Missing Reels (5 page)

“You like to mix up your eras, don’t you,” he said. “This is … sort of …
Happy Days
.”

Happy Days
? Was the man out of his mind? “It’s called a Sabrina dress.”

“1954. Billy Wilder,” said Harry. “I approve. I’m going to put this in the bedroom. Donna will be right out.”

“I’m here,” said Donna, walking in. She was about a head shorter than her husband, gray-haired and freckled, wearing an apron and glasses on a cord around her neck. “Ceinwen, so nice to meet you,” she said, with a kiss on the cheek. Maybe it was an academic thing, too. “What a lovely dress. Let Harry get you a cocktail, dear.”

It hadn’t occurred to Ceinwen that drinks might happen before dinner, and she had no idea what to ask for. Coke wasn’t going to make her look very sophisticated. “What’s everybody having?”

“Gin and tonic for me,” said Harry, emerging from the bedroom. “Donna’s having a sherry, which I do not recommend, and Matthew’s well into the Laphroaig.”

“That sounds good,” said Ceinwen.

“The Laphroaig? I like this woman,” said Harry. Ceinwen had meant the gin and tonic, but what the hell. “Up?” She glanced at Matthew’s drink, which was straight. “Sure,” she said. Harry poured a terrifying amount of scotch into a faceted highball glass. She took a sip and her tongue clamped to her palate. She’d tried scotch before, but what on earth was this? This was smoke and soil and a disturbing dash of Smelly Deli. She attempted an appreciative “mm” and set it down, hoping it got better as you went along.

“Leo McCarey,” said Harry, settling on the sofa. “How does a person your age become a McCarey fan?”

She told him about all the time she’d spent watching cable TV in Yazoo City with Granana. Donna said it was sweet that she had a close relationship with her grandmother, did Granana live near them? Ceinwen said her mother died when she was ten, and Granana moved in to keep house. She was dead now, too.

“What does your father do?” asked Donna.

“He’s got a farm,” said Ceinwen. “Lives in town and goes back and forth.” Harry wanted to know if her father liked movies too. How much more were they going to ask about him? “Not really,” she murmured into her glass, and took another sip.

Matthew spoke up. “Aha. Granny was the family auteurist.”

He came up with that pretty quick, thought Ceinwen. No, she and Granana were in love with Cary Grant, and Ceinwen would go to the library and check out books about Hollywood, and that was how she knew about McCarey. They finally left Yazoo City, and just as she was afraid they might stop in at Vintage Visions, it was on to McCarey.

Harry had been at City College in the fifties and sixties, and in the early sixties he and Donna had gone to California for a visiting professorship at USC. They’d been staying in Santa Monica and would run into McCarey around the neighborhood. One day, on impulse, they’d asked him to come to dinner and wound up at a restaurant. He wasn’t especially warm, but he was witty, and Donna said he had good manners and wore nice clothes. He often had a bad cough, probably heralding the emphysema that would kill him in a few years. He never seemed very happy, Donna said, and Harry said he imagined McCarey wanted to be making movies, not puttering around Santa Monica. At dinner they had asked him about
The Awful Truth
. McCarey had been a bit guarded about Cary Grant, but went on and on about Irene Dunne, who was still his good friend. Dunne had been Granana’s favorite actress, but Ceinwen didn’t want to bring that up, either.

“I did get him to talk about
My Son John
,” said Harry. Ceinwen didn’t know that one. It was an anti-communist thing with Robert Walker, Harry told her. Nobody ever showed it anymore. Walker had died a few weeks into shooting, and it flopped. It wasn’t much good, in Harry’s opinion, but it had something. McCarey always did. Harry had told the director about a couple of scenes he liked, with Walker and Dean Jagger as his father, and McCarey had seemed pleased.

“So when he wasn’t making comedies this chap was making anti-communist screeds.” Matthew again. “How did your views go over?”

Harry’s eyebrows bounced. “I was an academic in the 1950s. Believe me, I know how to stay off politics.”

Matthew wanted to know about City College and Joe McCarthy and who was getting fired and what they wound up doing after they left. Harry must be fun to watch in class, she thought, even if he was teaching math. He said everything with big gestures and vocal italics, the eyebrows rising up and down along with the volume. And the blacklist reminded Harry that he wanted to tell Ceinwen about the time he sat next to Elia Kazan at a dinner in New York, before Kazan named names, and about talking to Joseph Losey in London during another stint abroad (“bitterest man I ever met”) and another time he’d been at a party in Paris, and Elizabeth Taylor showed up with Michael Wilding. She was so beautiful he wound up excusing himself from the person he was talking to so he could go to the bar and stare at her for ten minutes, and Donna had joined him and stared, too.

The scotch did seem better now. It reminded Ceinwen of her cigarettes, which she hadn’t had the nerve to ask if she could smoke after the McCarey discussion. Donna kept jumping up to check the chicken. Harry asked her about
Love Affair
, and
An Affair to Remember
, then a movie she hadn’t seen,
Make Way for Tomorrow
. It was McCarey’s best. She needed to see it, Matthew did too.

“Don’t make them see that one,” protested Donna. “It’s the most depressing thing in the world. I was upset for days.” Harry told her she couldn’t just stick with Cary Grant movies all the time, and Donna said why not, and Ceinwen said that most of Granana’s favorites were sad, like
Penny Serenade
.

“George Stevens,” said Harry.

“Cary Grant,” said Donna. “That one’s a killer too.”

“What’s it about?” asked Matthew.

“This couple adopts a child,” began Ceinwen.

“Never mind,” said Matthew, “I’m depressed already.”

When Donna announced that the food was ready, the glass was almost empty and Ceinwen felt pretty much as she had when she walked in. Then she stood up and felt one ankle turn over. This was an alarming development. Her heels were just two inches high.

“All right there?” inquired Matthew.

“Fine!” Would you please take your eyes off me for one minute so I can trip in peace? She made it to the dining room, took her seat without bunching her dress and got the napkin in her lap without dropping it. Matthew poured her some water. Harry poured her some wine.

“Behold,” said Donna, setting down the chicken. “We have now arrived in the one room in this apartment without any books.”

“I love the books,” said Ceinwen. “I think you have just enough.” Matthew was serving the chicken, and the portion he’d given her was enormous.

“It’s taken me forty years to get a decent library together,” said Harry, “and all she does is pester me to give them away.” Ceinwen sliced in as carefully as possible—chicken on the bone was tricky—and realized Matthew was tracking each lift of her fork. He really did think she never ate anything.

“Harry used to have films, too,” said Donna. “Dozens of them. And a projector and screen. I made him get rid of it all when we moved in here. He’s still mad at me.”

“When did you move in?” asked Ceinwen. The place looked settled, but maybe that was just all the books.

“1973,” said Donna. “Ask him the date we sold the last reels. Go ahead, ask him.”

“August 17,” said Harry. “Tuesday. Hot as blue blazes.”

“There was only one air conditioner,” said Donna, “and Harry had it in the room with the all the movies. And then he wondered why I didn’t want them around.”

“Aren’t they dangerous to store?” Ceinwen reminded herself to swallow before speaking. The chicken glistened with butter, the skin was crisp, there was garlic on every surface and in every crevice, and the wine was so good she’d just gulped like a farmhand.

“That’s just nitrate,” said Harry. “I didn’t have any nitrate. It’s all 35-millimeter anyway. Mine was all 16-millimeter. Safety film.”

“Not everything, Harry. You’re forgetting
The Crowd
. All nine reels of it. We only had that one a couple of months, but that was when I reached my limit, right there. Made me so nervous, I can’t tell you, lying to customs when we came back from Europe. Can you imagine if we’d been caught? ‘Math Professor Nabbed Smuggling Hazardous Goods.’ Oh, I was glad to see the last of that stuff. You can’t imagine how much room it takes up, too.”

“What happened to the movies?” asked Ceinwen.

“Yes, don’t forget the key data,” said Matthew.

“Sold them to Andrew Evans.”

That jolted Matthew out of his cool. “Andy? Are you serious?”

“Bought the lot,” said Harry glumly. “I never should have let them go. And would he lend any to me later, or let me see something even for reference? Of course not. Always some excuse.”

“Harry,” warned Donna. “He’s a colleague.”

“He’s a gibbering loon.” Matthew choked. “You aren’t going to contradict me here, are you Matthew?”

“Ah, no.”

“I don’t know why he wanted them anyway. Or maybe I do. Andy’s thing is silents. That’s his obsession. And I bet my collection is gone. I bet it’s all turned into lobby cards and fan magazines and Chaplin two-reelers.”

“I like Chaplin,” said Ceinwen. She didn’t care what they discussed anymore. Matthew could talk about the Red Scare all night. She even liked the salad. Yazoo City salads always seemed to include Jell-O.

“I do too, but some of my movies were valuable. Unless you’re Andy. If it’s got a soundtrack, he’s not interested.”

“Not surprising,” said Matthew. “He’s his own soundtrack.”

“He tries hard,” said Donna.

“He doesn’t do anything of the sort,” retorted Harry. He turned to Ceinwen. “When Kevin Brownlow was doing the restoration of
The Crowd
, he came here to New York, did you know that?”

Ceinwen knew nothing of Brownlow or
The Crowd
, let alone that it had been restored, so she said, “Really? Right here?”

“He was trying to track down some elements that were in bad shape. And he’d heard about my copy so he came to see me.”

“Charming man,” said Donna. “Very easygoing. Not at all like some of these film buffs.”

“He’s considerably more than a buff, honey. Of course I couldn’t help him, so I sent him to Andy. And Andy told Brownlow he got rid of all his nitrate when he moved into Washington Square Village. Ha! I bet he did.”

“It’s difficult to imagine Andy getting rid of anything,” said Matthew, “if you’ve seen his office.”

“Oh, he has it. For sure he has it. That’s probably the one thing of mine he did keep. He just doesn’t want to give anything up, even temporarily. That’s what he’s like. He wants to have this stuff, he wants to know that it’s his and that nobody else can have it. Screwball.” Harry knocked back the last of his wine. “I’m ready for a refill, how about you Ceinwen?” He began pouring without waiting for an answer.

“Maybe he
didn’t
have it,” Donna reminded Harry. “You told him he should donate
The Crowd
, and he said he was going to after he had it copied.”

“Andy says a lot of things.”

“I don’t see why he has to be lying,” said Donna. “He couldn’t store that stuff in his apartment, you know.”

“He’s lying,” boomed Harry. “All right, not in his apartment, although he’s such a hermit how would anybody know. He’s got it at some secret facility.” He pondered. “Probably in New Jersey.”

“Why New Jersey?”

“What else is it good for?” Harry roared at his own joke.

“Andy’s at Courant?” Andy sounded more like her idea of a typical mathematician.

“He’s with the pure guys, two floors up from us,” said Harry.

“Is he older?”

“You mean older than me? Are you wondering if that’s possible?” She started to protest but he waved her off. “No, Andy isn’t that old. If you’re me and Donna, that is. If you’re you and Matthew, he’s ancient. Must be 50 now.”

“Brilliant, though,” said Matthew. “Nonlinear partial differential equations.” Then, with a glance at Ceinwen’s face, “Really fundamental work.”

“Eh, he used to be brilliant,” said Harry. Donna eyed his wineglass and shook her head slightly. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, and Matthew doesn’t care. He did a big burst of great work in his twenties and thirties, got tenure, and he’s been resting on his laurels ever since. Now he goes to collectors’ conventions and can barely be bothered to grade his own students. Stores a million journals and papers in that office.”

“I admit,” sighed Donna, “the office bothers me. Such a nice big space and he’s almost never there. And there’s poor Matthew, stuck in that little room.”

“It isn’t bad,” said Matthew. “More than I had at Cambridge. And there’s always the flat.”

“Where’s that?” asked Ceinwen.

“Washington Square Village,” hooted Harry. “Matthew’s three floors above Andy. He can’t get away from him.”

“I don’t see him much,” said Matthew. “But when I have, it hasn’t been pleasant. I wanted a back issue of SIAM …”

“Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics,” interjected Harry. “Ceinwen’s going to think you were looking up Rodgers and Hammerstein. Or Irene Dunne. Did you see that one?” Ceinwen nodded. “Rex Harrison as the king. With hair.”

“I needed an issue,” continued Matthew, raising his voice slightly, “and it was missing from the library. So I asked to borrow it from him, because he must have them going back to the sixties. Not only did he claim he didn’t have it, he said some journals were missing, and he really, really hoped people weren’t taking them without asking. And as he’s saying this, his voice is shaking, and he’s looking at me as though I had them stuffed down my trousers.”

“Yep. That’s Andy all right,” said Harry. “What do you think of
The Crowd
?” Ceinwen had to admit she hadn’t seen it. Harry was horrified. “Have you seen it?” he demanded of Matthew. “Never mind, I know the answer. What’s wrong with you two? Or rather, what’s wrong with Ceinwen? I know what’s wrong with Matthew.”