Sunburn: A Novel(58)
“I didn’t ask, but my hunch is that her family had a black-and-white set, so she wouldn’t know.” The guy has the self-awareness to be chagrined. “She did remember one scene in vivid detail.”
“Have at me,” Bob says. “Graduated UT-Austin six years ago with a film degree. Still unclear how I ended up in the land of the Blue Hen.”
“The Blue Hen?”
“That’s the mascot for University of Delaware. I’ve gone from Hook ’em Horns”—he does the fingers—“to who gives a cluck?”
The guy’s smile is polite but he’s clearly not much on small talk. “Anyway, all she remembers is that it’s in Paris and there’s a bonfire. A man has killed a woman, but maybe it’s by accident? Or she deserves it? And it happens that there’s a big bonfire that night, so he rolls her body up in a carpet and goes out, throws the body in the bonfire.”
“Does he get away with it?”
“What?”
“In the movie? Does his plan work?”
“I don’t remember. I just thought—well, I thought it would make an impression, if I found this movie she was talking about.” This smile feels more genuine. “At least it would prove that I’m listening to her, right?”
Bob nods, as if he has as much experience with women as this older man. He hasn’t had a girlfriend for eighteen months. He’s dated here and there, but his job is a catch-22 when it comes to a social life: Women want to date Baba O’Riley at Video Americain, but if he wants weekends off, he can’t be Baba O’Riley at Video Americain. He’s going to be Bob Riley again.
This guy could probably get women if he worked the midnight shift at the sanitation department.
“Did you say Paris?”
“Yeah.”
“Could the guy be a musician?”
He shrugs.
“Paris. A bonfire.” Something is flicking Bob’s imagination, he can almost hear the movie’s soundtrack in his ear. Bernard Herrmann. He’s hearing Bernard Herrmann, but not this film, yet he’s also seeing an actress who is integral to a pretty famous film with a Herrmann score. “Are you sure it’s Paris?”
“I’m not sure of anything.”
Bob pages through some of the video guides they keep behind the counter. His mind is racing along, hearing music again, but this time he has finally identified it—the score of My Darling Clementine. Everything clicks into place, cylinders sliding into a tumbler. My Darling Clementine. Chihuahua. Linda Darnell. Linda Darnell, with her pout and her put-upon act.
“Hangover Square,” he says, snapping his fingers, as pleased with himself as if he were a doctor solving a medical mystery. “Not Paris. London. It’s whatever that day is in England when they celebrate that guy not blowing things up.”
“Guy Fawkes Day,” the customer says. “So do you have it?”
“I’m not even sure it’s out on video. The director didn’t have much of a career, I don’t think. But if you really want it, I can look into it.”
“I live downstate, in Belleville, almost an hour’s drive. If I opened an account—could I overnight the movies back to you? There’s nothing near us like this, of course. But my”—that pause again—“girlfriend, she likes old movies. Obscure ones.”
“Clearly. But as for mailing the movies back, all I can give you is a very flabby maybe. I’d have to ask the owner. We take a credit card for all accounts, you lose a movie, we charge your card, but I’ve never had anyone ask if they could mail it back. I know this much—if it got lost in the mail, that would be your problem.”
“As you said, you don’t even have it in stock. But if you find it, yeah, I’d like to know.” He takes out his Visa card, fills out the paperwork. Bob can’t help noticing he lists his home address as Baltimore, which has its own Video Americain.
As he’s finishing up, he asks: “What about She?”
“Who?”
“She. The movie. Do you have that?”
“Oh, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Ursula Andress. That might be in.”
He finds it in general horror, which strikes him as sloppy. They should have a Christopher Lee shelf.
“Another kind of bonfire movie,” he says. “Your girlfriend have a thing for fires?”
The guy’s smile flickers, slow, like neon blinking before it reaches full tilt. “You know, I should probably wait to check this out until I find out what it’s going to cost me to mail these back overnight. I work almost every day.”
“Who doesn’t?” Bob asks agreeably.
“Is there, like, a vintage store nearby? With household items?”
“Household items?”
“I’m looking for an old sprinkler bottle, the kind women used to use to wet down clothes when they ironed. My girlfriend talks about how much she wishes she had one.”
“She likes to iron and watch old movies. Dude, you have hit the jackpot. Does she have a sister?”
“I have no idea.”
35
Polly pulls two drafts for Max and Ernest. The High-Ho is quiet tonight. It’s quiet almost every night now. The youngish couples in town might come in on Fridays and Saturdays, but weeknights are slow. Adam has been making old-fashioned comfort food—brisket and chicken pot pies and what locals call Maryland stew—but it is, as he keeps pointing out, a small town. That’s why they need to make the restaurant a destination unto itself. She has been reading up on a restaurant-hotel in Virginia, the Inn at Little Washington. It opened in a garage in 1978 and, in less than ten years, became the first restaurant to earn five diamonds from AAA. They could do that here if they had some cash. You don’t have to have water views to have a successful inn if the restaurant is good enough.