What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [73]
A small line of people had queued up to see it, and she joined them without hesitation. Every other woman in line was not only young but with a man—a date, a husband—but Arlene was alone, still in her waitress uniform, and if anyone from town recognized her, no one made a motion. The patrons were a younger set than most at the café, not at all like the farmers or the farmers’ wives, not at all like people who might have whispered behind her back about how Dan Watson had now been missing for almost nine months. They were here to see a film, young people who didn’t bother with busybodies who whispered with the Western Union clerk to see if Dan Watson might be getting secret money transfers in Mexico. They lined up at the refreshments counter for popcorn and candy, Arlene slipping into the screening room and taking her seat as quickly as she could.
It had been a long time since she’d been to a picture house. It had been years—since Frederick—and when the screen lit up, Arlene startled at the bright white, the scope of what she was about to see, and she remembered that bubble of anticipation. This time, though, the anticipation had been replaced by a sense of confirmation, that her deep suspicion of the Actress and the Director would reveal that they had been up to something—exactly what, she didn’t know—but as the credits cracked across the screen and the film score jittered the audience, she felt even more certain in her desire to maintain the anger she had felt against them that day. The film—she felt it in her bones—was going to confirm it.
But when the screen read “Phoenix” rather than “Bakers-field,” and the camera’s prying eye brought her inside a room that looked nothing like her highway motel, Arlene let go of the righteous grip she’d held on her purse, but then tightened it again: she felt fooled by the Actress—brazen in her underclothes in the very first scene of the film! All along, Arlene had thought she would see her motel or even a replica of it. For all her hopes of seeing her place on the screen as a confirmation that she existed in the world, the story was set in Arizona, a woman in a bra and a man bare chested in a hotel chair.
Arlene almost stood up, indignant, but thought of all the young women in the audience, all the young men, and their silence behind her meant they didn’t mind at all what the Actress was doing on the screen. Arlene wouldn’t fool any of them, walking up the aisle with a nonchalance that suggested she was merely going to get a box of chocolates, so she sat and watched the Actress. Arlene quieted her mind enough to listen rather than just watch, and she learned that the Actress was playing a secretary deeply in love with the bare-chested man. She listened as they declared themselves to each other, thinking of Frederick, remembering the man who had sat across from the Actress that day, wondering if this might even be the same actor now. She saw immediately the Actress’s dilemma, the wish to be with a man she loved—what an old story—but there was no way in which they could be happy.
What did a search for happiness have to do with jagged letters and the dark silhouette of a house and the Actress screaming silently over her shoulder?
The Actress in her bra. The tittering of the young people in the audience, all behind her. Later in the story, an arrogant rich man flaunting money, drunk from an afternoon lunch. Arlene couldn’t picture the farmers at the café doing such a thing, though a small dot within her knew better. All kinds of people did things just like what she was seeing on the screen. The Actress eyed the rich man’s money, and Arlene knew she would steal it, her ugly confirmation coming in the form of the Actress plotting an escape from Phoenix, clad once again in her bra. Arlene thought of the newspaper