Your voice departs your apartment via a fiber optic cable. You’ve only said hello but she immediately recognizes you. “Neville! I’ve been waiting to see you. When can you come over, Hon?”
“Actually, I called to invite you out,” you say.
“What do you mean?”
“Someplace nice. A restaurant—”
“Don’t be silly, Neville. We’re not a couple.”
Your heart is pounding and your phone’s getting slippery. “I’d just— I’d like to take you to dinner.”
“Where?”
“I wondered if you had any ideas.”
“Silent Movie,” she says immediately.
You’ve heard people at the boffice mention this place. “Great,” you say, wondering if you’re being brave or merely stupid.
You’re standing on a dirty sidewalk beneath a fake marquee with Silent Movie spelled in plastic letters. You’re looking at a pair of metal doors with glass handles that glow blue, movie posters on either side. One’s Charlie Chaplin, the other’s Lillian Gish. But they’re fakes, they’re models, more hip and sassy-looking than real silent movie stars ever knew how to be.
People shuffle past you on the sidewalk and you have to keep moving to let them by. Alana comes up from behind so you don’t get a chance to look at her, and she’s embracing you from behind, saying she loves your “sexy suit.” You feel her breath on your ear, her hand on your butt. “I want to see it again,” she coos.
“We should go in now,” is the only thing you can think to say.
She’s pulling you by the hand and, in the darkness beyond the doorway, you see multiple figures flicker around her face. The most visible one’s a statuesque woman in a white greatcoat that buttons to her neck. Somewhat smaller, a skinny lady with flapper-style hair, thick lipstick, and a man’s suit so shear it looks sprayed on. There’s a young boy with pale legs and knobby knees in some sort of uniform: a kerchief, shorts, and emblems. There’s another figure, or maybe two, on the other side of her, but you can’t see them very well.
“How you guys doing?!” says the Maitre D, a small woman in a blue dress and one lone influencer, a barefoot girl in overalls.
“Oh, we’re doing good!” Alana says, pulling you close. “We’ll take a booth.”
“I’m sorry,” she says as you watch the teenage girl mouth out the Maitre D’s exact words: “Silent Movie has no booths.”
“But my friend told me—”
It’ll be harder to see her little people in a booth. “A table’s fine,” you say.
You stroll into a large space with a high translucent ceiling and artfully streaked walls. The decor’s minimalist. The waiters are dressed like ushers. There must be fifty people dining here along with their hundreds of influencers, all emanating an unsteady glow, peering across the gaps between tables, chatting, gesturing silently.
Your table is beside a heat lamp and Alana hangs her jacket on the chair back to reveal her shapely arms and shoulders. She’s twisting her body this way and that, looking all around, and you’re transfixed again. It can’t be that you’re the only one who finds her so spectacular, and you imagine people all around you must be watching, wondering how’s it possible someone like that can be with such an amazing woman?
And beyond where she sits, less than twenty feet away, a black and white movie covers the enormous wall; scenes of a city like a big gray machine. Planes and monorails speed between retro-futuristic buildings, neon lights tint the smoky air. It’s illuminated from behind you think, and the overly-bright shivering glare makes Alana’s influencers decompose against the palpitating blobs of the cityscape, and suddenly the huge out-of-focus face of a man appears with dark lipstick and mascaraed eyes.
Alana says, “I’m so glad you called me.”
You see a fourth influencer hovering near her ear; a middle aged man with a meaty build who’s dressed in a tophat and tails like a circus emcee. But Alana’s staring directly at you, trying to catch your eye, so you don’t get a chance to study him.
And all this visual stimulation is making you feel off-kilter, dizzy almost, and you know you’re required to say something.
“I, um, have you eaten here before?” is what you come up with.
“I love gorgeous food!” she answers, smiling happily.
The waiter arrives and begins his recitation of specials, but Alana interrupts. “Caviar,” she says as she looks at you pointedly over a cocked wrist. “I love caviar, don’t you? And I feel like celebrating!” Then, after glancing up at the waiter for a microsecond, “Bring the Czar’s Caviar and two Champagne Mules. We’ll read the menu while you’re gone.” The man seems to evaporate.
“What else do you want, Neville?”
The menu is printed on gray paper. There’s a heading for Premiers, another for Main Features.
“I have no idea,” you say.
“Let’s make it easy. Let me choose everything.”
“But—”
“Don’t think so much! I know what you like.”
You attempt a casual laugh. “How can you know that?”
“Maybe I don’t know precisely, but I have a very good sense of you. I can tell a lot about you.” She pauses. She’s staring directly into your eyes again. “It’s a gift I have, being able to read people. And I can tell what sort of person you are.”
“Really?”
“Not Really. Real.”
“Real?” you say, flashing on her business card that’s still tucked someplace in your pockets. “You mean my voice?”
“I love your voice.”
“But why?”
“Because it’s so innocent.”
She’s smiling a hole in you, leaning towards you as if she’s in the midst of telling you a clever joke. Her black eyes, her myriad little freckles—
“Your voice is fresh. You sound so authentic.”
You feel this is the nicest thing anybody has ever said to you and you don’t want to question it. You don’t want to deny yourself this moment.
“And your ass is nice too.” She laughs her pearly laugh.
You take another gulp of champagne. You feel unbearably happy to be like this with her. Your eyes are watering and soon you’re laughing. It’s not a laugh. It’s more of a giggle. What’s happening to you? You can’t remember when you’ve felt so good.
The waiter has reappeared. He’s standing beside your table but she’s not looking at him, she’s looking at you. “It would never occur to you to use your voice the way I want to use it,” she says. “We’ll make an excellent team, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” you say hypnotically, not exactly sure what you’re agreeing to. It doesn’t matter. You have no desire to resist her.
The caviar’s on a bed of ice. There are little crackers as well. The champagne’s consumed rapidly, and she orders another bottle. Alana eats and drinks with gusto, commenting on the things she likes and doesn’t.
The movie on the wall reminds you of something, and the waiter tells you the name of the film is Metropolis and now you recall that you saw it in college. It was made during a time of social upheaval and a blossoming in the arts, just a few years before the Nazis swept it all away. This thought leads you to mention that you’ve been going to a lot of lectures and plays.
“I didn’t know you were an outgoing person,” she says.
“I have a sort of weird obsession with celebrities.”
“Really? That surprises me a little.”
“It seems like you could be a celebrity, Alana.”
She laughs. “That would be too easy.”
Soon the fetus of Spanish octopus arrives, Atlantic Bluefin tartare, baby bunny cheeks with hedgehog mushrooms.
You begin to tell her about your “accident” but she’s not terribly interested.
“You don’t need to put yourself through things like that,” she interrupts.
“Well, there were four of them, so—”
“When your position’s weak, never act on emotions. You should know this at your age.”
“What age do you think I am?”
She pauses with her fork in the air. “Hmmm. I think you’re thirty-six. Am I right?”
“That’s exactly right!” you lie, thinking you’re glad you look younger than you are.
She beams you a smile.“But your body looks nineteen,” she whispers, and then laughs out loud.
“How about you? How old are you, Alana?”
“Just three years older than you are, Sweetie.”
“You mean thirty-nine?”
“I’m so dreading the big four-oh!” She sighs and rolls her eyes comically.
You’ve never dined with such abandon. Whenever she summons the waiter with his three sad-looking laborers on his shoulders, which she does a dozen times, he bends low to hear her questions and requirements: “No wild nettles, Honey! All the best places serve nervetti now. I asked for dry-aged! You understand dry-aged don’t you?” He takes notes on a crumpled slip of paper as she interrogates him about truffles. “Make sure it’s only Perigord. We will NOT eat Brumale!” You’re certain it’s only because of her beauty that he makes such a stupendous effort to please her.
When at last you’ve finished the Candied Buddha’s Hand with dandelion curd, the waiter brings the check and you slide your credit card into the leather folder without looking. “Add nineteen percent!” Alana says to him before he steps away.
When he’s gone you ask, “Nineteen?”
“I rate him as a nineteen on a scale of twenty-five,”
“He seemed nice,” you say.
“His neck’s so scrawny though.”
Outside the air feels cold. Mission Street’s filled with cars. Besides the engine noises and the honking, there’s laughter and shouting in the distance. You hear music coming from someplace close by and you suddenly remember it’s Friday night.
There’s a young couple in jeans and matching quilted vests standing at the open door of a cab, talking, probably deciding where to go next.
Alana, like a cat, slides through the door in an instant and calls out to where you stand frozen on the sidewalk. “Hurry up, Hon!” she says before slamming it.
You don’t know what to do. The guy in the vest is trying to pull the door open but Alana must have locked it. Finally he gives up. “Bitch!” he yells.
She flings the door open so it hits him hard in the legs and calls to you a second time, “Come on, Babe!” And slams it again. Without looking at the angry couple, you rush to get in on the other side. The auto-locks click as the cab surges forwards.
“I can’t believe you did that!” you say.
“Eddy and Gruenwald,” Alana tells the driver.
The driver laughs and you realize it’s a lady, though from the back, it’s a beefy-looking man with a flat top haircut and four children dressed in rags on his shoulder. “Nicely done, Sweetheart,” the cabby says.
“Do your doo-doo or get off the pot,” Alana says, referring to the quilted couple you guess.
“You’re the one I wanted to pick up anyway!”
She sighs and leans back, slides her arm under yours and pulls you close. “Such a nice dinner,” she mumbles softly in your ear, and then to the cabby: “I live in New York so I know about survival.”
“Do you really live in New York?!” you ask.
“I’m going there next week.”
“You’re moving away?”
“Will you miss me, Hon?”
You don’t know what to say.
She laughs. “It’s just a little trip. Don’t worry!”
Looking out the window, you’re pretty sure it’s the Potrero District; a sort of industrial landscape with garages and shuttered windows. There’s nobody on the street and you don’t recognize this spot. You search for a landmark or a sign and wonder if the driver’s going the right way. You think you know the city pretty well but you’re more than a little drunk. Why? Why did you do that? Why did you drink so much champagne? And why did you spend all that money? The answer is obvious: Because you want something to happen to you. You want to change things for yourself. You want to be happy the same way Myrna is. And in your case, the shark is Alana. This thought makes you laugh so hard that bursts of air come out through your nose.
“You okay, Sweetie?” She reaches down to rub the inside of your thigh.
Should you touch her? Should you respond? Should you wrap your arms around her? You want to kiss her, but “I’m fine,” is all you say, and pivot to see her a little better. You’re about to bury your face in her neck but the driver’s saying something that makes Alana laugh, and then abruptly she leans forward and, even though it’s a foreign language, you can tell she’s saying something vulgar. She’s using a new sort of voice as well, a voice you haven’t heard before. And what in the world is she saying?
The cabby is instantly angry and both of them are yelling now. They’re arguing in Chinese you think, but it’s not exactly Chinese, it’s something else, and the voice of the lady driver who looks like a man goes up an octave. She sounds positively shrill now, and the little woman in white on Alana’s shoulder, who’s German or Scandinavian or something, is using her megaphone to egg Alana on. All of Alana’s influencers, with the exception of the ringmaster, are screaming and pointing at the driver’s peasant children who rush around like mice on a hot skillet. Maybe all the champagne has made things clearer, or maybe your brain damage is worsening, because now you can see the little boy scout’s costume has a swastika on its collar even when that’s stupid. You’re making things up. Alana’s not a Nazi. She’s yelling in something like Maylay, not in German, and all these images are being formed against your will; images and faces, bodies and personalities you’ve pulled from your memory to feed these hallucinations of hundred-year-old ghosts. But you’re drunk enough to see it now: the lady in the long white coat is somebody you recognize, someone notorious, someone who’d think nothing of stealing somebody else’s cab.
Alana’s shouting at the cabby. Her perfect hairdo shakes with every word, and now the cabby’s stopped arguing. Her famished children are huddled together, they look like they’re weeping and you can see a sheen of sweat on the back of the cabby’s neck. The skinny lady with the crazy makeup’s squatting and snarling like a minx. The ringmaster lights his cigar, waves his arms to exhort an invisible crowd, then turns and gestures to you as if he’s giving you the cue to begin. You feel isolated from everything that’s happening here, but this is where you’re supposed to say something. This is where you need to explain to Alana that there’s a world beyond the visible.
“My mother was a dentist,” you blurt as your voice cracks—your excellent voice, your innocent voice. It’s the wrong thing! You didn’t mean to say it but you did. Alana finishes her tirade at this very moment and turns to you. “Don’t worry, Hon. We’re almost home.”
Everything’s turned unpleasant. The fizz has left the champagne. It’s a redlight. You don’t want to be here anymore and you shove open the door, detach yourself from her arm, step to the pavement and walk briskly back in the direction you came. Cars whiz by. A horn blasts right next to you and you’re tripping over your feet. There has to be a street sign around here somewhere. It’s called Larch. Little shards of glass glitter around your shoes but you rush into the narrow alley anyway. You’re halfway to the corner when the cab comes rolling up in front of you.
You watch her get out. She’s leaning into the open door and saying something to the driver and you hear them laugh. They’re back on friendly terms again. Now she’s smoothing out the hem above her gorgeous knees and the taxi’s driving away. Her heels click against the pavement as she approaches and surrounds you with a sisterly hug. “Let’s go, Babe,” she says.
You’re crossing Van Ness, crossing Polk, passing the KFC, the Phoenix Hotel. You’re climbing her filthy stairs again. She leads the way, waves to the second-floor Mama as you schlep past her greasy window. You’re having trouble keeping up and, on the sixth floor landing, you see one of your socks pushed up against the bannister. You start to pick it up but stop yourself. You're nearly there.
She’s already gone inside. The door’s ajar and you see the red glow beyond it. You slip though and slam it accidentally. You’re in the audition room again.
“Alana?”
“Go to where the light is, Honey.” You hear her voice from somewhere behind the wall.
You’re inside the red beam but the table’s gone. The mic’s on a boom attached to the ceiling now. The big soft chair is pushed back aways, and there’s something draped over its arm next to the headphones.
“What’s that?” you ask.
“A grass skirt. You’ll look ravishing!”
“Why, Alana?”
“Just put it on, Honey. This’ll be fun!”
No, Neville, nooooo! Don't do it!
The ringmaster lights his cigar, waves his arms to exhort an invisible crowd, then turns and gestures to you as if he’s giving you the cue to begin. You feel isolated from everything that’s happening here, but this is where you’re supposed to say something.
This is where you need to explain to Alana that there’s a world beyond the visible.
“My mother was a dentist.”
HA!