The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, 2010

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Is this okay?” she asked.

  “Fine.” I responded without really thinking. It was her movie choice, so it wouldn’t bother me to sit too far back from the picture.

  Helen gestured toward the man in front of me, then forked her middle and forefinger to point at her eyes. I recognized the man from the couple I’d half-noticed on the way inside. He sat tall in his seat: his shoulders and gangly gray-fuzzed head, from my vantage, cut a dark notch into the bottom of the screen like the interlocking edge of a missing jigsaw piece. His companion was a good bit shorter, granting my wife a clear view of the film.

  I knew Helen felt guilty because she liked the aisle, actually thought she needed it because she typically left to use the restroom at least twice during a ninety-minute film. The water bottle didn’t help, obviously.

  Music swelled from the preview’s soundtrack, and a glossy country manor montage shimmered onscreen. Like a sequel to Age of Innocence, or maybe A Room with a Different View. “I can see fine,” I assured her. Besides, the slight obstruction was better than having Helen climb over my legs several times once the film was in progress. “As long as there’s no subtitles,” I joked.

  Helen pointed to her eyes again, and her fingertips nearly touched the lenses of her glasses. I could tell she wanted to say more, but she stopped herself.

  “What is it?”

  I spoke normally, just loud enough so she’d hear over the trailer’s quoted blurb from The New Yorker, but from Helen’s expression you would think I’d shouted “Fire!”

  “Never mind,” she said, especially quiet, but her message clear.

  Then the man in front of me turned his head. It was a quick motion, almost like a muscle spasm, and he held the angle for a long, awkward profile. His shoulder pressed into the chair cushion, and he twisted his head further around toward me. From a trick of the projection light, I assumed, his eyes appeared fogged, the irises lined like veined gray marble.

  His companion tapped him. “The movie’s about to start.” As if she’d activated a button on the man’s shoulder, his head snapped quickly around, face front.

  “Strange,” I said, barely audible, but still Helen winced. I couldn’t understand her agitation. In our shared interpretation of moviegoer etiquette, it was perfectly acceptable to speak quietly during the “coming attractions” portion of the show.

  The exit lights dimmed completely, and the studio logo appeared on the screen. Then before the credits, a pan over Trafalgar Square, then Big Ben, then a red double-decker bus. Quick establishing shots so any idiot would know—

  “We’re in England.”

  The woman in front of us spoke with a conspirator’s whisper, a quiet, urgent tone far less musical than the lover’s lilt she’d expressed earlier when she tapped his shoulder.

  Jeez. Thanks for stating the obvious, lady.

  The credits began, yellow lettering over a long shot of the Thames river and the London skyline. The two main actors’ names appeared first, then the film title.

  In that same strident whisper, the woman read aloud to her companion. The stars, the co-stars, the “Special Appearance by Sir James So-and-so.” The screenwriter, editor, for-God’s-sake the music composer, and finally the director.

  He can see for himself, I thought. He’s not . . .

  But of course, he was, and I’d been a fool for not realizing sooner. For a moment I held out a glimmer of hope that the man was simply illiterate. Once the credits ended, she’d grow silent and they’d watch the movie in peace. Wishful thinking, however, because I recalled how she’d held him close coming inside the building. Guiding him.

  And I knew she’d be talking over the entire movie.

  If we’d figured it out sooner, we could have moved. Dark as it was, I barely distinguished a few unoccupied seats scattered around the theater—including an empty to my left—but no pairs together. Helen and I always had to sit together. If the movie ended up being ruined for us, at least it would be a shared experience.

  The commentary began in earnest. “She’s trying to lock the door, but she’s got too much in her arms. A purse, an accordion briefcase, a grocery sack, and a Styrofoam coffee cup. The lid’s loose on the coffee.”

  Onscreen, the Emma- or Judi- or Gwyneth-person—possibly I’ve conflated the actor’s name with the character’s—juggled the coffee cup, the lid flew up and the liquid slipped out and over her work clothes. “Damn, damn, damn,” she said in a delightful accent, and the audience roared with laughter.

  “She spilled it,” the man’s companion told him. “A huge coffee stain on her blouse.”

  I hadn’t laughed. The woman’s commentary—I assumed she was the blind man’s wife—had telegraphed the spill. Had the lid really been loose? Enough for any of us to see the clue?

  “I can’t believe this,” I whispered to Helen, and she half-winced again. Finally, I realized the source of her tension: the commonplace wisdom that a person lacking in one physical sense gained extra ability in another—in this case, hearing.

  Sure. His loudmouth wife can ruin the whole film for us, but God forbid we whisper anything that might hurt the guy’s feelings.

  Helen risked a quick whisper of her own: “I’m sorry.”

  It wasn’t her fault, of course—not really. But we’d been married almost fifteen years, and familiar intimacy brought its own yardstick for blame. The woman, her husband, the situation itself created the problem, and we could share disapproval of the couple’s imposition, or shake fists skyward in synchronized dismay at Fates who brought us together at the same showing. And yet, Helen had eaten her lunch slowly this afternoon, had misremembered the show’s start time, which in turn limited her seating options (and she must have the aisle seat, and must see these British comedies the first weekend of their release). So I blamed her a bit, then—the type of blame saved for those you love deeply, blame you savored as you indulged a spouse’s habits and peculiar tastes.

  Helen did the same for me. When she disliked one of my film choices—the somber violence of the latest King Lear adaptation, or any Thomas Hardy depression-fest other than Under the Greenwood Tree—I could sense her unspoken discomfort beside me, all while the film flickered toward an inevitable, tragic end. In an odd way, her discomfort often improved the experience for me, magnifying the tension of the film. Making it more authentic.

  The tension was all wrong here, though, since nothing spoiled a comedy like an explanation. As the Rupert- or Ian- or Trevor-character blustered through confident proclamations, and Emma/Judi/Gwyneth mugged a sour expression, the blind man’s wife stated the obvious: “His arrogance offends her. He’s so self-centered, he doesn’t yet realize he’s in love with her.”

  Oh, really? Do tell.

  It was easy enough to infer the same conclusions from the dialogue. I could have closed my eyes and done fine without the woman’s incessant whispers. Score myself a hundred on the quiz. Besides, these romantic comedies all followed the same formula: the guy would Darcy her for a bit, she’d come around just when it seemed too late, there’d be a misunderstanding on one or both sides, until a ridiculous coincidence threw them awkwardly and then blissfully together, the end.

  “Now she puts her Chinese take-out cartons in the trash, aware she’s eaten too much, but also aware it doesn’t matter, because she’s alone.”

  A slight bit of interpretation there, against the whimsical Supremes song hurrying love on the soundtrack, but probably accurate. At that moment, I wondered exactly how many others in the theater could hear the woman’s commentary. The people in front of them, surely, were in the same position as Helen and I: close enough to overhear, but too close to make a show of offense. Nobody else seemed to react to the voice: no grunts of disapproval, no agitated shiftings in the seats. There wasn’t that ripple of cold scorn that chills the orchestra seats when a cell phone goes off during the first aria. Perhaps her whisper was one of those trained, directed voices, sharp in proximity but dropping off quickly with dis
tance—as if an invisible bubble cushioned the sound into a tight circumference.

  Lucky us.

  I actually tried to control my indignation, for Helen’s sake. We were both hypersensitive to extraneous chatter during a film, but this was her type of movie (though not, as was already evident, the pinnacle of the art form), and I was determined not to spoil her experience further by huffing my disapproval throughout. Instead, I touched the top of Helen’s hand on our shared armrest. Our secret signal in the dark: three quick taps, for I-love-you.

  It was a slight film, stupidly titled Casting a Romance: a reference to the Darcy character’s job as a casting director for movies, then a pun on casting a fishing line, since he joins the girl and her father at a summer cottage, only to lose his stuffy demeanor amid hooks and slipping into lakes, and her getting a massive rainbow trout next to his emasculating tadpole. Somewhere along the way—about halfway between Helen’s first and second trips to the Ladies’ Room—I’d settled into the film, and into the commentary. I grudgingly appreciated it after a while—the woman’s skill at selecting the right details, firing the narration rapidly into her husband’s hungry ear. To keep myself amused, I played around a bit, closing my eyes for short stretches and letting the woman’s words weave images around the dialogue. When Helen returned from the restroom, I didn’t have the burden of summarizing what she missed: the woman’s commentary easily filled the gaps.

  After a while, I didn’t mind being in the bubble with them. The shape of the blind man’s head became familiar to me, atop his thin neck and leaning perpetually to one side to catch his wife’s every word. That sharp underlying whisper became part of the film, like the experts’ comments during a televised sporting event. I half-toyed with the idea she was an expert herself. For example, she whispered how the man left his jacket draped over the chair, and she warned, correctly, that the plane tickets would spill out. She also predicted the moment when he realized his embarrassing connection to the heroine’s brother—the cad who’d tried to blackmail him into an acting job during the first reel. Her delivery was so good, that I suspected she’d seen the film before—perhaps even practiced with a notepad and a stopwatch, to pinpoint the precise moments to whisper crucial details or hiss clues that inattentive viewers might miss.

  So, I’d grudgingly grown to admire her skill, almost to rely on it for my full appreciation of the movie. And then she did that malicious thing during the final scene.

  She changed the ending. It was almost elegant how she did it, an interplay between the silences and the openness of the characters’ final words. Onscreen, the man said “I still love you,” and there was a faint rise in his voice, maybe the actor’s insecurity rather than the character’s, but the woman twisted a question mark over his declaration.

  “They say they are in love,” she whispered, “but they don’t mean it. He reaches out to hug her—” and on the screen they are hugging, “but she pulls away. It is too little, too late.”

  I realized, then, how precarious this type of movie was: a teasing, near-romance, suspended over ninety brittle minutes. The main characters’ relationship is simultaneously inevitable and fragile—a happy ending endlessly deferred, the threat of ruin always beneath the comic surface.

  The actress laughed onscreen, a clear display of relief and joy, and the woman said: “She’s bitter. It is a dry, empty laugh. Her face is full of scorn.”

  I reached again for Helen’s hand beside me. We didn’t speak; our touch expressed the outrage well enough. This horrible woman at once betrayed the movie, and her blind husband.

  I felt certain now that she’d rehearsed the commentary. How else could she best deliver her poison into his ear—at what time, and at how strong a dose—certain no additional dialogue would provide an antidote?

  Thinking back, I realized something more sinister. The woman’s descriptions of the lead actor had made him taller than the visual reality, gave him a thin neck and wobbled head that tilted awkwardly to the side, very much like . . . the head in front of me, a shadow rising above the seat to darken the bottom edge of the movie frame. She’d transformed the hero into a younger version of her husband, making the character fit how the blind man—for lack of a better word—saw himself. For him, the disappointed ending would be particularly cruel.

  The camera pulled back from the onscreen couple’s happy, final embrace, and a song blared from the soundtrack. The song was allegedly a cheerful choice, with an upbeat tempo and optimistic lyrics. Most people in the audience probably tried not to dwell on how the lead singer died of a drug overdose, just as the group verged on the brink of stardom.

  The blind man’s shoulders shook in uneven rhythm. His head, formerly tilted toward his wife, now drooped forward. I couldn’t hear over the joyful soundtrack, but clearly, the man was crying.

  Still, neither Helen nor I said anything—to them, or to each other. The woman had done an awful, unforgivable thing to her husband, but we decided it wasn’t our place to comment. An overheard whisper is sacred, like the bond of a confessional. We needn’t involve ourselves in another couples’ private drama—even if its language had been forced upon us, even if (and I knew Helen felt this more than I did) the whispered words had spoiled our afternoon’s entertainment.

  My wife and I didn’t need to voice this decision. It was communicated though a strange telepathy, refined over many years in darkened movie houses: a released breath after an exciting chase scene; an imperceptible shift in posture to convey boredom; a barely audible sigh at a beautifully framed landscape. We felt from each other what we couldn’t hear or see. Helen’s soft gasp had told me, “It’s not worth it.” I tapped my foot on the floor, as if to say, “You’re right. I’ll let it go.”

  Like many patrons of the Midtowne Cinema, we were “credit sitters.” We wouldn’t stay to the very end, necessarily—even the greatest film buff has little interest in what stylist coiffed the extras’ hair, or who catered lunches for the crew—but it was always worth sitting through the list of characters, to recognize an actor’s name and think, “Ah, I thought I’d seen him before. Wasn’t he the one in . . . ?”

  But the blind man and his companion began to leave right away. The woman seemed to lift him from his seat. Together, they moved slowly into the aisle. Instead of guiding him, as she had upon entering the theater, it now seemed more like she was carrying him out, her arm around his back and supporting slumped, defeated shoulders. The house lights were raised slightly to help people exit, and I’d caught a brief glimpse of his sad expression. I wished his wife had given him more time to collect himself, before exposing his raw emotions to the bright, sighted world of the lobby.

  In a bizarre, random thought, I wondered if she’d purposely ushered him out before the rapid scroll of names and obscure job titles made a mockery of her remarkable skill. She would have short-circuited trying to keep up, like an early computer instructed to divide by zero.

  Helen and I waited through the rest of the cast list, maintaining our silence even as the real-life names of “Florist” and “Waiter #4” floated toward the ceiling. About a third of the seats were still occupied when we stood to leave. After we pushed through the double doors into the lobby, my wife took a detour to the side: another trip to the ladies’ room.

  I dropped our empty water bottles into the recycle bin, then stood aside near the front doors. A line stretched outside, people buying tickets for the next show, and a steady trickle emerged from the auditorium doors on either side of the concessions counter. They blinked their eyes against fresh light, and all of them had pleasant expressions on their faces. Some people, at least, had been allowed to enjoy the film.

  Beside an archway to the side hallway, I spotted the blind man. He stood by himself, slouched slightly against the wall. His head bobbled indecisively on the thin neck, as if longing to lean toward his wife’s voice.

  The opportunity presented itself. Despite what Helen and I tacitly agreed to, I moved toward him, my tennis shoe
s soundless—to me, at least—over the lobby’s worn beige carpet.

  “Excuse me,” I said, but before I got the words out, his face turned toward me. He looked older than I’d imagined, overhead lamps etching shadows under the wrinkles in his skin. Although he was dressed in casual clothes—a light blue short-sleeve shirt and twill pants—he stiffened into a formal posture which, sadly, made him seem more foolish than dignified. His eyes were expectant and vacant and puffy red.

  “Excuse me,” I repeated, stalling for time even as I feared one of our wives would return from the ladies’ room. My voice was loud, but I couldn’t control it—as if I needed to pierce the fog of his blank stare. “I just, um, I just wanted to say . . . ”

  “Yes.” It was the first time I’d heard him speak. His voice sounded weakened by his bout of tears, with barely strength to encourage me to continue.

  People walked past us, oblivious. I squinted down the hallway toward the rest rooms. No sign yet of Helen, or the awful, whispering woman.

  “The movie didn’t end the way she described it to you.” I blurted out the rest, before I lost my nerve. “The couple was happy at the end. Still in love. I thought you should know.”

  The blind man didn’t react at first. Then I saw something like relief: his body relaxing, the tight line of his mouth loosening as if he sought permission to smile.

  He swung his left arm to the side with a flourish, cupped his right arm over his stomach and bent his torso forward in a deep, exaggerated bow. He straightened, then spoke with a firmness I hadn’t expected: “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”

  It was a parody of gratefulness. The sarcasm settled into his face, an expression of scorn that immediately dismissed me from his presence.

  Luckily, I spotted Helen approaching. I crossed to meet her in the archway, and I steered her across the lobby, keeping her distant from the blind man. As we reached the sidewalk outside, before the theater door swung shut with a rusty squeak, I thought I heard the blind man thank me again.