It wasn’t until the picture ended with a pan shot of a dreary desolation that I began to add two and two. You can’t, for pennies, really have a cast of thousands, or sets big enough to fill Central Park. A mock-up, even, of a thirty-foot wall costs enough to irritate the auditors, and there had been a lot of wall. That didn’t fit with the bad editing and lack of sound track, not unless the picture had been made in the old silent days. And I knew it hadn’t by the color tones you get with pan film. It looked like a well-rehearsed and badly planned newsreel.
The Mexicans were easing out and I followed them to where the discouraged one was rewinding the reel. I asked him where he got the print.
“I haven’t heard of any epics from the press agents lately, and it looks like a fairly recent print.”
He agreed that it was recent, and added that he’d made it himself. I was polite to that, but he saw that I didn’t believe him and straightened up from the projector.
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
I said that I certainly did, and I had to catch a bus.
“Would you mind telling me why, exactly why?”
I said that the bus—
“I mean it. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me just what’s wrong with it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” I told him. He waited for me to go on. “Well, for one thing, pictures like that aren’t made for the sixteen-millimeter trade. You’ve got a reduction from a thirty-five-millimeter master,” and I gave him a few of the other reasons that separate home movies from Hollywood. When I finished he smoked quietly for a minute.
“I see.” He took the reel off the projector spindle and closed the case. “I have beer in the back.” I agreed beer sounded good, but the bus — well, just one. From in back of the beaverboard screen he brought paper cups and a Jumbo bottle. With a whimsical “Business suspended” he closed the open door and opened the bottle with an opener screwed on the wall. The store had likely been a grocery or restaurant. There were plenty of chairs. Two we shoved around and relaxed companionably. The beer was warm.
“You know something about this line,” tentatively.
I took it as a question and laughed. “Not too much. Here’s mud,” and we drank. “Used to drive a truck for the Film Exchange.” He was amused at that.
“Stranger in town?”
“Yes and no. Mostly yes. Sinus trouble chased me out and relatives bring me back. Not any more, though; my father’s funeral was last week.” He said that was too bad, and I said it wasn’t. “He had sinus, too.” That was a joke, and he refilled the cups. We talked awhile about the Detroit climate.
Finally he said, rather speculatively, “Didn’t I see you around here last night? Just about eight.” He got up and went after more beer.
I called after him. “No more beer for me.” He brought a bottle anyway, and I looked at my watch. “Well, just one.”
“Was it you?”
“Was it me what?” I held out my paper cup.
“Weren’t you around here—”
I wiped foam off my mustache. “Last night? No, but I wish I had. I’d have caught my bus. No, I was in the Motor Bar last night at eight. And I was still there at midnight.”
He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “The Motor Bar. Just down the street?” And I nodded. “The Motor Bar. Hm-m-m.” I looked at him. “Would you like… sure, you would.” Before I could figure out what he was talking about he went to the back and from behind the beaverboard screen rolled out a big radio-phonograph and another Jumbo bottle. I held the bottle against the light. Still half full. I looked at my watch. He rolled the radio against the wall and lifted the lid to get at the dials.
“Reach behind you, will you? The switch on the wall.” I could reach the switch without getting up, and I did. The lights went out. I hadn’t expected that, and I groped at arm’s length. Then the lights came on again, and I turned back, relieved. But the lights weren’t on; I was looking at the street!
Now, all this happened while I was dripping beer and trying to keep my balance on a tottering chair — the street moved, I didn’t, and it was day and it was night and I was in front of the Book-Cadillac and I was going into the Motor Bar and I was watching myself order a beer and I knew I was wide awake and not dreaming. In a panic I scrabbled off the floor, shedding chairs and beer like an umbrella while I ripped my nails feeling frantically for that light switch. By the time I found it — and all the while I was watching myself pound the bar for the barkeep — I was really in a fine fettle, just about ready to collapse. Out of thin air right into a nightmare. At last I found the switch.
The Mexican was looking at me with the queerest expression I’ve ever seen, like he’d baited a mousetrap and caught a frog. Me? I suppose I looked like I’d seen the devil himself. Maybe I had. The beer was all over the floor and I barely made it to the nearest chair.
“What,” I managed to get out, “what was that?”
The lid of the radio went down. “I felt like that too, the first time. I’d forgotten.”
My fingers were too shaky to get out a cigarette, and I ripped off the top of the package. “I said, what was that?”
He sat down. “That was you, in the Motor Bar, at eight last night.” I must have looked blank as he handed me another paper cup. Automatically I held it out to be refilled.
“Look here—” I started.
“I suppose it is a shock. I’d forgotten what I felt like the first time I… I don’t care much any more. Tomorrow I’m going out to Phillips Radio.” That made no sense to me, and I said so. He went on.
“I’m licked. I’m flat broke. I don’t give a care any more. I’ll settle for cash and live off the royalties.” The story came out, slowly at first, then faster until he was pacing the floor. I guess he was tired of having no one to talk to.
His name was Miguel Jose Zapata Laviada. I told him mine: Lefko. Ed Lefko. He was the son of sugar beet workers who had emigrated from Mexico somewhere in the Twenties. They were sensible enough not to quibble when their oldest son left the back-breaking Michigan fields to seize the chance provided by an NYA scholarship. When the scholarship ran out, he’d worked in garages, driven trucks, clerked in stores, and sold brushes door-to-door to exist and to learn. The Army cut short his education with the First Draft to make him a radar technician; the Army had given him an honorable discharge and an idea so nebulous as to be almost merely a hunch. Jobs were plentiful then, and it wasn’t too hard to end up with enough money to rent a trailer and fill it with Army surplus radio and radar equipment. One year ago he’d finished what he’d started; finished underfed, underweight, and overexcited. But successful, because he had it.
“It” he installed in a radio cabinet, both for ease in handling and for camouflage. For reasons that will become apparent, he didn’t dare apply for a patent. I looked “it” over pretty carefully. Where the phonograph turntable and radio controls had been were vernier dials galore. One big dial was numbered 1 to 24, a couple were numbered 1 to 60, and there were a dozen or so numbered I to 25, plus two or three with no numbers at all. Closest of all, it resembled one of these fancy radio or motor testers found in a super super-service station. That was all, except that there was a sheet of heavy plywood hiding whatever was installed in place of the radio chassis and speaker. A perfectly innocent cache for…