The Last Days of Video

by Jeremy Hawkins

  She’s an honest-to-God metal sculptor! Alaura thought.

  A waitress with Zooey Deschanel bangs and black fingernails arrived with breakfast. Alaura had ordered a deep-fried sausage sandwich—she was shocked now that she had allowed herself such a greasy indulgence. She looked at the sagging thing on the plate in front of her. Everything about it disgusted her. The glistening exoskeleton. The twists of blue steam. Even the fanned slices of orange—fruit suggesting what? That this meal was somehow defensible?

  The sandwich was like her life—disgusting and indefensible.

  She turned to Karla.

  “When?” Alaura said.

  “Today,” Karla responded excitedly. “There’s a guest event at five p.m.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it.”

  A sibilant gasp across the table; Constance touched her mouth in horror.

  Karla looked toward the ceiling. She beamed. Bright white energy spilled from her pores, filling the restaurant like a Klieg light.

  “Oh, Alaura,” she said glowingly. “Make sure to dress up. Something businessy. And come sober. And keep a positive attitude. Reality might seem freaky at first, but if you keep positive, it will change your life forever.”

  After breakfast, walking toward Star Video, her head spinning from Karla’s bizarre proclamations and also still from the ramifications of being able to watch movies on Netflix, Alaura came across a crowd of twenty people gathered on the front lawn of Weaver Street Market, West Appleton’s organic co-op grocery store. Standing on a small stage at the center of the group, under the shade of a sprawling oak, a young woman was reading a truly god-awful poem.

  Such a display was not uncommon in West Appleton, especially now that the midday heat had finally dropped below eighty-five degrees. Alaura had noticed street musicians popping up everywhere, more people out walking and running and biking in the evenings, and there were more hula-hoopers and interpretive dancers/schizophrenics frolicking around. But what caught Alaura’s attention this morning was not the crowd of people, nor the terrible poem (which was one of the most excruciating things she’d heard in a long, long time—all “raven of the night” and “blood splashed upon the moon”), nor that the poor girl reading it was visibly shaking in intense self-awareness of her own poem’s awfulness. What caught Alaura’s attention were all the tiny video cameras.

  Four of them, to be exact. Little handheld things, no bigger than a cell phone. More than Alaura had ever seen in one place. They were called Flip Video cameras, and Alaura knew that they could be plugged directly into a computer. You could download your video and zoosh, post it online. Or you could cut together your own little movies, using free editing software. The cameras had been on sale since last year.

  And now here they were, on the Weaver Street Market lawn, their small, rectangular screens shining like badges of light, all of them held aloft by skinny undergrads.

  Not to mention that half the damn people on the lawn were chatting on their six-hundred-dollar iPhones.

  Alaura realized that the tiny cameras were focused on the petrified bard, and that they were all capturing her crime on digital video. Digital video that would soon be uploaded, most likely, to YouTube.

  The future is today, Alaura thought, and at that moment, she decided she had no choice but to go to the visitor’s event at the Reality Center.

  “Don’t do it,” Waring said, perched on his director’s chair behind Star Video’s counter. “Sounds like a scam.”

  Dorian—Alaura’s favorite part-timer and Star Video’s musical and concert film expert—was working, too. Upon his ageless face hung a calm, though concerned, frown.

  “It does sound a little strange,” Dorian said.

  “Jesus, I shouldn’t have told you guys.”

  Alaura had only stopped by Star Video to pick up schedule requests and to count change for the weekend. Though she’d skipped work all week, having gladly scheduled Waring for seven consecutive shifts, she could not completely suppress her near-maternal devotion to the store.

  “Does it cost money?” Waring asked.

  “Of course it costs money,” Alaura replied flatly.

  She looked at Dorian, who wore a neon pink blazer, and whom Alaura knew to be unfailingly polite and understanding. He gazed back at her with calm inquisitiveness, so she explained to him, more than to Waring: “It’s not religious or anything. It’s not a cult. They help you organize your life. Think positive. Experiential learning and all that.”

  Dorian smiled what Alaura always thought of as his gay-Buddha smile.

  “Do what you gotta do, Alaura,” he said. “As long as you’re safe.”

  Then Dorian picked up a stack of Tabitha Gray DVDs, which he was using to set up a special feature display near the front of the store, and he strolled onto the floor to arrange them.

  “Dorian’s clearly an idiot,” Waring said, standing up and approaching where Alaura was counting change at the Cashier du Cinéma. “And anyway, I think you’re just trying to punish me.”

  “That might be true.”

  “What are you so angry about?”

  She wheeled toward him. She stabbed a finger in his direction. “Are you really asking that?”

  “I told you, I didn’t throw a brick through Peckerdick’s window.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “What we’ve got here . . . is failure . . . to communicate.”

  Alaura glared at him. She took a moment to collect herself. “You think I’m in the mood for jokes, Waring? After everything that’s happened. You lied about your financial situation. You lied about your credit. And now we’re on our own. We’re screwed. We have no way to buy movies. So what’s the point of all this now?”

  Waring forced a snorting laugh that Alaura knew to be an affectation of disinterest.

  “Alaura,” he said, “there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Of course there is!”

  Waring smiled falsely.

  She pointed a thumb at her own chest. “I’m trying to do something positive with my life,” she said.

  “Positive?” he said, wincing. “You know, this wouldn’t be the first time you’ve fallen into some stupid religion in hopes of fixing your problems.”

  “This isn’t a religion.”

  “When will you realize that you’re just as miserable now as you were before all those religions?”

  “I’m not miserable.”

  “The Reality Center? What kind of name is that?”

  “Whatever!” Alaura turned back to her change count, but she had lost her place. She raked her fingers through her hair, which lay flat and oily on her head because she hadn’t washed it in days. “I can take it for what it’s worth, Waring,” she muttered in exhaustion. “Maybe learn a few things that’ll help me.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  She sighed, shook her head, and looked back at him. Then she stepped forward to straighten the collar of his dirty checkered button-up.

  She noticed his body stiffen. But he submitted silently to her attention.

  A calm descended between them.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said gently when she had finished. “But it would be nice if you could just . . . not give me a hard time.”

  Waring grimaced. He hesitated for a moment, then said:

  “But it sounds so embarrassing.”

  “Come on,” she pleaded. “Stop joking. Please . . . I really need you, just for a moment . . . to stop being you.”

  Waring backed away from her. His eyes were trained on the floor. He sat back down on his director’s chair. He turned to face the host computer.

  “I’m really mad at you, okay?” Alaura went on. “You’ve been good to me. I was fucked up a few years back, and you helped me through it. I’ll always be grateful to you for that. But I know that you’re aware of how completely psychotic you are. You’re not like normal people. You’re crazy, Waring. You have to know that.”

  Waring: no re
sponse.

  “Having an affair with Clarissa Wheat?” she went on desperately. “Not telling me about your money situation. I mean, shit. You have to know that’s all really, really . . . crazy and self-destructive.”

  “Fine,” he said in a low voice. “I understand. You have legitimate reasons. You’re mad at me.”

  He reached out and tapped the keyboard, one stiff jab at the “Return” key.

  “I understand,” he said again, his voice even softer.

  “You do?”

  “If you want to go, then go.”

  Alaura nodded.

  She turned and walked toward the exit—she hadn’t finished counting the change or picked up the schedule requests, and she wasn’t going to.

  “Good-bye,” she said, and she left the store.

  Later that afternoon, when Alaura entered the Reality Center conference room (windowless, clockless, gray), she found a group of thirty well-dressed Caucasians holding hands in a semicircle. Fifty or so other people—parents and siblings and friends—mingled inside the circle, all looking a bit dazed.

  “Wind Beneath My Wings” played over loud speakers.

  Weird, Alaura thought.

  “This is wacko,” hissed Constance, gripping Alaura’s arm—Constance had told Alaura point-blank after brunch that she wouldn’t allow her friend to go alone into “some insane asylum,” thus inaugurating herself into an extended speaking role.

  But the Reality Center was different than Alaura had expected. She had expected classrooms and PowerPoint presentations and Tony Robbins. Maybe guided meditation and macrobiotics. Or perhaps some Scientology-ish iconography. This didn’t feel like that at all. The vibe in this room was very spiritual, but somehow not religious. A lot of hokey love in the air.

  It reminded her of her favorite aspect of church as a kid—the church lock-in.

  A small Asian woman with obviously enhanced cleavage led Alaura and Constance into the semicircle, and she instructed them to wait directly in front of Karla, a link in the chain of hand holders. Karla stood holding hands with two handsome men in their twenties, and her head was thrown back, like the rest of them, in cataleptic bliss. She wore a searing white business suit that called the transfiguration to Alaura’s mind, and she mouthed the ridiculous lyrics along with Bette Midler.

  On the walls around them hung a series of blue-on-white posters with simple slogans in bold letters:

  THE FUTURE IS NOW

  YOUR POTENTIAL IS YOUR REALITY

  PROGRESS IS EVOLUTION

  “Seriously,” Constance whispered, “this is fucking crazy.”

  “Yeah,” Alaura said. “Those posters are pretty 1984.”

  “Whatever,” Constance said. “This is just fucking crazy.”

  Alaura nodded. It was fucking crazy. But the cumulative effect of the hand holders (“graduates” they were called) was nonetheless impressive. These were real people, after all—not all of them could be loonies. Many of them seemed to wear Dorian’s gay-Buddha smile, totally at ease and confident, if not contentedly homosexual. Were they all as convinced as Karla that they had figured out their lives? Unshackled their egos? Figured out their future? Had they finally put everything in order?

  Karla, of course, came from a rich family. She’d never had to worry about money. She only worked part-time jobs. The bohemian-sculptress lifestyle made financial sense for Karla, so it was also perfectly reasonable for her to venture on mental and spiritual escapades like this potentially crazy Reality Center. But in the diner, Karla had seemed so centered. So happy. In the past, despite her intense positivity whenever listening to Alaura bitch about her shitty life, Karla had also harbored, it seemed to Alaura, a certain latent displeasure with the world. At times she was prone to bursts of witty cynicism born of sublimated rage (a pose that other bohemian artists in town seemed to respect intensely, and her looks didn’t hurt), and this complex disposition made its way into her sculptures, large twisting things that defied gravity.

  But now, standing here, Karla seemed like a different person—a mightier person. Even swaying silently with eyes closed amongst a bunch of weirdoes, Karla was someone to be idolized.

  Mercifully, Bette Midler stopped singing.

  “Thank God,” Constance whispered.

  “Hush,” Alaura said harshly.

  “I can’t take this. I feel sick. I think I have to get out of here.”

  “Then leave.”

  Constance took another look around the semicircle. “Maybe I will.”

  “Go then.”

  “You should come with me, Alaura. Please don’t get involved in this.”

  “Maybe I want to get involved,” Alaura said. “I can just take it for what it’s worth.”

  “But I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  “And I’ve got a bad feeling about you.”

  Constance’s mouth dropped open—she turned and left the conference room.

  Moments later, a woman’s voice exploded over a loudspeaker: “Welcome, guests! The Reality Center would like to thank you for being here on perhaps the most important day of our graduates’ lives. They have experienced one of the most exhilarating, frightening, and illuminating events they will ever experience, and now they are ready to reenter the world and help pave a new future for us all. You should consider it a singular honor that you have been chosen to share this momentous moment with them.” (Momentous moment? Alaura thought.) “Graduates, open your eyes!”

  Karla opened her teary green eyes, and Alaura, feeling a bit like a misguided apostle, smiled. They embraced. Alaura felt her friend’s body shudder against her, cold tears glazing her neck.

  JEFF AND WARING’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE

  It had only been seven days since The Corporate Visit and Alaura’s subsequent “leave of absence”—a term Jeff had thought applied only to doctors and professors—but during that short time, without her guiding hand, Star Video had begun falling apart. It was shocking to Jeff how quickly things unraveled. He would arrive for a shift to find that none of that morning’s returns had been shelved, and though business was slow, this still amounted to fifty or more show boxes, not including pornography. Then, when Jeff had gone back to Waring’s office to retrieve a roll of quarters, he’d found no change in the money box and had to pay back customers with dimes. New membership forms hadn’t been filed for a week (though there had only been two). No one had swept the floor or battled the dust bunnies or taken out the trash. They’d run out of Jiffy Pop. And that Monday, the day before that week’s new titles were to be released, Jeff realized that no one had printed up the New Releases handouts, nor had anyone updated the New Releases whiteboard positioned by the front door, which was the very first thing most customers looked at when entering the shop.

  So Jeff did what he could. He shelved DVDs and VHSs. He took cash next door to Pizza My Heart and pleaded for change. He swept the floors, changed the whiteboard, took out the trash. He scoured the file cabinets and found the phone number of their concessions distributor, and he ordered more Jiffy Pop, because how could a video store function without popcorn? And, on Tuesday, he used the dingy laptop he’d inherited from one of his redneck cousins to create a poor approximation of Alaura’s New Releases handout, which he then printed and photocopied on Ape U’s campus, at his own expense, using his student account.

  Later that day, Jeff worked with Waring, and he found himself, as usual, the only one standing to help the few customers who entered. Waring never budged from his director’s chair, and he hadn’t bothered to thank Jeff for any of his extra work. Instead, Waring kept his gaze dispassionately on the television screen, today playing High Sierra, and he only occasionally emerged from his trance to belt out the title of a movie that a customer might be asking about.

  “Night of the Living Dead,” Waring grunted to one unsuspecting customer who’d approached Jeff with a question. “That’s Romero’s first zombie movie. Dawn of the Dead is better. They’re both great. I was just reading that Romero say
s that the racial commentary in Night wasn’t on purpose . . .”

  Waring’s voice trailed off, and Jeff led the confused customer to the Horror section.

  Over the next few hours, as Jeff continued shelving and cleaning and assisting customers, he occasionally stole glances at the ragged little man, who seemed even more weird and distant, and possibly more drunk, than normal.

  And slowly Jeff realized what must be going on in Waring’s mind—he was worried about Alaura. He missed her. He might even be in love with her. It had been easy for Jeff to think of Waring and Alaura as an old married couple. As bickering, griping, sexless entities. But the truth, Jeff decided, was much more complicated.

  “It’s been years!” Waring said suddenly, some time later, when they were alone. “I thought she was over all that religious crap.”

  “Where is she?” Jeff asked in confusion. “What is the Reality Center?”

  “I think it’s some Werner Erhard knock-off.”

  “The director?”

  Waring sighed, shook his head. “No, Jeff. That’s Werner Herzog. Werner Erhard ran these life-training seminars in the seventies. I had no idea they were still around. The kind of thing where they berate you for hours, then empower you with mumbo-jumbo, then convince you to sign up all your friends. A pyramid scheme.”

  Jeff wanted to respond, but at that moment, a beeper went off on his hip. He scrambled to silence the device.

  “What’s that?” Waring said.

  Jeff wrote something in a small notebook.

  “Hey. You. Hick.”

  “I’m not a hick,” Jeff said, but not as forcefully as he would have liked.