Tatiana (probably Tchevshanska, originally)
Expensive black leather coats tight around their bodies, the Godardistes approached. I put the telephone book back in a drawer and spun around in Antonya’s chair. They were leaving for the night, carrying bags of tapes and speaking to each other in loud, emphatic voices. They were in agreement in their disgust and disappointment about something or other. The illusion the two women presented as they walked toward me was that the carpet had been transformed into a conveyor belt. As if on a people-mover found in airports, they appeared to glide effortlessly in my direction. I was a motionless sitting target until their hip bones abutted Antonya’s desk, and, assuming I was the receptionist, they handed me the key to their room along with a bag of detritus from their Mexican dinner. I threw it in the trash on top of Antonya’s junk mail and day-old newspaper.
“There was no garbage can in the viewing room,” one said with a slight French accent.
I apologized as if it were my job to provide furniture and services, then asked if they could describe anyone who’d interrupted their work besides myself and the delivery boy.
“Short, sort of a goatee, moustache, and wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a jacket and underneath his jacket he wore a sweatshirt turned inside out.”
“What did he say? Anything?”
“Wrong room.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes. He knew he had the wrong room and he left us in peace, which is more than some people have done. Can we leave these tapes with you? We don’t want to carry them around all night.”
“No. I’m not the concierge. You should have locked them in the editing room.” They headed for the elevator, smoking, fuming, chattering like monkeys, brittle, hard as nails. Dreyfus waited for me in the editing room, shackled to a prison bed, and I didn’t know exactly what to do with him. Why was this worth saving? I could smell the coil of old nitrate film lying dormant in a can as it had for years and feel its crumbly slickness under my fingernails, but could make little connection between the life of a man delivering take-out food who had been smuggled into the city in the trunk of a car with holes punched in the top for air and the value of saving old film. Some part of me remained unconvinced.
I step into the shoes of the man who shot deer, tied them to the back of his car, and waved with glee at the people who stared at him in disgust as he drove down the interstate. As if by knowing this neighbor well and by playing with his children, I have more than a glimpse into a life organized around utilitarian motivation; more than a passing acquaintance with a house dominated by the maypoling twins of hunger and satisfaction, one continually chasing the other. There is no room for history, no reason to preserve the feeble or antique. Why not melt the films down for boot heels? This is a dangerous and actually false confession for someone with my job, but sometimes the cobwebs stick to my hands, the reasons elude me, and for a moment I’m watching deer cut from the back of the car or truck, fascinated by torn fur, looking over the surface of the carcass for the evidence of the wound. This confession might mark me as a slacker who sees only futility in the project at hand, but I’m not, I’m very good at conservation and very careful. I would never rub out an actor or a scene, despite jokes to the contrary and perverse temptation.
Why bother with Dreyfus taken away at gunpoint? Are new Dreyfuses born every day? Julius traveled to Paris during the two-hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution and returned with Charlotte Corday and Marat cigarette lighters for everyone in the office, as well as condoms printed with pictures of Robespierre that he only claimed to have and showed to no one. For the anniversary of the trial will there be Dreyfus (innocent) lighters and Esterhazy (guilty) condoms, already torn and punctured with sneaky pinprick holes?
Julius was yelling into the phone. I needed to talk to Antonya, but we both listened to him instead. It was unavoidable. The door to his office was open. Antonya was circling want ads with a yellow highlighter.
“Listen, Ratner, you have my deposit just in case, but what I’m saying to you is we’ve got a big contract here and as soon as that payment clears I can catch up on rent.”
Pause.
“La Société de la Preservation du Cinema. That’s who’s got the contract.”
Pause.
“Yes, I’m pronouncing it correctly.”
Pause.
“I know. I know I can’t pay you with celluloid.”
Pause.
“Look, Ratner, you can’t impound my equipment. I’ll never be able to pay you if I can’t work.”
Pause.
“Well, suit yourself.”
Pause.
“You have a point, but if I don’t pay my electric bills and the power is turned off I can’t work either. My company vanishes into paperwork. I declare personal bankruptcy, and you get zilch.”
Pause.
“I know someone else will pay three times what I’m paying in rent, but if Alphabet goes Chapter 11 you better collect top dollar from whoever moves into this dump next. We’re the last in the industry, Ratner. For your information what I do is a dying art.”
Pause.
Julius looked up, saw us listening, put his hand over the receiver, “He just told me to take my extinct horseshoes to Williamsburg — not the Brooklyn one, but the one he heard is in Virginia.”
“You’re no Trump, Ratner, you’re a small-time dinosaur yourself.”
Pause.
“Listen, Frances, prepare yourself,” Antonya whispered. “He’s already spent that contract money he’s talking about. Don’t count on being paid anytime soon. I do the books, so I know. There isn’t any Société paying for this job. It must be some other outfit.”
“Frances, how much longer on the Méliès job?” Julius called out to me, hand over the receiver once again.
I held up seven fingers although I really wasn’t sure how much longer it would take. Julius frowned and kicked the door shut.
The sound of breaking glass interrupted my concentration on a scene from French Cops Learning English. Thinking the noise came from a nearby sound track I tried to ignore it. In the Méliès film four French policemen were learning bilingual puns. The teacher wrote on the blackboard What a fair fish! One of the police responded by writing Va ta faire fiche as if that were the French translation. Then she wrote Very well, thank you. He replied by writing Manivelle Saint Cloud, holding a chalkboard up for the audience to see. The end of the film was chaotic. Four English girls, clearly actors in drag, invaded the classroom and sat on the policemen’s laps, danced with them, and then the whole scene degenerated into wild cartwheels and gymnastics. The sound of things being thrown around persisted.
I looked out my door toward the reception area. The door to Julius’s office was open, and a man I’d never seen before
