The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  Thinking about Laura naked in the park makes me shift in my seat, and I look around for a second to make sure no one notices. The lights are dim. I’m safe.

  “All right,” Professor Krauss continues. “Next up, we’ve got Shuttered Eyes, by Tyler Lau. Says here Tyler shot using both digital and sixteen millimeter—is that right?” she asks him, sounding impressed.

  “Yeah,” Tyler says, like, it’s no big deal, and not something he’s been obsessing about for weeks.

  “Wow. Okay. So it was shot in both sixteen and digital, and he says it’s a”—she squints at the paper—“visual tone-poem meditation on the . . . nature of . . . identity and . . .” Professor Krauss gives up, looks at the audience and says, “It’s an art film. Let’s go.”

  We’re plunged into darkness, the numbered countdown begins, like I always imagined would roll before one of my films, and then the scene opens on Tyler’s eye, filling the frame of the camera. Dissonant classical music plays that I don’t recognize, but which Tyler told me a while ago is by some guy named Schoenberg. After a minute, I’m lost. But it’s a pleasurable lost. The images tumble together in a way that makes me uncomfortable, but which manages to be beautiful. It’s like a kaleidoscope, only it’s telling a story. Here’s a flickering candle, here’s an eye, there’s the baby gumming a quartz crystal and someone taking it away, then hands grasped together on the tabletop and holding perfectly still. There’s the woman winding on her turban, there’s me falling (oh, man, I can’t believe he put that in), then back to a repeat of the woman winding her turban. Time seems to move both forward and back, and it’s dizzying, but it’s rhythmic and magical. I’m letting myself be pulled into the experience of it.

  And then, in a flicker of light, it happens.

  I see her.

  Annie.

  My scalp crawls, and a strangled gasp comes out of my mouth.

  She’s standing right behind Maddie, and staring straight into the camera. It’s shocking, arresting. Her bottomless black eyes pierce into me, and her rose-pink mouth opens. Her hand reaches slowly forward, toward the camera, and the lighting is such that it almost looks like her hand is reaching out from the surface of the screen and into the space where we’re sitting. I imagine I see her arm cast a shadow on the flat movie screen. For a second, I’m terrified.

  Then just as quickly, she’s vanished, the scene is the same—how did he do that?—it’s just Maddie at the table, looking down, in fact now I can clearly see that Maddie is asleep (of course she’s asleep). The phantasmagoria of images continues: candles, the baby, candles, the guy in the Rangers jersey crying (when did that happen?), the Ouija pointer moving with no one touching it (that totally did not happen), white screen with contrails of lights, quick cuts of color digital film of shapes that I can’t make out, Tyler’s eye again in soft filter, and then it’s over.

  There are no credits.

  The lights go up, and for a long minute nobody does or says anything. I can see Tyler gripping the armrests of his chair next to me, can feel the anxiety clinging to him like sweat. I can almost smell it.

  Then I realize that I’m gripping my armrests, too.

  “Well then,” Professor Krauss falters. “Who would like to comment first?”

  There’s another long pause, and then Deepti’s hand creeps up.

  “Deepti?”

  “Um. I actually thought it was kind of derivative? Kind of like Stan Brakhage, if he, like, used real people?”

  Oh, man. Here we go.

  Rage vibrates off Tyler so hard it makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

  “Deepti,” Professor Krauss says slowly. “Have you ever actually seen Stan Brakhage?”

  I raise my hand.

  “Yes, Wes,” says Professor Krauss.

  “Okay, so, maybe I’m biased, since I did sound for Tyler, but . . .” I glance at him to see if it’s okay, what I’m doing. His face is a mask. “But I thought it was kind of awesome.”

  “Can you elaborate?”

  “Well . . .” I hesitate.

  I’m not really an art film guy. Documentaries, I can talk about. I can talk about the Up series, I can talk about Michael Moore. The Maysles brothers. The only art film I’ve seen to my knowledge is Cremaster 3, and to be honest, I fell asleep halfway through and woke up with no impression beyond a vague desire to wash my hands. I am totally out of my element. But I can’t back out now. I can feel Tyler waiting next to me.

  “So,” I start, “one of the things I really admired about it was its use of time?” I wait, wondering if I’m going to say anything else. Then I continue, “It managed to use non-narrative image structures to convey a simultaneous passage of time forward and backward. It made me really involved in the aesthetic experience of the film. And I thought the way he incorporated diegetic sound with the music was pretty tight.”

  A heavy pause deadens the room while everyone stares at me.

  “I thought so, too,” Professor Krauss say finally, looking at Tyler over the rims of her reading glasses. “Well done, Tyler. You made some bold visual decisions in this piece that really paid off. The transitions were a little clunky, but that’s just a matter of technique. It’ll improve with time. And I thought your homage to Kenneth Anger was wry and unexpected. Next time, don’t leave off the credits. Okay. Up next, we’ve got Kanesha Wright, with a piece called Summertime . . .”

  Next to me, I hear Tyler exhale long and slow. I glance sidelong at him and smile an encouraging smile.

  “Thanks, man,” he whispers to me as the lights start to drop for Kanesha’s film. “That means a lot.”

  “No problem,” I whisper back. “It rocked.”

  There’s a long pause, and as Kanesha’s opening music kicks in, I just hear Tyler whisper, “You really thought so?”

  “Definitely,” I say. But I can’t make myself smile when I say it. I’m thinking about how it’s going to be my turn, one week from today. One week. That’s not much time. One week for me to make something that might get me the thing I want most in the world.

  And I’m thinking about Annie’s nighttime eyes staring out of the screen, straight at me.

  I look up at the ceiling of the screening room to keep myself from tearing up. I count sixteen divots before it gets too dark to see.

  CHAPTER 10

  Toss it back! Do it!” a chorus of voices shouts, and a stream of tequila burns down my throat. The backsplash of it in my nose makes me cough, but then Tyler’s shouting, “Bite it! Come on!” and my teeth are sinking into a lime wedge and the burst of acid rips away the tequila aftertaste and my eyelids fly open and Tyler shouts, “YEAH!” and pounds me on the back and then hollers to the bartender, “Same again!”

  “Dude,” I cough, laughing, “wait a minute!”

  “No waiting!” Tyler cries, grinning. “You can’t wait, that’s the whole point!”

  He licks the back of his hand, sprinkles it with salt, picks up the tequila shot, and vaults onto the bench alongside the scarred wood table where we’re sitting in an old-fashioned East Village bar.

  “To the two biggest film geniuses to come out of Tisch since nineteen-freaking-seventy-five!” he shouts.

  Everyone in the bar cheers, Tyler hoists the shot glass over his head, licks the salt from his hand, tosses the tequila back in one slug, and chucks the empty shot glass across the room. There’s a shatter and someone in the back shouts, Hey! but Tyler doesn’t pay any attention. Now he’s down off the table and biting a lime wedge next to me, leaving the rind in his teeth and giving me a green-rind grin while sliding a shot glass over in front of me.

  Obediently I lick my own hand, sprinkle it with salt, and pick up the tequila shot. Tyler and everyone is clapping and cheering. I hesitate, take a deep breath, then in one motion lick the salt off my hand and toss the tequila back. I exhale the fumes with an “aaaaaah” and thunk the shot gla
ss upside down on the table, pick up the lime wedge, and tear into it with my teeth. A warm patch starts to spread across the back of my neck.

  “Yes! That’s it. That’s how we do it,” Tyler shouts near my ear. “Now tell me again what Krauss said about Most at the reception. Verbatim. I want to hear it.”

  “Come on, man.” I wave him off, but I’m grinning.

  “Shut up, shut up. Listen. Do you know what Krauss said about this guy’s documentary?” he shouts to a couple of girls who are jammed up next to us at the picnic table. They look at each other, giggle, and shake their heads.

  “She said she’s heard it’s powerful, and she can’t wait to screen it next week. Tell them,” he instructs me.

  “I’m sorry,” I explain to the girls. “You’ll have to excuse him, we’ve . . .”

  “Powerful,” Tyler says, jamming a finger into my chest, his arm over my shoulders. “That’s serious film talk, right there. That’s what that is.” The girls are really laughing now.

  “Are you guys, like, filmmakers?” one of the girls asks, half hidden behind one of her friends.

  “Damn right we are!” Tyler hollers. “You remember this guy’s face, because you’re gonna be seeing us on TV. When we get our Oscars. I swear.” He points to me, finger wavering from the tequila.

  The girls all laugh, trying to figure out if they’re supposed to know who we are.

  “Dude,” Tyler says, leaning in close to me. “You have to do sound on my next one.”

  “Your next one?” I slur. My eyes are having trouble focusing on one point all together. And my lips are feeling kind of numb.

  “Totally! The woman from Gavin Brown wants to see another one from me by the end of the month. She said, at the reception. Do you have any idea what this means?”

  He’s grinning so wide, I can’t help but grin back at him, even though I can’t feel my mouth. His eyeliner’s gone streaky with sweat, and his cheeks are flushed, and in the background one of the girls has taken a selfie with him and looks like she’s posting it to Instagram, just in case he’s famous.

  “It means,” he says, leaning in close, “that it’s really going to happen for me, Wes. For serious. All this time, you know, and I think maybe it’s finally going to happen.”

  “What is?” I ask, leaning into him in a conspiratorial whisper.

  Tyler smiles and takes my overturned shot glass so that he has something to play with on the table. Without looking at me, he says, “You don’t know me that well, do you?”

  I’m taken aback. I mean, we’ve seen each other every day for five weeks. I feel like I have a pretty good idea about Tyler. I don’t always like him. But he’s okay, basically.

  “Sure I do, man.” I stumble to reassure him. “Come on.”

  Tyler shakes his head, smiling to himself.

  “Did you know I had to work two jobs during the year to save up for summer school?” he says lightly. “My dad’s dry cleaning shop. And a moving company run by some Russian dudes in Brighton Beach. Cash only, under the table. So sketch. That’s how bad I needed this.”

  I turn and stare at Tyler. Damn. He plays it close to the chest. The art films. All that 16 millimeter film stock. The hair and everything? The nightclub with the list? My image of his plush Upper West Side life—of framed prints and polished parquet and a mother with a gambling problem—evaporates before my eyes. No, I did not know he was sending himself to school. I’m starting to think that maybe I don’t see all that well into people.

  He catches me staring and his smile shades uneasy. But whatever he’s worried about seeing in my face isn’t there. Tyler passes the shot glass back to me.

  “Listen. I know I was being kind of a dick about stuff, before. It’s just, my dad couldn’t pay for it. And even if he could, there was no way he’d think art school was a good use of money, you know? He was kind of on the fence about college anyway. So I just really needed everything to be perfect. I had put too much into it to let myself screw it up.” He’s looking at me, needing me to understand.

  “Your dad didn’t want you to go to college?” I ask. This baffles me. If I’d tried to not go to college, my parents would’ve sold me for parts. And Gran, forget it. She’d have clobbered me to death with her handbag. The big, hard-sided one from the sixties.

  “Nah. I mean, to be an engineer or a doctor, yeah. But my math grades sucked. He was all set I should be a plumber. Make good money, not go into debt. College is just an excuse to waste time that would be better spent supporting the family. According to him.”

  Tyler looks me full in the face, his eyes damp at the corners, and for the first time, I start to understand who the eyeliner is for. I nod.

  “Shuttered Eyes had to be good,” Tyler goes on, his hand tightening into a fist. “I mean, it couldn’t just be good. You know? It had to be perfect.”

  “No, no. I get it.” I rush to close the subject because we’re both about to get uncomfortable with all this sharing. Later, he’ll blame the tequila. Or more likely we’ll both pretend this conversation never happened at all. “It’s no problem,” I continue. “God, look at Krauss! She loved it. Right? And that woman from Gavin Brown?”

  I’m not normally Mr. Effusive. But I want Tyler to know that I get it. I really do. I watch him, wondering if I’ve persuaded him. Wondering if this means we’re really friends now.

  He weighs what I’m saying, and then his face splits into a delighted grin.

  “Can you believe how freaking awesome this is?” Tyler cries, sweeping an arm out to encompass I’m not sure what. School, the workshop, the summer, maybe the entire city. “And Most? Seriously? It’s art, man. It’s freaking beautiful. I’ve seen what you’ve been doing. You’re a freaking artist, Wes. Next week, Krauss is gonna lose her mind. Everyone will. I’m freaking serious.”

  Someone plunks two more tequila shots down in front of us and we look up in confusion, because we didn’t order them. The tableful of girls next to us all giggle some more and wave.

  Tyler and I exchange a wry look, pick up the shot glasses, and lift them in tribute. Then we clink them together and down the shots in one gulp.

  • • •

  Somehow my feet are moving, and I’m not sure where they’re moving to, because all I can see is the blue screen on my phone. My thumbs aren’t working quite right, but I’m pretty sure I’m texting Maddie, and I’m reasonably certain I’m telling her to meet me and Tyler at another bar. Tyler’s got one of the girls who bought us tequila shots wrapped around his neck like a scarf, and they’re stumbling along in front of me, singing a Taylor Swift song. Tyler started by trying some Velvet Underground, but the girl didn’t know what he was talking about.

  The phone vibrates in my hand.

  Where R U right now? Maddie wants to know.

  I stop, swaying on my feet, and look around. Everything is lights and taxi horns and the smell of hot summer rain, and I squint, trying to make out a street sign, but my eyes will. Not. Focus. I close them, inhale a long, ragged breath, and open them again, but it doesn’t help.

  “TYLER,” I holler.

  Ahead of me two figures pause in the blur of people, and then come swaying back to me.

  “WHAZZIT?” he hollers back to me. The girl he’s with keeps giggling and giggling.

  “What street izzis?” I slur.

  “Uuuummmmmm . . .” He squints also, looking around in a circle that makes me dizzy to watch.

  “Second,” the girl chirps. “We’re on Second and Bowery. Who’re you texting with?”

  “My friend,” I manage to say. “She’s meeting us. Where’re we going? I’m sposta giver the address where we’re going.”

  “Give it here,” the girl says, yanking the phone out of my hands. With lightning speed her thumbs fly over my smartphone. At first I’m okay with this, and then just as quickly I’m not. What’s she telling
her? This could be bad. I should get it back from her. I should—

  But then she’s handing the phone back and she says, “Come on! She’ll meet us there. She your girlfriend or something?”

  “No, she’s just this . . . she’s, like,” I say, but nobody’s listening, so instead of talking I shamble along behind them as we go another block and turn down a side street.

  “Dude!” Tyler cries, stopping short. I trip over my feet trying not to run into him.

  My heart collapses when I see where we are.

  Her, my mind breathes. My hand reaches out for something to steady itself against, and finds the bark of the long-suffering pear tree near the curb.

  We’re standing in front of Annie’s house.

  The pizzeria is doing a brisk business, kids hanging out along the counter open to the street, its windows folded back to let in the night air. There’s music and the smell of garlic knots, and the kids inside are all laughing together, and Tyler and the girl are laughing together, and maybe it’s the tequila pickling my brain, and maybe it’s a mistake or I’m confused or overtired, but I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying, and I’m so glad it’s dark and nobody’s looking at me.