Dead Waters - Anton Strout [53]
“Let’s see,” I said. “Mason gave me a pass on the remedial levels of Monster Craft and bumped me up to his Harryhausen and Hollywood. Still made me take Bela, Lon, and Boris, though. Said I had a lot to learn about makeup still.”
The girl stared at me a moment longer before her face shifted to a welcoming smile. “Yeah, BL and B is a real bitch,” she said. “I was ready to give myself real facial scars instead of makeup by the time we got to finals.”
“I hear that,” I said, signaling for the guy working the bar. “You mind if I buy a round for the table?”
Elyse smiled. “We don’t mind at all, do we, boys?” she asked, offering me her hand. “I’m Elyse. Acting track.” As I expected, she had a strong, firm handshake but still kept it dainty enough. “Mr. Tall across from me there is Darryl. He edits things to make me look good in front of the camera. Chunky Monkey back there is Mike, who is the camera on the cinematography track. The chatty one at the back is Trent, and his fellow frosh with the soul patch and bleached-blond hair is George, the one crowding Darryl. We’re trying to paper-train those two. They’re undeclared still.”
I waved to the group of them, nodding as I looked them over. “I’m Simon,” I said.
Darryl was clacking away on his netbook in front of him on the table. “Do you have a last name?” he asked.
“Why? Are you taking notes?”
The big guy stopped typing and lowered the screen until it closed shut against the keyboard. “No,” he said, folding his hands over it.
“I thought maybe you were the party stenographer,” I said.
“Don’t mind Darryl,” Elyse said. “He’s our resident tech geek–slash–editing maven. A bit OCD, but otherwise socially functional.”
“Barely,” Mike said.
Darryl flipped him the bird in retaliation, and then turned to me. “I just wondered what your full name was, to see if I could recall you.”
“Oh, right,” I said, not really ready for the question. My brain froze and I went with the first thing that came to mind. “It’s Vanderous. Simon Vanderous.”
“Is that Dutch?” George asked, running one hand through his blond shock of punked-out hair.
“Only half,” I said, wondering if I was turning red. “Don’t ask me what the other half is. I’m a bit of a mutt.”
“Could you say that again for the camera?” Mike asked, and I looked over at him. Sure enough, his enormous hands were cradling a digital video camera.
“Are you. . . taping me?”
Mike looked at me from behind the camera like I was stupid. “We are film students,” he said, “and what better way to pay tribute to our recently deceased prof than by taping our mourning?”
“So, you’re here for the memorial?” I asked, wondering how they had gotten wind of it.
Elyse scrunched her face up. “Huh?” she asked. “What, now?”
“Never mind,” I said as the beer arrived. I set to pouring their five glasses before filling one of my own. “I just meant we’re all in mourning for Professor Redfield, aren’t we? I was wondering: why are you here, though?”
“Eccentric Circles?” Elyse asked. I nodded. “The professor used to wax nostalgic about this place, when he wasn’t waxing nostalgic about the gory glory days of monster movies and the film industry, that is. Said this bar used to remind him of his misspent youth, so I dunno. Seemed like an appropriate place for a send-off.”
Maybe Professor Redfield had been just as nostalgic for the old days as the Inspectre was. For a man who had supposedly turned his back on the Fraternal Order of Goodness and the D.E.A., he certainly spent enough time hitting their favorite watering hole. And for what?
A glimpse of the world usually unseen by the average New Yorker? A world he knew existed, but had turned away from when his own life had almost been cut short at the edge of a ghoul-filled fissure? The temptation of the paranormal must have been too great to turn away from it completely. That which had been seen could not be unseen and all that.
Mike panned his camera around the bar, taking it in. “I dunno,” he said. “I think the place is kind of creepy.”
“True,” I said.
“Well,” Darryl said with a chuckle, “that’s Professor Redfield