the last picture show #2
The management shuts down the balcony for the midnight screening, but I’m able to slip past the red velvet rope and sneak
upstairs. I have the entire section to myself. The rest of the crowd sits below in the orchestra. No one’s noticed me. Or
maybe they have. There’s only one person whose attention I want tonight. I’ve just got to wait and see if she finds me.
Find me, Lilith. Please. I need you . . .
The crowd below is growing, filling in. All those bodies. They don’t see me up here. I feel like I’m looking down on some
pit, a chasm crammed with lost souls.
Is this what hell feels like?
Footsteps. I hear heels against the balcony floor. They echo against the steps like hooves and suddenly all I can think of
is the four horsemen. Which one’s behind me?
I’m not alone. The heels clop louder, closing in, and now I’m picturing the devil drawing near, their hooves lifting the hairs
on the back of my neck.
But I’m not about to turn. I focus on the audience below as this stranger sits in the row right behind me. I sense them, their
body, as they take the seat just behind mine.
I don’t look, keeping my attention locked on the screen. The movie has yet to start, the lights still up, that open expanse
of white yearning to be filled.
The person behind me doesn’t say a word. It’s her. It’s got to be her. There’s a current of electricity in the air now, I
can feel it. Particles gathering. I hear that song I can’t sing.
The chandelier surges for just a second before the lights go dim, sapped of its color. We’re plunged into darkness. The projector
is at the rear of the theater, up here, in the balcony, so I can hear the massive machine whir to life, its internal mechanisms
reviving, teeth seizing the celluloid film strip and weaving it through, shining its light.
The beam reaches over our head. I can see it.
The shaft is so close, directly above me, that I almost want to reach out and see if I can touch it, graze my fingers through the beam, feel the warmth of it, maybe even touch the images themselves, feel the movie seep into my skin, its characters, its colors, its sound, letting it pour into me.
Whoever is behind me—
Lilith
—still hasn’t spoken. Maybe they are just as transfixed by the film as I am. This is something I want to share with her. This
magic. This place is worth sharing.
The opening credits to Vertigo begin. There’s the eye, the dizzying spiral spinning out from the iris and filling the screen, consuming us all.
The person behind me leans forward.
No words pass between us. I simply sense their presence, the proximity of their body to my own, as they close in. Draw near.
The hairs on the back of my neck bristle.
Breath. I feel the warmth of their exhale spread down my spine.
Still, nothing. No words. I want to turn and look, but what’s the point? The body she’s possessing would distract me. Maybe
it’s better I don’t see. Don’t look. This way, here, in the dark, in the shadows of the movie theater, we can just talk. The
two of us. I don’t have to focus on whose body she’s in and she can simply speak to me from the pitch black.
“You found me,” I say.
“We did.”
Look at them fall. Bodies in endless descent. See how they plummet, eternally spiraling.
Jordan keeps his eyes on the screen. The images play out in a glorious, blinding array. It’s impossible not to be seduced
by the fluid parade of individual pictures, purling through the projector at such a rapid clip, it creates the illusion of
movement.
We can hear it, even now, the roar of celluloid, a raging river of the film reel speeding through the kinetoscope, what a wondrous machine, a glorious invention, and here we are, at the mouth of this mighty flow, the images pouring forth, crashing over of us, we feel like we might drown. Let it. We welcome the flood.
We are so close to Jordan now, leaning forward in our seat. His neck presents itself to us, that tender flesh. Our lips are
there, right there, just at his ear. We can whisper anything we want to him. Tell him all our secrets. This is why we are
here, yes? To share this with him. Experience everything this world has to offer.
We sit in silence. Let his presence fill us.
“You found me,” he says to the screen, eyes ahead.
“We did,” we say back. “You’re easy to find.” His body burns, even in the dark, an oscillating flame. We lean forward even
further, until our lips are at his ear. We hold there, letting the warmth of our breath spread over his skin, then we whisper,
“Did you miss me?”
“Yes,” he says.
“All you ever have to do is come calling,” we say. “We’ll always answer.”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
We sense something different about him. His erratic pulse. He’s covered in sweat.
Afraid. He’s afraid. “What happened?”
“I needed to see you.”
“Here we are.” What could’ve happened to him? Why won’t he tell us?
“Where have you been?” he asks. “I thought I’d lost you . . .”
“Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know . . . The way we left things at the museum, I guess I just didn’t know if you were needing some space or not.”
Space. This distance of skin. It feels like miles. A gulf between us.
We want to close that gap. Narrow our bodies down.
“We thought you wanted some time away from us,” we reply.
“Not even close.”
“Chalk it up to a miscommunication then,” we offer. “See? If we just talk to each other, maybe we can avoid misunderstandings
like this from now on.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I just need to listen to my personal demons.”
“You have plenty of those, don’t you?”
He says nothing, so our attention drifts to the film. “Do you believe that someone out of the past, someone dead, can enter and take possession of a living being?”
The saturation of colors, so bright, so enormous, washes over us both. Lush, vivid reds and greens. The poetry of the abyss.
We are peering into an infinite chasm, a spiral that will never end, even after the film itself is over. It will merely devour
more and never get its fill.
“We’ve seen this film before,” we offer. “All these men claiming ownership over this woman’s body. Nothing but a toy for the
boys to play with.”
“Isn’t that what you do?” The question cuts through the dark, even at such a low tone. There is no worry over drawing unwanted