The Cutting Room (27 page)

“When that poor old lady told us about the film,” she went on, “I could see that Alan wanted it, and he didn’t care about the consequences. One night, after we’d all been drinking, I stayed in the living room, and he walked down from upstairs, all sweaty and panting, and tore a page out of the hotel ledger, the one with our names on it. That’s when I knew that something awful had happened.”

I wanted her to stop there, at the place where she was innocent. But she went on, helplessly, to the place where she bore responsibility, to the scene before the credits that set the story up. Just like
Of Mice and Men
, I thought.

“On the way back to the States, he was so affectionate. His ‘partner in crime,’ he called me. He depended on me now, and I liked it, I couldn’t help it. People like us need that kind of thing, you know?”

“I do.”

“But once we were back in New York, all of it changed. Alan was so cold, he only cared about the movie, and what it would do for him. It just kept getting worse and worse, he didn’t seem to see me at all anymore. On the night that he planned to premiere it on his show, I sensed that, once he saw it, it would be over for us. I did our charts, and they confirmed it.

“I know it was crazy, I hardly even liked him. Alan called Gus, to have him shoot the show. I didn’t hear him call you. Then, right before he showed
The Magnificent Ambersons
, I”—and here she paused to find the least disturbing word—“I stuck him with the sharpest thing I could find.

“I made it look like a robbery. I ran out, through all the junkies. And I guess Gus showed up after that, found Alan, and stole the film.”

She paused then. All I could hear was the wind whipping around the hotel.

“When I agreed to help you find the film, Roy, I never thought you actually would. But you were so much more clever than I gave you credit for. Right after midnight, I was sure that the same thing would happen with you. Except it was different with you. You, I liked.”

The past tense of the affectionate term made me even more wary of Jeanine’s agenda. Shaken, I stepped forward, to try to change her plans.

“It won’t be the way you feared,” I said firmly. “I won’t let you go. Because I love you, Jeanine. I love you.”

It was the first time I had said those words in years. But if Jeanine had heard them before, she didn’t want to hear them now. She turned, as if struck, and did not respond. It was too late, she seemed to say, and it had been too late the moment we met.

My case, of course, could just get weaker. Once you’ve said those words and they haven’t saved the day, there’s nowhere to go but down. Still, I tried.

“Nothing bad has to happen,” I said. “Believe me.”

She knew it wasn’t true. To cover for Jeanine would be to sentence Lorelei Reed for a crime she didn’t commit. I tried to think as that reporter had: If Lorelei didn’t do this, she’s done something else. But I couldn’t do it with conviction. And Jeanine, of course, knew it, because she knew me.

“Something bad has to happen,” she said. “Because something bad
has
happened. I just hope it won’t be so bad for you.”

With that, she picked up her bag again. Then she tossed it, as powerfully as she could, into my arms. Catching it, the force of
Ambersons
sent me stumbling back a bit, just long enough for Jeanine to make her move.

Dropping the film, I ran to stop her as she scrambled up the small fence, the only guardrail the hotel had. In an early version of
Meet John Doe
, Gary Cooper jumps from a roof to his death. After negative previews, he is saved.

Today, I was too late. Without looking back, she sprang over the edge. I watched Jeanine fly and then fall, taking with her all the movies she had seen, all the memories she had had, all the love she would never give, to other men, to children, to me.

In one second, she had become a part of the past. And some things from the past never return.

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A few days later, I stood in line, like all the rest. I didn’t know how many had been paid off or promised something, as I had been at Webby’s rally. I just knew that the line of people at Manhattan’s Kmart weaved through the main floor and out the door, onto the street.

That bottle in little Orson’s hand had just been the beginning; now the U.S. promotional push for Fizz had grown. TV ads, reshot with a California cop, were starting on the airwaves; billboards were stopping traffic on the roads. And Erendira—whose beauty was assumed a most marketable export—was the key to the campaign.

Today, everyone was here to meet the Fizz girl.

From far back in the line, I could see that Erendira had been “improved” for international exposure. Her hair was lush but not too big; she wore a tight black business suit, short but not too sexy. In America, she would be sold as a maternal role model or postfeminist sex symbol, not the basic bombshell that seemed to suffice in Spain.

I got closer to the table. Erendira was autographing a picture of herself posed on a motorcycle and was handing it to a preteen girl. The girl beamed back, then took a free soda sample and went away. Erendira’s feet kicked and crossed, with familiar nervousness, above the floor.

Then she looked up and saw me. Her dark eyes shone with sudden warmth. Impatiently, she signed the picture of the man before me—who flashed a camera—and then I was as close to her as I had been in months.

“It’s so nice to see you,” she said.

“Same here.”

“I wanted a picture with
both
of us on the bike,” she said softly, “but my boss said no.”

I smiled. Then I examined the Fizz bottle, pretending to discuss it, for the benefit of those behind me.

“I have a gift for you,” I said.

“You do?” She looked confused.

“Yes. Well, actually, it’s not a gift. It was yours to begin with.”

With that, I placed Gus’s nylon bag, which I had carried all along, beneath the table. Erendira’s busy feet came to rest against it. Then she looked up at me, and her whole face flushed.

I no longer wished to keep
The Magnificent Ambersons
. I wanted to give it away, like a coin handed to the homeless, to do some good in the world. And who better to receive it than the woman now appearing at my local Kmart?

Watching me with suspicion, an American P.R. woman beside her moved to speak, but Erendira shushed her.

“Did you catch who . . .” She trailed off, in the public place.

Before responding, I swallowed deeply.

“No,” I said. “They got away.”

I had told the Rhinebeck police what I knew about Jeanine. They assumed she was a lovesick suicide—the Film Fair brought such lonely people to town. Then I kept the screening cancelled and left before the gossip began.

It was the biggest trivial scandal since Alan Gilbert’s death, but no one knew the two were linked. Maybe the New York cops would want to know, but they rarely listened to nerds, hard-boiled or otherwise. For Lorelei Reed, however, I would give it my best shot.

Now Erendira kept staring at me, gratitude making her eyes begin to water. I felt a rush of feeling and moved to take her hand in mine, indifferent to the crowd around us.

In truth, I had been no altruist in offering her the film. Jeanine had been right, there was a risk for a trivial person seeing
The Magnificent Ambersons
: It might take the place of love. But on my way to meet Erendira, I knew it was no longer enough for me to watch the film alone.

“Look,” I said, “I want you to know how much I’ve been—”

Then I saw the ring on her finger.

I swallowed the emotion that had been welling in my throat. I only touched the gold band briefly, and pulled my hand away.

“Well,” I said, “congratulations.”

She nodded. “Jorge listens to reason,” she said, “once he gets something that he wants.”

I understood: She was only on loan to America, like a touring work of art. And now, because of me, she would go back with more than just memories.

“You don’t know,” she said, indicating what lay below her, “what this will do for me.”

Would the movie make her feel an equal of her husband? Would it close a family circle and bring her a primal peace? Or would it just provide a publicity hook—Orson Welles’s granddaughter, his masterpiece restored—on which to build a big career? From the stillness of her limbs, the crucial calm it brought her, I could tell that, for Erendira, it would do all three.

“Is there anything I can give
you
,” she asked, “in return?”

“No,” I answered. “It’s okay.”

I backed away slowly, and watched her disappear behind all those people, so eager for her attention. Held in Erendira’s arms now,
The Magnificent Ambersons
disappeared, as well.

I took an autographed picture with me, to remember her by.

EPILOGUE

One night, I saw Alan Gilbert again.

I couldn’t sleep, and the Oscar winners for Best Original Song hadn’t helped. I started surfing channels, and there he was. At three
A.M.
, in his overstuffed chair, talking a mile a minute, introducing an obscure old film.

From there, channel 297 or something, I switched to an Ed Landers station, one that showed recent movies. I saw Ben Williams in the original
Cause Pain
—or was it the first sequel?—battling a terrorist in his everyman T-shirt.

I next hit the all-news network, also owned by Landers. Here, Webby Slicone was giving an interview, detailing his plans since his landslide re-election a month before. Capital punishment was at the top of his list.

Only I knew why the first two were dead, and the other still—in a political sense—alive. Then I clicked on Landers’s old-movie channel, LCM, where Taylor Weinrod worked.

Its new on-air host was Abner Cooley. And only I knew why, as well.

A typesetting job awaited me. I had just completed the latest, long-delayed edition of
Trivial Man
; it would be distributed in the morning. I had made no mention of locating the full version of
The Magnificent Ambersons
, the film find of the century. For detectives, I thought, discretion was part of the deal. So, I had learned, was loneliness.

Then the phone rang.

It was Jody. She wondered who the actor was playing the sheik in the film before me on LCM.

I stared at the man on the screen. Then, to my own shock, I answered, “I don’t know.”

I really didn’t. There was a long pause on the other end. Jody wasn’t accustomed to this kind of thing from me, and she wasn’t accustomed to not knowing where I was for months on end, either.

Trying not to sound concerned, she said, “What have you been up to, Roy?”

I paused. Then I turned off the TV. And I started to explain.

When I was done, Jody sounded very sympathetic. So I told her that I wanted to solve other mysteries now, not just those to do with trivia. There were other questions to answer, other pieces of the past to find and place together for people. And for myself, as well.

I said it was a new conviction, one that could be easily discouraged. It was fragile, shaky, and needed to be approached with care.

And I didn’t laugh when I said:

“Don’t even breathe, baby.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

L
AURENCE
K
LAVAN
won the Edgar Award for Best Original Paperback for
Mrs. White
, written under a pseudonym. His work for the theater includes the libretto for the Obie Award–winning musical
Bed and Sofa
, for which he received a Drama Desk nomination. He lives in New York City.

While set in real places, this book is a work of fiction. The characters and events are products of the author’s imagination and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual people is unintentional. In the few instances where well-known or real names are used, the related characters, incidents, or dialogues are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict any actual people or events.

A Ballantine Book

Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright © 2004 by Laurence Klavan

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher upon request.

eISBN: 978-0-345-47208-3

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