She had always known he was special. His name was special—“Match,” a cool Anglicization of the Scandinavian “Mats.” His grandparents lived in Europe, which was the coolest thing she had ever heard. He’d been born in Massachusetts, had lived for years in Boston, and he was the only kid in Sprinks—where his mother had moved to work at nearby Research Triangle Park—who didn’t speak Redneck. He was ideologically opposed to hunting and manual labor. He wore black band tee shirts and baggy jeans, and he loved to read fat books and to watch movies, always movies. These traits, as well as his waifish frame (he’d weighed no more than 125 pounds at the time) so differentiated him from her other classmates that he was the logical choice as her companion, because by that point, she was already “too smart” and “too weird” for Sprinks. And Match hadn’t minded that she was poor, that she lived in a rusty trailer. He introduced her to a new world: a world beyond Sprinks, a world of culture and insight. They developed their own shared history, their own inside jokes, their own lexicon derived from film that only slightly resembled Piedmont English. They rented movies from the nearby grocery store and watched them on his family’s VHS player and huge television. They cackled at their own obscure movie references, while other kids thought their antics were offensively nerdy. As far back as freshman year, Alaura had felt that their souls were platonically linked.
The Buried Mirror, she remembered, had started as a joke between the two of them during that final summer. On a Saturday road trip to Appleton to see an old film (The 400 Blows, she recalled), they had wandered downtown (which to them was Greenwich Village compared to the ratty stoplight of Sprinks) and into an independent bookstore. There they had chanced across a used Spanish history book called The Buried Mirror, and into her head popped the idea that it would be a good title for a movie. She told him this. He agreed and said that it sounded like a Hitchcock thriller. The idea stuck. On the drive home that day, they worked out some of the story details. She proposed Appleton as the film’s setting and suggested that the main character be a stifled housewife with dangerous sexual longings. He suggested that her husband could be carrying on an affair with an underage girl living on their immaculate Historic District street, and that when the stifled housewife discovers the affair, she engages in her own self-destructive escapades, including some backwoods rednecky drug-den scenes, ending in disaster. Alaura insisted that the actors must be real-looking people, not Hollywood types, and he agreed enthusiastically, registering all of it, a creative blaze roaring behind his thousand-yard stare.
Over the next few days, he outlined a story, and a week later, he acted it out for her on his back porch. They critiqued the outline together, then made love for one of the very last times, and then he sat down to write the entire thing.
If he was making the film now, in 2007, that meant that The Buried Mirror—a Lynchian/Cronenbergian thriller she had helped inspire—had been growing inside Match Anderson for over eleven years. And now he was home, in North Carolina, in Appleton, to film it.
She didn’t believe in Fate. But at the moment, it was hard not to.
With just a little more luck, Star Video had a chance.
It was seven p.m., just after sunset, when Alaura arrived at the Siena Hotel, which was a four-story Italian-style building that rested in a verdant corridor of oaks and maples at the bottom of the eastward slope of Appleton, two miles from campus.
A large crowd had gathered at the hotel’s ornate front gate.
Alaura parked the Dodge, walked across College Street, and found herself amidst a throng, a bizarre collection of middle-age and teenage females—autograph hounds, she realized. She pushed through the heavily perfumed crowd, her head down, gaze locked on the sidewalk, and she realized again that she was still wearing this stupid blue business suit.
Keep going, she told herself.
She reached the head of the buzzing mass, where activity seemed loudest, most violent, and to her surprise, she was admitted without comment past the literal velvet rope, ushered in by an armed security guard wearing a lemon-yellow polo, his massive hand gently touching her back.
Why had she been admitted? Did Match know she was coming?
It was probably the tattoos on her neck and her pomaded hair combined with the business suit—that she looked so unlike the bubble-gum swarm of Southern women—that the security guard had assumed she was part of the crew.
She walked quickly toward the hotel.
The front doors of the Siena opened and closed with a pleasing sci-fi whoosh, and once inside, she found herself amidst another maelstrom. She had been in this lobby once or twice, for a wedding maybe, or on a night out drinking (there was a restaurant/bar in the back), but she did not recognize the space now. Piles of crumpled cardboard boxes and various bits of alien film equipment filled the room, and packs of people churned in seemingly random directions, chattering, laughing, cursing. Several loud debates went on at once, fingers pointing at computer printouts, men and women rubbing forefingers and thumbs against temples. A man with wild white hair sat in a suede easy chair, his legs crossed, and berated several young crewmembers. Another man stood next to a potted holly tree and looked over the room with a scowl that seemed to betray sinister intentions.
Then Tabitha Gray, Academy Award winner and international tabloid star, entered the lobby—she was flanked by three bodyguards, firearms holstered.
Alaura had never been so near a celebrity. Fifteen feet. Ten feet. Five. Tabitha Gray, known affectionately as “Tabby” (though she was reputedly a sadistic anorexic) was even more striking in person than on screen. Her brunette hair seemed to sparkle. Her face was flawless and Photoshopped. Her neck was as long as the neck of that alien from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and her figure was the work of some sadistic deity bent on torturing all of malekind.
As she passed, Tabby smiled at Alaura, and a blue firework exploded inside Alaura’s chest.
But the blissful moment evaporated as Tabby floated by and as Alaura discerned that the room had quieted in deference to her raw power, to her beauty and fame and familiarity to audiences. Tabby knew her own power, and the crew knew it, and she hated them for it, and they hated her. Alaura felt the vehemence at once—there was nothing but sexually charged hatred in the air, until Tabby finally exited in the direction, Alaura now remembered, of the hotel’s indoor swimming pool.
“May I help you, miss?” a voice asked.
A huge guy in a yellow security shirt stood to Alaura’s right. His hair was up in a high, clean, perfect Kid ’n’ Play box cut.
“No,” she said, confidently looking toward the center of the room.
“Are you a part of the crew, miss?”
“Absolutely.”
“The hotel is off-limits to non-crewmembers, miss. We’ve rented the entire building.”
She knew it was unwise, but hoping to scare off this square-headed titan, she decided to channel Waring:
“Quit waving your beef burrito in my face, dude, and don’t call me miss.”
“Miss, I know everyone on the crew, miss.”
“I’m a friend of the director,” she said.
“Do you have a security pass, miss?”
“I just arrived, didn’t I?”
“Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Call me miss again,” she said, preparing herself to be arrested and placed into handcuffs. “I triple-dog dare you.”
One hour later, Alaura was sitting in a small, sterile conference room in the depths of the Siena Hotel, a room that she imagined was used primarily for the hiring and firing of employees. Another uniformed security guard—this one slickly handsome and donning the Eurotrash fauxhawk that was all the rage that year—stood in the corner of the room, hands cupped in front of him as if protecting his genitalia. The guard had not spoken to Alaura, nor moved a muscle, since the other guard with the box cut had left to check her insane story. She had removed her suit coat and was leaning forward, her elbows propped on t
he ovular conference room table.
Endowed with a confidence born wholly from the absurdity of this situation, Alaura said to the guard, “You know, I work at a video store. If you bring Match Anderson to me, I’ll give you free rentals for life.”
No response.
“I bet you get one or two crazies like me a week.”
Nothing.
“This time it’s actually true, though. I really do know Match Anderson.”
“Get me a screen test?” Fauxhawk said in a bored voice.
The door opened, and a potbellied man with a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard entered.
“Match?” she said.
He wore a rumpled brown blazer, and his eyes seemed twice the size that she remembered. Altogether, Match looked like a different person. His face sagged under his beard, even more than in the most recent photos of him she had seen, like he’d attempted to pull back his skin for a facelift only to terminate the operation unfinished, leaving the stretched-out material to flop downward. His formerly waifish frame had remained spindly at the chest and shoulders, but it had bloated dangerously in his midsection. And his hands twitched nervously, like he was tickling an invisible monkey wrapped around his waist.
She noticed that his forehead was sweating, little beads dripping from hairline to brow.
“It’s me,” she said gently. “Alaura.”
He stared at her, unresponsive. Neither like he recognized her, nor like he didn’t—almost like he was frightened. Then he looked off to the corner of the room, as if someone there was about to speak to him.
Alaura shot Fauxhawk a nervous smirk.
But a moment later, a shy smile emerged behind the thick tendrils of Match’s short, uneven beard. It was an expression Alaura immediately recognized from the halls of Sprinks High.
“It’s me,” she said again, standing up.
“Alaura?” Match’s voice—creaky and childlike.
“I’ve missed you, Match.”
“Oh, wow.”
He reached out and touched her: the squid tattoo on her right arm.
She brought her opposite hand up to meet his, and in the same movement, she caught a breath of his familiar scent: a woody sweetness that she’d always associated with bookshelves.
“I just found out that you were filming in Appleton,” she explained. “I asked around and found out this is where the crew is staying. I came right away.”
“Man,” he said, and he looked down at the floor. “The Buried Mirror script was originally set in Ehle County. Do you remember?” He glanced at her, smiled, then swiped at the sweat on his forehead with the back of a hand. “Of course you remember, Alaura. You were there in the beginning. Since that first draft I wrote in high school. You know that the setting was always Appleton.”
“Sure, I remember.”
“But the studio thought Charleston was more exotic and recognizable. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, et cetera, though of course that was filmed in Savannah. And so but anyway The Buried Mirror is set in Charleston.”
“Okay?” Alaura said, struggling to follow the relevance of this story.
“But then, when we were location scouting, Ehle County made us an amazing offer. Maybe because I grew up around here, I don’t know. But so, boom, we’re filming here, in Appleton, but hanging fake Spanish moss everywhere, trying to make the streets look all flat and Charlestony. And now here you are. Alaura Eden. Standing right in front of me.”
She didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, but nonetheless, she hazarded: “Yes, here I am.”
“Alaura Eden,” he repeated. Then, in a peculiarly secretive murmur, he said, “Alaura, I’m so glad you’re here. I have to tell you something. Something I’ve only told one other person.”
“What is it?”
“I can trust you, can’t I?”
She squeezed his shaking hand, which she now noticed was clammy under hers. And she realized that even though he was looking at her, his eyes were almost completely unfocused.
“You can’t repeat this to anyone,” he whispered.
Alaura glanced suspiciously over Match’s shoulder at the security guard, who was now inspecting the reflection of his fauxhawk in the conference room’s tiny window, completely unimpressed that Alaura had not turned out to be a lunatic.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said.
“I need your help.”
“My help?” she asked, thinking at once of Star Video, and that she had come here to ask for his help. “What do you need?”
“It’s like . . . it’s like Fate that you’re here,” he muttered.
She smiled nervously.
“Can you help me?” he asked.
“Why do you keep asking me that, Match?” she said, edging away from him a little bit. “Is this about the movie?”
“No,” Match said. “It’s about me.”
“What is it, Match?”
He sighed. His voice lowered even further. “Alaura,” he whispered, “I don’t know how to say this . . . but I’ve been seeing the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock. He’s sitting in that chair right now.”
Alaura looked at the chair, clenched her jaw, and tried with all her might to see what simply wasn’t there.
EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT MATCH ANDERSON* (*BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK)
Waring and Jeff, alone again at Star Video. Next-to-no business. Jeff had just taken a short break and strolled out to College Street, trying to absorb the full extent of today’s events: the Reality Center, holding Alaura while she wept, helping Waring pack up his house, and the insane revelation about Match Anderson. It was all too much to process.
Then Jeff smelled something. Butter. He looked down the street in the direction of the intoxicating odor, and he noticed that Blockbuster’s parking lot was nearly full. Two posters swayed in the breeze beneath the huge Blockbuster sign. One of them read, “Rent TWO Get ONE Free,” the other, “And FREE Popcorn!”
Jeff walked back into Star Video, having resolved not to mention this brilliant marketing offensive on the part of their enemy, nor that he had suggested the exact same maneuvers to Waring not two days earlier.
“I can’t believe it,” Jeff said, sitting on a stool close to Waring, who, as always, was seated in his director’s chair.
“What?”
“That Alaura knows Match Anderson. And he’s here in Ehle County.”
“Yes,” Waring said. “She never told me that either. Never mentioned she knew a Hollywood director. It’s all a rather improbable turn of events.”
“Crazy.”
“Some might say far-fetched.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Contrived even.”
Jeff nodded.
“If it happened in a movie,” Waring said, “I probably wouldn’t believe it.”
Silence.
Minutes later . . .
“Have you ever seen Annie Hall?” Jeff asked.
“Have I ever seen Annie Hall? Let me think, Jeff.” Waring clenched his eyes shut, searching his memory banks. “Yes,” he said finally. “I recall watching Annie Hall once or twice.”
Jeff chuckled. “I’ve never seen it. Can we watch it now?”
“’Sfine.”
They watched Annie Hall.
Ninety-four minutes later, as the final white-on-black credits faded, Jeff turned to Waring and asked, “You believe what Woody Allen says?”
“Mm?”
“How life is full of loneliness, misery, and suffering, but it all ends too soon.”
“So?”
“So do you believe him?”
“What’s not to believe?” Waring asked.
“But it’s so cynical. Seems like a miserable way to think about life.”
Waring turned to Jeff. “Think about it,” he said. “Cynical implies that because life is meaningless and painful, we should be miserable. Woody is kind of suggesting the opposite. That because life is shit, we should try to enjoy ourselves while we’re
here.”
Jeff considered this, and he was preparing to ask if Waring believed this notion himself—because it seemed very out of character—when Waring added:
“Of course, Woody married his stepdaughter, which is gross.”
“He did?”
“You don’t know this?”
“No.”
“Christ! We could fill up the Grand Canyon with what you don’t know.”
Jeff flipped Waring the bird, the first time he had attempted this gesture after witnessing Alaura do it to Waring fifty times.
Waring smiled, as if in appreciation.
“By the way,” Waring said. “Rose has a crush on you.”
Jeff frowned, having been completely caught off guard.
“Seems pretty obvious,” Waring went on. “The way she’s always, you know, talking to you.”
“Rose barely talks to me at all.”
“She never says a word to anyone else.”
“But I thought maybe her and Farley were—”
“Rose is a much better fit for you than Alaura. I’m just saying. Completely objective viewpoint here.”
Jeff flipped Waring the bird again.
Waring rolled his eyes, disappointed by the repetition.
“I can’t believe Alaura really knows Match Anderson,” Jeff repeated.
“Yes, so amazing,” Waring said with a sudden grimace.
“Losers was a great movie.”
“Yes, it was. But it’s been a while since Losers.”
“I didn’t see A House on the Edge of Reason or Changeless,” Jeff said.
“Don’t.”
“I hear they’re . . .”
“They are.”
“They don’t rent much.”
“That’s a good sign of a bad movie,” Waring said knowingly.
“But I mean, maybe he can help, you know, with the store?”
Waring sighed loudly, his patience with the subject of Match Anderson apparently exhausted. “By the way, Sasquatch, call him Woody. Not Woody Allen. Just Woody.”
The Last Days of Video Page 17
