The Last Days of Video (25 page)

She noticed that his forehead was sweating, little beads dripping from hairline to brow.

“It's me,” she said gently. “Alaura.”

He stared at her, unresponsive. Neither like he recognized her, nor like he didn't—almost like he was frightened. Then he looked off to the corner of the room, as if someone there was about to speak to him.

Alaura shot Fauxhawk a nervous smirk.

But a moment later, a shy smile emerged behind the thick tendrils of Match's short, uneven beard. It was an expression Alaura immediately recognized from the halls of Sprinks High.

“It's me,” she said again, standing up.

“Alaura?” Match's voice—creaky and childlike.

“I've missed you, Match.”

“Oh, wow.”

He reached out and touched her: the squid tattoo on her right arm.

She brought her opposite hand up to meet his, and in the same movement, she caught a breath of his familiar scent: a woody sweetness that she'd always associated with bookshelves.

“I just found out that you were filming in Appleton,” she explained. “I asked around and found out this is where the crew is staying. I came right away.”

“Man,” he said, and he looked down at the floor. “The
Buried Mirror
script was originally set in Ehle County. Do you remember?” He glanced at her, smiled, then swiped at the sweat on his forehead with the back of a hand. “Of course you remember, Alaura. You were there in the beginning. Since that first draft I wrote in high school. You
know
that the setting was always Appleton.”

“Sure, I remember.”

“But the studio thought Charleston was more exotic and recognizable.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
, et cetera, though of course that was filmed in Savannah. And so but anyway
The Buried Mirror
is set in Charleston.”

“Okay?” Alaura said, struggling to follow the relevance of this story.

“But then, when we were location scouting, Ehle County made us an amazing offer. Maybe because I grew up around here, I don't know. But so, boom, we're filming here, in Appleton, but hanging fake Spanish moss everywhere, trying to make the streets look all flat and Charlestony. And now here
you
are. Alaura Eden. Standing right in front of me.”

She didn't quite understand what he was talking about, but nonetheless, she hazarded: “Yes, here I am.”

“Alaura Eden,” he repeated. Then, in a peculiarly secretive murmur, he said, “Alaura, I'm so glad you're here. I have to tell you something. Something I've only told one other person.”

“What is it?”

“I can trust you, can't I?”

She squeezed his shaking hand, which she now noticed was clammy under hers. And she realized that even though he was looking at her, his eyes were almost completely unfocused.

“You can't repeat this to anyone,” he whispered.

Alaura glanced suspiciously over Match's shoulder at the security guard, who was now inspecting the reflection of his fauxhawk in the conference room's tiny window, completely unimpressed that Alaura had not turned out to be a lunatic.

“I won't tell anyone,” she said.

“I need your help.”

“
My
help?” she asked, thinking at once of Star Video, and that she had come here to ask for
his
help. “What do you need?”

“It's like . . . it's like Fate that you're here,” he muttered.

She smiled nervously.

“Can you help me?” he asked.

“Why do you keep asking me that, Match?” she said, edging away from him a little bit. “Is this about the movie?”

“No,” Match said. “It's about me.”

“What is it, Match?”

He sighed. His voice lowered even further. “Alaura,” he whispered, “I don't know how to say this . . . but I've been seeing the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock. He's sitting in that chair right now.”

Alaura looked at the chair, clenched her jaw, and tried with all her might to see what simply wasn't there.

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT MATCH ANDERSON* (*BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK)

Waring and Jeff, alone
again at Star Video. Next-to-no business. Jeff had just taken a short break and strolled out to College Street, trying to absorb the full extent of today's events: the Reality Center, holding Alaura while she wept, helping Waring pack up his house, and the insane revelation about Match Anderson. It was all too much to process.

Then Jeff smelled something. Butter. He looked down the street in the direction of the intoxicating odor, and he noticed that Blockbuster's parking lot was nearly full. Two posters swayed in the breeze beneath the huge Blockbuster sign. One of them read, “Rent TWO Get ONE Free,” the other, “And FREE Popcorn!”

Jeff walked back into Star Video, having resolved not to mention this brilliant marketing offensive on the part of their enemy, nor that he had suggested the exact same maneuvers to Waring not two days earlier.

“I can't believe it,” Jeff said, sitting on a stool close to Waring, who, as always, was seated in his director's chair.

“What?”

“That Alaura knows Match Anderson. And he's here in Ehle County.”

“Yes,” Waring said. “She never told me that either. Never mentioned she knew a Hollywood director. It's all a rather improbable turn of events.”

“Crazy.”

“Some might say far-fetched.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Contrived even.”

Jeff nodded.

“If it happened in a movie,” Waring said, “I probably wouldn't believe it.”

Silence.

Minutes later . . .

“Have you ever seen
Annie Hall
?” Jeff asked.

“Have I ever seen
Annie Hall?
Let me think, Jeff.” Waring clenched his eyes shut, searching his memory banks. “Yes,” he said finally. “I recall watching
Annie Hall
once or twice.”

Jeff chuckled. “I've never seen it. Can we watch it now?”

“'Sfine.”

They watched
Annie Hall.

Ninety-four minutes later, as the final white-on-black credits faded, Jeff turned to Waring and asked, “You believe what Woody Allen says?”

“Mm?”

“How life is full of loneliness, misery, and suffering, but it all ends too soon.”

“So?”

“So do you believe him?”

“What's not to believe?” Waring asked.

“But it's so cynical. Seems like a miserable way to think about life.”

Waring turned to Jeff. “Think about it,” he said. “Cynical
implies that because life is meaningless and painful, we should be miserable. Woody is kind of suggesting the opposite. That
because
life is shit, we should try to enjoy ourselves while we're here.”

Jeff considered this, and he was preparing to ask if Waring believed this notion himself—because it seemed very out of character—when Waring added:

“Of course, Woody married his stepdaughter, which is gross.”

“He did?”

“You don't know this?”

“No.”

“Christ! We could fill up the Grand Canyon with what you don't know.”

Jeff flipped Waring the bird, the first time he had attempted this gesture after witnessing Alaura do it to Waring fifty times.

Waring smiled, as if in appreciation.

“By the way,” Waring said. “Rose has a crush on you.”

Jeff frowned, having been completely caught off guard.

“Seems pretty obvious,” Waring went on. “The way she's always, you know, talking to you.”

“Rose barely talks to me at all.”

“She never says a word to anyone else.”

“But I thought maybe her and Farley were—”

“Rose is a much better fit for you than Alaura. I'm just saying. Completely objective viewpoint here.”

Jeff flipped Waring the bird again.

Waring rolled his eyes, disappointed by the repetition.

“I can't believe Alaura really knows Match Anderson,” Jeff repeated.

“Yes, so amazing,” Waring said with a sudden grimace.

“
Losers
was a great movie.”

“Yes, it was. But it's been a while since
Losers
.”

“I didn't see
A House on the Edge of Reason
or
Changeless
,” Jeff said.

“Don't.”

“I hear they're . . .”

“They are.”

“They don't rent much.”

“That's a good sign of a bad movie,” Waring said knowingly.

“But I mean, maybe he can help, you know, with the store?”

Waring sighed loudly, his patience with the subject of Match Anderson apparently exhausted. “By the way, Sasquatch, call him Woody. Not Woody Allen. Just Woody.”

“Why?”

“Video store etiquette. Woody.”

Jeff nodded. “By the way, Waring, you're repeating yourself.”

“What?”

“That's like the tenth time you've called me Sasquatch, which doesn't even make sense, by the way, if I'm quote-unquote hairless.”

“I'll remember that, teenage Ed Begley Jr.”

BEING MATCH ANDERSON

Match Anderson's immaculate room
at the Siena Hotel looked like it had been ransacked by goons searching for top-secret government documents. The mattress of his four-poster king bed sat askew on its box springs. Several dinner trays and takeout cartons were strewn over the floor, along with a carpeting of yellow and white papers, hundreds of them, many with Match's messy handwriting scrawled over them. It was a wonderful room—mahogany furniture and brass fixtures and a sixty-inch flat-screen television—but the place was a complete disaster, as if Match had been holed up here for months.

Alaura sat quietly and watched as Match traipsed around, quickly, crazily, in completely random routes amidst the clutter—the Tasmanian Devil who had clearly caused the room's devastation. Now that she'd spent an hour with him, during which they'd shared a quick meal in the hotel's restaurant, and during which he'd been constantly accosted by fifty crewmembers asking him a hundred questions, all of which he seemed to answer correctly, but with intense anxiety and annoyance . . . she couldn't believe the general character of his behavior, nor how he looked, nor how he sounded.
His voice was scratchy, like a smoker's, and he lapsed occasionally into strange phrasing, odd elocution . . . a million parsecs from his sharp boyishness back in high school. And he looked . . . well, he looked awful. Skeletal in the shoulders, haggard and sallow in the face, and more of an unhealthy distribution of flesh around his waist than she had originally noticed. He was sweating profusely, and mostly, it seemed, from his forehead. And his huge, glassy eyes—freaky and detached like Gollum in
Lord of the Rings.

The problem was: how to bring up Star Video. She hadn't figured out how to do it yet. There hadn't been a calm moment.

“So the thing was, I couldn't get money for the movie,” Match said, after he'd been silent, but walking violently, for quite some time. “For
The Buried Mirror.
The studio was balking at the eleventh hour, there just wasn't funding, so I had to say sayonara to my lead actress, who is a great fucking actress, by the way, and she would have played the role perfectly, this obscure Irish chick I bet you'd know. But [name of film studio omitted] said that I had to go for someone with a bigger name, just ten days before initial exteriors in LA, and what the hell am I supposed to do? I don't have a lead actress. So I float my interest to agents and shit, and then it comes about after a
lot
of rigmarole that Tabitha Gray is interested. I mean, Tabitha Gray! And though honestly she isn't right for the part, I agree to meet with her at this restaurant overlooking Central Park, this private club, and she's read the script, and she's super interested, which really doesn't mean anything, because they're always super interested, but I'm hoping, because I've been wanting to make this movie since fucking high school, you know? I mean, I know I'm only thirty years old, but still, that's a long time.”

Alaura nodded, smiled. But Match was frightening her. He was tramping around and not looking at her and smoking cigarettes and sweating and holding a clinking glass of bourbon and monologuing.

“I can't express how wrong Tabitha was for the part,” he went on. “
Is
for the part. But I walk in to meet her, at this fancy club,
and what do I see standing at the bar?
Who
do I see? Here it is, Alaura, are you ready? Here it is: I see this amazing fucking Alfred Hitchcock impersonator. I mean, he's absolutely stupendously perfect. You know how into Hitchcock I was. Am. I've watched every second of every movie and all the interview footage and every episode of
Hitchcock Presents.
I know what the man looks like. He's one of my heroes. And there's this impersonator standing there, at the bar, all chubby and shiny like a white seal in a black suit, his teeth jutting forward and craggy, ugly as all sin. Around sixty years old, placing him at the height of his powers, you know,
The Trouble with Harry. The Wrong Man. Vertigo. North by Northwest. Psycho. The Birds.
Six great films in eight years.” Match sipped his bourbon.