Last Night at the Circle Cinema (14 page)

“Miss me?” he'd asked Olivia on the Night of 1,000 Escalators.

“Of course,” she'd said, linking a finger into one of his belt loops as a way to steady herself on the steepest ones we'd found, from the top of the Metropolitan Building down past the lobby and into the subway.

“Mais bien sûr,
Le Nut Sac,” I translated into French, although no one had asked me to. If I'd had Bertucci's knack for stating what no one wanted to hear, I might have added that his absence had made my life a little easier.
“La vie est plus facile sans toi.”

Less fun? That too. But also not as stressful. His manic-to-mellow moods were hard to keep up with and, if I actually admitted it—which I did but only in therapy—I wasn't thrilled about the time he'd been alone with Livvy.

This also made me feel like an asshole.

Olivia had totally stepped up to bat for Bertucci from the minute his mom got diagnosed, and while I'd pitched in where I could, I certainly wasn't there every day. So what did I resent? The fact that Livvy was a decent enough person to miss her own senior prom to pick out caskets with our best friend? The last English paper I'd turned in was on Ophelia as a victim of circumstance, and I believe the phrase
phoning it in
best describes my effort. At least that's what Mrs. Connolly said in her comments. She'd written, “What are you trying to say here?” in big red all-caps.

“I don't know,” I wrote beneath, even though I wasn't handing it back in or anything.

Watching Olivia commit so fully to helping Bertucci only highlighted how good she was at so many things. And while I was glad that all of Bertucci's work had paid off and he'd gotten his genius grant and an article in the paper to prove it, where did that leave me?

“Oh, don't be such a turd,” Olivia had said as she checked off another escalator on Bertucci's spreadsheet.

Bertucci could have easily brought up how hard he had it, with the particular circumstances of his home life, the rabbit holes that made up the cruel forest of his brilliant mind, or how stable my life seemed in comparison, but he didn't. “Alex Codman,” Bertucci said, “you, sir, are bound for something big.”

“That's not how it works, though, right?” I held on to the moving black banister and picked at a strand of coconut that was wedged between my back molars. We'd stopped at Sweet Nothings after nineteen escalators.

“Like what? Great, you mean?” Olivia had half-shouted from the escalator next to mine. They weren't particularly synchronized, so the three of us weren't riding up at the same speeds. Olivia was just behind me, but Bertucci was way ahead, as if his step moved faster.

“Exactly,” I said. “Maybe some people walk around thinking they're destined for greatness or at least more than mediocrity, but ...” I'd watched the stairs slip back into the machine; the black rubbed handrail slipping down to repeat what it had just done. “I think I just might have the opportunity to neither excel nor fail. Just kinda float.”

There was a commotion and Olivia quickly hauled herself up one side of her escalator and swiveled so she was on my left, then landed two steps above me. “I don't for a second think that's true.” She paused as we neared the top. Bertucci was already there, waiting for us on the platform before leaping onto the next triple set that lead to another floor of retail. “You know what I think?”

I could smell the licorice on her breath, see a gap of skin between her English Beat T-shirt and the top of her jeans. “What, Livvy?”

She opened her mouth to correct me, I thought, give me a stern
Olivia,
but she put her hands on my shoulders. “At some point, you're going to see your name in lights—metaphorical or otherwise—and you'll know what everyone else does.” She licked her lips and prepared to step off the stairs. “Your life is going to be amazing—and anyone who's a part of it will feel that.”

We stepped onto solid ground just for a minute before the next moving staircase beckoned. I didn't know if Bertucci heard Olivia's prediction. I wasn't sure I'd want to hear what he had to say.

“Who's in the mood for beans?” Bertucci had asked, breaking the short spell Livvy had cast on me.

“When have I ever declined a visit to the Bean Pot, even if we already ate foods
a
,
b
, and
c
, and I have the coconut stuck in my teeth to prove it?” I took the next escalator as though it were nonmoving stairs, bounding up to get to the Bean Pot first.

“Escapades on Escalators require Emergency Protein,” Bertucci said when he was behind me in line. Livvy had her arm snaked through his, but Bertucci's frame was awkward, and they looked like Dorothy and the Tin Man.

“Just remind me I have got to stay upwind of you both,” Livvy said, but her face looked like she only ever wanted to be right next to us. I did not so much as dream of having my name in lights, more just having her there beside me to gaze at the marquee.

••••

Had I been so roped in by Lissa's looks? The tank tops that stuck to her skin that begged to be peeled off? Had Bertucci ever hooked up with her? Had we all wanted to bring her into the fold to make things easier? To disperse the weird triangle we'd become?

Probably I wanted Lissa to be more than she actually was. After the
Rashomon
movie, while Livvy'd ordered pizza, I told Bertucci about the bathroom session. “The thing about it is ... she's the kind of girl who will come over to your house and give you a blowjob and then offer you brownies that she's just made. And not just regular brownies. Shit like s'more brownies or grasshopper brownies, which have these mint and dark chocolate chewy things.” Bertucci fiddled with the plastic silverware—he ate pizza with a fork and knife—and regarded me with disgust. “My point is it's awesome but it's also kind of like, Really? That's what you want to be?”

Bertucci saw it: Lissa desperately trying to be part of us and failing. It had taken until now for me to admit it, when there wasn't really an
us
to be a part of anymore.

How sad it was to be only tangentially related to something that you wanted so much to be a part of. How pathetic it was to long so desperately for something. To have everything just out of reach.

I thought Bertucci would be with me when I went to the Circle lobby to open the package Lissa had handed me, but he was nowhere to be found. It was painful thinking about moving away from someone who knew me so well. Well enough that he could count on me forgetting the plan, reading every stupid inch of the
Brookville Baton
, and seeing the ad he'd placed. The fact that Lissa had also seen it and figured it out made me think that Bertucci had wanted her to show up. I didn't know if I'd ever make another friend like Bertucci. I guessed not.

I walked through the vacant back lobby past the never-inhabited snack bar, feeling almost normal. Then, right when I allowed myself that luxury, I did a double take. In the half-light, I craned my neck to see. Apprehension played at my fingers, wormed its way into my breathing.

I had to shift back and forth to make out the words, but it wasn't my imagination. That much I knew. Bertucci used to say I could be paranoid, and when I disagreed, he'd said, “In the words of the great David Foster Wallace, yes, but ‘are you paranoid enough'?” Only I wasn't being paranoid. There, in the front of the sickly display of candy boxes, written in slanted script, were the words
I Know
.

I swore in my head and then aloud. Their prank had been stupid, the one on my bathroom mirror (though I didn't know if it was scary or hot that Olivia had been in there at some point), and truth be told it was lame by Bertucci's standards, but in the darkness of the movie house, it got to me. My own anxiety annoyed me. This in turn made me march over and wipe the words away with my sleeve.

Satisfied, I turned to go. A haunting thought occurred to me, and I was desperate to find Olivia, figure out what was in the package, and find a way out of the mess I'd created, but I also knew I had to turn around. Slowly, as though I was being watched, my lungs shook as I breathed and I pivoted.

There, where I'd swept the words away, were more words. The same words.

I know. I know.

I erased them again. They reappeared. I got rid of them faster and they rewrote themselves. Sweat and fear mixed on my skin.

What do you know?
I know
.

But what?
I know
.

It was like that game we had played in drama elective when we'd been assigned a phrase—
take the eggs
or
are you sure
—and you had to say it over and over again, changing your tone to convey a different emotion but never adding more words. It sounded dumb, but when I'd been paired with Livvy and she asked me for the fourteenth time
are you sure
, seeing the directness of her stare, I felt unhinged. I had excused myself with a bathroom pass, and by the time I was back the exercise was over.

Seeing
I know
in the coffee-colored light in the empty back lobby made me nauseated, the fear stinging the hairs on my neck, hairs that Livvy had once trimmed in her bathroom. I pictured her hands on my neck and remembered the way Bertucci had been the DJ, finding songs with the words
hair
or
cuts
or even the Molecules's cover of “Hirsute.” It was like they were taking care of me somehow.

I heaved, puking onto the industrial carpet, then I backed away and fairly sprinted toward the main lobby, where I hoped Livvy was waiting for me—or at least hadn't taken off, done with the whole night, with me and my inability to express myself properly, with Bertucci's maniacal plans.

I reached the ticket booth out of breath, reeking of sick, wishing I'd thought to bring gum or breath mints even though as a rule I hate both gum and breath mints. Without realizing it, I'd gripped the package from Lissa so hard I'd torn part of it.

Light from the parking lot filtered into the room. I stood, hoping Livvy would show up or that Bertucci would tell me what he'd planned next. The black and white industrial clock ticked audibly, the ghosts of moviegoers past seemed to snake out from the ticket booth, all that pre-film anticipation sucked into the vacuum of time. I waited a full eight minutes before calling out.

“Liv—Olivia! I have something. We need to open this together!” No response. I tried again. “Lissa gave me something!”

Livvy stepped out from the shadows behind the large interior pillars. “An STD?”

“Yeah, gonorrhea.”

“You can't even spell gonorrhea,” Livvy said.

“Good thing she gave me a package instead, then,” I said and waved the crinkled manila envelope at her.

She stepped closer to me. She'd taken off Bertucci's sweater and tied it around her waist, the arms of it long and flopping uselessly against her thighs. “Where is Lissa, anyway?”

“Gone,” I told her. I tried to close the distance between us by moving to the front of the ticket booth where Livvy stood, but she came around back as I moved, making us only switch places. I leaned on the booth with both hands.

“Did she leave on her own, or was she pushed?” Olivia asked, referring to the paper I'd written, “Anna Karenina: Did She Fall, or Was She Pushed?” I'd gotten a B.

“I'm pretty sure she was pushed,” I said. It wasn't convincing enough, and I knew I had to try and speak up. “I mean, I asked her to leave.” I put the package on the ticket booth as though I were about to pay for admission, and Livvy plucked it with two fingers as one might a dirty jockstrap.

Olivia was the kind of person who takes forever to open presents, undoing the tape just so, saving the wrapping paper, basically being annoying as all fuck, so I was surprised when she ripped the padded manila envelope all the way.

She pulled out a piece of white paper, and instantly her face fell. She chewed on her lip. “Bertucci's writing.” He had the kind of penmanship that guaranteed that, even if you lost touch for decades, the second a postcard arrived you'd know who it was from. All caps, each letter pointed as a spire. “Your basic instructional fare.”

I took the note and read it aloud. “The best way out is always through.” I coughed.

“I can't believe he asked her here,” Livvy said, circling back into Lissa fallout.

“I know.” I thought about touching Livvy's hair. “But I get it, sort of.”

I could see Livvy acquiesce, her shoulders slumping. “Look, I know she's pretty. And objectively, she has the beginnings of a good person. At least, Bertucci thought so.” Livvy paused. “Do you ever think maybe I tried to be friends with her—or you kept ... whatevering with her—just to support that theory of his?”

“You mean, that she might be ... one of us?”

Livvy nodded. “But squares collapse. Bertucci told me that.”

“Bertucci said a lot of things.”

Livvy sighed and said, “Fine,” in a way that suggested anything but.

She tried to pull the package away from me, but I gripped it harder, reading aloud. “
In the rear of the main theater, you will find a balcony
. Like we don't know that? I was the one who showed him the balcony access.”

“It's not a competition, for God's sake,” Olivia snapped.

Everything's a competition.
“Ok, sound system, blah blah blah.” I looked at her. “So, I guess we go?”

Olivia pulled a folded piece of paper out of the ripped package. “The CD. And another note.” She held it out to face me. On the CD cover was a Post-it that read,
This should already be playing
.

“He knew she'd be late,” I said, that sickening feeling building in my stomach. He always knew everything.

“Well, Lissa's always—” Olivia she shook her head. “Honestly, this whole thing is too weird to digest right now. Also ... you smell gross.”