Missing Reels (6 page)

“There’s nothing wrong with Matthew,” protested Donna.

“Nothing except his taste in movies. Go on, Matthew. Tell us, please. What was your number-one favorite movie of last year?”

Matthew looked resigned to his fate. “
Back to the Future
.”

Harry put his head in his hands. “Oh grow up,” said Donna. “I liked it too.”

“Well, I didn’t. Cars. Thunderstorms. That crazy Christopher Lloyd running around mugging. Because he’s a scientist,” yodeled Harry, waggling his hands near his ears. “Did he remind you of any scientists we know? Even Andy?”

“He isn’t supposed to remind us of real people. It’s a fantasy,” said Matthew. “Movies are nothing but fantasy.”

“In my fantasies,” shot back Harry, “I don’t want a bunch of incest gags. And I’ll tell you another thing—” he pointed at Matthew’s chest.

“Watch out, he’s got the finger going,” said Donna.

“I’ll tell you another thing.” Harry waved the finger over his head. “
The Crowd
is not only the greatest silent movie ever made, and I’ve seen nearly as many as our addle-pated friend from Courant, it’s one of the greatest movies ever made in this country, period. It was years before they could replicate some of those shots. It takes the life of an ordinary man and turns it into poetry. Harsh, dark, truthful poetry.” The finger was pointing at Matthew again. “It makes that movie with the stomach creatures look like a Porky Pig cartoon.”

“Stomach creatures?” repeated Ceinwen.

“
Alien
,” said Matthew. “I told him to rent it. And I’ll never hear the end of it.” Ceinwen started laughing and so did Donna. “Plenty of critics liked that one too. I’m not an outlier.”

“Critics and their pets,” said Harry, with a hand-wave broad enough to scare off all aliens. He took his last sip of wine. “Are we ready for coffee?”

They moved back to the living room and Harry immediately began saying they needed to see more silents.

“So we can be more like Andy,” said Matthew.

“Logical fallacy, my friend. Because Andrew Evans watches silent movies, it does not therefore follow that watching silent movies makes you act like Andrew Evans.”

“It doesn’t exclude the possibility, either.”

Ceinwen ate four cookies and ignored her coffee as Harry talked about King Vidor and
The Big Parade
and asked her what silents she’d seen, and she came up with
City Lights
and
The Gold Rush
. Also
The Birth of a Nation
, which she’d hated.

“I thought all Southerners worshipped that one,” said Matthew.

Was he kidding? He better be. “I don’t like Klan movies.”

“Good girl,” said Harry. “Griffith should have ended that one when Lincoln got shot.” He was flipping up pictures, pulling books off the shelf, handing them to Ceinwen and insisting she borrow them.
The Parade’s Gone By
, by the Brownlow person he’d mentioned.
The Movies
, a huge book that Harry said had a lot about silents. He was reaching for something called
American Silent Film
when Donna stopped him and asked if he’d mistaken poor Ceinwen for a Teamster. Harry said Matthew could carry them, and Ceinwen felt
The Movies
almost slide off her lap. She better go home before she did something embarrassing. Harry went to another room for another book, and Matthew went to get her coat. He was going to walk out with her. She hoped she didn’t trip.

Donna patted her arm. “It’s been wonderful having you, dear. We’re so glad Matthew brought you over to meet us.”

That sounded funny. What was Donna thinking? Ceinwen tried to work out a pithy way to clarify, and came up with, “Matthew’s nice.” Then, “Have you met Anna?”

“Oh yes. She’s lovely.”

Donna didn’t like her either. So that was why they didn’t mind Ceinwen coming to dinner.

Matthew wanted to carry the books as Harry had instructed—“Bring them back anytime, I’ve read them already”—but Ceinwen wanted something to do with her hands and she flat-out refused to hand them over. She clutched the books and tried to figure out the right walking space—arm’s length? Half an arm?

“You’re a hit,” said Matthew. “I haven’t seen Harry that animated in yonks.”

“He’s wonderful,” she said. Harry made her feel normal. “He’s really famous?”

“Invented half the things we’re working on.”

“Funny how brains work,” she said. “He’s a genius, but he couldn’t remember the title of
Alien
.”

Matthew let out the biggest laugh she’d heard from him. “Of course he remembered. He was taking the piss.” She hadn’t heard that expression before, and she didn’t think she liked it. “Harry was a child prodigy. He could read the front page of the
New York Times
once and recite it back almost word for word. His parents used to have him do it at parties.”

“Did Anna like him?”

That was a mistake. “Yes, she did.”

She’d already messed up, might as well do it big. “What does she do, is she a mathematician too?”

“Economics.”

Mathematics and economics. Fun couple.

“The two subjects do rather go together.” Damn, she’d said that out loud. She really was drunk. And here was Washington Square Village. “How much further do you have to go?”

“A few blocks that way.” She jerked her head east. She didn’t want to have the Alphabet City safety discussion, especially not with him mad at her.

“How many is a few?”

“Three,” she lied.

“What’s that, near Third? Not Bowery, surely? I’ll walk you there.”

“It’s a little past Third …”

“Ceinwen. Is there a reason you don’t want to tell me where you live? I’m not going to mug you.”

She never got away with anything. “I’m on Avenue C.”

“
Avenue C
? First of all, that’s quite a bit more than three blocks.”

“It isn’t that far.”

“Second, isn’t it dangerous at this hour?”

“Of course it’s not dangerous.” She drew the books close to her chest and stood tall. “I,” she announced grandly, “am friends with all the derelicts.”

“What does that mean? Do you buy their beer?”

“They say hello to me. Every day.”

“Lovely. And that doesn’t worry you.”

“It does, a little,” she confessed. “Like, I worry one day there’ll be a derelict who doesn’t like me.”

“You’re taking a taxi.”

“I walk home all the time.” Because I can’t afford a taxi. Why do you think I put earrings on hold?

He was already out on Third Street looking down the road. He got a cab almost immediately and opened the door for her. She thanked him for inviting her, he said, “Pleasure” and “I’ll stop by the store again” and then they were pulling away. She shoved the books to the other side of the seat and felt around in her bag for the first cigarette she’d had since leaving Avenue C hours ago. She’d insulted his girlfriend and strongly implied that mathematics was boring; she might as well have smoked all night.

H
ER STOMACH WAS BURNING AND HER HEAD SWELLED WITH PAIN
every time she turned it on the pillow. She threw on her slip and headed for the kitchen, but paused near the door.

“I was snarfing all night. I’m still congested.” Talmadge was blowing his nose, but even from the door he didn’t sound that bad.

“So wash your hands,” Jim said evenly, “and cover your mouth.”

“But you know the guy from the Crisis said it wasn’t safe.”

“He said it wasn’t safe if you had flu or something. Are you trying to tell me you’re feverish?”

“I don’t know, I can’t find the thermometer.”

“You broke the thermometer two weeks ago when you took your temperature to try and get out of going that time. Will you stop?”

They were arguing about going to see Stefan. This was another one of Talmadge’s rituals, and Ceinwen always tried to let it play out without her in the room. She leaned against the wall and waited quietly; it wouldn’t take long.

She had met Stefan only twice, at the store, a tall man with a shock of blond hair and a wide mouth. He had been polite, but he was nothing like Jim and Talmadge, who had started flirting and cracking jokes within minutes of meeting her. “He likes you,” Talmadge apologized, “but Stefan isn’t all that crazy about girls.” He was Talmadge’s oldest friend, the first friend he had made in New York. Talmadge was always vague about exactly what he did when he went out with Stefan in the early days, and she never pressed him. “I don’t ask him either,” said Jim.

But the early days ended when Stefan joined AA, at which point Talmadge started to see less of him. Talmadge wanted to keep drinking, and did. “I loved him, but I’d never have moved in with him then,” said Jim. “Never. Drunk he was doing Marlene imitations and coming on to everything but the swizzle sticks. Hungover he was Baby Jane Hudson.”

Talmadge might have kept on forever had he not fallen asleep one night on the Q train, which wasn’t even his line, and woke at dawn in Brighton Beach, still a bit drunk, his wallet and big topaz ring missing and, he told Ceinwen, “it took me half an hour to figure out why the fuck everyone was speaking Russian.”

He called Stefan and they went to a meeting, but Talmadge didn’t take to the process. “Oh god, sweetie, it was brutal,” he told her. “Brutal. I don’t know what to compare it to. Sunday school. Or Lily telling me about one of her dates.” Stefan argued, but Talmadge objected to everything—the endless talking, the chairs, the lighting, the insufficient number of sufficiently attractive men.

Most of all, he objected to the Higher Power business, which wasn’t something you got to skip. “Everybody insisted, and I finally came up with one,” said Talmadge. “Marlene Dietrich. Especially
The Scarlet Empress
. I thought that was a great idea. That’s power.” She gathered that despite Talmadge’s sincerity—he really did think Marlene would have been happy to help him out—his bad attitude remained. After about a half-dozen meetings he stopped going, and no amount of Stefan’s pleading could get him to return. Instead of going to AA, he’d call Stefan, and they would go out for macrobiotic food, and Stefan would talk him down.

Bit by bit Stefan made Talmadge go through the steps, eventually getting to all of them, or so Talmadge claimed. “Even Marlene?” she’d asked. “Especially Marlene,” said Talmadge. “She’s very understanding.”

He tried to make amends with Jim. “He wanted to tell me all about how sorry he was for leaving me in the men’s room at Limelight when he met some dockworker, and that he was sorry for all the times he stole my customers,” said Jim. “Be glad you didn’t know him while this was going on. It took days. He kept coming back with stuff he’d blacked out, like the time I left a big tip for a cute bartender, and when I turned my back, he used it to buy another couple of margaritas. I hadn’t even realized how often he screwed me over. And then he went back to Stefan, and Stefan told him that he knew damn good and well he’d done bigger things to me than that, and Talmadge started apologizing to me about those, and I told him to tell Stefan that Marlene understood and so did I.”

Talmadge hadn’t had a drink in three years, but now Stefan was sick. The conversation in the kitchen had paused, and she needed coffee in a bad way, so she walked in.

“Good morning, starshine,” sang Talmadge.

Jim peered at her. “There’s still some coffee. Talmadge and I are just leaving.”

“I want to hear how everything went!”

“My head hurts,” said Ceinwen. “I guess professors drink a lot.”

“You’ve had NYU students in the store. Do you blame them?” said Jim. He was pouring coffee for her.

“Which professor was drinking?” said Talmadge. “The old one or the one you like?”

“They both were. The old one is sweet. The other one’s okay. Kind of annoying at times.” She tasted the coffee and wrinkled her nose. “Cafe Busted?”

“It was all I could get last night,” said Jim. Cafe Busted was Cafe Bustelo, a lethal Cuban coffee that none of them liked, but which was cheap and effective.

“All right, the annoying one you wore your best dress for. Is he going to call?”

“I didn’t give him my phone number,” said Ceinwen. “He has a girlfriend.”

“Talmadge,” said Jim, “get your jacket. We’re leaving.”

“Ceinwen looks all in,” said Talmadge. “We should get her some breakfast. Something good and greasy.”

“Talmadge,” said Jim. “We’re leaving. So get your fucking jacket.”

When Jim swore, you moved. Talmadge edged toward the kitchen entrance, then stopped.

“You didn’t do anything dumb like ask about the girlfriend, did you?”

“I mentioned her at the end of the evening,” she admitted.

“No, no, you didn’t! Oh, sweetie …”

Jim threw up his hands. “Why shouldn’t she mention his girlfriend? He’s gonna have one whether Ceinwen brings up her up or not. We’re leaving. You know the earlier we make it there the better he is.”

Talmadge went to get his jacket. Jim said, “He’s really pushing it this morning. If you ask me, he should give those meetings another try.”

“He always goes in the end, you know that. This is his way of psyching himself up.” Jim was picking at something stuck to the kitchen counter. “I could come too,” she said, “before work. Maybe he’d like seeing someone different.”

“That’s sweet, honey, but right now I’m not sure he’d even remember you.” Talmadge reappeared, clutching a tissue to show he wasn’t dropping the cold-in-an-AIDS-room issue. Jim kissed her and headed for the door. Talmadge kissed her too and said, “I bet you anything he shows up at the store today. You just watch. Now go get some eggs and bacon.”

She got her eggs and bacon at the tiny coffee shop two blocks away, as well as a Coke that settled her stomach and cleared her head. But Matthew never appeared that day, nor the next. The books, at least, kept her occupied.

At work she kept looking toward the front door whenever she wasn’t helping anyone, until Lily caught her and remarked that it was no wonder her sales were down, since she spent all her time in a trance like this was a fucking ashram. Talmadge was still working the early shift so Ceinwen often went to lunch with Roxanne. Roxanne had been her first friend at the store. She was from Trinidad, a stunningly good-looking girl who was also very good-natured, but she really only wanted to talk about her boyfriend, and also apartments.