Camera Phone. Brooke Biaz

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      . . .

      “Karen, I don’t know what to say here. Help me out.”

      “Ciaran, you are not listening!”

      “What?” I say. “What?”

      “Would you just turn that thing off?”

      I stand propped against a white convertible as a truck the size of a house passes, and I catch the huge tail lights in a full elongating phone shot away to north and it just looks great as a slight but maybe even slightly red dust whirls up behind it and the cars parked on either side of the road rock a little and the load, whatever it is, train wheels or cogs or huge buttons or something, rattle, and clink against each other.

      Then I turn around again, but Karen is gone.

      5

      Ras Bregendahl, my closest friend, who is famous for once running Jacob’s Ladder from dusk till dawn every night for a whole week, worked as an assistant projectionist at The Roxy over summer (three evenings, SE7EN—MIDNITE). Ras is a biophysics MS (now in his second optional extension year), and an absolutely first rate Horror freak.

      Catching the landline as I come in, I agree to meet him this evening at eight at Plexus, the student union bar, and I swear he says in a breathy voice: “Come alone.”

      “What?” I say. “What did you say?”

      But he laughs and is gone.

      Still, by five, Karen has not come back to the terrace and I’m forced to watch DVDs of Ricki Lake alone. Tonight a longstanding friend’s partner reveals her intentions while Ricki acts as a mediator. I eat a Greek salad that we bought on special from New World because it was near its date, and also a tuna mini-pizza, a Granola Bar, and drink some Evian, then I set the DVR to record Jerry Springer and, with my phone now charged, head out of Langford onto the Halfmarket where the street lights are now lit and there is a mist rolling in from the sea. Now this, I think to myself, takes the cake.

      Soon I’m traveling down The Promenade in the direction of Chester Circuit and shooting without a corrective screen, despite the lag effects. I suppose I could have shot this during the day with a night filter but I’m thinking “Honesty and integrity,” I’m thinking “You can fool some of the people some of the time” Also: with coming of high speed film no one much does it anymore. I think it will pay off. Bladers pass me, heading along the beachfront wearing black lycra cycle shorts and red stretch sateen jeans, their bodies absolutely piped. The sea is black and sketched with neon DIABLO CLOTHING, TATTOOOS, REXUS HOTEL and M in several colors. Outside the Lobster Room, which is notoriously gay and charges blood to get in, four lush undergrads wait for the doors to open, wearing white stretch lace dresses and ankle boots and watching kids skateboarding up the bandstand steps, doing floaters and hi-backs. Across the road two old bottle hounds, total wastes-of-space, are drinking white cider on the bench.

      In a moment of inspiration, I phone zoom in on one of them and he cries out:

      “You from MTV?”

      “That’s right,” I say. “Newsnight.”

      At which point he (yellow t-shirt, elasticized draw-string jog pants) gets up and steps out into the road in my direction and is nearly hit by a convertible (possibly a Mazda, an MX6 I mean), whose driver (insurance professional: INCREMENTS) hits the horns. But the hound’s saying: “I used to be in show business. You know? I used to be in films.”

      “Yeah?” I say. “Really?”

      I’ve got him in the most incredible deep phone focus with the whole promenade behind him flaring like an oil fire. He’s nothing more than a silhouette swaying left and right and blubbering:

      “I was in The Guns of Navarone.”

      “Really,” I say, noticing now that the lush four, having been alerted by the car incident, are now tuned in on this. I prop down on one leg and put my elbow on my knee to keep my phone steady. “Which one were you . . . Captain Mallory or Colonel Stavros?”

      “Mallory,” says the hound.

      “Nope,” I say, “couldn’t be Mallory. That was Gregory Peck.”

      “Well,” he says, looking for his bottle, “the other one then. . . . Staverros.”

      “That was Anthony Quinn.”

      His face, which is asymmetrical, now falls to his neck.

      “Maybe it was the sequel,” I say. “Maybe it was the sequel you were in . . . with Harrison Ford.”

      “What?” he says. “No. The what? Hey, I’m talking about the film The Guns of Navarone.” He staggers over close, unbalancing my picture. “You’re doing that wrong . . . Here! Here, give it to me!”

      He’s coming at me now with his arms out, grinning like a chimp, waving his hands about.

      “Listen,” I say, standing up and stepping back. “It’ll be on the news.”

      “Alright?” I say, starting to walk away. “Ten o’clock. Okay?”

      “You’re doing that wrong,” he screams.

      6

      Ras puts this month’s Black Heat on the table between us and he reads aloud as follows:

      “What is wrong with The Institute Benjamenta: Or This is What Dream People Call Human Life is what is wrong with all the Quay Brothers films. It’s a question, you know, of making the morbid detritus of life into some kind of psychic substance and these days these two guys, terminally attached at the hip, seem to take this to mean an endless cycle of repetitive scissor shots. I didn’t even like Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies that much. If they’d just get back to existential dread they managed to dredge up in Street of Crocodiles we could all go back to not sleeping at night. As to The Institute I’d rate it a “don’t even think you’ll get a hand-job after this one.” I suggest you rent Body Chemistry 2 again instead.”

      “Justin Madden,” says Ras. “I mean: how can you take that complete poke seriously?”

      There’s about half a crowd in Plexus, but there’s at least several people I recognize, and I film Neve Campbell and Liv Tyler from Supa-Video tonguing their drinks in a booth to the right, and Gary Oldman, I think, no I’m sure, in the corner. But still no sign of Karen.

      I mention this to Ras. And then I try to give him some idea of how my relationship with Karen is panning out since she left Roeford, moved in with me into the terrace, registered at USP, but now has turned her back on film in favor of “literature.”

      “I mean,” I say, “what is she doing? I direct, she acts. It just doesn’t make sense. I mean, when she finishes here, what? Look how Julia Stiles started, right? Mena Suvari? Patricia Arquette? In In . . . dee . . . pendents. Independent labels.”

      For reasons I guess I understand well enough, Ras looks awkward and pats his coat pocket, looking for a cigarette.

      “She’s got things on her mind,” he says.

      “Sure,” I say, “medieval literature.”

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