The Grin of the Dark

'How do you know they're wrong if you haven't seen the movies?'

'I think this character specialises in writing rubbish.'

'Show me.'

I linger to ask 'You won't be including me in the film, will you?'

It's the camerawoman who answers. Her hair is cropped even shorter than the other women's. 'What,' she says, 'as a joke?'

'Not even as that if you don't mind.'

The girls send a final sigh, mocking or otherwise, after me as Willie ushers me out of the room. 'Don't mind Marilyn,' she murmurs. 'She has quite a tongue when she uses it.'

I'm tempted to rejoin that the same is true of the performers. Instead I say 'Don't think I'm prying, but how old are the girls?'

'Legal. Proof on file. Want to see?'

'Good heavens no. Of course not.'

As I open the door to her office she says 'Well, you seem to know your way around.'

'I heard the screensaver before.'

'Really? I'll have to cancel the repairman. The sound card must have fixed itself.'

The waves have fallen silent. Before they can prove me truthful, Willie rouses the mouse. 'Where do I need to look?'

'The IMDb.'

'I'm not familiar with it.'

I lean over her to bring up the site. She's wearing the thinnest of T-shirts, and the V of the neck is even more revealing. The heat of her body seems to surge at me as I use the mouse to pull down the list of recent online visits and click on the reference. At once I feel as if the computer has tricked me into betraying myself. 'Sorry,' I blurt. 'I was on here earlier. I couldn't find you and I wanted to let my partner know where I was.'

'Hey, don't worry. Were you feeling lonely?'

I'm distracted by Mona and Julia, who are strolling naked past the office. 'Not at all,' I say hastily. 'Just making sure she wasn't.'

'In case she was looking for company, you mean?'

'Not at all,' I repeat as a memory of Nicholas barring the way to her flares up in my head. 'We don't do that kind of thing.'

'Gee, you Brits. You can have too much control, you know.' Willie types her grandfather's name in the search box on the database. 'Okay, what's the son of a bitch been saying?'

I let Smilemime's comments speak for themselves. Willie gazes longest at the claim that Fool for a Day helped destroy Charley Chase's career, and I reflect that an administrator must have edited the comments somewhat, since they aren't misspelled. Willie is silent until she has read back as far as Crazy Capaldi, Orville Hart's first sound film, and then she says 'So what am I meant to be seeing?'

'Inaccuracies, I should think.'

'I don't see any. Where are they?'

'You aren't saying you can confirm everything this person wrote.'

'Sure, that's what I'm saying.'

The mirth I was affecting dies in my throat and deserts my face, leaving it almost too stiff for me to ask 'How could he know about your grandfather's last film when it was never released?'

'Read about it, I guess. There's always advance publicity. I don't understand what your problem is with this guy.'

I mustn't treat her as a spokeswoman for Smilemime. 'Take a look at the other titles.'

She checks the next three, starting with the unreleased Tubby Tells the Truth. 'I'm still not seeing it.'

'The clown's making it up. I promise you the one I've watched is nothing like his description.'

'Maybe you should see some more,' she says and stands up. 'Whenever you're ready.'

When I smile eagerly she motions me towards the middle of the house. 'Unless you'd like something else first,' she says.

I could imagine that the girls are giggling at her suggestion or in anticipation of its outcome. 'We're making sandwiches,' one of them tells me.

'We can make you,' says her colleague, 'anything you fancy if we have it.'

They're standing by a monumental white refrigerator, and both have turned to me. Each torso puts me in mind of an amused face, an impression hardly counteracted by the memory of one girl tugging her friend ajar. I feel as if they've linked too many of my appetites – as if my brain is close to overloading with them. 'Thanks,' I say, 'but I'd better start work.'

'Don't you like our sandwiches?' Julia says, if she isn't Mona.

How would I know? Are we talking about food, or have they a different arrangement in mind? I'm not here to prove myself. Even if Natalie never knew what I'd done, that would only aggravate my guilt. I won't use Nicholas as an excuse. Nevertheless I'm absurdly abashed to admit 'I couldn't say.'

'Never tasted an American sandwich?'

'You don't know what you're missing.'

Perhaps we're discussing food after all. I'm distracted from reading the girls' faces by the rest of them, and Willie's is unhelpfully neutral. I have to gaze at her to make her say 'It can be sent out if you're raring to get started.'

'Whatever you're having will be fine. There isn't much I won't put in my mouth.'

This earns me a disconcerting burst of applause from the girls. 'And a drink?' Willie says.

'Something soft.' When the girls sigh at this I feel bound to explain 'I don't want to risk nodding off in a film.'

'I've left you the fixings if you need to take notes.' Willie unlocks the back door beside a granite kitchen counter and pauses with her hand on the doorknob. 'Can you operate a projector?'

'I'd better not try.'

'You bet if you don't know what you're doing with these films. I'll send Guillermo.' Willie hands me a key from a hook beside the door. 'Don't catch cold,' she says and shuts the door behind me at once.

Is the desert always so cold at night? It makes me feel as if I wasn't previously awake. A bare dusty path leads to the solitary other building, a long brick shed about a hundred yards away. As far as I can see, it's windowless. I glance back to see the naked girls selecting items from the refrigerator, a sight that seems close to impossibly unreal. Am I hearing a low vibration in the air? It intensifies, fluttering against my eardrums, as I hurry between cacti ashen with dimness to the shed. When I unlock the door the pulsation seems to lurch to meet me. I could feel that my senses aren't to be trusted – that I can't see two bulky shapes waiting for me in the dark.

I grope around the doorframe, over the chilly bricks, and locate a switch. The harsh light of an unshaded bulb shows me two projectors, which are trained on apertures in the far wall of a room about half the length of the shed. Both side walls are occupied by shelves full of film canisters. A clipboard fat with paper and dangling a pen on a string leans against the foot of the left-hand shelves. ORVILLE HART MOVIES, the topmost sheet announces in large enthusiastic capitals.

My first thought is that Willie doesn't write the way she emails. I shut the door and pick up the clipboard. The canisters aren't labelled, and there are far too many of them even if the shelves contain Orville's entire filmography. I take a can at random and lay it on the table next to the projectors. The reel inside it bears a peeling yellowed label with a title in a vintage typescript: Tubby's Tremendous Teeth.

I'm so overwhelmed to be looking at an actual film of his, and perhaps distracted by the well-nigh subsonic throbbing of the hidden generator, that I've no idea how long I fail to notice someone else is in the room. When he sets down his burden on the table, my start almost knocks the canister onto the floor. I don't know how he managed to stay unheard as he entered the shed and closed the door, especially since he's at least twice my width. His round swarthy face, which is topped with oily black curls, appears to protrude from his poncho without the intervention of a neck. 'You'll be Guillermo,' I tell him.

The nostrils of his broad nose flare, but his disproportionately small eyes and little mouth don't stir. 'I'll take this in the screening room,' I decide, picking up the tray that's loaded with a plastic litre bottle of water and a crusty ham and avocado roll too big for its plate. 'Could you run this film for me?'