?” Steve’s voice really was something, a honk that sounded like he was blowing his nose.

“You know,” said Fred. “Can’t complain. This is my friend Ceinwen.”

“Howdy!” Steve pumped her hand up and down. “Come in, come in, don’t be shy.”

She walked in and checked to make sure Fred was behind her in the short hall. He was, albeit at a bit more distance than seemed logical. She took a look at the living room and remembered.
Dracula
. And
Freaks
. Who on this green earth painted three walls black and one wall blood-red?

“So you’re Freddie’s new friend. Let me take your coat.”

“Ceinwen’s, ah, interested in film preservation,” said Fred, clutching his duffel.

“Yup, yup, yup, and film preservation is interested in her, too. Hey Freddie, wanna hand me your coat there?”

“I’m kind of cold …”

“Whoopsie, sorry about that. I’ll go turn up the heat.” Fred shifted his duffel and handed his coat to Steve, with a far-off expression like Merle Oberon in
The Private Life of Henry VIII
, getting ready to put her head on the block. Steve led them to a sofa placed directly in front of a massive poster from
Nosferatu
. “I was pretty sure I saw you at the Bangville screening, but I didn’t get a good look. Then Gene called me this morning and said hey, whaddya know, didja see Freddie brought a girl last night. So when Freddie said he wanted to bring a friend, I figured it wasn’t that scary broad he works for.” Fred opened his mouth, and Ceinwen tugged on his sleeve to get him to sit next to her. Steve shifted their coats to one arm and put up a hand. “Sorry, I mean lady. But you gotta admit, friendly she ain’t.”

“Isabel,” said Fred tightly, “is professional.”

“I so agree,” said Ceinwen. She had turned so she didn’t have to look at Max Schreck and found herself confronting a gold-framed reproduction of that Goya painting that showed a giant biting a man’s head off. She put her eyes back on Steve. “I met her, and she’s terrifically professional.”

Steve’s couch was a bit like theirs at home, but it had all its legs and the wine-red upholstery was in better shape. Fred set the bag on the floor and put both hands on his knees, whether to persuade his legs to move less as they popped up and down, or to have his hands along for the ride, she couldn’t tell.

“Let me get you kids a drink,” said Steve, picking up some coasters and flipping them on the table like playing cards, still balancing the coats on one arm. “What’ll it be? I make a mean vodka tonic.”

“Awesome,” said Fred. Not only was he moving even more than usual, his sentences weren’t long enough for him to stumble over. Ceinwen nodded. Steve disappeared and she swiveled to look at another wall. Sure enough,
Freaks
: “The story of the love life of the side show.” To avoid looking at the poster she said to Fred, “You’ve seen
Freaks
, right?”

“Sure. You too?”

“Kept me up for days,” she told him. “Those people crawling toward him in the rain …”

“Yeah, so you see it and have nightmares,” whispered Fred. “Steve sees it and thinks, you know, lifestyle option.”

She turned to look at the last wall, behind the couch, and found a framed lobby card from
He Who Gets Slapped
. She’d seen that, Seastrom, it was a good one, but this room was definitely suggesting a theme, and it wasn’t “home sweet home.” “I admit it,” she whispered back. “I’m starting to get your point.” There were low cabinets along the length of one wall, with plants and little statues on top—an Easter Island head, a miniature mummy case. “Is that where he keeps his movies?”

“He didn’t open them last time, but, um, I don’t think so,” said Fred. “Reels’d be too wide to fit.”

“Videos then?”

“Yeah, right size for that, I guess.” He paused his knees for a moment. “They’d fit all kinds of things. Thumbscrews.”

“Fred.”

“Shrunken heads …”

“
Fred
.” She put a finger to her lips as Steve came back in holding three tall glasses against his chest. Fred blanched, but Steve didn’t seem to notice as he set them down and said, “Fresh outta swizzle sticks.” She tasted her drink and remembered that she hated vodka. Fred took a gulp, tapped the back of his hand against his mouth and said, “So, ah, Steve. We, um, appreciate the hospitality, but we’ve, um, got a motive here.”

“Course ya do, Freddie. Here, lemme take a swallow”—he gulped and smacked his lips—“and I’ll be right back with what I know you been waiting for.”

Fred looked surprised and relieved as Steve left the room. “Hey, you’re a good-luck charm.” She smiled. Fred took another swallow and kept his drink in his hand, as though afraid it might be taken away at any minute. She looked past him to the Goya painting. It was even more frightening than she remembered. She was wondering why on earth any man, gay or straight, would pick that Goya instead of
The Naked Maja
that Ava Gardner had played in a biopic, although it was a pretty bad movie, when she felt something brush her shoulder and then her ear. White fuzziness swayed across her sightlines and a furry touch grazed her cheek. She let out a scream—“
What’s that
?”—clamped her hands on Fred’s arm and felt his drink slosh as she tried to hide her face behind his shoulder.

“Aw, don’t be scared,” she heard Steve say. “Topo’s just trying to give you a kiss.”

Fred picked up his napkin with his free hand—she hadn’t let go of his arm. She sat up and found herself eyeball to eyeball with a mouse in a prison uniform. Stripes, anyway. It was about ten inches tall, the ears were enormous, its mouth was slightly open to show its buck teeth, and its cheeks were horribly red. Steve was standing behind the couch and holding the mouse in front of her by wires attached to its creepy little arms. She felt Fred prying at her fingers.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, if you could, um, relax the grip a bit …” She took her hands away. Fred wiped at her skirt and then his pants leg.

“Topo didn’t mean to startle you,” said Steve. “He wants to say hello.” Then, in some kind of accent, “Hel-lo, Karen!” She wanted to say her name wasn’t Karen, but she didn’t want to talk to a mouse. Steve moved around the couch, the mouse moved closer, and she backed away. “Aw. You’re hurting Topo’s feelings. Kiss and make up.” It advanced on her once more, and this time she threw her arms over her head and flattened herself face-down on the cushions.

Steve’s voice was so cold it almost sounded normal. “What’s going on here?” She felt Fred tap her gently and she raised her face. He was looking at her the way Brandon DeWilde looked at Alan Ladd in
Shane
. He winked, so fast she wasn’t sure she’d seen it.

“Uh, I’m really sorry about this, Steve. Should have told you. The lady, um, is deathly afraid of mice.” She righted herself.

“I am,” she said. And it was true. At home, Jim and Talmadge could tell her cockroach scream and her spider scream from her mouse scream, because the mouse scream, Jim said, was like how you’d announce finding a dead body.

“I don’t get it,” said Steve. “This one is a toy.”

“I know, I know,” said Fred, like a doctor apologizing for a crappy prognosis. “That’s, um, why we thought she could handle it.”

“I guess I can’t,” said Ceinwen. Adding, “It’s a phobia. It’s not what you’d call rational.”

Actually, she thought any rational person would scream if you assaulted them out of nowhere with a mouse puppet, but there was no percentage in pointing that out. Steve looked at the puppet, then back at Ceinwen with an expression that was almost wounded. “All righty then,” he said. “I don’t suppose you mind if Topo just sits with us?”

“No problem,” said Fred. “Does he drink vodka?”