The Last Days of Video (18 page)

Her face ached from so much smiling. But even the ache was transportive to broader thoughts: the ache represented her new life, and looking at herself in the autumnal shop windows, allowing herself to smile her full Reality Smile, she saw that she was beautiful, while, at the same time, she knew that others, seeing this (manic?) expression, might think she was insane.

A giggle erupted from her stomach like an electric shock—
Other people!
she thought. Though her Reality Center instructors wouldn't admit it, other people, non-Reality people, were to be pitied. Loved, of course, but also pitied.

Love. She loved herself—she could honestly say that she loved herself. Despite everything, she loved herself! And though this thought,
I love myself!
was real and frequent and always accompanied, almost literally, by melodic trumpets and riotous applause from the invisible audience of her psyche, still she was the tiniest bit ashamed of loving herself so much. It was a hackneyed
sentiment, she knew. So banal. But was this shame the last barrier Reality would help break down? When its philosophies finally came together, and the future finally revealed itself to her, would she finally love herself without embarrassment? Would the power that now rendered her unable to stop smiling soon narrow its focus, phaser-like, onto her life's true purpose? And she could see with HiDef clarity that she loved West Appleton. That was obvious. West Appleton was her home. She never wanted to leave. She had occasionally entertained the notion of moving away, of finding a new life somewhere else, anywhere else, anywhere far away from Sprinks and West Appleton, anywhere outside of North Carolina. But not now. Now she strolled and strolled, hands linked behind her back like a dictator surveying
her
town. Her people, West Appletonians, “Applets” (Waring's term), streamed around her—the pleasant drinkers (she hadn't sipped a drop of alcohol in four days—but they are having fun, aren't they?). Why would she ever leave? True, the shops that lined West Appleton's business district, a quarter-mile from Star Video, sold mostly expensive nonsense. Trinkets of no real value. Vintage clothing stores—but the skirts and shirts and scarves were all so pretty, she thought. Is it wrong to want to be pretty, to value beauty?—her thoughts, a mile a minute. But always returning to the Reality mantra—
I love myself, and I can create whatever I dream. I will never abandon this belief. I love myself, and I can create whatever I dream. I will never abandon this belief.

She looked at the ornate analog clock high on the redbrick Community Center building—a clock she knew to chime a digital bell tune every hour—and she saw that it was 11:45. Star Video would be closing in fifteen minutes. She didn't want to be late.

Jeff kept surveillance on
Star Video's parking lot—Alaura would be arriving any second. Business was slow. Nonexistent. He and
Rose had nothing to do, and, like always, Rose had remained silent during their entire shift. But that was fine. Since meeting with the Russian grad student, Jeff hadn't felt like talking to anyone.

Alaura arrived at 11:55 p.m., five minutes before closing. On time, for once. He hadn't seen her since The Corporate Visit. And . . . she looked amazing. Jeff was speechless—she wore a black dress, blood-red lipstick, gold sandals snaking up her legs. He was transfixed by the dress's spaghetti straps and the almost-fully-exposed tattoos on her back and right arm. And her hair—it was up in that amazing pompadour, rising three inches above her head, slicked back and shining dark.

“Hi,” he said shakily.

“Hi there, Jeff.” She presented an open-mouthed smile, teeth gleaming, as she glided around the counter.

“I . . . you . . . we . . .” but Jeff's stammering was silenced by Rose, who yanked her backpack from under the counter, slung it over her shoulder, and stomped (as much as such a tiny person can stomp) toward the door.

“Is something wrong?” he called out to her.

“Bye, Rose,” Alaura said sweetly.

The door clanged shut behind the little girl.

“That was strange,” Jeff said. “What's wrong with her?”

But Alaura hadn't seemed to notice. “Waring's not here, is he?” she asked with a cheerfulness that did not match her question. “I'm avoiding him.”

“Um, that shouldn't be hard,” Jeff said, confused. “He hasn't been around much.”

“No?”

“Me and the other part-timers are basically running the store.”

“What?”

“Well, honestly, me more than anyone else. Nothing seems to be getting done. I think there's a whole shipment of DVDs in the back that haven't even been processed.”

He watched Alaura's face tighten, but a moment later she rolled her eyes and said brightly, incongruously, “Oh well, it's Waring's store!”

After this baffling response to what he assumed was troubling news, Jeff decided not to report the full extent of Waring's strange behavior: that for days he had been scribbling in a large red book, talking angrily on the phone, and storming in and out of the store without explanation.

“How's your leave of absence going?” he asked instead, bypassing the subject of Waring.

“Wonderful, Jeff. Absolutely wonderful.”

Only then did he notice the dark circles under her eyes. “You look tired,” he said.

“I didn't get much sleep these past few days.”

“You look great, I mean,” Jeff corrected himself.
You're such an idiot
, he thought.

“That's very sweet of you, Jeff.”

“Uh . . . so you were at . . . uh . . .”

“The Reality Center,” she said—and in the next breath, she launched into an impassioned monologue about her miraculous experience. Her voice brightened steadily as she spoke—she smiled, laughed, oozed gratitude at her great fortune in discovering “Reality.”

But her fervor, well, it was just plain weird. Jeff had only witnessed such drowsy-eyed enthusiasm in church, or at tent revivals on his high school's football field in Murphy, and for the first few minutes of Alaura's speech, he suspected that she was acting. That this was all a big joke. Until it became clear that it wasn't a joke. She pronounced his name with worrisome frequency. She drifted on tangents. And the odd, new age phrases. She was now “aligned with who I really am, Jeff,” an idea he could in no way comprehend. She was “ready to change my life, Jeff, to change our world.” She was finally “embracing interconnectedness and running away from solitude, Jeff.” She believed in “the magic of positive thinking, Jeff.”
Reaching out and squeezing his arm, she said: “Look at how we're interacting now, Jeff. Right now, Jeff, this is the most powerful conversation you and I have ever had.”

Jeff looked down at her hand, which felt warm and damp on his skin.

She removed it.

He focused again on her pompadour, which seemed to defy the laws of physics, and he was unable to look at her beautiful face.

Had she noticed his new Richard Pryor tee shirt? Did she like it?

“Jeff?”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Does it make you uncomfortable, me talking about Reality?”

Jeff froze in fear—like that night when he had been unable to defend himself against the cyclists. Other versions of Christianity were one thing—but experiential learning? The Reality Center? All he could think to say was, “So you're going back there?”

She pondered, breathed deeply. “There are two more levels of the Experience: Intermediate and Advanced. I've signed up for both.”

Jeff managed a nod. “Do you mind me asking how much they cost?”

She told him the cost of each session.

“Oh my . . .” he said, but he captured “God!” in his throat.

“It's an investment in
me
,” she assured him.

“I guess so.”

“Don't worry, Jeff. If you're not interested, I won't talk your ear off about it anymore.”

Jeff nodded, glad for this offer.

A moment later, Alaura hopped up and sat on the counter, facing the store's central television. Jeff had been watching
Forbidden Planet.
She pointed at the television and asked, “So you're a sci-fi fan, Jeff?”

“I guess so.”

She smiled again, and with gentle fingertips, she adjusted the delicate fabric of her dress to drape more evenly over the curve of
her hips. “
Forbidden Planet
is a classic,” she said softly. “Great sets. Great costumes, too.” Her eyebrows raised. “Jeff?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Did you throw a brick through my ex-boyfriend's window?”

Jeff looked away—

“If you did, I'm not mad at you,” she said.

Jeff said nothing. He looked at the television, where a giant, howling cartoon monster was being shot with purple lasers.

“And if you did,” she said, “it's the sweetest thing anyone has
ever
done for me.”

His stomach, pole-vaulting into his throat. Then he remembered, strangely, his quiz in Business Administration tomorrow; he needed to study.

“I've decided not to borrow Waring's Dodge anymore,” Alaura said. “Could you walk me home? Maybe we could watch a movie at my place. Do you have class tomorrow?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“The Reality Center has this silly thing about movies,” she went on. “They say movies cut us off from human contact. I'm pretty sure I don't agree. But still, if you and I watched a movie together, and we talked about it, that wouldn't be cutting ourselves off, would it?”

“I really don't know, ma'am.”

She smiled, and Jeff realized that she had been ignoring his repeated “ma'am” slip-ups.

“Jeff,” she said, “I
want
you to walk me home.”

Once she had taken
him through the steps of closing Star Video and bequeathed him his own key to the store, they locked up the shop and set off into West Appleton. They walked slowly—it had rained at some point, and volcanic steam rolled off the streets. And to Jeff's surprise, they did not speak as they walked. At first this worried him because he felt it was his responsibility to fill in the
silence. But Alaura seemed content, smiled gently to herself, and he decided it was best not to bother her.

Eventually she motioned for them to turn right onto Cape Fear Drive. Small, close-set houses lined both sides of the narrow street. No curb—weedy lawns ran directly onto pavement. Like Waring's shabby neighborhood. She turned onto a driveway, and he thought they had arrived, but then they walked past the house, past a fenced-in yard where two yellow dogs trotted with them happily for a few yards. He realized that he was looking at her constantly, at her profile, at her lips that seemed so soft he would be frightened to kiss them too hard. Should he reach for her now, here in the dark forest, draw her toward him? Is that what she wanted? But she was so much older than him. Ten years, more. He didn't want to ruin this opportunity by acting too soon.

Two weeks ago—after overhearing Alaura leave a strained voicemail message for a friend about her boyfriend breaking up with her—Jeff had looked up Pierce's address in the Star Video computer, Googled directions, and at three a.m., he had thrown a brick through the a-hole's window. It was maybe the craziest thing Jeff had ever done—and he had virtually wiped it from his memory, until Alaura had brought it up.

A small baseball field opened in front of them. The field was surrounded on three sides by kudzu-masked trees. Alaura led him onto the field. Strangely, she climbed the pitcher's mound, set down her large purse on the dirt, kicked off her golden sandals. Her eyes were closed. Her body cavity expanded and deflated several times. He stood beside her, several painful feet away, and listened to the crickets, to the breeze in the branches, to the drizzle from earlier draining onto the forest floor. Looking at her again, he felt his manhood straining against the elastic band of his boxers, where he had been repeatedly tucking it whenever she wasn't looking.

But what was she doing, standing on this weedy field? Praying some Reality Center prayer?

Then he noticed—her gaze had turned downward, and she was staring with a frown at his feet. He was wearing leather sandals with white socks underneath.

What was wrong with his sandals?

She left the pitcher's mound—he was confused—but five minutes later, they entered her apartment, which was just around the corner from the baseball field. She directed him to sit on the couch. She walked into her small kitchen, and he marveled at the movie posters (
L'Avventura, Amores Perros, Happiness
—all movies he would now have to watch), hundreds of books, the organized clutter, the odd smell that he knew to be incense because his dormitory often reeked of it. This was exactly the sort of bohemian Fortress of Solitude he had imagined.

From the kitchen, she asked if he wanted something to drink.

“A beer?” he said.

She brought him some fancy bottle with a purple label, which was like no beer Jeff had ever tasted. He loved it.