The Last Days of Video (35 page)

“Sure you won't come tonight?” Alaura said to Jeff, breaking the silence.

“No, sorry. I've got some catching up to do. Studying.”

Alaura nodded, not looking at him, not insisting that he change his mind. But her coldness didn't really hurt him anymore. For weeks after the Match Anderson debacle, she'd either completely ignored him or snapped at him rudely for any mistakes he made in the store, and Jeff had come to understand the difference between real anger and the type of perpetual crankiness Waring exhibited, and how much more the former hurt than the latter, especially when it came from a woman you adored. Jeff longed for the Alaura of two months ago, in her apartment, wearing her long tee shirt and little shorts. But that was over, forever, and he'd grown used to it, moved on.

Then, a week ago, there had been yet another mysterious shift in her behavior—though she never actually announced forgiveness for his stupid mistake, she seemed to have made a conscious decision to be more polite. Or at least not to snap at him. She didn't hate him. She might even be his friend again, eventually.

“Waring?” Jeff said. “Good luck with everything.”

Waring nodded, flicked a cigarette stub onto the sidewalk, and gazed at his shoes. “Well,” Waring said, “you know, Jeff . . . for these last few weeks, working so hard during the final sale, you've been . . . I appreciate it.”

“You were paying me.”

“I'm saying thank you,” Waring said, a bit annoyed.

“I know you are.”

They shook hands.

Waring continued looking at his dusty shoes, and Jeff was tempted to hug the strange little man—but he suspected Waring might throw something at him.

Jeff turned to Alaura.

“Well . . .” he said.

“Oh, shut up,” she said, her tone breezy and familiar. “We'll see you soon.” Then she reached out and hugged him.

And though he tried to resist, he could not help holding her tight. Squeezing her even after she had started to pull away. He knew she would understand. She wouldn't mind the long hug. She knew he'd had a crush on her, maybe even loved her. But he didn't want to push it. Who knows, years down the line. Still, he held on. He did not let go. He smelled her hair, felt the wool of her lime-green toboggan fizzing against his face.

“Bye,” he whispered, and he turned and walked away.

Moments later he glanced back, trying to imbue tragedy in the motion, but Waring and Alaura were already walking in the other direction, not looking his way.

So that was it.

Five minutes later, Jeff passed Tanglewood Baptist church—where he'd not gone in over a month, and he hadn't told Momma, and he didn't care—and after giving the tall steepled building a sidelong glance, he turned and entered a pub, a place he'd had the good fortune to be served beer several times recently. It was a dingy place named Pravda, the centerpiece of which was a huge red-on-black painting of Lenin on an exposed cinderblock wall. At 6:35 p.m., when Jeff arrived, there were only three other patrons, men in their twenties or thirties, drinking quietly and watching college football. Indie rock with an off-key singer buzzed over the jukebox.
Jeff ordered a twenty-four-ounce Pabst. He took the beer to a corner table and began studying a textbook on film criticism. Earlier that week, he had observed a film class, and he had all but decided to switch majors, from business to film, at his next opportunity. The class had been exciting—though much of the discussion was over his head. But they were talking about movies, his favorite thing in the world, and he'd learned that he might even be able to focus his studies on sci-fi and anime, genres that he now guiltlessly admitted were his true loves. Some people actually made a living studying exactly those genres! The only thing he had not understood during the class was that no one ever said that a particular movie was good or bad; they only talked about shots and sequences, used cryptic French terms he had scribbled in his notebook to investigate later.

So he had checked out this book, a large brick of paper, the contents of which, he now realized, were also over his head. Every few sentences he had to consult his mini dictionary, and some of the terms weren't even in there.

Then a group of three girls and two boys, preppy college kids, walked into Pravda, blaring voices, laughing stupidly at the kitschy decor of the place. They ordered fruity red drinks and took a table next to Jeff's, though there were ten other tables they could have chosen. He heard the girls babbling about
Gossip Girl
—of all the shows on television, that new piece-of-crap
Gossip Girl.
And the gaggle of them looked so much like what Jeff assumed fans of
Gossip Girl
would look like that he couldn't stop listening to them with anthropological fascination. Jeff caught a glare from the bartender—the bearded man shrugged. Jeff nodded in disgusted agreement. Then, after another explosion of shrill laughter, Jeff leaned over to them, cleared his throat, and said, “If you're going to be obnoxious, could you move over there?” One of the boys, the bigger of the two, started to say something. But Jeff beat him to it: “Don't talk to me, Chester. You're in my bar.” (Why Chester? Jeff didn't know. And why had he said “my bar”? Because he had
shared a glance with the bartender, he decided.) The guy stepped down, and the group moved to the far table, finished their drinks quickly, humorlessly, and left. The bartender then waved Jeff over, shook his hand, and gave him a free beer. Jeff returned to his book. Over the next hour, he got a bit drunk, and for the first time since—well, maybe since first getting hired at Star Video—he felt hopeful about his future.

At seven thirty p.m.,
cigarette and beer in hand, Waring Wax stepped from the shadows wearing a rumpled black suit that, to all those watching him, seemed a natural extension of his body. The large room opened up in front of him. Christmas lights were strung along the eighteen-foot-high ceiling, a firmament of near-linear constellations. Waring was standing upon a small stage and looking down at his audience. Forty Applets stared back at him. They were sitting on mismatched couches, or in Burger King booths, or at Formica-topped diner tables, or on the short bank of twelve theater seats that Waring had procured cheap from Memorial Hall on Ape U's campus (recently remodeled). He saw a young couple sitting in the front half of a Volkswagen Beetle that he had purchased for forty dollars in scrap, and that Jeff had painted with two cans of Rust-Oleum spray paint (Harbor Blue). He saw several of the old biddies from Covenant Woods, his morning regulars, who were holding hands cutely, looking up at him with dazed smiles. A few other people milled near the walls of the wide-open space, and in the dim creamy light, Waring saw them studying the dense collection of classic movie posters—there was the Tom Laughlin autographed
Billy Jack
poster that Jeff had marveled at, and several of Alaura's indie posters from her apartment, and all of the random wrinkly posters that had adorned Star Video for so many years. And looking to the back of the room, Waring saw Alaura behind the new glimmering concession stand. She was handing two bottles of beer and
a leafy sandwich to a chubby lesbian he recognized from the store. Alaura smiled radiantly, leaned forward onto the counter, her head bobbing in some theatrical jest, locked in pleasant conversation. Waring smiled, took a drag of his cigarette.

“Welcome to Star Theater,” he called out to the audience.

He announced the title of that night's film, the newest from an up-and-coming independent director, and he called out loudly, “I'll be honest with you, I watched the movie today, and it isn't fantastic. I've seen better. But when you go to a movie theater, you don't necessarily expect the greatest thing you've ever seen, right? You just want to be entertained. And I was entertained when I watched this earlier today. And the director, I think we'd all agree, he's earned the right to make a movie that isn't exactly amazing. He's made other, better films, and he dated that woman, you know, from that British pop group, the one everyone really liked, or so they tell me. And well, I guess . . .” and Waring took a sip of beer, only his third sip of the evening.

The air smelled, immaculately, of popcorn.

“This place, Star Theater,” he went on, “will be a home for
good
movies. Or if not
good
movies, then at least interesting ones. And if not interesting, then at least weird. What I'm saying is, we'll show old films and new films, we'll host film festivals and other gimmicky things like that, and in general, we'll try to deal in
honest
films that contribute to the scope of film history. I know that sounds pretentious. But that's what we're going to do. That's our humble mission, et cetera.”

Then he saw Farley, whom he'd known would be there that night, just as he'd been at Star Video earlier—Farley was filming Waring, as always, while Rose dutifully pointed a long-tubed microphone in Waring's direction, a finger set to one ear of her huge headphones.

Waring, unable to resist, began to flip Farley the bird—

“And the documentary!” Farley yelled, as if to forestall Waring's rising middle finger.

“Oh, right,” Waring said, turning his attention again to the audience. “As my former employee has so politely interjected, two weeks from tonight, at eight p.m., Star Theater will screen a new documentary by Farley . . .” and Waring glanced at the camera and its vigilant operator. “Farley . . . Farley . . . who I'm sure has a last name, though I'm not recalling it just now. But anyway, Star Theater will screen
his
new documentary, which he promises will be ready and screenable by then, because apparently he's been working on it for months and is rushing to get it ready for festivals or something, though I'm a bit skeptical of his timeline, as it appears he's still engaged in principal photography
right now.
But whatever. The documentary is about my old . . . I'm sorry,
our
old video store, Star Video—”

A sudden round of applause, mingled with a healthy dose of doleful “awwwws” from the audience.

“Yes, yes,” Waring said. He clenched his jaw, trying to drive away the surge of absurd sadness now expanding in his chest: “It's tragic. It's heartbreaking. We're all devastated. And Farley has captured all that tragedy on camera, which is just absolutely great. The documentary is titled . . . what's it titled again?”

“
The Last Days of Video
!” Alaura's voice rang happily through the theater.

“Right,” Waring said, nodding. “The
Last Days of Video.
Come check it out. There'll be a reception or whatever, with drinks and chips and things like that.” Waring belched behind a fist. “Oh, and some time early in January, date to be announced, we're hoping to have Alex Walden, yes,
the
Alex Walden, who is an old friend of mine, we go way back, he'll be visiting Star Theater for a discussion and a screening of some of his father's films. Alex, the old lug, has agreed to come, and we're just hammering out the details. Impressive, huh?” The audience agreed resoundingly with a round of clapping, during which Waring sucked down another gulp of beer. “Anyway, I wanted to thank you for coming, and for watching
tonight's movie and drinking and eating with us. And for forgiving us for the state of the place, which will improve with time. As a treat for our first night of business, we'll stop the movie halfway through and bring fresh chocolate chip cookies to whoever wants one.” A few giggly murmurs from the audience. “Really, I just wanted to thank you,” he said again. “So . . . well, thank you.”

Waring stepped away from the screen.

Sixty seconds later, up in the projection room, Waring turned down the houselights and the Christmas lights, and he hit play on the digital projector—he had paid for the projector, as well as for all the seating and the concession implements and the first and last month's rent for this ancient building on Watts Street, just around the corner from his old shop, with money garnered from selling his house, and from selling the property that housed Star Video and Pizza My Heart to Ehle County. He had paid off all his debts, and, depending on how business went (People still go to movie theaters, right?), he suspected he would have enough money to keep the place running for at least a few years.

The movie began, and he watched the first minute of it through the projector room window. But he had already watched the damned thing earlier that day—and you couldn't watch the same movie twenty times in a row, could you? He knew he would have to lug a television and DVD player up here, so he could watch other movies while Star Theater's films played on the big screen. The small projection room was big enough for the flat panel. It was big enough for his bed and his books and for the twenty boxes of junk he had deemed un-throw-awayable from his house. And it was just barely big enough for the crusty couch from
The African Queen.

Downstairs he heard Alaura clunking around in the small kitchen, a remnant from this building's ancient history as a general store. Maybe he should go down and help her. But no. He was exhausted, and Alaura had said she could handle the cookies herself. At intermission, he would help her carry them out. Shit, he
thought, how can I replace her? He couldn't afford to pay her what she deserved, of course, and he had been honest about that. Finally he'd been honest. Now she had a new job at that damn grocery store. He had visited her there that morning, had watched her from behind a display of organic corn chips and all-natural jellies, and to his surprise, she had seemed happy. Smiling, charming customers, fixing problems. She'd be running that store in a year. And that was a good job for her, wasn't it? They probably contributed to a 401(k), which Waring had never gotten around to setting up. That store would be around forever. People would always need food.