by Tim Hennessy
By the time the sun set on Milwaukee that Sunday, I was bleary and half drunk, frantic in trying to execute my farewell. I stepped outside for a smoke and, at five minutes to showtime, saw Janet round the corner of Wisconsin and 3rd, dressed in her usual work clothes and wearing those awful black shoes. I stood under the glowing marquee, a warm evening breeze stinging my face. I grinned a bit and waved and walked up to meet her. We said hello to each other in front of the next-door massage parlor. Behind me, the old “hot print” floodlight lit the theater’s façade, bringing to marvelous life its battered and cracked grandeur.
“I don’t want to hang here too long,” Janet said. “I just got done with a double shift.”
“No problem,” I told her. “It’s a short program tonight.”
“I mean, if you could just—”
“Take a seat downstairs, in the front. I gotta make sure we’re ready in the booth,” I said, backtracking to the glass doors of the theater. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.” I opened a door, and she walked inside.
I rushed up to the booth, where Earl was checking everything over. “How are we doing?”
“This is all fucking stupid, kid. Why not just run the movies like normal?”
“I told you a thousand times, Earl, I need to do this.”
I had been at the theater since four a.m. First, splicing together the snips from Earl’s fuck books. It was, all told, only about two minutes of material, a machine-gun spray of filth that fluttered across the screen so frenetically the brain hardly had time to recognize what was happening. So, I set to building. Every spare sprocket or wheel that I could find, mounting them all over the booth to create a long, messy path through which a single loop of the dirty film could flow. By early morning, I had it all set up: an endless reel of every bit of sex to ever put its foul light on the Princess. In the B projector, the second part of the two-projector setup we used, I loaded a long-forgotten instructional reel that I’d found while cleaning up. They would be played over each other, mashing together wicked and wholesome, sex and love, smut and art. I had finished it just in time. The Princess would close as an art house—of sorts.
“Are you sure this is even gonna work? I don’t think this is gonna work.”
“Earl, goddamn it. Just go with this!”
He shook his head. “Whatever you say, boss.”
“So, we’re set.”
“If we’re not, we never will be.”
“Perfect.” I buttoned my vest. “Watch for my cue.”
I dashed back downstairs and took the back way to the old stage door. I walked out onto the stage, and the house lights briefly overwhelmed me. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that I was standing before a nearly empty house. Mostly it was just the same old bums and drunks who made up our Sunday crowds. My shoulders sank. I had envisioned a rogue’s ball. What I got was a dozen people with nowhere else to go. Thirteen if I counted myself.
“I want to welcome you all to the last show at the Princess Theater,” I announced to the room. “The Princess opened in 1909 . . .” I sighed. “Ah, fuck it.” I waved my wand toward the booth, and the lights sank. As I walked down from the stage, the show began. Some rumpled trumpet music started up and a title screen reading The Waltz for Beginners lit the screen, a jumble of nudist-camp breasts flashing on top of it.
I dropped down next to Janet; her face bent with perplexity. “What . . .”
“I just wanted to do something worthwhile, after all my time here. I guess nobody gives a shit, though.”
“Why would anybody?” she asked.
I had almost expected sympathy. A billowy waltz started to play as the instructional went into its first demonstration. A tidy couple, dressed in ages-old formal wear, pressed close and began their steps. A smattering of pale-tinted breasts and half-covered ass cracks flashed across them.
“This is just weird,” Janet said. “Let me buy my bag and get out of here.”
The bag—I’d forgotten about it. It was a lie, one that I’d hoped she’d forgive when she absorbed the weird joy of the Princess’s last romp. I stood and reached down to her. “Would you dance with me first?”
“What?” she said sharply.
“One last waltz for this old dump. It would mean a lot to me.”
“Just give me the—”
“There is no bag,” I said. This was the scene in the movie where the heel comes clean. I’d seen it a thousand times growing up. The girl is impressed with the fellow’s honesty, and they embrace while the score rises and the picture fades. This wasn’t romance or love—I knew that. But maybe, in that theater and on that lonely last day, it might have been just enough for a shared moment. “I made that up to get you to come tonight. This night was supposed to be special, but it’s a total bust. I thought maybe if we—”
“What is wrong with you?” she spat. “I’ve told you before I’m not interested. And then you lie to me and expect me to do some weird sex ritual with you in front of all these losers?”
I didn’t say a thing. There was, really, no more to say. She stood and shoved me aside, knocking me backward over the stage stairs. I lay there on the dirty floor as she marched up the aisle. Somewhere in the darkness, a lone drunk laughed. And there I lay, while one dance ended and another began, a hundred bare tits a minute covering it all. I pulled the flask from my pocket and took a long drink. This was how the Princess would end. There would be no salvation. There would be no farewell.
From the glow of the house door thrown open by Janet, a shadow started down the aisle. As it drew nearer, I took another long drink. A slow and sad waltz echoed through the auditorium. In the morning, crews would begin to arrive to haul off equipment and furniture. The morning after that, I would be unemployed. I had followed Dick’s instructions nearly to the letter in cleaning out the theater. But I had left one item out of place. It was a large envelope addressed to the inspection agent of the real estate company that owned the property. There was a note inside. It detailed the time and date that a break-in had been scheduled with the intention of burglarizing the vacant building. And it asked a favor: that the enclosed book be returned personally to Beverly Bradlee, the former tenant. It was the theater’s logbook, with detailed notes on every picture the house had run since last year. Thy will be done.
The figure stood over me. “This is fucking stupid,” Earl said. “You are fucking stupid for thinking it up.”
“I know.”
He put out a hand. I reached for it. He recoiled. “No, the flask.” I passed it over, and he drank. “You know, kid, you either gotta live in your world or theirs.”
I furrowed my brow, head buzzing from the rotgut whiskey. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I lead.” He pulled me up and led me onto the stage. “You know how?” he asked, putting his palm to mine.
“It’s been a long time,” I managed as he put his other hand on the back of my shoulder.
“Wait for it . . .” he said. And so we stood, as far apart as our arms would allow, until the music came around. “And one, two, three. One, two, three . . .”
As the battered old soundtrack tooted out a slow and sorrowful song, the old man and I danced clumsily, casting a pair of misshapen shadows on the screen behind us.
SUMMERFEST ’76
by Reed Farrel Coleman
Murray Hill
I knew I was fucked the second I opened my eyes. The blacktop was covered in a thin, nearly invisible layer of ice that beckoned people to drive a little faster, to brake a little harder, to die a little sooner. My vision still bleary from sleep, I noticed that if the streetlamp hit the ice just right, it sparkled, though it was a sparkle not of delight, but more the twinkle in a killer’s eye at the moment of ecstasy. The sight of Locust Street that night in November 1976 made me wish I had driven the last few hours instead of sleeping it away. If I’d been driving, I thought, I would have seen it coming. I would have known. I would have dropped her off and turned right around for home. I
like to think that’s what I would have done, but it’s horseshit.
“We’re here,” she said, road exhaustion thick in her voice. There was something else in it too. I didn’t know what it was then, but forty years on, I know. Then, the only thing I knew was what it wasn’t—enthusiasm.
I was fucked, all right. Royally . . . with a cherry on top.
This wasn’t the Milwaukee I remembered from the summer when the sun brushed its warm fingertips across my cheeks, and the sky was so blue it hurt me all the way back to Brooklyn. It had been the best summer of my life because love—real love, not lust, not that stuff I mistook it for when I was seventeen—had found me. Love had light cat-green eyes, and its name was Lisa. She began to consume me the first second we accidentally brushed up against one another in line at the Pabst Pavilion at Summerfest. She was an actress, a dancer, an artist, studying at UWM. She supported herself by slinging beer at Century Hall, a cavernous old bowling alley that had been converted into a bar, restaurant, gallery, and performance space. And it was at Century Hall that the destruction of the person I used to be began in earnest.
At Summerfest, in line, waiting for the Pabst, we’d chatted a little.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Beer always this cheap in Milwaukee? I might have to consider relocating.
Where are you and that accent from?
Brooklyn . . . Coney Island.
Oh my God, I love New York. Broadway, Times Square . . .
You’ve been?
Twice. I’m going to live there when I’m done with school.
Come visit.
She smiled at the offer, but it wasn’t a smile to send me on my way. Get outta here, son. You’re botherin’ me. On the contrary, it was a smile with interest in it. A smile with potential. After she’d gotten the three beers she’d ordered, Lisa turned to me.
I’ve got to go now. Friends. You know how it is. She actually looked disappointed. Then, as she walked past me, she stopped. I work at Century Hall. I’m on tonight. Ask for Lisa.
Where?
Century Hall. Just ask anyone.
And that was that. She disappeared into the swarm of people along the shore of the small ocean known as Lake Michigan.
I think I would have found Century Hall that night had it been on the dark side of the moon. It was considerably easier to find than that. Everybody in Milwaukee seemed to know Century Hall. She fairly shook when she came to the table and noticed it was me sitting there.
“You showed up.” She flashed that smile again.
“Did you doubt it?”
She crooked her neck, shrugged. “There’s always a little doubt.”
“Not with us.”
I couldn’t believe those words came out of my mouth. Us! What us? But her reaction was answer enough to that question. She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. Yes, Virginia, there is an Us. It was a first kiss I will never forget. Forty years later, in spite of how we eventually ground ourselves into dust, I think about it and can almost feel her lips on mine.
“I get off at eleven.”
I sat in that seat until eleven, afraid to move for fear that it would all disappear.
* * *
The next morning, I woke up with Lisa’s body pressed against mine, and the taste of her was full in my mouth and on my face. Becoming conscious of it, and sore as I was, I got hard. Then Lisa noticed and took me in her mouth.
We parted later that morning with tears and promises. Tears and promises I don’t think either of us were willing to forget. But that night in late November of ’76, when she stopped the car outside her apartment, I think we both wished we had been more willing to consider forgetfulness.
Now here’s the funny thing. Funny? Okay, not funny. Ironic. What I’m telling you about isn’t really about Lisa or about how we set about beating each other into submission and smashing ourselves into small pieces, pieces so tiny and ragged that reconstruction wasn’t an option. We were fated to be Humpty Dumptys, never to be put back together again. I wish that’s what I was telling you about. It probably wouldn’t even be worth the telling, actually. I mean, that’s what people do to each other sometimes, right? They meet, fall in love, and eat each other alive. And the thing is, I’m not blaming Lisa. I was just as guilty—guiltier, maybe—for what happened to us. She asked me to move there, probably thinking I wouldn’t come. But I said yes, though in my head I knew it was likely a mistake. So, there was love between us, but not honesty.
After a week of lying around her apartment, feeling sorry for myself, I ventured out into the prewinter wonderland that was Milwaukee. Here’s something you may not know: New York City is a pretty sunny place even in late fall and winter. I hadn’t realized how sunny, nor how much I missed the sun, until I noticed that all I ever saw out of Lisa’s window was grayness. Oh, that’s not totally fair. It was grayness interrupted every other day by lake-effect snow.
Bottom line was, I had to get a job. Lisa had asked me to live with her. She hadn’t offered to support me. And there was the fact that things had already begun going sideways between us. Our sex, while still intense, had taken on an uneasy and angry tone. Her scratches along my back a little deeper. My thrusting a little harder. I guess we were determined to express ourselves one way or the other.
My job hunt lasted all of seven minutes. I walked up the block, crossed the street, and went into a medium-sized grocery store called Eastside Emporium. A neon sign in the window boasted that it was the only store on the East Side open twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. All I’d wanted was a cup of coffee to cut against the windchill and regret. I left the store with my coffee and a job.
Both sides of my family had been in the grocery business, and when I saw the Help Wanted sign by the deli counter, it was practically a done deal. And when the owner, Myron Katz, a transplanted Chicagoan, heard my Brooklyn accent, my use of the Yiddish word meshugge instead of crazy, and my willingness to work the graveyard shift, I was officially an Eastside Emporium cashier.
“And Robby,” Mr. Katz said, placing his age-spotted hand on my shoulder, “the people in Milwaukee are good people. Sweet people, really, for the most part, and there’s a nice Jewish community here . . .” His voice trailed off.
“But . . .”
He smiled a sad smile. “You might want to watch the Yiddish, boychik. This isn’t Brooklyn. Ton ir farshteyn?”
I nodded. “Ikh farshteyn. I understand.”
My days took on an awful sameness. I would be so wound up after working until six in the morning that I couldn’t go right to bed. So, I’d go out for breakfast with my coworkers. After breakfast we usually wound up at one of their apartments, getting stoned, drunk, or both. Around noon, I’d head back to the apartment. First, though, I’d go check out the new records at 1812 Overture or Ludwig Van Ear. Then I’d stop in at Axel’s or Kalt’s for lunch and a beer. As things got progressively worse between Lisa and me, I forsook beer for stronger spirits. It got so bad that I used to say my two best friends in Milwaukee were named Jack—Yukon Jack and Jack Daniel’s.
I’d get home around one or one thirty, and Lisa would be off at school. Half in the bag and exhausted, I’d collapse into bed and sleep until five thirty. I’d shower, brush my teeth, and head over to the store. Lisa and I hardly saw each other except on weekends. And weekends inevitably included dinner with her parents and her sister Karen in Wauwatosa, during which Lisa’s mom and dad would stare at me, shaking their heads in disgust and disbelief. I wasn’t fond of them either. Karen was cool.
Within two months, our destruction was nearly a fait accompli. Our love seemed to have drained away with the last snowmelt. But it was more than that, worse. It did more than simply vanish. When it was gone, I think both of us were utterly perplexed that it had existed at all. The encounter at the Pabst Pavilion at Summerfest felt like a billion years ago in two other people’s lifetimes. Those intense, hours-long, late-night phone calls full of love and yearning had evaporated. O
ur sex had devolved into a pro forma exercise in a consensual need for release, and it was performed with all the passion of a computer screen cursor. By mid-February, I was out of Lisa’s apartment. By March, I was out of her life. I should have gone back home. There were a hundred points during my time in Milwaukee when I should have left, but I was twenty and stupid and full of pride.
* * *
After I moved out of Lisa’s place, I moved in with John Woolridge. John and I worked the graveyard together at the Emporium, and we got along pretty well. His parents had moved to Florida and left their old shitbox house across the highway from County Stadium to him. It was during those two weeks, the ones between my getting my walking papers from Lisa’s apartment and my permanent pink slip from her life, that it happened.
It was four in the morning in the third week of February 1977 when he walked in. He didn’t look more ornery than most of the other shitfaced assholes who stumbled into Eastside Emporium early in the morning, looking for munchies or someone to grouse to. He was about six feet tall and two hundred pounds of nasty. He wore a weathered, torn Harley motorcycle jacket and reeked of nickel-bag pot. His eyes were shot with blood, and his mouth tilted lazily down to one side. His brown eyes were misaligned so that the right one seemed to be staring off into the distance.
He threw a bag of potato chips, a bag of pretzels, and a package of Usinger’s brats on the belt at my register.
“That all, man?” I asked, and started ringing him up.
He didn’t answer immediately. He seemed focused on something over my shoulder.
“Those flowers at the end of the register, how much are they?”
