My Life and Other Failed Experiments

by Tristan Bancks

  ‘Bye-bye, silly Mummy.’

  She grabs her umbrella, closes the front door after her and clacks off down the path to the ute.

  Jack and I slump to the floor against the door as the ute backs down the driveway and heads off up the street. I can’t believe we survived. For now, at least. We still have to clean up all the glass. Mr D’s Cranky Dad Syndrome is going to go off the charts when he sees what’s happened.

  ‘Barney’s a trick-ster. Barney’s a trick-ster!’ he chants, dancing around in front of us.

  ‘That was really mean, Barney,’ Jack says. ‘We thought you were dead, but still breathing a little bit.’

  ‘Ha!’ he says, pointing in our faces and cackling. ‘Wanna wrestle?’ He wiggles his eyebrows up and down.

  Jack and I look at each other, then back at Barney.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Jack asks. He glares at Barney, who shrugs his shoulders and looks down at the floor, bottom lip out. ‘Absolutely!’

  ‘Seen it.’

  ‘Haven’t seen it.’

  ‘Seen it’.

  ‘Haven’t seen it.’

  Jack and I are at Hollywood Dreams, just like every afternoon. It’s the last video store in Kings Bay. The last one in the world, maybe.

  We know we can download or stream movies, but Jack and me, we’re video store guys. We like talking to Brett, the owner, about movies and how they were made and if the sequel is better than the original and whether he’ll give us a free tub of the Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice-cream he has in the freezer. (He hasn’t yet, but I swear he’s on the verge of breaking.)

  We like the comforting smell of the shop –stale popcorn garnished with a hint of Brett’s feet. He likes to kick off his Converse when he’s working the counter. You don’t get that smell on Netflix. We like the rundown look of the shop, too – the old, brown timber shelves, the torn ’80s movie posters and thick orange shagpile carpet. It’s like time travel every afternoon.

  ‘Seen it’.

  ‘Haven’t seen it.’

  In this game, you have to pick a row in the store and say whether you’ve seen each movie or haven’t seen it. Whoever has seen the most movies in that row gets a point.

  ‘Seen it,’ Jack says.

  ‘You have not!’

  ‘I have!’

  ‘We were in here on Tuesday,’ I tell him, ‘and we did the same row, and you said you hadn’t seen it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, my dad hired it on Wednesday, and I watched it.’

  ‘Zombie Flesh 5. As if your parents would let you watch it.’

  ‘I watched it from the living room doorway,’ Jack says.

  ‘Really? What was it about?’

  Jack shrugs. ‘Just … zombies and stuff. It was pretty boring.’

  ‘You haven’t seen it.’

  ‘Have.’

  ‘Haven’t.’

  ‘Hey, Brett!’ I call out.

  He’s sitting on his stool at the counter in front of the computer playing Pac-Man. Brett has long, dark, greasy hair and a beard. He’s wearing a Back to the Future cap and a Goonies t-shirt. I don’t think anyone’s told him that it’s not the ’80s anymore. He takes a long swig from a two-litre bottle of creaming soda.

  ‘Did Jack’s dad hire Zombie Flesh 5 on Wednesday?’ I ask.

  Brett groans and glares at me, but I know he doesn’t mean it. He loves me and Jack, really. I mean, who wouldn’t? We’re adorable. He taps the keyboard. ‘Nope. Hasn’t been out since September 2003.’ He sighs before muttering, ‘Like most of the movies here.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I give Jack a dirty look.

  ‘Hey, boys,’ Brett says. We look down the row of shelves at him. He looks grimmer than usual, which isn’t easy. ‘I have something to tell you.’

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ve sold the store.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Sorry. I meant to tell you earlier. The new owners take over in a couple of weeks.’

  This rocks me to my core. Who, apart from me and Jack (if we had any money), would be crazy enough to buy a video store? I thought me, Jack and Brett would grow old together.

  ‘Who?’ I ask.

  ‘A couple of businesswomen from Sydney. It’s been on the market for three years. I had to sell.’

  ‘Do they know strange facts about movies, like you do?’ I ask. ‘Do they know that George Lucas’s original name for Yoda was Buffy? And do they know Yoda was going to be played by a monkey in a costume? You told us that.’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing …’

  ‘What’s the thing?’

  ‘They’re not … going to keep it as a video store.’

  ‘What?’ I spit.

  ‘What’s it going to be?’ Jack asks.

  ‘A nail salon.’

  ‘What? What’s a nail salon?’ I ask.

  ‘Where ladies, and probably a few men, sit in big lounge chairs and get their nails polished and stuff. The new owners have a whole chain of them – Totally Nailz.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘The good news is that I’m selling all the DVDs,’ Brett says. ‘So anything you want, bring some money on Saturday. Grab yourself a bargain.’

  ‘We don’t want a bargain,’ I tell him. ‘We want the store. We want you to be here on your stool, doing Rubik’s Cube time trials and saying, “I’ll be back!” like Schwarzenegger in Terminator. This is our favourite place. What other store allows us to hassle the shopkeeper with a thousand questions for a whole hour, then walk away having only spent a dollar hiring something that will give us two hours of fun?’

  ‘Sorry, boys. Maybe you can get your nails polished and hassle the beauty therapist.’

  ‘You can’t sell!’ I tell him.

  ‘I have to sell.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m forty years old with two kids and I earn less than I did when I was eighteen, and my wife’s had enough. No one hires movies from a store anymore. You guys are pretty much my only customers, and you only hire on Dollar Tuesdays, so I’m currently making two bucks a week. The mortgage costs me three hundred.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Deal’s done. I didn’t want to tell you but –’

  ‘So, that’s it? The end of the line?’ I ask.

  ‘That’s it,’ he says.

  I shake my head. I don’t feel like I have much energy for ‘Seen It, Haven’t Seen It’ anymore.

  ‘We’d better go,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jack says.

  ‘See you Saturday,’ Brett calls as we head outside and pick our bikes up off the path. We wheel them towards home, not speaking, just wallowing in all the bad feelings.

  ‘I can’t believe it, the end of an era,’ Jack says. ‘Who would buy that shop?’

  ‘And a nail salon! It’s an insult. People should just bite their nails, not go to a special place to have them clipped.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Jack asks.

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘We could try to save it,’ he says.

  I stop wheeling my bike.

  Jack stops wheeling his.

  ‘You are a genius,’ I tell him. And in this one rare moment, I really believe that he is.

  We high-five and jump onto our bikes, pedalling hard for home.

  An hour later we’re back outside Hollywood Dreams with our homemade signs. Mine is a broom handle with a large piece of cardboard taped to it. The sign says, ‘Save Our Store’. Jack’s says, ‘DVDs Are the Future’.

  We march in a circle out front, chanting, ‘Save our store! Save our store!’

  ‘What are you two numbskulls doing? ’Brett asks from the door.

  ‘Trying to save your shop from becoming a nail salon.’

  ‘Save our store! Save our store!’ Jack and I continue to chant.

  Someone beeps their horn as they go past in support of our protest.

  ‘But I need to sell,’ Brett says. ‘I’ve been trying to sell it for years.’

/>   ‘We don’t care,’ Jack says. ‘Save our store! Save our –!’

  ‘Boys, please, this is really nice of you, but it’s too late.’

  ‘We’ll buy it!’ I tell Brett.

  ‘Do you have $240,000?’ he asks.

  ‘What?’ Jack and I stop chanting and marching. ‘Someone paid you that much for this place? But it smells like stale popcorn and feet. Did they buy it off the internet without coming to visit?’

  ‘It’s a prime position. They’re buying the building, not the business.’

  ‘This is our spiritual home. We’re not going to let you sell.’

  ‘Save our store! Save our store!’

  Another person beeps in support. Or maybe to shut us up. I’m not sure.

  ‘See!’ I say. ‘Everyone loves this place. It’s the heart and soul of the town.’

  ‘Can you guys knock it off? I don’t want the new owners thinking they’re buying into trouble. Come in and choose a DVD – you can have it. Take it home right now.’

  Jack looks at me, raises his brows. He’s keen.

  ‘You can’t buy us off,’ I tell Brett, waving my sign at a passing car. ‘Save our store!’

  ‘Two!’ Brett offers. ‘Take two DVDs … each. It’s my final offer.’

  ‘NO!’ I yell. ‘We don’t want your stinking bribes. Where are we going to hang out? We can’t play “Seen It, Haven’t Seen It” online. We’ve tried. It’s boring.’

  ‘Boys!’ he says firmly. Brett has never spoken to us firmly before. ‘It’s over.’

  I rest the broom handle against my shoulder, and we all stand there in an awkward triangle for a moment.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I ask.

  ‘Get a real job,’ he grunts.

  ‘Who would hire you?’ I ask.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says.

  ‘Sorry, but I thought all you knew was movies?’

  ‘It is, but I guess I’m going to have to learn something else. I wanted to start a movie blog but my wife won’t let me. She says there’s no money in it.’

  ‘A real job …’ Jack says, letting the idea sink in.

  ‘That sounds terrible,’ I say.

  ‘I know, but what’s a guy gonna do?’

  ‘You’ll end up a zombie like everyone else,’ Jack tells him.

  ‘Yeah, you’re a role model to us,’ I say. ‘A hero.’

  ‘What other adult gets paid to play Pac-Man, drink creaming soda and watch movies?’ Jack asks.

  ‘It’s been 20 good years,’ Brett says. ‘In the 90s, Hollywood Dreams was the place to be on a Saturday night … practically a nightclub – nervous people on first dates, brawls over the last copy of Titanic. Jack, I think your parents met in the Comedy section.’

  I laugh. Jack’s dad is the least funny person I know. They should have met in Horror.

  ‘Well, if we have anything to do with it, you’ll have another 20 years,’ Jack says.

  We show up at 7.04 am on Saturday morning. Brett isn’t here yet. We slump down in the doorway on the cold concrete and breathe steam. It’s 8.15 before he shows. He looks weird. He has little cuts all over his chin, and it looks like he might have washed his hair. I decide, in that moment, to never get married – not if it means bathing and shaving and washing my hair and getting a real job.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ I say.

  ‘Yep. This is the first day of the rest of my life.’ He says it like it’s the last. ‘Are you here to get first dibs on your favourites?’

  ‘Nup,’ I say. ‘We’re here to tell anyone who tries to buy a DVD that it’s scratched, and to tell the new owners that the place is haunted.’

  ‘Get out of my way,’ Brett says.

  He opens up and we step inside for what might be the final time. I look around at all the classic movie posters. I suck in that smelly feet/stale popcorn aroma, hoping to lodge just a little bit of it in my lungs forever.

  ‘How much have you got?’ Brett asks.

  ‘Seven dollars and sixty cents,’ Jack says.

  ‘I’ve got $11,’ I say.

  ‘Well, knock yourselves out. You have 41 minutes till the doors officially open, and you can afford 18.6 DVDs. I’ll round it up to 19.’

  So Jack and I have to work out which 19 DVDs out of the 5,000 in the store we like best. I head straight for Comedy and start stacking up Jim Carrey movies. Jack goes for Action and makes a Transformers pile. It’s torture whittling down our selections.

  At 8.59 am we hand over our cash, Brett opens the doors and 50 people rush in. His eyes go wide with panic. The store is crammed. It’s like the Boxing Day sales. I’ve never seen more than four customers in here before –that’s including me and Jack.

  People scoop DVDs off the shelves. They drop them on the floor. They tread on them.

  ‘Hey, easy!’ Jack tells them. ‘Respect the merchandise.’

  But they don’t listen. They just dump their finds on the counter, hand over a few notes and exit the store, arms piled high with our movies. One guy has Mrs Doubtfire in his pile, can you believe it? That’s, like, our 22nd favourite film. It only just missed the cut. I try to trip him over in the doorway but he’s too quick.

  ‘Boys, I need your help at the register! I’m getting slammed,’ Brett calls.

  Jack and I scowl at him.

  ‘Please?’ he pleads.

  We don’t want to say yes, not after he’s allowed strangers into our home, but it’s a pretty important mission. We’ve never been allowed behind the counter before. And maybe he’ll let us press the button to open the cash register drawer. So we do it.

  We saunter over behind the counter, trying to make out like this isn’t the best thing we’ve ever been asked to do. Ten or so people have their Leaning Tower of Pisa piles of DVDs lined up on the long counter. They laugh and chat about what a bargain they’re getting without any respect for the history of the ground on which they stand.

  ‘Thanks, boys. You’ve saved my life.’

  Jack and I take their miserable money, bag up their movies and, yes, press the button to open the register. I wonder if there are any jobs in the world where you just get to press that button. If so, that’s my new life dream.

  Brett pays us for our work in creaming soda and packets of chips that went out of date in June 2013. Still remarkably tasty.

  If I see someone with a movie I really love, like Ghostbusters or the third Harry Potter, I try telling them that it’s totally overrated or that the DVD has a curse on it, but people don’t care. For a dollar, they say they’ll take the risk.

  A guy with a really bad mullet buys three sets of our sacred shelves for $20 a pop, and we have to help carry them across the car park to his ute. It’s a disgrace. Next, someone’ll want to buy Brett’s stool. But that’s where I draw the line. No way. You don’t touch a man’s stool.

  One lady with big hair, bright red lipstick and a gold watch buys the entire Romantic Comedy section. I bet she’ll be a regular at the nail salon once she’s sucked this place dry. Although, I must say that I’m pretty happy to see the back of Romantic Comedy.

  At 5 pm on the dot, Brett slams the doors behind the last customer and turns around. Afternoon sun streams in through the front windows, illuminating twenty years of dust stirred up by the moving of the shelves.

  The three of us look around at the mostly empty store. Tears well up in my eyes, but I’m too tough to let them spill over.

  Nuts. They just spilt over. I wipe them away, as manly as I can.

  ‘Thanks, boys,’ Brett says. ‘It really means a lot.’

  He opens the freezer and grabs the last two tubs of New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream.

  ‘Here.’ He gives us one each.

  That brings more tears. ‘It must be this dust,’ I say, wiping like mad.

  ‘You don’t have to help clean up. I’ll –’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Jack says. ‘We want to.’

  We put the ice cream back in the freezer, and we sweep and sneeze and box up
the leftover movies. There are some good ones in there, too – Spider-Man, Hugo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze.

  ‘Where will all the leftovers go?’ I ask.

  Brett is on his knees, packing a bunch of Looney Tunes into a box.

  ‘Public library,’ he says. ‘Any they don’t want will go to the tip.’

  Jack and I look at each other.

  ‘Or …’ Brett says. ‘You guys wouldn’t be interested in taking them off my hands, would you?’

  ‘We spent all our money. And there are still hundreds left.’

  ‘I’ll put them on your tab,’ he says with a wink. ‘Least I can do. You’ve kept me in business the last couple of years. And kept me company. Annoyed me, at least.’

  Half an hour later Mum pulls up out front in her red hatchback. We pile DVDs into the boot, onto the backseat, in the front passenger seat –even the glovebox. We count 826 movies in all. Jack and I are in heaven. Mum, not so much. Until she sees copies of Father of the Bride and Maid in Manhattan, her two favourite movies.

  As she drives off we stand in the doorway of the shop. It’s empty apart from a few shelves, the front counter, the drinks fridge and freezer.

  ‘Thanks, guys.’

  ‘Good luck with your new life,’ I say.

  ‘Hey, I got a message on my phone earlier,’ he says. ‘I went for an interview on Thursday. I think I’ve got a new job.’

  ‘Where?’ we ask.

  ‘The cinema. I’m the new manager.’

  ‘No way! Can you get us free tickets?’

  ‘I knew there was something I forgot to ask in the interview.’

  Jack and I laugh and high-five Brett.

  We say goodbye, jump on our bikes and pedal off into the darkness towards home.

  ‘This has been the best day of my life,’ Jack says.

  ‘No question.’

  We spend that night and the next day unpacking the car and setting up half the movies in my room and half in Jack’s. Over the next three months we swap DVDs back and forth until we each settle on our perfect collection. We’ve started a neighbourhood video store with two franchised outlets. We call ourselves The Last Video Store on Earth. And I’m pretty sure we are. Fifty cents a night to hire a movie. Trouble is, Jack and I are our only customers.