Ship It(31)

My hands feel clammy. She can’t do that, can she? But she’s solid and unmoving, and I don’t doubt that she could do anything she wanted to. Rico gives me a little shrug, like Just do what she asks. And I know it’s over.

“Okay,” I say. “I don’t think it’s going to work, but fine.”

“Great. I’ll see you at five.”

“Let’s go,” Rico says under his breath. We start across the parking lot toward the convention center.

“Oh, and, Forest?” Paula says sweetly. I turn, wondering what the hell else she could possibly want, but it’s Caty who speaks.

“We need you to tweet again,” Caty says. “Something real. Something personal. Rico, will you give him a hand?”

“You got it,” Rico says, and pulls me away before I can respond.


The bustle of the convention floor seems to not affect Rico at all as he glides along, cutting a path through clumps of people. The Oregon convention center appears to be about twice the size of Boise’s, with a larger attendance, too. More costumes, more vendors, more people getting in the way of where I’m trying to go.

“The thing about a crowd like this,” Rico says over his shoulder as we navigate, “is that there are so many people, but they’re all here for their own specific thing, and the Demon Heart fans are just a drop in the bucket. So, weirdly, you get recognized less than at a smaller convention.” Still, Rico has swept up his distinctive thick black hair into a beanie and he’s wearing sunglasses indoors, which gives him kind of a rock-and-roll-Unabomber look, but it works for him. I slip my sunglasses and Sooners hat on and try not to let him get too far ahead of me.

When we reach Gina’s Poster Emporium, the woman behind the counter throws her arms around Rico.

“Rico!” She almost sings his name. “My love, my main squeeze!”

“I told you she was a looker,” Rico says to me.

“Oh, stop it,” she says. Gina is probably around seventy-five years old, Asian, and tiny but lean, like she works out every day. She’s wearing a faded U2 tee from some tour in the ’80s and loose-fitting jeans. There’s a youthfulness about her that is compelling. I have to admit that, yeah, actually, Rico’s not wrong. Gina’s hot.

Rico introduces me, and Gina gives me a kiss on the cheek that I’m pretty sure leaves behind an imprint of red lipstick. She doesn’t have an Alien poster for Rico, so we start flipping through her collection, looking for anything else that sparks our interest.

“You know, it’s weird,” I say to Rico as I browse the ’90s section. “There are so many vendors here I don’t really, well, get. But this one…”

“Pretty cool, right?”

“Actually, yeah.”

“I’m just happy people like Gina exist in the world,” he says. “She loves Japanese movie posters more than anything, and she’s been able to carve out a life going to cons and buying and selling them. It’s so weirdly specific, and yet everyone here has their own weirdly specific thing. It’s the one place in the world where being weirdly specific is totally the norm.”

“Whoa.” I pull out a poster from the stacks. Rico takes one look and busts up laughing.

“See what I mean, man? Everyone’s a fan of something.”

It’s a mint-condition, gorgeous Red Zone poster from the 1999 original film. Jasper Graves’s face fills the frame, giant and dotted with sweat and grease. The title is scrawled in black lettering across his nose: レッド ゾーン.

“I’m gonna hang it in my living room,” I say. That room needs something on the walls. Anything at all.

We poke around a bit longer until Rico finds a vintage Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? one-sheet, which I have to ask what it is, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Elizabeth Taylor movie in my life, but apparently she’s one of his favorite actresses. We try to give Gina money for them, but she won’t take it, insisting that we more than paid for our purchases by signing the Japanese Demon Heart posters she had on hand. Apparently Jamie is right when he’s always saying Demon Heart is big in Japan.

It’s while Gina is wrapping up our posters that Rico suddenly lights up and smacks me on the arm. “You know what you have to do, right?”

“What?” I furrow my brow, suddenly suspicious.

“You have to tweet about this,” he says, eyes dancing.

“Aw, dude, c’mon.”

“You have to tweet something, Reed,” Rico says, reaching over and wriggling my phone out of my sweatshirt pocket. “Seven-four-two-six, right?” He watched me punch in my phone passcode on set once, and he’s been using it against me ever since. He opens Twitter and hands it to me. “Might as well tweet now, about this.”

I know he’s right, so I take the phone from his outstretched hand and stare at the blinking cursor on the white tweet box. Don’t think about how many people will read this. I don’t know what my follower count is up to and I don’t want to know.

“Be sure to mention I’m booth two forty-four!” Gina calls from behind Rico, and I laugh.

“Okay, okay, I’m doing this one for you, Gina,” I say, and I type out a message about how much I love Gina’s Poster Emporium and I found something amazing for my walls back home. Then I mention Booth 244, and before I can overthink it, I hit TWEET. It has 114 likes and 12 retweets by the time I even click over to my notifications tab. Intense.