Missing Reels (46 page)

As soon as she was on the sidewalk she found a phone booth and called Matthew at his office.

“Four reels missing. My god, Andy. That useless git. What good is it being a compulsive if you can’t even hoard a complete set of something?”

“We still have six. We’ll be able to tell a lot about the film. And it’s Emil’s cut.”

“I know, you should be proud. I’m tired, that’s all.” He sounded exhausted.

“You better perk up. We’re going out to celebrate.”

“What, tonight? I can’t possibly. I think I’ve finally got something and I have to stick with it.” Not even tonight? As if to answer, he said, “You don’t want to see me anyway. Go see Miriam. She’s the important one. Isn’t she.”

She walked down the sidewalk, then turned around and went back to the pay phone. Jim picked up.

“Champagne! Champagne for everybody!” he sang out when she told him.

“Except Talmadge.”

“Come on, Talmadge too. We’ll tell him one little old social drink won’t hurt.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It is too. Does Matthew want to come?”

“He’s working.”

“What, again? All righty, bring Miriam. There’s one lady I’d like to see drunk.”

There was plenty of time on the subway and the walk to Avenue C to think about exactly what she’d say. But when she knocked, and Miriam opened the door, it was Miriam who had to speak first.

“Are you trying for coffee again?”

“I have something to tell you,” she said, pleased with how steady her voice sounded. “Something important.”

Miriam waved her in. “I just made my own coffee. I suspect it’s better, anyway.”

The same pot, the same cups. No brandy. Ceinwen picked hers up and ran a finger along the rim. Miriam had her legs tucked neatly to one side, just like Christmas. Except now she was the one with a story to tell, not Miriam. Get right to it, had been Jim’s advice. Don’t try to ease her into it, it’s too big.

“I’ve been looking for the film.”

A long silence. Miriam said, “Have you really. And what did you find?”

“Six reels.”

Miriam’s cup hit her saucer and for a few seconds Ceinwen just watched her breathe. “You’re telling me you have six reels of
Mysteries of Udolpho
? Where, in your closet?”

“Not here. At a film archive. The Brody Institute for Cinephilia and Preservation. It’s uptown.”

“I think,” said Miriam, very slowly, “you had better tell me exactly how this happened.”

She told her about going through the Gundlach monograph, about Edward Kenny and Louis Delgado Jr. and all the people who had died, and writing to Lucy Pierrepoint. She told her about the Vermont cache and Fred and going to see Norman.

“You talked to Norman. I see. Norman likes to talk.”

She’s in shock, Ceinwen thought, just like I was. “Yes. He told me about Leon Reifsnyder. Whitman, you knew him as.”

“Ah. Leon.” She picked her coffee back up. “I hadn’t thought about Leon in almost sixty years.” And she didn’t sound pleased to be thinking about him now, but that was natural. Ceinwen had decided long ago she wasn’t to going to tell Miriam anything about Leon except that he had taken the film from Emil’s house.

By the time she told Miriam about going to see Fred today, and looking at the title frame, she’d finished her coffee. Ceinwen gestured toward her cup. “Do you mind if I pour myself some more?”

“Yes.”

She stopped with her hand on the coffeepot. “I beg your pardon?”

“Yes, I very much mind your coming in here and accepting my hospitality, for all the world as if you weren’t a lying, conniving little witch.”

No one had ever said anything like that to her before, not even Lily. The words hit so hard she felt her eyes sting. “Miriam, do you understand? We found the film. Emil’s work, the thing you made together.”

“I understand perfectly well. I understand that you’ve spent weeks, no,
months
scurrying around behind my back. I admit, from the start I had you pegged as exactly the sort who might waste her time on a lost film.” Miriam’s coffee jostled and splashed as she braced her hands on the table to stand up. “But I thought once I quit answering all your questions you’d get bored and write a fan letter to, god, Joan Fontaine or whoever else isn’t pushing up daisies yet. I thought you were a film buff, not a lunatic. You
knew
there was a reason I never once tried to see any of these people after the movie was done.”

“I couldn’t tell you.” Her voice was quavering, she sounded like a scolded child. “It made you sad, you didn’t want to talk about it. I thought that—”

“Who gives a
damn
what you thought?” Miriam was on her feet and pacing. She
never
paced. Ceinwen wanted to tell her to calm down, but she was afraid that would only make things worse. She could picture Miriam keeling over, like Gladys Cooper in
Now, Voyager
. “Did you think I’d burst into tears of gratitude? Say you’re the daughter I never had or something?”

That slapped her into responding in kind. “I never expected anything from you, Miriam. Believe me, I don’t even expect good morning.”

“You and your pitiful act over your boyfriend, and me falling for it, giving you what you want so you’d be happy and go away …”

“Pitiful? I was curious, that’s all.”

“You were curious all right. So you come in here and you drink my coffee and smoke my cigarettes and you wheedle the most intimate details of my life out of me, all in that smarmy Southern voice of yours. ‘Oh Miriam,’” she mimicked, making Ceinwen sound like one of the Yazoo City debs. “‘Ah’m jes’ dyin’ to know what it was lahk to make a gen-yoo-ine motion pick-chur.” Miriam was standing still now, but this time she didn’t look steady doing it.

“I didn’t say that. I asked you—”

“And then you
use
that to run around digging up things that are absolutely none of your business. Writing to Lucy Pierrepoint, that god-bothering bitch. Asking her about Emil, when she never missed a chance to harass and humiliate him.”

“I was asking her about Frank Gregory.”

“Oh really? Did you ask whether he was a good lay, too? Going to see Leon Whitman. Did Norman happen to tell you what we called him? Did he?”

“No, he—”

“Uriah Heep. Crawling around that set, bowing and scraping. He was a toad. I’m amazed you didn’t get that out of Norman too, while you were busy going behind my back to him. How did you manage to track down Norman? Did you sneak a look at my address book when I was out of the room, like you nosed around my photographs?”

“What gives you the right to accuse me of that?” Ceinwen was finally on her feet and raising her voice, too. “You didn’t even tell me he was alive. Matthew had to go all the way to the
L.A. Times
archives and—”

“But of course, get your boyfriend involved too. He’s even sneakier than you are and his accent is better, too.”

“He only did it because of me!”

“I believe that. I believe you’d ask the man for his right arm if you thought it would do you any good.”

She was, to her relief, much too angry now to give any thought to tears. “I wasn’t doing it only for myself. I was doing it because if people work hard on something it deserves to survive.”

“And you deserve to be Joan of Arc, running in and saving all these pathetic old people, isn’t that it? Your incredible selfishness, your
conceit
. If you can’t make movies, you can at least worm your way in with people who did.” She stood up. “Get out.”

Miriam was still shaking, but Ceinwen was no longer worried about that. She was staring at Miriam’s face, the blotches that had never marred it before. The way her mouth was showing wrinkles that Ceinwen hadn’t known were there. “I’m a liar? That’s rich. You aren’t upset that I was nosy and went around talking to people who used to think you were a slut. You’re afraid the movie’s no good.”

“If you think I won’t call the police to get you out of here, you’re wrong.”

“You only saw it once,” she shouted. “Practically nobody else alive ever saw it, and if they did they’re too old to remember it. And now if it gets restored and people watch it, maybe they’ll react the same way they did back in Pomona. Maybe a critic will see it and say the same things as that guy from the
Times
.” She breathed deep and spat out every adjective. “That Emil was a lousy director and the movie’s a silly, pretentious piece of trash.”

“I’m picking up the phone right now,” said Miriam, and began to walk.

“You don’t want anybody to see you act.” Her voice was emerging so loud her throat began to burn. “You’re afraid you really were terrible. You call me selfish? You got your nerve, Miriam Clare.”

“My name is Gibson!”

“You’d rather have Emil’s last movie gone for good than have anybody look at a few reels and think he was a fool to put you in it!”

“Dear god,” shouted Miriam, “what does it take? What do I have to say to get you and your bleach-blonde hair out of here? Leave. I’m standing here with my hand on the phone. Leave!”

The door slammed behind Ceinwen with a force that knocked a paint chip off the jamb. She stood there, trembling herself, looking at the other door on the landing and wondering if there was a neighbor behind it, listening. She walked upstairs and discovered that Jim and Talmadge were standing in the open door to the apartment.

“That went well,” said Jim.

“I guess everybody in the building heard,” said Ceinwen.

“Possibly,” said Jim. “Kind of hard to catch all the details, but I don’t think she likes you anymore.”

“We came out here to see if we needed to break up a fight,” said Talmadge. “I thought you could take her, but Jim was afraid she might try a sucker punch.”

“She called me conniving. And a witch. And selfish and conceited,” said Ceinwen.

“Now
that
makes me mad,” said Jim. “I say you march right back down there and get that scarf back.” He paused. “After we finish the champagne.”

They went to the kitchen. “Talmadge made himself some tea,” said Jim. “What’s the herb tonight?”

“Chamomile,” said Talmadge. Ceinwen stood next to the kitchen table, hugging herself and staring at the stove. “Very soothing,” he added. She grabbed her neck. “You two can have some after the champagne. To cleanse.”

Jim paused at the fridge. “Maybe Ceinwen doesn’t feel like celebrating.”

She drew herself up. “Of course I do. Just because Miriam’s crazy doesn’t mean I’m not gonna celebrate.”

Jim poured the champagne into their one set of highball glasses and they toasted. “To Ceinwen’s obsessiveness,” he said, cheerfully, and she drank to that without a second thought. They sat for a little while, Ceinwen telling them about how long it would take to restore the film, and leaving out the technical bits when Talmadge started to do his cheekbone-popping exercises. She drained the last of her glass. “I have to call Norman,” she said.

“Didn’t you talk to him enough?” asked Talmadge. “And
oh
. By the way.” He draped an arm along the back of the couch with an air that was almost flirtatious. “I think Matthew is a lee-tle jealous of him.”

She stopped halfway to the phone. “Jealous of Norman?”

“Just a feeling I had,” said Talmadge, eyes crinkling and voice getting deep and mysterious. “The way Matthew said you went all the way uptown so Norman could show you his films and, ah, how to clean them up.”

“That’s Fred,” said Jim, “not Norman. Norman is the eighty-something-year-old gay guy. Try to keep up, Talmadge.”

“I thought the old guy was named Harry.” Talmadge sounded annoyed.

“He’s the old professor.”

“The one who had the movie?”

“
No
. Jesus. Harry is the one—”

Talmadge put up his hand. “This is way too complicated for me. Of course, if Ceinwen had told me all this stuff from the beginning instead of keeping me in the dark—not that I’m hurt about that or anything.”

“I thought Miriam would be mad at me if I told people,” said Ceinwen.

“Pshaw, you’re paranoid,” said Jim.

She found Norman’s number, dialed. Busy signal. She hung up and went back to the living room. They finished the bottle of champagne and she took some chamomile tea, tepid now. Talmadge and Jim began to debate ways to get her scarf back from Miriam. Jim was hoping Miriam would have enough class to wrap it up and leave it on their welcome mat. Talmadge was talking about the People’s Court. She went back to her room and dialed again. This time, it rang.

“Am I speaking to Norman Stallings?”

“My dear lady adventuress. Are you yet living?”

“I was trying to call you. The line was busy.”

“That it was. It was turning blue, as a matter of fact.”

“What?”

“I haven’t heard that kind of language from Miriam since the day this Iran scandal broke. Which, come to think of it, wasn’t that long ago. Maybe she’s always had a low-down vocabulary and I never bothered to notice.”

“She hates me now,” said Ceinwen.

“I could deny it, of course, but that would be deceitful. I didn’t think Miriam could surprise me anymore. But this was … unexpected.”

“I’m sorry, Norman,” she said. “I totally did worm Leon’s name out of you.”

“Yes. But you weren’t exactly subtle. I could have told you to buzz off.”

“I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

“She’ll get over it. She isn’t really mad at me, anyway. She was going on about how helpless I am, a regular babe in the woods, out there getting taken by reporters and conniving blondes. I reminded her of all my time in Army Intelligence spotting shady characters, and let’s not forget Hollywood, those folks could have outfoxed Rommel. She told me I’m a sucker for a pretty face, male or female, and that’s why when I met Eve Harrington, all I did was feed her cake.”

“Eve?” That was what Miriam thought of her now, Eve? Now she did feel like crying.

“Yes. Don’t get too upset. Eve makes out all right.”

It was so unfair. “Did you point out that Emil
wanted
people to see
Mysteries
?”

“Certainly. I told her that was why I talked to you. She said even Frank Gregory didn’t cut away four reels, and Emil wouldn’t have wanted that, any more than he’d have wanted to live with all four of his limbs cut off. I asked her to consider the possibility that she was being an itty-bitty teeny-weeny bit melodramatic, and at that point she became quite hostile.”