We had a fun day, although I felt bad depriving her of her social umbilical cord and then ignoring her in favour of the decorating work. But she was happy to join in and, I have to admit, far better at straight edges than me. She even came up with a clever technique, which involved painting carefully around the edges of an area first, with the brush, which meant when we were filling in the main area with the roller we could do it a lot more quickly.
Mom came out in the afternoon and brought us some homemade pancakes, which we ate sitting in the front row.
“Did my mom ever come here?” Sofie asked me.
“Sure. But she always sat in the balcony. With the cool kids.”
“She was cool?”
“She’s still kind of cool, don’t you think?”
Sofie groaned.
“Someday, you’ll be just as cool,” I teased.
“Mom says that people who talk about doing stuff ‘someday’ never do it.”
I laughed. “She’s got a point. That’s why we’re doing this today!”
At half past five, I gave Sofie her phone back. She slipped it straight into her pocket, without checking for notifications. I walked her to the station. As the train pulled in, she reached into her pocket and pulled out my yo-yo. She tried to pass it back to me, but I shook my head.
“Keep practising. You never know when it might come in handy.”
She rolled her eyes, gave me a hug, and climbed aboard the train.
WHEN I RETURNED to the Atlas, it was my turn to rock the ghetto blaster, and barely had Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” gotten to its chorus when it was interrupted by a “Yoo-hoooooo!” from the door.
Dad’s old friend had arrived. He was wearing camouflage cargo pants and an olive-green army jacket over a grey sweater. His head was utterly hairless, and white spots shone across his scalp as he walked toward me, like the reflections of streetlights on a car windshield.
He waved to Dad, who waved back and yelled, “That’s my kid, Pete, the one I told you about!”
I stood up and creaked, and reached over to silence the Durans.
Rexi extended his hand, and as we connected in a firm handshake, he said, “So, you’re thinking of being in the movie business.”
“Well, yes. Not just thinking anymore, as you can see,” I said.
“Your father said you wanted to speak with someone who knew how to run a movie theatre,” he said, dismissing my comment.
“People keep telling me I don’t know anything about running a cinema. But how hard can it be, right?”
Rexi squinted—not just his eyes, actually, but his whole face—and looked me dead in the eye. I expected him to call me a punk, but it was my lucky day. Instead, he just growled and stepped closer. He wasn’t much taller than me (most people are), but he was compact, stocky. He spoke quietly.
“You ever had to aqua-vac eight hundred square metres of carpet in one night? You ever changed the lettering on a billboard, ten metres up, in a force-six gale? You ever spliced together a broken reel while three hundred people downstairs munch popcorn, without even missing a beat? No? I thought not.”
He turned and began walking away.
I wasn’t quite sure what had just happened.
I realized I was still holding my paintbrush. I put it down.
“Um. Mr. . . . Rexi?”
“What are you just standing there for?” he snapped, without looking back. “Let’s have a look at the booth.”
As he walked away, I noticed he let his hand trail down and brush against the red velvet of the seat.
UPSTAIRS, REXI WALKED into the projection room and switched the light on. I stood behind him, unsure of what, if anything, to say.
The room was about as wide as the theatre, but only about two metres from front to back. In the middle of it, in front of the hole in the wall, stood the projector—a beige box on legs that looked like a seventies idea of a domestic robot. Behind it stood a huge round table.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“Oh, how I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
He flicked the light back off and barged past me.
BACK DOWNSTAIRS HE made himself comfortable in one of the front-row seats, his legs splayed more widely than seemed feasible. I wasn’t entirely sure where to look.
“You wouldn’t have lasted a day up there. Not a day,” he said, and gestured up to one of the windows in the back of the auditorium. “Up there, there was no room for error. You had to be quick, fast, effective, never miss a beat. It got up to forty degrees in there, and you weren’t even allowed to sweat.”
“I see,” I said sheepishly. I didn’t want to upset Dad’s slightly odd friend.
“Do you think you’ve got what it takes to run a cinema?”
He wanted me to admit defeat.
“Yes, sir, I do,” I said, “but I’m going to need help.” I decided on a direct approach. Flatter his ego. “I’m going to need your help. Nobody knows this place like you do.”
“Now you’re talking.” He stood back up and swaggered over to me. “Here’s my advice, so listen carefully.”
I looked at him and nodded, dumbfounded by the whole affair.
“Let me whisper it to you.”
I turned my right ear toward him, waiting for the cinema guru to give forth his wisdom.
“DON’T DO IT!” he shouted into my ear.
With my heart in my throat, I jumped and bolted toward the door, tripped and stumbled over the ghetto blaster, and landed in a heap. When I realized what had happened, I looked back at Rexi, who was sitting back in the front-row seat, smirking.
“Ready for more advice, kid?”
I struggled to get to my feet.
“Not sure. Can you tell it to me from over there?”
He pushed down the seat next to him and patted it. “Come on,” he said, smiling in a way that suggested he’d had his fun with me and was now ready to help. “Tell Rexi what you want to know.”
I pulled out the list Dad had made and went over the items with Rexi. And once he’d stopped being a maniac, he actually became quite helpful. He told me Dad was right about all the licences, and the movie permits, and the marketing plans, and he gave me some ideas for how to go about it all.
“Where are you getting the reels from?”
I shrugged.
He gave me a telephone number and a contact name at a media distributor in Helsinki.
“And you know what type of reel? Changeover or platter?”
“No idea.”
“You’re crazy,” he said, “but I like it. I like it!” He clapped his hands and shouted to Dad that he should have told him I was crazy, and they both laughed.
“It’s platter. That’s what the big table was. I once had to reassemble a whole movie. The crowds were coming.” His eyes took on a faraway look, like a veteran recounting a war story. “They told me they were going to cancel the show. They told me it was impossible.” His gaze snapped up to meet mine. “I fixed it. You want to know how long?” I didn’t dare to hazard a guess. I was going to say less than sixty seconds, but was worried he might actually hurt me if it was wrong. “An hour and a half,” he said coolly. “I dunno, but they told me it’s the world record.”
“Wow,” I croaked.
“Listen, kid, running a movie theatre is hopeless. Your dad told me you love movies and that you used to work at Video 2000. I get that. I love movies. My brother owned Video 2000; I remember you.”
He paused and ran his fingers over his scalp. He sighed.
“The thing is, Pete, cinema is dead. People don’t want that anymore. They want to sit at home and eat sludge off a tray while they stream movies on a fifty-inch flat-screen or whatever. Fifty watts of stereo sound is good enough for them. They don’t care! They fast-forward over opening credits, the barbarians. And don’t even get me started on people who watch movies on their iPads . . . goddammit.”
As he was speaking, he’d been running his fingers ov
er the red velvet of the chair. Absently he lifted his hand, held two fingers under his nose, and sniffed.
He sighed again.
“In other words, I wasn’t kidding when I gave you that piece of advice. Forget about it. Save your money. This is a waste of your time. It’s a tough business, and working that machine”—he pointed to the little window—“is art.”
I nodded.
“I know. I remember an episode of Columbo where he operates a projector, so I think I’ve got a pretty good idea how it works . . .”
Rexi didn’t say a word, but then again, no words could have communicated what his eyes were telling me.
I closed my mouth.
Rexi looked away.
“You have no idea,” he grunted. “It’ll never work.”
“Thanks for your time,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I need to get back to work. I can’t let Dad do it all.”
We walked to the lobby in silence. Rexi shouted his goodbyes to Dad, who was still working on the wiring somewhere behind the scenes.
“Thanks, Rexi! I’ll get you that thing later this week,” Dad yelled after him.
I noticed that Dad had switched the tape again. The song that was playing was the Platters’ “Great Pretender.”
Chapter 28
True Colors
NOW THAT MY ankle was feeling better, I decided to start each morning with a good bike ride to get my blood pumping and limbs limbered up ahead of a day of crouching and stretching and repetitive brushstrokes.
I’d ride along the bike path into town, the music in my walkman pushing me on. At the market square I’d go full throttle, and then engage low gear for the uphill climb. It was a couple of kilometres, I think—my Crescent didn’t have an odometer, and bike computers hadn’t been invented yet—and the first few days it was a killer, and I would arrive at the hospital parking lot hacking and screeching and wobbling, desperate to get air into my lungs and expel it as soon as possible. I’d sit on the wall and catch my breath while looking out over the hills around the valley, casting occasional glances at the main entrance, at the staff getting out of their cars to begin their days . . .
Over time the ride became easier, so I would try it in a slightly stiffer gear, and as my legs grew stronger I found I didn’t need the easy gears at all. I noticed one evening that my Bryan Adams T-shirt, which had previously clung to my belly, was now tight around my pecs.
I learned the route by heart, memorizing the location of each bump and pothole. And I tried altering my start time by ten minutes here and there so I would get to the hospital at different times, but I didn’t once see her.
They say it only takes a week for smokers to lose the chemical craving for nicotine, but the psychological craving can last for years—a lifetime.
What was I doing?
I’d travelled back in time to the 1980s because I wanted to rake over the coals of a romance that hadn’t even been a romance in the first place. But I didn’t want to rake over those coals myself; I wanted a spark to smoulder unbidden and bring the fire to life. I desperately wanted it to . . . just . . . happen. I’d come back to Kumpunotko because I believed that Jennifer was my destiny. And, while I didn’t exactly believe in fate or God or karma or the cosmic forces controlling the universe, neither did I want to tempt fate, to ruin my chances of somehow manipulating destiny.
I wished there was somebody I could talk to about it.
I didn’t have a best friend anymore. And Tina? Well . . . Tina would just laugh. I considered telling Twisted Sister, but having that kind of conversation on a dial-up modem would have taken months. Dad would have plucked some Beatles lyric from his head. And Mom . . . let’s not even go there.
So I rode my bike. And, of course, riding a bike up the biggest hill in town was good exercise. It wasn’t my fault that Jennifer worked in the building at the top of the hill, was it?
Rolling down the hill was my reward for the hard work, and a nice consolation each day when the main prize didn’t materialize. I would roll all the way down without pedalling, and on the days when I managed to roll as far as Kim’s Basement, I took that as a sign that I should treat myself.
Kim was my polar opposite. He was a big man, in every sense of the word. He was tall, and I’m guessing he liked his food. Had he given me a bear hug, I would’ve disappeared completely inside the embrace. I’d let my hair grow; he had a crew cut. He had “ink,” as he put it, whereas I was scared of needles. But we both loved our music. And on that point we mostly sort of agreed. Our musical tastes were, it has to be said, both pretty awesome.
Kim liked making lists. I discovered this one morning when I walked in and he pretty much shouted at me: “What’s the best song for driving on the freeway?”
“‘Road to Nowhere,’” I said, reflexively. Because it is.
“Damn!” he said, scribbling it down. “Why didn’t I think of that? What else?”
“‘Drive,’ by the Cars?”
“Got that. Obviously.”
“Um . . . ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’?” I blushed. What did he expect, putting me on the spot like that?
“Hmm.” He looked at me curiously. “‘St. Elmo’s Fire,’ in brackets ‘Man in Motion.’ Yes. I never would have said that. But I like your thinking.”
His other lists have included “Top 10 Songs to Play Air Guitar To,” “Top 10 Songs to Cook To,” and “Top 10 Songs That Have to Do with the Law (But That Are Not By the Police).”
One morning, as I was coasting down the hill from the hospital, I came up with an idea for a list myself: “Top 10 Songs to Look for Your Dream Girl To.”
“What kind of a list is that?” Kim asked me. “Sounds a bit niche. Something on your mind, man?”
“You know, what would be the song you’d like to hear in the background when you serendipitously meet your dream girl?”
“Hmm. If it’s only one song, why a Top Ten?”
“It’s more about the time just before you meet her, see. When you can sort of feel it in the air . . .”
“‘In the Air Tonight,’ for example?”
“Exactly! Yes! I knew you’d be into this.”
“It’s not too obvious? It is too obvious, come on.”
“Maybe. But it’s a great start.”
Kim lifted the countertop; he rubbed his chin as he walked around his store. He was mumbling something I couldn’t hear.
“‘Every Breath You Take’?”
“Isn’t that a stalker song? This isn’t about obsession,” I said, perhaps a little sharply. “It’s about, you know, destiny. The guy doesn’t even know the girl is there, and then the universe aligns and . . . says . . . ‘Abracadabra’ or ‘Missing You.’”
More chin rubbing. More pacing. More mumbling.
“Does he know her, though? This hypothetical gentleman.”
“Maybe. Yes. A long time ago.”
“I get it. Here’s a good one. ‘I Want to Know What Love Is.’”
“Yes. That goes on the list.” I pulled out my diary and wrote down the names of the songs we’d already mentioned (except the stalker song).
“You’re old-school,” Kim said. “I like it.”
Forty-five minutes later, we had a list of ten songs, and another hour of heated debate later, we had put them in order.
1. “You’re the Inspiration”
2. “Waiting for a Girl Like You”
3. “Saving All My Love for You”
4. “Suddenly”
5. “Dead Ringer for Love”
6. “I Want to Know What Love Is”
7. “If I Was”
8. “Since You’ve Been Gone”
9. “For Your Eyes Only”
10. “Woman”
We were both very pleased with the list, and Kim told me he had all the songs in stock and that I should swing by on my way home. That evening I did so and was delighted when he passed me a BASF D60 Chrome tape. “No charge, man,” he said with a grin. When I got home, I noticed tha
t he’d added Survivor’s “The Search Is Over” as the last song on the B-side.
In my mind, I thanked him for his encouragement.
AS THE DAYS ticked by, we moved from September to October, edging ever closer to December. Painting the walls had been the least of our problems, and something we should have left until the end. Dad’s creative solutions to some of the electrical issues had been ingenious, but also illegal, as his electrician buddy told him after the fact. And though we poured bleach and drain cleaner and even acid down the blocked toilet, nothing worked, so we had to call on another friend of Dad’s to have a look at it.
Dad’s plan covered everything from polishing the front doors to buying new garbage cans, cleaning the curtain and carpets, building a new counter, cleaning the seats, and reupholstering half a dozen of the most sat-upon ones.
My biggest decision—and expense—was getting a new sign. The T in the old one was broken; it looked like somebody may have thrown a stone through it. I didn’t want people to see ALAS glowing in the night, so I decided to order a new one. I found a company in the phone book, rang them up, and explained what I needed.
“Sure, we can quote on that. Can you send through a design? CAD file or high-res PDF.”
“Um, sorry, I . . . I’m not a designer. I just want it like the one that’s there, only not broken.”
“Sure. We can try to copy what you have. Can you email us a picture?”
I had an idea. “Maybe someone could come out and have a look? Maybe the old one’s fixable.”
“To Kumpunotko? Um, have you tried just replacing the bulbs?”
I reminded her that one of the letters was actually broken. She sighed and said someone would be with me by Wednesday.
Dad fixed the minor issues with the plumbing, replaced broken tiles, cleaned and polished the projectors, and mopped the floors, all the while humming his songs. I generally tidied up after him, passed him things, made tea. One day I was taking a stack of boxes out to the Dumpster and spotted something strange.
“Dad, someone’s been using our Dumpster.”
“Hmm?” he said through a mouthful of screws.
“Must have been a local restaurant—there’s a bunch of potato sacks. Unless you’re planning on selling fries?”
Someday Jennifer Page 18
