A moment after that realization struck me, one by one the kids began weaving their way out onto the empty street, where they began performing again. Only now the repertoire included bikes floating in the air, riders lifting off them to fly alone, like Walter had done, and other variations.
It was a child's dream, a child's drawing. You see them in crayon colors on the walls of any kindergarten class. Me on my bicycle, flying. Everyone's favorite scene in E. T.
I looked at Gambado. He gestured at his friends. "You don't like it? They're doing it for you. You're the guest of honor tonight."
"At what?"
The Ruth Theater was flanked by a take-out Mexican restaurant on one side and JUNE AND SID'S EXQUISITE CATERING on the other. In the window of the Mexican restaurant was a wilted, sun-bleached sombrero. For some mysterious reason, in June and Sid's window was a stuffed Pekingese dog. The kids noticed that and crowded around the window talking about it.
The theater interested me more. It was one of those small, pre-World War Two neighborhood theaters that were built when going to the movies was still a major event. Scalloped walls, brass on the doors, and miniature pillars made you feel like someone special on Saturday night, two tickets in hand and your girlfriend close by in her new high heels, walking across the red plush carpet. The place had seen better days, but it was in decent shape and, like so many smaller houses, was now reviving old films. On the billboard it advertised a 1954 film, New Faces.
"Go on in."
"This is it? We're really going to the movies?"
He nodded. His friends wheeled their bikes up to the door of the lobby and leaned them against whatever wall was nearest. None of them locked or did anything at all to protect the bicycles. Trusting souls.
"Are we seeing New Faces?"
"No, you know everyone there."
We walked through the glass doors together, past a copper stand where the ticket taker usually gave you back your stub. There was no ticket taker, but there were posters up on all the walls: posters of my films, posters of Phil Strayhorn's films.
Walking by Wonderful, Gambado pointed to the poster and said he liked that one best.
"What's your name?"
"Gambado's good. Call me that."
Two of the others stood at the doors, holding them open. When we passed, they both bent at the waist and beckoned us in with long sweeps of the arm.
The lights in the theater were already dim, so it was almost impossible to make out anything besides the fact there were others in the audience, seated in different places around the room.
"Where do you like to sit? How about in the middle?"
"Fine."
We walked past a woman sitting in an aisle seat. I looked at her as carefully as I could but she was unfamiliar.
"Here. Yeah, go in here, to the middle."
We sidled our way into the middle of a middle row. I was trying to count the number of heads in there and could make out maybe twenty.
There was music playing, the theme song to Midnight.
When we were seated, the music stopped immediately and the curtains parted in front of the movie screen.
The lights came up on a familiar setting: Phil Strayhorn and his dog sitting on the couch in his living room, looking at the camera.
Oddly, what was most disturbing about it, in the midst of all these other disturbances, was seeing Phil large like this. I'd watched him again and again on the video screen and grown accustomed to his face TV size, not a face that covered a wall, a hand as big as the chair I was sitting on.
"Hi, Weber. Here we are, and today you get the whole story." Hearing something off-camera, he turned to it. A moment later, Pinsleepe appeared and sat down beside him on the couch. They smiled at each other. She handed him a dog biscuit, which he gave to Flea. They both watched the Shar-Pei for a few seconds, then looked back at the camera. Phil smiled.
"I lost a bet because of you, Gregston. What do you think of that? Poor old Flea just ate his last dog biscuit." He scratched the dog's head. "Pinsleepe and I thought about making a big production of this, but then I remembered how much you hate Dimitri Tiomkin music and credits that go on forever, so we cut it right to the bone. If you want, after I'm finished telling you this, we have movies of everything and'll be happy to show you things as they actually happened. The last home movie, sort of.
"Okay." He took a deep breath and sat forward. "A long time ago, Venasque told me in his oblique way this would happen. The only thing I could do was prepare for it, so when it did come, I'd at least be ready. I did what I could, but as you know yourself, who can ever can be prepared for the miraculous?
"He told me to make the films and see what I'd find there. The only thing I found making Midnight was money and fame for the wrong reasons."
One of the kids in a row behind us whistled and screamed out "Bo-ring!" Strayhorn smiled and nodded.
"You're right. What do you think of those little shits who brought you here, Weber? Figure out who they are yet?"
Gambado gave the screen a big raspberry. "You were better as Bloodstone, man! Nobody's gonna give you an Oscar!"
"Do me a favor, Weber. Reach over and touch him on the arm or someplace. Anywhere'll do."
I looked at Gambado. His face in the theater dark was close enough to see he was very frightened.
"Should I do what he says?"
The boy licked his lips and tried to smile. "You have to. We're out of it now. Do it, huh? Just do it, man!" The last sentence came out trying to sound tough, but it was a scared boy sounding tough which didn't work. "Do it!"
I put my hand out and touched his face.
Remember what you see in the theater when you turn around and look toward the projector while the film is running? Pure white light like a laser flipping up and down energetically, with perhaps some cigarette smoke or dust bits hanging lazily in it. That's what Gambado became when I touched him: sheer white movie light for a moment and then gone. Nothing.
"It's never like you expected. Even angels! You'd think they'd have a little class. Not necessarily wings or harps, but at least well-behaved and innocuous. But what do you get? Little shits on racing bikes who don't know when to keep their mouths shut!"
To soothe him, Pinsleepe put her hand around his shoulder and hugged him to her. He paid no attention.
"'God is subtle, but not cruel.' Do you agree with that now, Weber? On your last, last chance to turn back, God sends out his legions to warn you, only they turn out to be prepubescent rats on orange bicycles! Today's version of the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz.
"And weren't his warnings effective? An actor gets murdered. Blow Dry disappears. Bike flips in the air and you're told a few times to photograph only them? Didn't you recognize all his CAUTION signs? I'm not surprised. Who would?"
Phil stood and, picking up the now-lifeless body of the dog, put it gently in its basket next to the couch. "Things change when you're here. Time, sequence. Different rules.
"Think of it as a moving sidewalk in an airport next to a normal one. On mine you can go twice as fast if you walk while it's moving. Or I can just stand here and be whisked along while people next to me have to walk. Another possibility is to turn around and run as hard as I can against the flow of my sidewalk.
"What I'm saying is Flea just died now, but we'll put him back in time so Sasha sees him when she finds me. This is off the subject. I want to talk about you and me, Weber.
"You never realized I stole from you because you were always too busy being original to notice. But I did, and so did a lot of others. You were always so sure of what you did, and you were inevitably right.