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The night swims in dark,
billowing clouds behind my sleepless eyes.
It’s time.
I open my eyes, look at
the sickly green digits of the clock, confirm what I already
know: 2:30 a.m.
My wife is a dim, curved
mound, warm flesh, sighing gently. My thoughts are the
thoughts of a thousand nights, ten thousand nights. If I
leave now, she won’t know for hours. With a headstart like
that, in a country this size …
But it’s not about
leaving her, not really, and I can’t get away from the rest,
so I shove that fantasy away and rise quietly, bitterly,
grabbing clothes as I go. They won’t care what I’m wearing,
no more than they care what they’re wearing, but I’d feel
odd, buck naked or with my business hanging out. Outside,
the town of Sutton’s Grove is quiet, save for the uneasy
stirring, the November breeze that chases autumn.
The stairs – old,
wooden, the treads rising and falling around the worn nails
like breath from cancerous lungs – creak the welcome of a
thousand nights. Ten thousand nights.
One flight of stairs, a
short hallway, a right turn and I’m in the projection
booth, flipping switches, warming up the old 1934 RCA
PhotoPhone. The magic machine that’s burned out a hundred
bulbs on Barrymore and Fairbanks and Flynn, Tracy and Grant
and Wayne. All the square-shouldered heroes with their
glinting eyes and wise smiles. All the ladies, beautiful and
tough – Wray and Temple, Garbo and Garland, Hepburn and
Monroe and Bacall.
The red carpet on the
broad satirs to the lobby is soft and slick, its worn nap
like skin. The thought makes me walk carefully, gently.
I breathe the stale
salty smell as I line up the leftover bags of popcorn from
the evening show, the scent so thick I can almost taste the
butter-grease on my lips. I glance at the big Timex over the
concession counter: 2:50 a.m. I hurry across the lobby and
unlock the doors, glowing brass and beveled glass catch the
light from the sconces and play with it.
They’re waiting and
that’s a truce. The first time, all those nights ago, they
battered down the doors, leaving them in shards and
splinters.
I wheeze up the stairs,
exhaling terror, inhaling relief. I hurry toward the
projection booth, past the restrooms reeking chlorine-tablet
breath into their empty tiled mausoleums. They’ll see no
action tonight – one of the advantages of being dead, I
suppose.
The projector is ready
and I hear the crowd rustling in. I flip the switch to
drown out the scratch-and-creak of dry bones and withered
flesh. The crunch of yellowed teeth masticating old popcorn,
kernels tumbling down non-existent throats, falling through
empty stomach cavities to the theater floor.
They’ll watch anything,
but I won’t show musicals anymore. I can’t bear the sound of
three hundred sepulcher voices singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy”
or “We’re Off to See the Wizard.”
Tonight it’s “Pride of
the Yankees” – a little singing, but I’ll tough it out. Gary
Cooper. Walter Brennan. Teresa Wright. Corny, made-up stuff
except for that speech at the end, distilled into its
Hollywood essence. Even in the projector booth, the old RCA
clicking, the worn reels humming and squeaking, I hear them
whisper the final line: “Today (today… today…) I consider
myself the luckiest man on the face of this Earth.”
I can’t argue. Perhaps
because I do this, they let me be, and the rest of Sutton’s
Grove as well. Maybe it’s as close to tipping back my
Stetson and riding into the sunset as I’ll ever get.
The dead file out,
heading back to their graves and crypts and riverbeds and
ditches, and I head back upstairs, sated on terror, grateful
for the warm flesh of my sleeping wife.
She stirs as I slip back
into bed. “Another bad dream?” she murmurs.
I grunt a lie that
satisfies her and close my eyes, watching the dark billowing
clouds until I fall asleep.
-end- |
