Missing Reels (50 page)

“I know you’re there.” Matthew, head still hidden, was raising his voice over the wind.

“You do?” she called back. “Who am I?”

“I know it’s you, Ceinwen.”

“How?”

He leaned over the armrest to look at her and pointed back at her reflection, barely visible in the plexiglass shielding the wall along the terrace. He laid back against the lounge.

“I can also see,” he called, “that whatever you’re trying to hold there isn’t what most people would call an umbrella. So if I were you, I’d go back in.”

She crossed to stand at his feet. He couldn’t have been more sopping wet if he’d been thrown into a swimming pool. A wide pink stain fanned down the length of his shirt and tie. A bit of spaghetti clung stubbornly to his belt buckle. “Why is it okay for you to be out here? What are you doing?”

He waved his hands at his shirt. “Laundry.”

“What’s wrong with the men’s room?”

“I used half the attendant’s towels and I started to feel sorry for him.” Another gust of wind hit her umbrella. “Don’t stay out here, you’ll catch your death.”

“Colds are caused by viruses. You were always telling me that.”

He closed his eyes for a second. “Go back in. I’m fine.”

“Anna left,” she heard herself say.

“Yes, she told me. Me and whoever else happened to be anywhere near the toilets.”

“I don’t see,” she said in a burst of anger, “where she gets the nerve to act like the injured party. She’s the one who made a scene, not you.”

“If she were here, she’d say she had her reasons.”

“Reasons?” Her voice was far louder than the competing rain and wind required. “It’s not your fault I showed up. You were treating me like a human being, that’s all. She should try that herself sometime.”

“She was angry.”

The wind reversed her umbrella and she snapped it back, causing a spray to hit him smack in the face. He didn’t flinch. For once she didn’t care what she said about Anna or what truths she had to force on him. “She humiliated you. In front of Harry and Paru, in front of that whole damn place. If she was so angry I dared to show my face in a public restaurant she should have thrown the plate at
me
.”

He’d discovered the piece of spaghetti on his belt and was working to detach it. He shook it off his hand onto the ground and said at last, “Wouldn’t want that, would we. Think of your dress.”

She sagged from the blow. “I guess I deserve that.”

“Deserve what?”

“The sarcasm.”

He picked up his head. Hair soaked to the scalp, eyes locked into hers. “I don’t do sarcasm anymore. New York’s killed my taste for it.” The same blue. The same lines. He said, slowly, “If I had my way, nothing bad would ever happen to you. Not even a mark on your dress.” He swung his legs to the side of the lounge. “I think the rinse cycle’s done. Why do you have your coat on? Weren’t you going to have dinner?”

“I already did.”

“If you say so.” He braced the balcony door against the wind. “One of these days you really must master the whole eating concept. I’ll walk you out.”

She could hear his shoes squish as he walked. Back at the coat check the man was handing umbrellas to a group of five loud and rather boozy men. She looked at the floor and noticed small puddles collecting around Matthew’s feet. Even his plastic coat ticket looked wet. As the man retrieved the coat Matthew reached in his suit jacket and pulled out his wallet, brown leather, now with a big water stain wrapped halfway around it. He tossed a couple of bills in the bowl as the man came around to help him.

“Thanks. We’ll take it as done,” said Matthew, and put the coat on himself. “I have an umbrella back there, don’t I?”

The man gave a little cough. “The, ah, other lady took it.”

“I see.”

“She took your umbrella?” blurted Ceinwen. Of all the low—

“We were sharing it.”

“Burberry, I guess.” Maybe he’d sworn off sarcasm, but she hadn’t, not where Anna was concerned.

“Longchamp,” he said. “It’s all right. She bought it. I always hated the thing.”

At the elevator he said, “This is different. A coat soaked from the inside out.”

“I was thinking that, but I’ve been working on my tact.” They got on.

“You’ve always been tactful,” he said. “Your trouble is saying tactful things in a believable way.”

He refused to share her umbrella, saying it was barely enough to cover her. By the time they got to the corner, the wind had popped another rib. Matthew took it gently from her hand. “I think we should let this die with a little dignity, don’t you?” He stuffed it into a garbage can and they began to walk in the direction of the subway. On a night like this, he’d never be able to put her in a cab.

She moved to hop across a vast puddle over a blocked drain and felt him grab her elbow to steady her. His hand was gone almost instantly. At the next corner he looked back. “How far do you suppose we’ve gone?”

“Two blocks, maybe?”

“That’s three blocks, you mean. I know that. I meant distance. Meters.” He made a face. “Although why am I asking you of all people?”

“Good question.”

He pointed across the street to a building shrouded by scaffolding. “Over there.” He took off, got ahead, and waited for her.

“The subway’s that way,” she pointed. “I know that much.”

“We’re stopping here.” He stepped into the frame of a deserted doorway under the scaffolding.

“Are we waiting for the rain to let up?”

“We’d be here all night.”

“Then what?” He leaned against the door and for only the second time that night, he was holding eye contact. She tried to smooth her hair, tucking the wet strands behind her ears. “What?”

“It’s hard to explain to someone who’s never been engaged.”

Oh brother. It never ended, it never would end, him and Anna. “Single people can’t find the 6 train?”

He crossed his arms tight against his chest. “Right.” He took another pause, then, “You’re at a restaurant, and you have a fight with your fiancée. But you realize that doesn’t bother you. Not the way it should.” He drew a long, uneven breath. “No. In all honesty, it doesn’t bother you at all.” He shifted his legs. “Probably won’t ever bother you again.” She waited. “But, if you have a fiancée, even in the technical sense, then no matter what you want at the moment … you can’t …” He was focused on a point somewhere over her head. “Not while you’re actually, physically in the same restaurant she was in. It’s …” His hand traced a few cartwheels while he searched for a term, and at last he came up with, “Tacky.”

“Good Southern word,” she said.

“Yes. Even in the lobby it’s tacky. Still tacky one block away.”

A pause. “Four blocks,” she said.

He moved closer and looked past her shoulder, to the street. “Eight hundred meters. At least.”

Like someone watching from the last row, she saw herself put a hand on his chest to push him away.

“I don’t want anything to happen,” she said, “if all you’re going to do is leave again.”

He folded her hand in his. “Neither do I.” He laid his other hand against the side of her face. And then they were kissing, water running from their hair down to their mouths, hands moving anywhere they could reach, pressing against each other until she felt the damp of their coats work through to her skin.

She opened her eyes and saw a flash of yellow behind his shoulder. “Matthew! Cab!” He spun and bellowed, “TAXI!”

They crouched under the bars of the scaffolding and sprinted to the cab that had stopped in the middle of the street, Ceinwen hitting the puddles so hard she felt splashes at her hem. He held the door and she scooted across the seat, leaving a smear of water on the vinyl. He slammed the door and they sat united for a moment in panting New York triumph, the winners of the big rainstorm cab lottery.

The cabby’s turban bobbed. “Hello there.”

“Evening,” said Matthew. Ceinwen jacked up her hips so she could pull down her skirt and coat.

“Where to, please?”

Matthew appeared to be contemplating the world’s hardest theorem. “Washington Square Village?” he ventured.

“That is where exactly?”

“Mercer and, ah, Third.” The cab took off.

“But,” said Matthew.

“Anna’s there?”

“She does live there. As of this morning.”

“Think she’s maybe putting landmines around the living room?” Matthew choked.

“Mercer and Third, right?” The cab turned and kept going.

“Maybe. Give us a minute,” said Matthew.

The driver gave an exasperated groan as the cab continued to move uptown. “You seem like you are nice people. I know it is not fun to be out in a storm. But in my opinion it is best to decide where you are going
before
you hail a cab.”

“We’re going to her place,” announced Matthew, in his Britishest voice.

“Great. I am happy for you. Where does she live?” They were kissing again and she was somewhere else. Theatre 80, Kiev, a train coming back from Paru’s. “You did not plan this at all, did you?”

“Avenue C and Fourth Street,” said Matthew.

“That was not so hard, was it?” The cab turned east.

He put one arm around her shoulders and the other across her lap. He brushed his mouth near her eyebrow and left it there.

“Did you get your paper? I redid it this morning. I put it in your box.”

He pulled back only a tiny bit. “Yes. I know I was a shit. I’m sorry.”

She was going to take that as meaning only the paper. “I did it deliberately. You knew that, right? I knew they were deltas. I wasn’t trying to make you as mad as all that. I just wanted to see you.”

“I wanted to see you too. That’s why I was shouting.” His mouth slid down to hers and he tightened his arms.

After a while she said, “Are you staying in London?”

He groaned. “Oh god. No. After the party we were supposed to go to Nice.” The cab had hit traffic. She ignored her stomach as the driver kept tapping the brakes. Raw beef. Who on earth eats that? “I’m not going anywhere. Obviously,” he said, his head trying to burrow under her chin.

She laid her hand on the back of his neck. “You’re sure?”

“No comparison, is there? Who’d pick the south of France when they can have Manhattan in August?”

He straightened and she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “That’s an awfully big ticket to waste.”

“Oh, this little evening will cost a bomb. There’s no doubt about that. I paid the restaurant in advance. There’s the plane ticket. Tickets, that is. There’s the hotel deposit. There’s calling my mother to cancel that bloody party, and that doubles my phone bill right there. There’s this suit. And the tie. And the shirt.” He banged his head hard against the back of the seat. “And the ring.”

“She’ll give it back, won’t she?”

“Even money. Place your bets.”

“So you’ll be poor for a while,” she said cheerfully. “No problem. If anybody can show you how it’s done, it’s me.”

He pulled his arms away and leaned forward with his face in his hands. “Christ I’m a shit.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that and I don’t like it. If you’re a shit, what does that make me?”

He didn’t move. “There’s nothing wrong with you. I thought I was doing all the right things, and no matter what I was doing it turns out I’m a shit. I’ve attained the absolute summit of shitdom.”

She pulled at his hands. “Once you’re at the summit, there’s nothing to do but leave.”

“That’s wrong, you know. I could pitch camp here for a very long time.”

There was a loud throat noise from the front seat. “You said Fourth and C, that is correct?”

“Correct.”

“If you look out the window,” said the driver, “you will see that is where we are.”

When she unlocked the street door, Ceinwen found herself confronting Miriam, who was banging a tall umbrella on the floor to shake off the water.

“You two look like hell,” said Miriam.

Those were the first words she’d heard from Miriam since the night they fought about the film.

“Good evening, Mrs. Gibson,” sang out Matthew. Ceinwen sneezed, then sneezed again.

“What were you doing,” asked Miriam, “fording the Hudson?”

Ceinwen examined the drips on the floor tiles for a second, then said, “Emergency.”

“Oh?” Miriam was fastening her umbrella with deft precision.

“Movie emergency,” offered Matthew. “That’s the only sort Ceinwen ever has.”

There was silence as they passed her. Then Miriam’s laugh, the same one from Christmas night, chased after them as they climbed the stairs.

N
EW
Y
ORK
C
ITY IN THE LATE
1980
S WAS REAL, MUCH AS SOME OF US
may look at the present-day city and wonder if we dreamed it all. This is a work of fiction. Real places such as Theatre 80 St. Marks and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences on Mercer Street are freely mixed with others, such as the Brody Institute and the Lancashire Hotel, that exist only in my imagination.

Aside from the obvious historical figures mentioned, I made up everybody in this book. That is true of the cast and crew of
The Mysteries of Udolpho
and the studio that supposedly produced it; the staff and customers of Vintage Visions (no such store); the employees of the Brody Institute (there isn’t one, though I wish there were); the true-blue members of the Bangville Police Society; and the dedicated waitstaff of Il Primo Cerchio.

And it is certainly true of NYU, where I have, in addition to creating fictitious faculty, set aside the 1980s presence of numerous distinguished scholars of both film and mathematics. Buildings have been borrowed from NYU, but all other realities of that institution (my alma mater) have been stubbornly ignored. There is not, and never has been to my knowledge, anyone storing highly flammable nitrate prints on any part of New York University’s property, and certainly not in 1 Washington Square Village. I don’t believe there is even a storage area in that building, at least not as I have described it.

I borrowed the surname of a famous film theorist, Rudolf Arnheim, for my imaginary director. I also made up the Raymond Griffith two-reeler
The Man From Manitoba
, gave the long-missing Colleen Moore silent
Flaming Youth
a brief shot at resurrection, located the firmly lost
Wedding Bills
and
The Silk Bouquet
, and implied that
The Magic Flame
, which exists only in a fragment, had been recovered in its entirety. I apologize to any silent-film lovers left crestfallen over those last four. Like Ceinwen, I’m basically an optimist.