RICHARD CHWEDYK

AUTEUR THEORY

"Auteur Theory" is a wonderful look behind the camera, where countless
compromises and sacrifices transpire in the course of producing a film. And
behind all that hard work, well, sometimes you'll find a few unexplained
phenomena as well...

"I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds."

--John Keats, in a letter to his brother

How good are you girls with the impossible?" Dad asked us as we returned from
dinner at his favorite restaurant and settled into his living room.

"Impossible" is not a word Dad uses lightly.

"To me, everything is impossible," I answered. "Teaching. Writing. Living
without a car. On Mondays, waking up is impossible."

"I try to do at least one impossible thing a day," said Koren Hume, the graduate
student I'd brought back with me from Madison, hands deep in the pockets of her
blazer: a dark blue schoolgirl sort of thing with an odd lapel pin that looked
something like an atomic energy symbol.

"Why do you ask?" I went to the kitchen to start some coffee.

Dad sat in his usual place at the end of the couch, next to the lamp table. "I
saw one of my old films the other day." He cleared his throat, a sound like a
boulder rolling in the bottom hull of a battleship. "Not the way I made it, but
the way I wanted to make it. Not just a different cut, but everything I wanted
and couldn't get. A film that doesn't exist -except that it does."

"You're not just talking about an idea, a dream or a vision," I asked, "but a
real film?"

He drew a pack of forbidden Winstons from his tweed jacket and put them on the
table. He rarely smoked them now, but it comforted him to have them around.
"Cath, any film worth seeing is an idea, a dream and a vision. This one--" He
gestured to a small cabinet next to the television. "Do you see that box on the
top shelf?"

I picked up a frosted plastic tape case. "This one?"

"That's it. Read the name on the box."

"Flirting with Failure." It was printed on a cheap computer label.

Koren had settled herself on the floor, crosslegged, and pulled out her tiny
black computer, no larger than one of those pocket "organizers." She could
summon from it volumes of information, including all sorts of things about Dad
and his film career, his books, his teaching-- probably even his bank balance
and credit rating.

"Shouldn't that be Flirting with Fate?" Her voice was smooth and confident, like
good prose, with no regional trappings of generational affectations.

"Gregg Kandel nixed the Flirting with Failure title." Dad admired the little
tyrannosaurus model on the lamp table. "He thought it sounded too negative."

Koren read from the tiny display screen on her machine: "'Flirting with Fate,
USA, 1973. 93 minutes. With Alex Kent, Carol Loesser, Theresa Devlin, Richard
McKay. Directed by Andrew Ulaszek.'"

"I wanted Mark O'Connor and Ellen Abrams to play the leads," he said with his
roughly sonorous voice, "but Mark had started a successful run of a play in
London and Abrams' agent told her that working with me was the kiss of death."

Koren clucked her tongue at that.

"The logic of actors and agents can seem a bit obtuse, but they had their
reasons. Ellen deserved to be in first rate pictures, and my films were never
entirely first rate."

"That's not true," Koren said. "You made some wonderful films."

"Out there," Dad raised his finger, "first-rate means big stars and big budgets,
which you must admit I never had. For Flirting, my usual cinematographer, Ron
Wollesky, was on another picture t directing, no less. Allan Gould was editing
some hopeless mess of a Nazi vampire picture. Gregg wouldn't pay Jon Nelsen his
usual fee for writing the score, and I can't remember why Bud Tanner wasn't
there, but he was sorely missed." He lowered his head and looked at us over the
rims of his glasses. "Kandel cut the budget on me twice in the middle of
shooting, which killed four days of location shots and two days of re-shoots. My
second unit was made up of inept USC interns. Gregg wanted six minutes of cuts
after the previews, and this after having me race through the editing. Alex and
Carol in the leads --" He held out an open, wavering hand. -- they did what they
could."

I hadn't seen Flirting with Fate in years, but I said, "It's really not that bad
a picture."

"Sure," Dad pulled up his glasses and rubbed the side of his nose. "But that's
about all you can say for it -- that it's not that bad."

"They have a print of it up in Madison," Koren said. "I saw it five times. It's
a gem."

He fought off a smile. "A flawed gem. But thank you both."

He may have spoken to both of us, but Koren had his attention. They eyed each
other like fellow conspirators.

I didn't know what to make of Koren Hume. She'd found me a few weeks before at
the small college in Madison where I teach, and approached me in the midst of a
chaotic rehearsal for Oedipus at Colonus which I had been railroaded into
supervising by the department chairperson. I mistook Koren for a high school
girl, fashionably lean and pale, in that blazer, with a "gamine" hairdo that
really belonged to Louise Brooks or Colleen Moore. She wanted to know if I was
Andrew Ulaszek's daughter, and would I be able to arrange an interview with him.

I was so preoccupied with a rebellion caused by my suggestion that the chorus be
mixed into the audience, like agents provocateurs, I could pay little attention
to the thesis she rolled before my eyes on her Lilliputian screen. I told her I
would mention the interview to Dad and get back to her. She smiled back,
stoical, patient, and determined. I could have used her in the cast.

When I called Dad about the interview, he said, "Sure. Always willing to tell a
few stories."

"I believe in stories," is Dad's version of the Nicene Creed. When he gets going
he can make you a believer as well.

On a chilly, fog-gray Friday in April, Ms. Hume and I took the Van Galder bus to
Chicago. She worked away on her little machine while I stared lazily out the
window. Koren, I decided, was one of those calmly driven persons I can't regard
without suspicion. Wildly driven, passionately driven: those I understand. But
smooth, precise concentration affects me like muffled ticking from a small brown
package with no return address.

We took a cab to the far north side where Dad lives with his second wife, Anna
(a sweet lady, but in no way a stepmother). His condo is on a dead end street
that terminates at a cluster of red brick "Georgian" townhouses. Many seniors
live on that block, but I couldn't think of Dad, at seventy, as one of them.

After the interview, I arranged with my brother to put us up for the night at
his home in Hyde Park. Dad also suggested Koren visit Jon Nelsen, the composer,
who lived on the Gold Coast, and I agreed to take her there.

Anna was in San Francisco on business, so we had Dad all to ourselves and,
charmed by Ms. Hume's attention, he was at his charming best. Dad is bald,
white-bearded, and a little frail, as one might expect, but he still stands
tall, and there's something in his blue-gray eyes -- when they become huge and
baleful like some Byzantine saint's portrait --that is fiercely commanding. His
face is the illustration that accompanies every story he tells.

And so he told us about Flirting with Fate and Flirting with Failure.

"I know how good it could have been." The dim amber lamplight accented his
facial creases -- worry lines when he looked down, smile lines when he looked
up, "pain" lines when he looked at me. He pulled a cigarette from the pack but
didn't light it. "When you're the captain of a sinking pleasure boat you at
least try to make the disaster entertaining. Cath, would you put that tape in
the machine, please?"

"Wait for the coffee." I returned to the kitchen and braced myself.

It's not that I don't like his films, but I see each one as a kind of farewell:
an eccentric response, I know, but my parents' divorce came at a difficult time
in my life (as if there's an easy time). Dad exited faultlessly, but no good-bye
is ever good enough for a child. He put up with a lot of shit from me, simply
put, but I also became his most loyal defender. With typical adolescent conceit,
I imagined everything he wrote, every film he made, was a secret message to me.

I returned to the living room with the coffee. Koren listened with rapt
attention, pointing her machine at Dad, recording his words.

"No two people ever see the same movie. Movies are suggestion. Evocation. If
there's an art to movies, that's it. It's amazing how much cheap scenery and bad
cutting we'll put up with for a dream, a vision, an idea." He looked up at me --
smile lines. "That's why the current crop of movies doesn't interest me --
technically superior but otherwise vacant. The technician depicts; the artist
evokes."

"Do you see yourself as an artist, then?" she asked as I handed Dad his coffee.

"That doesn't matter." He blew into the still-too-hot mug. "A director is
nothing but a sort of social secretary. A stager of train wrecks."

"You're a writer, too. Is a writer also a stager of train wrecks?"

"Yes, but a writer has more responsibility. A movie's parentage is a murky,
dubious affair."

"You don't follow the politique des auteurs, then?" Her French pronunciation was
enviable.

Dad stroked his lower lip with the forbidden Winston. "When you're a director,
you're just another subordinate craftsman at work on the big cathedral. You're
not an author so much as a conductor, a catalyst. When no amount of inspiration
can save a picture, you still have to keep things moving. If a novel isn't
working you can put it in a file cabinet. You can't fit a cast and crew,
Mitchell cameras and Steenbecks into a file cabinet, not when you have three
producers waiting for you to part the Red Sea. You work by your wits and
experience, not by the politique des auteurs." He turned to me. "Now let's see
the film."

I slipped the tape into the VCR and, with the remote and my coffee, struggled
into the incongruous, steel-tubed "Swedish" chair that no one else can manage to
get into or out of.

"If no two people ever see the same film," I readied my finger over the 'play'
button, "no two people can make the same film, can they?"

He drew the unlit cigarette from his mouth, raised an eyebrow and smiled at me.
"Let's find out."

The tape began with the film's countdown leader and with no FBI warning: signs
of an unauthorized film-to-tape transfer, but one of some quality. In the
opening scene, the central character has his back to the camera as he engages in
a heated phone conversation. He slams the phone down and turns around.

It's Mark O'Connor.

"Dad --"

"Ssshh!" -- from Koren.

After O'Connor suffers a heart attack, the credits roll: "Mark O'Connor, Ellen
Abrams, Flirting with Failure --"

"Oh my God --"

Dad held the tip of his finger to his lips.

I saw all the names of the people Dad wanted -- the ones who didn't work on it
-- working on it, demonstrably so. The camera work had more depth-of-held, and
the night shots were highlighted with deep neon hues. There was more unity of
color and shape in the production design. The editing was sharp and balanced,
the score filled with lovely ironies. The opening theme was catchy, strangely
familiar. It could have made a good pop song.

Dad watched it all, his left eye shut: the director's squint, inspecting every
frame, every fleck of emulsion.

When O'Connor has his last, fatal heart attack at the end of the film, in
Abrams's car, and he tosses his lighter back over his shoulder, it was the
perfect -- the only -- gesture.

And Abrams's performance was the real revelation of the film. She exuded the
husky, erotic charm of a hybrid Bacall. Had she actually made this film she
wouldn't have descended to playing cranky mavens on soap operas.

Had she made this film -- I was watching it, laughing through the first half and
blubberfag by the end: at another farewell.

I knew what Dad meant now. Flirting with Fate was a good little picture.
Flirting with Failure was a little masterpiece.

The tape ran all the way to the end. I dropped the remote somewhere on the floor
as I pushed my glasses up on my head and dabbed at my eyes with a piece of used
tissue retrieved from my jacket pocket. When I slipped my glasses back down, I
noticed Koren staring at me, smiling in a way that seemed partly pitying and
partly derisive.

My voice squeaked as I said, "It was wonderful, Dad."

"Thank you." He pulled out a small disposable lighter. "I think I needed you to
see it-- to prove to myself that I haven't lost my mind." He finally lit his
forbidden Winston. "Now I can erase it."

"What!" I sprang from the Swedish torture chair.

"I can erase it." He exhaled a jet of smoke. "It doesn't belong here."

"Belong?" I shook my head. "Where should it belong?"

"I don't know." He finished the cold dregs of his coffee. "But it doesn't belong
in this world. I didn't make it. You can look for this version in the Times
Index, and the Screen Achievement Record. You'll never find it. It's not a
remake. You can tell from all the peripheral details, including the film stock,
that this thing was made about the same time I made Flirting with Fate."

He tapped his cigarette against a small china ashtray on the coffee table. "It's
not computer-generated. I get over to some of the local studios and I've seen
what they can do with imaging and matching. Incredible stuff, but they can't do
this yet, not at under twenty times my original budget. What motive would
someone have to recreate the technical limitations of 1973 for this film?"

I slowly eased myself back into the torture chair.

"You asked before if no two people could make the same film." He pointed his
cigarette at me. "That was Ron's camera work, Jon's music, Allah's cutting. A
guy sitting down at a Mac can't fake signature work like that. Ii they could, it
would be for commercial reasons. It wouldn't end up on a tape transfer sent to
me by Terry Boyle."

"Boyle?" I rolled my eyes. "Oh shit!"

Koren picked up her computer. "Who's Boyle?"

"He lives down the street." Dad crushed out his forbidden. "Runs a video
business out of his basement. Big, hefty, Vietnam vet in a motorized wheelchair.
Runs ads in film collector magazines for his public domain stuff. On the side,
he does other things, some of it not so legal. He found out I lived nearby when
he signed up for one of my film classes and he started to invite me over to
drink scotch and talk. He loves movies, if you can call things like
Slaughterority House and Feargasm movies." He shook his head and rubbed his
temple with his palm. "He has a brain, of sorts. Angry. Bitter. Paranoid as
hell, with a sophisticated home security system -- motion sensors, computerized
locks, the whole deal."

Koren's fingers danced over the impossibly tiny keys of her machine --she could
probably play a piano the size of a postage stamp too. "Why do you see him?"

Dad shrugged. "He's lonely. I've worked with a lot of guys like him. Bawdy
bastard. I took Cath with me once and he couldn't keep his hands off her."

My elbow slipped from the steel-tubed armrest. "We needn't discuss that."

"Not married?" Koren asked.

"Oh, he married his high school sweetheart, the cheerleading captain. She works
the second shift at the White Castle."

"Will he tell us where he got the film?" Koren stood up, stretched, smoothed the
pleats of her tiny skirt.

Dad shook his head. "All he'll probably tell you is that he got it from a guy
who got it from a guy."

"And yet it has to come from somewhere." I stood up and paced before his Great
Wall of Books on the other side of the living room.

"Well, we've both written some science fiction." He affectionately rubbed the
head of the tyrannosaurus on the lamp table. "We should be able to come up with
something."

"Come on." Computers. Aliens. Time travel. I stared at all the titles on the
shelves.

He walked over to the liquor cabinet and took out a bottle of Glenfiddich. "I
know I have some ideas. Anyone care to join me?"

"I really shouldn't," I said.

"Neither should I. My doctor would have a heart attack if he could see me now.
Miss Hume?"

"No thanks." She saluted him casually. "I'm on duty."

He poured two small glasses. "I'd have to card you anyway. But you see why I
have to erase the tape, don't you?"

"No," I said. "I don't see why at all."

"Because it's false evidence for a history that didn't happen. I know what film
I made and it wasn't this one. Every day some new clown comes along claiming
that this or that event never occurred, or that something else did." He handed
me a glass. "As banal as another Elvis sighting or as evil as these new fascists
denying the Holocaust."

Before he sat down again, he looked at one of the photographs that cluttered the
lamp table, the shot of Dad standing with John Ford. "One little film. 'So
what?' you might say. Print the legend, especially if it compliments you. But at
my age, seven-eighths of me is history. I can't see it eroded without seeing
myself eroded. Do I sound like a nut?"

I said, "No," but I couldn't have sounded too convincing. The pain lines were
visible again as he sat down.

"Dad, that this film should exist is one matter. That it does is more important.
We should find out where it came from."

He sipped his scotch, pulled out another forbidden and turned to Koren.

"What do you think, Miss Hume?"

She looked a little startled, but answered calmly. "I think where it came from
is a very important matter."

Dad put her to the sort of one-eyed scrutiny with which he had just subjected
Flirting with Failure. "My son teaches Philosophy down at U. of C., you may
know. He's been involved in a cooperative project with the Physics department,
evaluating some of their logic systems. He told me not too long ago that some of
their faculty are working on a cosmological theory that starts from the premise
that one universe just isn't enough. They theorize that there are an indefinite
number of universes, emanating like ripples in a pond from the point of the Big
Bang. They call these concentric universes 'probabilities.' Interesting notion,
isn't it?"

She blushed a little, but her expression remained convivial. "What evidence have
they found so far?"

"From what Richard tells me, nothing more than some plausible math."

Koren lost some of her flush and smiled sweetly.

"Well, that's a whole other matter, I suppose. We can discuss it some other
time." He held his hand out to me. "Now Cath, if you'll just hand me that remote
--"

"Are you still planning to erase the tape?"

Pain lines again. "lust hand me the remote."

Above the couch was a framed silkscreen poster for a Polish production of Faust,
the doctor's features in red, Mephistopheles in black; the face of one was the
shadow of the other. I struggled from the chair once more, pressing the "eject"
button on the remote. The VCR spat out the tape, which I returned to its case
and dropped into my purse.

"Maybe I'm dense, Dad, but this is the only evidence we have of something, well,
'impossible.' We can't destroy it until we at least try to find out where it
came from and how it was made."

"As usual, Cath is right." He walked over to the telephone in the dining room.
"We should start by calling Boyle."

"Makes sense." Koren picked up her computer. "You said he lives close by."

"You can see the place from the window." He dialed the number. "The townhouse
with the ramp." Then, into the mouthpiece: "Terry? It's Andrew. Yes, just
finished watching it. First-rate transfer. Listen, would it be possible --"

Koren perused the contents of the Wall of Books as he spoke, and came upon a
novel Dad had written. She took it from the shelf, opened it and started to
read.

"What?" Dad rubbed his brow. "Yes she is, as matter of fact. And another girl, a
graduate student. I want you on your best behavior."

From across the room I could hear Boyle's cackling laugh coming through the
earpiece.

Dad hung up the phone and said, "We're on for eight tomorrow."

"Fine." I felt my stomach drop.

Back in the living room, Koren held up the book to show Dad. The title was
Facing the Music.

"Mind if I borrow this?"

"With my compliments." He put his hand on my shoulder. "Sure you want to go
through with this?"

"No, but what else can we do? And what was all that stuff about 'probabilities?"

"I'm not sure. Richard should be here to pick you up any minute. In the
meantime, keep your eyes open. You never know where you might find an answer."

He stared straight at Koren, who was pulling one of those toy "clickers" or
"crickets" from her pocket: one of those things stamped out of cheap metal in
the approximate shape of an insect, with another piece of metal angled out from
its underside; you press that piece and it makes a little clicking sound. She
held it carefully between thumb and forefinger, like a weapon, which she "aimed"
at my purse.

Click!

I felt a tingle run through me, but for all the force of her gesture nothing
else came of it. I do recall thinking that anyone who would choose Dad as a
thesis topic should be forgiven a few eccentricities.

"I've read your book on Aquinas. Wonderful piece of speculative philosophy."
Koren sat in the back seat of Richard's Toyota, reading Dad's novel by the
erratic glare of the lights on Lake Shore Drive.

"We're all philosophers in this family. We just have different ways of doing
it."

Richard looks much like Dad did thirty years ago: fair hair just starting to
gray, thinning a little; the prominent nose; clean-shaven and sad-eyed. "I heard
you're visiting Jon Nelsen tomorrow."

"Well, Jon and Dad worked on so many films together."

Richard nodded, eyes on the road. "He'll be glad to see you again." He turned up
the Brahms sextet on the radio. They're all glad to see me, I thought: old
artists, lonely academics, "responsible" gentlemen looking for dutiful
daughter-figures. I stared out at all the Gold Coast buildings, into lighted
windows with glimpses of elegant living rooms. Dad could be living in one of
those places, I thought. Or in Paris, as Anna always dreamed of doing.

Instead of -- where? Colonus? Dad was no Oedipus, but he had a touch of exile in
him, like Oedipus. Like Sophocles.

I looked back at Koren, still reading Dad's novel. "You'll ruin your eyes," I
said.

She smiled and flashed up at me the little book light that was built into her
computer.

"Does that thing have an ATM too?"

She returned to her book. The lights on the Drive caught her lapel pin for an
instant: crossed ellipsoids like the paths of orbiting particles, and below them
the initials H.E.L. What did they stand for? Haverford Energy Librarians?
Halcyon Ego Lux? I was ready to ask her outright when she pointed excitedly out
her window.

"There's the Field Museum! Remember that scene in Return from the Lost World
when the tyrannosaurus breaks loose and charges down -- were they the north
steps?"

They were, I remembered. I remembered the music as well, the odd, triumphant
little fanfare when the captive king breaks free. A pure Jon Nelsen touch for a
pure Andrew Ulaszek film.

IT WAS LATE when we got to Richard's. The children were long asleep, but Hollis
was still up, waiting to show Koren the guest room. She wore a bright red robe,
and still looked like a model for 'Teen, while I felt something like Sarah
Bernhardt in her final days, hobbling off to her coffin. In high school, Hollis
and I had been best friends.

She brought down some blankets and pillows to make the couch more comfortable
for me. I begged one more cup of coffee off Richard, who sat down with me in the
kitchen. "So," he picked up a teaspoon on the table, "Where did you find this
kid?"

"Koren?" I stretched my legs out on the chair next to me. "I explained already.
She found me."

"You didn't tell me anything about that computer of hers."

"Should I have? What do I know about computers?"

"I don't know that much either." He leaned back in his chair. "I do know that
there's nothing on the market that small that can do that many things." He
raised the teaspoon and stared at its convex surface. "Even if there were, they
wouldn't have built-in book lights."

He put down the spoon and stared at me until my face stung. "Another thing: when
I drove up tonight, I found a minivan parked in Dad's space." Dad has a parking
space in the condo lot. Not having a car, he never uses it, so friends and
family park there when they visit. "A dark green Voyager -- except that the logo
on the back, in the lower right corner, said Voyageur."

I shrugged. "On the left side did it say 'Plymouthe'?"

He sat forward, fingers knitted. "Factory goof-up? Foreign model? I don't know.
It's the sort of detail you might miss. Then the driver returned, a young woman,
dressed in perfect schoolgirl attire -- plaid skirt, blazer, the works. Even
wore a tie. Intelligent-looking kid, with long, straight brown hair. Big dark
eyes."

"So?" I struggled to appear indifferent, staring at a drawing stuck to the
refrigerator door: a squiggly figure with stick legs and flat feet, executed by
my little niece and labeled in her shaky hand "Grandpa." "Lots of girls dress
like that. There's a Catholic high school right down the street."

"Do they all carry computers like that one Koren has?" He held his hands flat on
the table. "Do they all wear those odd little lapel pins?"

"You noticed it too?" I slipped my legs off the chair and sat forward, leaning
toward him as far as the table would allow me. "H.E.L.?"

"Has Everyone Left. Hubris Endangers Lincoln?" He pushed back his seat and stood
up. "Is this some trend we missed?"

I picked up my purse and pulled out the frosted plastic box with the
videocassette. "You want 'odd'? How's your VCR working?"

"Perfectly, but it's a little late." As if to demonstrate, he yawned.

"Just a few minutes. The opening credits -- just to see what I mean."

He almost relented when Hollis came in, slipping her arm around his waist. "I'm
here to collect my husband."

Richard leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. "First thing tomorrow.
Promise."

Hollis kissed me good night, and wrinkled her nose. "Have you been smoking
again?"

"Do you know what H.E.L. stands for?" I asked.

"Huge Elephants Laughing," she said without hesitation.

They went upstairs. I dragged myself over to the couch, coffee in one hand, tape
and purse in the other. I turned on the TV and VCR, adjusting the volume to a
whisper, and slipped the tape into the machine. Just a few minutes of the
opening, that's all I wanted, to ensure my own sanity. I pushed the "play"
button --

-- and saw nothing. Heard nothing -- a screen of solid blue, like you see when
you inadvertently put a blank tape into the machine.

I advanced the tape a few minutes, and then a few more minutes -- solid blue.

So much for my insurance.

The only thing I could recall, as I tossed the humiliating thing back into my
purse, was Koren, with her toy cricket.

Click!

When I did, at last, fall asleep on the lumpy couch, I dreamed of commandos
dressed like schoolgirls, or schoolgirls dressed like commandos, falling from
the night sky under plaid parachutes.

"I always found it amusing to come down to the set," Jon Nelsen said from the
front row of his own private screening room. "It was bustling by six-thirty, but
the insurers wouldn't let Andrew direct until their doctor checked him out, as
if being on the set were the only stressful part of the job."

Jon's screening room, in its Art Deco pinks and grays, was lined with beautiful,
valuable posters from the silent era. To the left of the screen stood a white
Baldwin grand on which he would sometimes play his own accompaniments. The rest
of his huge apartment held a small museum's worth of Art Nouveau objects and
furniture: beautiful pieces by Guimard, Berroneau, and Charpentier. From his
windows you could look out at Lincoln Park as if it were your own private
Versailles. Even on that cold April afternoon, the view was painfully beautiful.

Jon himself had always been movie-star-handsome and remained so, even with his
lined face and neatly groomed hair now completely white, in his rose-colored
sweater and gray slacks.

"Everyone thought he was going to die after he finished Living the Lost," he
said softly.

Koren raised her computer, recording each little cough and hesitation. She wore
a plaid skirt today, and a tie over her white blouse made her look even more the
schoolgirl.

"So did I," I said.

Jon smiled warmly. "Now he's outlived two doctors and is working on a third."

We had just finished watching some film clips from an unreleased documentary
made while Dad worked on that last film. It was fun to see Dad with hair again,
and wearing it long. He looked frail even then, but the camera caught him in
turns both gentle and commanding, always concentrated, chewing out an actor for
overplaying a scene, then giving Emily Rankin a hug for getting through a tough
close-up.

"We'd argue for hours, but I loved it." Jon stood up, Koren following like a
mismatched shadow. "He only fought when he respected you. He knows how important
a good score is to a film. Not many directors would bring me in during
pre-production." He ran his finger over his mustache. "We were almost
collaborators. He'd whistle melodies that I'd end up using. I'd want to give him
credit, but he'd say, 'What can I do with it? You're the composer.'"

He smiled at me again, maybe a little too warmly this time. It brought out the
little bags under his eyes.

I wandered over to the white Baldwin. I'm no musician, but I can plunk out a
tune, and one had been stuck in my head since the night before.

"Did he ever tell you why he quit?" Koren asked.

"Three heart attacks," I said, playing B and C-sharp off each other, like
testing both sides of a seesaw. "A so-called 'mild' stroke -- "

Jon folded his arms. "He told me once he wanted to live long enough to see his
kids grow up and make it on their own."

I slowly found the melody: B to C-sharp, C-sharp to A. Richard and Hollis are
tenured, I thought. My sister runs her own design business. Then there's me, at
the tail-end of a two-year visitor's contract, with no great prospects of
renewal. I date divorced professors and sell a book every few years, when I'm
lucky. Poor Dad, I'll keep him alive forever.

Koren kept plugging away. "Was he disappointed with the lack of credit he
received?"

"He called himself 'A guy who makes fungus monster movies.'" Jon came over and
stood to my left. Even in my faltering, halting rendition, he seemed to
recognize the melody. "Truth is, he influenced everyone, but no one will 'less
up to it. He's in touch with the zeitgeist. All I can do is bring the trumpets
in like Mahler, on cue."

"Not true." I tried the next part of the melody: C-sharp, E, back down to D,
D-flat -- I stared at the two bronze nymphs atop the piano, raising candles with
upstretched arms, long curls and flowing shifts over their skimpy figures.

"Tempo," Jon placed his left hand on the keyboard, filling the chords in. "It's
all in the tempo. This way," he followed my slow pace, "it's just a theme. This
way," he quickened the beat to something livelier, "it's a pop song."

"You're right!" I followed along. "I remember this song now! This was pretty
popular twenty years ago. Didn't Streisand or someone record this?"

He pressed his lips into a strange smile, looking proud and embarrassed.

"I still hear it on elevators, or when my bank puts me on hold." He turned to
Koren. "Most of what you see here was purchased on its royalties, and from the
commissions I received on this song's reputati on."

Jon took over, playing with both hands. I stepped back. "And the melody?"

"Andrew again. I was supposed to do a score for him -- some little picture that
didn't work out -- Flaunting, Flirting -- something like that."

I opened my mouth, but Koren had her little cricket toy out again. My heartbeat
doubled.

"Sorry," I said to Jon. "Doesn't ring a bell."

"It was so long ago. I'd worked out this theme, but my part in the project fell
through. Your father suggested I try to sell it as a song. He introduced me to
George Estenburg, the lyricist. Even that I have to thank him for."

"Everyone should have a song like that," I said.

"Everyone does, I think, but they throw it away. Or they never listen to it." He
played the last chord with his foot hard on the pedal, so that it took forever
to decay.

Koren put her toy away.

"We have to get back now, Jon. Thanks for everything."

"You're always welcome, Cathy." He stared at me from a dark corner of his
solitude. "Give my regards to your father. Miss Hume, it was a pleasure."

In the elevator down, I said to Koren, "I wasn't going to mention Flirting with
Failure, if that's what you were worried about."

"I'm not worried."

"Look, I'm not going to ask you a lot of questions about who you are and what
you're doing here, because you wouldn't tell me anyway, but your coming here and
that film are connected, aren't they?"

She looked at me, expressionless. Inscrutable.

"Fine. I don't care. Just assure me that you won't do anything to hurt my
father."

Her brows knit slightly as she turned a sort of pitying smile upon me. "I would
never do anything to hurt your father. You can count on that."

The way she said it, I felt I should have asked for more.

"Welcome to my world."

Terry Boyle extended his huge, muscled arm and gestured to the chaos of video
machines, tape editors, duping systems, slave decks, movie projectors, and
ceiling-high metal shelves that made up "Cultural Accessories, Ltd." A
wheelchair-wide path shaped the chaos into a maze; one small corner had been
conceded to Stacy Boyle's washer and dryer. A lift, built into one wall of the
stairwell, facilitated Boyle's moves from Stacy's sedate, neat-as-a-pin kitchen
to this underworld. He sat in the approximate center of the labyrinth, before an
elaborate console, the crowning glory of which was a giant TV screen set on a
platform of orange crates mounted on a table.

Dad, Koren, and I were trying to look anywhere but the screen, on which a
half-clothed, panic-stricken girl ran through a dark attic until a noose dropped
down from the ceiling and slipped too easily around her neck.

"How about that?" Boyle gawked at the screen like a boy at his first matinee,
and over the soundtrack of a stifled cry and a sickening snap, he pronounced,
"Now that's real moviemaking!"

"Let's get back to the subject," Dad said, revealing some strain at this, his
third try, to fix Boyle's attention to the matter of Flirting with Failure.

"Yeah. Just wanted to see her legs kick again." He rolled himself over to the
VCR and ejected the tape. The chair hardly seemed equal to his girth, but he
maneuvered it with a facility that made it seem just another article of his
apparel, like his jeans or his stained Barbarella T-shirt.

"Guy I know picked them up at a post office auction. About a dozen of them.
Yours was one." His gray-green eyes turned to Dad, who was seated in a blue
canvas director's chair that Boyle especially reserved for him. "Sixteen
millimeter prints, in sweet condition, except for the sprocket gauging -- like
something from Afghanistan." He snorted a laugh, his long, narrow nose sharply
pointed hellward. "Weirdest shit I've ever seen. But you know me. Got a buddy
who's a tool and die maker to cast some sprocket wheels and a gate trigger --
stuck them on the trusty Bell and Howell -- VOOM! -- We're in business."

He picked up a jelly jar glass adorned with a picture of Jughead, from Archie
Comics, and took a healthy sip of Cutty Sark. "Speaking of business, Andrew,
you, uh, wouldn't happen to know who holds the rights to that flick, would you?"

We all had jelly jar glasses of Cutty, but only Boyle was drinking. I left mine
on the card table next to me, while I sat on a wobbly folding chair. Koren sat
on the cleared-off portion of a desk that served as part of Boyle's console, her
legs crossed suggestively and the hem of her skirt only just covering her hips.

Dad shook his head. "As if you ever really concerned yourself with rights."

Boyle smirked proudly as he gripped the armrests of his chair. "Well, only if
it's pretty blatantly owned."

Dad opened his mouth, but Koren beat him to the draw. "Then you do intend to
market this film."

"I'll market anything and everything I can get my hands on." He raised his right
hand, fingers outstretched, then clenched them violently. His grasp was
considerable. I looked at the "Death from Above" tattoo on his right bicep. It
had stretched and grown pudgy with its owner.

He slipped another tape into the VCR.

"Matter of fact, I had an idea the other day." The big screen came to life again
with the old RKO logo, the radio beacon on the globe, sending out its little
lightning bolts and radio waves. "We could tag an intro onto your film, with you
talking about how you made it, all that.stuff. What it was like to work with
Ellen Abrams -- man, was she a killer chick back then!" For punctuation, he
slapped the desk. It was a sturdy piece of furniture.

Koren hardly flinched. She tapped away at her computer.

I was distracted by the bold white letters on a black background, up on the big
screen: "A Mercury Production."

"You really doing a thesis about the old guy?" From the way he bent his head,
Boyle looked like he was talking to Koren's knees.

She stared back cooly and smiled.

On the screen appeared the title, Heart of Darkness. My jaw dropped.

"What is that thing?" Boyle pointed to her computer.

"A lie detector," she said.

Bassoons, accompanied by the low thunder of timpani, rumbled from the big
speakers under the screen, sounding so much like Bernard Herrmann's music it
gave me chills.

"Catch me at any lies yet?" Boyle placed two fingers down on the edge of the
desk and "walked" them, like little legs, toward Koren. "You could get in on
this too, you know. For the intro, you could interview Andrew, on camera, and
give all the background shit. You know, like Leonard Maltin."

She smiled impassively, looking nothing like Leonard Maltin. Boyle walked his
fingers back slowly.

On the screen, a group of men sat on the deck of a boat, at twilight, with a
backdrop London in the distance. One of the men puffed on a cigar as he said,
"And this, also, has been one of the dark places of the Earth."

One might mistake the appearance, but that was the voice of Joseph Cotten: no
other like it -- in this world.

"I know a guy who could shoot the whole thing for almost nothing. Professional
too." He gave Dad a venal, superfluous wink. "Eight percent per unit sold, and I
figure I can sell a few thousand of these in the first year. What do you say?"

Dad picked up his Sabrina the Teen Witch jelly jar and stared straight through
it. He listened to Boyle's jabber like someone experienced in the talk of
agents, producers, and money men of all shapes. "Not interested," he said.

"Why not?"

"There's no 'why' about it, Terry. 'Not interested' means 'not interested.'"

"Oh." Boyle closed his mouth into a little "o." "What would fifteen percent do
to your interest?"

"Not even fifty." He stared at the glass but didn't drink. "Not even one
hundred."

Boyle's lips formed the little "o" again. On the screen, Joseph Cotten, as
Marlow, was having his head measured by an old man with calipers. "In the
tropics, one must before everything keep calm."

"Can you believe this guy?" Boyle said, now addressing Koren's thighs. While so
distracted, I gestured to Dad and pointed up at the screen. He signaled back
with his finger over his lips.

"How many have you sold so far?" Koren asked, not looking up from her computer.

Boyle sneered indignantly, like a haughty Herod from an old biblical epic. "I
can sell anything, and I know what sells. Look up there." He pointed to the
screen. "Orson Welles. That'll sell itself! All those prints! I can sell them
all!"

For an instant he glanced at something behind me, where one wall of the basement
was lined with metal shelves. Dad stared over the top of his glass; Koren
shifted her eyes from the tiny display screen, both of them marking where
Boyle's glance had gone.

While he refilled his Jughead glass, I twisted around in my seat. The shelves
behind me were loaded with old film cases, the paperboard type, with metal
reinforcements on the corners and closed with crossed canvas straps. Most of the
cases were a dirty brick red or slate gray, but one stack contained about a
dozen cases, light gray, that looked cleaner and less battered about. They
weren't labeled, but I could guess what they were.

Before going over to Boyle's, I had caught Dad and Koren quietly conferring.
They wouldn't let me in on their conspiracy, but by now I had it almost all
figured out.

"In other words," continued Koren, "you haven't sold any yet."

"No," Boyle said, annoyed enough to look her straight in the face. "Like an
idiot I'm waiting for him." He pointed at Dad. "I want his to be the first in
the series. I just started transferring this one." He pointed at Heart of
Darkness, up on his screen. "The others will come later."

Koren looked as if that were the answer she was looking for.

And it made sense to me, too. I looked up at the screen: Cotten as Marlow,
George Coulouris as the accountant, Ray Collins as the manager -- all of them in
a film that Orson Welles never made, that he abandoned to start a new project,
Citizen Kane. When I saw Flirting with Failure the night before, I thought of it
as an incredible anomaly, a miracle. But two anomalies seemed dangerous, because
it presumed the possibility of a third, a fourth-- and Dad's worries about the
integrity of history no longer seemed misplaced.

Wherever these films came from, another universe, a sophisticated lab, or
conjured up by a demented sorcerer, I certainly didn't want them in Boyle's
hands.

And with any luck, that's what Dad and Koren were trying to prevent as veil.

"Look," Boyle said to Dad, "I can just release this as it is. You have no rights
to it. I'm doing you a favor."

"I don't recall asking for any, Terry."

"You just don't want me to make any money on it, because you think I'm an
uneducated slob --"

Dad put his glass down. "I've been squeezed by some of the best con men in the
business, Terry. You'll have to do better than that."

A tremor ran through Boyle, the sort of gesture you see in men who are about to
do something they'll have to answer for in a court. Dad stared him down,
courageously, stupidly stalwart.

Koren already had her cricket out.

"Dad," I said, sounding more than a little nervous, "maybe you should think it
over a little more. A few extra bucks might come in handy."

"A few." Boyle snorted.

For the first time in a long while, Dad was the one who looked puzzled as he
stared at me. "Cath, what are you --"

"Sure," I said. "You do have some major debts to consider."

He continued looking puzzled, but he fought off an admiring smile, as if he
never imagined that I might have a devious streak.

"Listen," I said. "I noticed that Stacy left us some coffee upstairs. Maybe it
would be a good idea to take a few minutes --" I made an effort to smile at
Boyle.

He admired me through half-closed eyelids, as if reassessing my worth to his
operation. "Yeah, sure. Coffee. I'll go up and get you some."

"I'll -- I'll give you a hand." I stood up, but Boyle gestured for me to sit
back down.

"I'm the host here. You think I'm helpless?" He started up his chair motor,
rolled himself over to the lift and expertly locked his wheels in place on its
base. In the next instant he slid up the banister track like an obscenely obese
spider.

I looked at Dad first. "I should go up there, right?" I turned to Koren. "How
much time do you need?"

She hopped off the desk and made her way to the basement door, tapping something
into her computer. "Ten minutes."

"If you really want to help." Dad arched his eyebrow. "You don't have to."

"I don't know what else to do. Just tell me what all this is about when we get
out of here."

"You already know," Koren said. The box next to the door emitted a little beep.
"There won't be time later."

From the screen, Marlow informed us, "Ah! but it was something to have at least
a choice of nightmares."

Upstairs, I found Boyle with a tray in his lap. On it, three mugs of coffee, a
carton of half and half, an old restaurant sugar dispenser and a scattering of
spoons all tottered precariously with the slightest move of his chair. He stared
fiercely at these objects as if he could will them not to move.

I quickly grabbed two of the mugs off the tray, before he could stop me.

"I told you--" He reached out and managed to tip over the third mug. "Shit!"

"This is how it's done," I said, taking advantage of his confusion to pick up
the tray without his mauling me. "Put the carafe on a trivet. Don't pour
anything until you get downstairs. Does that make sense!"

"Aren't you the perfect little housewife." He looked like he wanted to stick my
head in the sink and drown me.

"And you're the perfect Pullman porter." I poured out the coffee and started a
fresh carafe. That would take ten minutes, I figured.

"Sit in my lap," he said. "I'll give you a horsey ride."

I refilled the carafe and made another effort to smile. From the window over the
sink, I could see the parking spaces of the townhouse owners. In one of the
spaces, a minivan was parked. I couldn't tell what color it was in the dark, and
even though vans like that are more prevalent these days than old-fashioned
cars, how many of them came with long-haired girls in blazers and pleated plaid
skirts, opening up the rear door and depositing several movie reels into the
back storage area? Perhaps as many as have Voyageur instead of Voyager in chrome
letters on their backs.

I poured the carafe of water into the coffeemaker. The window was set too high
to give Boyle much of a view, but why take chances? I had to find the coffee on
my own -- in a lower cabinet -- and the filters -- up on the top shelf. Boyle
seemed to enjoy watching me bend and stretch. "Perfect little housewife," he
repeated, and chuckled.

Once the coffee was going, I stood in the middle of the kitchen, so that if he
wanted to ogle me he'd have to sit with his back to the window. It also afforded
me a view through the window. I could make out Koren now, with an armload of
reels, heading for the Voyageur.

"So what's the deal with your old man?" Boyle flipped back his long, gray
ponytail. "That's why you came up here, isn't it?"

I stood with my arms crossed, legs slightly apart. "I really don't know."

"Or is that why you came up here?" He took out a cigarette and his Zippo from
his jeans. "I always figured you couldn't help yourself."

My heart was racing. I could look into Boyle's eyes and see straight through
into his head, where an old projector was running, with a film of me, half
naked, panic-stricken in a dark attic.

"Doesn't matter. One of these days--" He smiled gleefully and lit his cigarette.

"Your old man's one of the few people in this world I respect. He's like me.
He's paid more dues than he's owed." He took a deep drag, as if he wanted to
consume the whole cigarette in one inhale. "I offered him a straight deal. On
the level. Why won't he take it?"

Outside, Koren and the other girl were depositing their third load of movie
reels. How much more could there be?

"Don't be so insistent," I said. "You should know he doesn't like to be pushed
into things."

"Who's pushing?" His fingers rolled into fists, threatening to crush his
cigarette.

"Give him time." I looked outside. The long-haired girl had an armload of reels,
but she was carrying them back from the van. What the hell was going on? Koren
followed, carrying back another stack.

Boyle offered me a cigarette. His eyes twinkled, making him look like some sort
of mutant leprechaun. He wiggled the cigarette between the first and second
fingers of his right hand. I hadn't smoked in years, but the stress of the day
had worn away my resolve. I reached for it --

-- and he grabbed my wrist with his left hand, yanking me forward almost into
his lap. I could tell from his grip that it wouldn't have taken much effort for
him to snap my bones like sticks of dry pasta. His breath smelled like a mix of
scotch and rancid butter.

"Horsey ride?"

"Let go!"

"Tell me why your old man doesn't want me to distribute the film?"

"You sick sack of shit!" I pounded on his chest with my free hand, provoking his
laughter. I might as well have pounded the drywall. "If you so much as --"

"Tell me, you little tease!" He gripped my leg with his right hand, just above
the knee. His fingers fit almost completely around it.

"It's not the film he made. He thinks it came from another universe!"

He let go of me instantly and burst into laughter. I slipped to the floor, on my
knees, cursing him and fighting off tears. I looked at him, wanting to kill him,
or just watch him drop dead, but he laughed so hard I thought I just might get
my wish. He handed me another cigarette, which I threw across the room. Then he
handed me the whole pack and I threw that across the room.

"Oh shit," he said, when his laughter subsided, "I should have known you'd never
give me a straight answer."

The coffee was ready. The long-haired girl was just closing up the back of the
Voyageur. I choked off more tears and arranged all the things on the tray in a
neat, balanced fashion.

"Ease up," Boyle said as he took the tray. "Just having a little fun. Of
course," he rolled his chair in place on the lift, "if that film was from
another universe -- and the others -- think of the fortune I'd be sitting on!"

Downstairs, I looked for some sign of activity, of something out of place that
would give away the subterfuge, but everything looked as it did before I went
upstairs. The film cases were on the shelf. The security door looked
undisturbed.

Dad always was good at continuity.

And on the screen, Marlow was accosted by Everett Sloane as the man in rags.
"...this man has enlarged my mind!"

Dad took one look at me and stood up. "What's the matter? Are you --?"

"It's all right." I sniffled and put my hand on his shoulder until he took his
seat again. "Just promise me I never have to come back here."

"Promise," he said softly, and ran his finger across my bangs.

Boyle put the tray down on the card table behind the console. He scowled,
scanning the room as carefully as I had just done.

"Feels colder in here, doesn't it?"

The three of us shrugged. Boyle wheeled himself over to the thermostat, looked
at it for almost a minute and wheeled himself back.

"Like someone had the door open or something. Or a window." He shrugged. "Like
you could open one without setting off the alarm. Or open the door without the
combination." He sneered at his own words as if he didn't altogether trust them.

We drank coffee as Boyle continued his sales pitch to Dad, but now he pitched
with much less fervor, still looking for some sign of disturbance in his chaos,
glancing at the screen just as Welles, in his Kurtz get-up, raspily whispered,
"The horror! The horror!"

"It sure ain't no Citizen Kane." Boyle scowled, still eyeing the thermostat and
the door with suspicion.

By the time Marlow wound up his tale, telling the lie to Kurtz's "intended," Dad
got up from his chair. "It's about time we go, Terry." He shook his hand. "I
promise I'll think over your offer."

We put on our coats and stood by the basement door, waiting for Boyle to let us
out. Instead, he wheeled himself over to the stack of gray film cases, pulled
out the top one, undid the straps and looked inside.

"Something the matter, Terry?" Dad adjusted his scarf. All the reels were there.
Boyle grunted and closed up the case.

Koren smiled. She was holding out her cricket again. Boyle wheeled himself over
to the basement door and punched the combination into the keypad on the little
box.

"Hey, Andrew." He pointed to me and winked. "If you'll throw in one of these
chicks, I'll give you the whole deal -- every last film I've got."

Dad gave him a wry smile. "That might be fatal, Terry."

Boyle opened the door. "You're probably right. I would've died for old
Barbarella here." He planted his thumb on his T-shirt, catching the Queen of
Space's bare navel. "So she goes to Hanoi while I catch three NVA bullets in Nui
Ba Dinh." He looked Koren and me over one more time, top to bottom, smiling,
displaying his rows of corn-yellow teeth. "Fatal-- but what a fatality!

"Now what's that?" he asked, noticing the cricket.

"Good luck charm." Koren gently nudged me through the door. Dad was already
outside.

"No shit?"

"No shit." She raised it up higher and pointed it back into the basement.

Joseph Cotten, in tight close-up, was on the big screen, speaking softly,
deeply: "I could not tell her. It would have been too dark-- too dark
altogether."

"Good luck," Koren said.

Click!

The brooding music became a hiss of white noise. The face of Joseph Cotten
fluttered, decayed into a dance of horizontal bars, like luminous chopsticks,
before withering away into a field of gray TV snow.

"Hey!" Boyle looked at his screen, then back at Koren, her cricket, viscerally
working out a simple causality that I, the night before, had been too rational
and sophisticated to accept.

"What in the fucking name of --" He lunged at Koren so swiftly the back of his
chair kicked up and threatened to fly out ahead of him. Koren must have
anticipated his trajectory, stepped back, and re-aimed the cricket.

Click!

Boyle stopped cold, mouth wide open, frozen like a movie frame stuck in the
projector gate.

Koren slammed the door, fiddled with her computer again and urged us up the
concrete steps to the gangway sidewalk.

"That took far too long." The long-haired girl stood in the gangway, arms
akimbo. "We have twenty-seven minutes."

"For what?" I kept staring back at the basement door.

"Don't worry," Karen said softly, "he's not going anywhere for a while."

"What the hell did you do to him?"

"I can't explain now. The Variable Field Arranger --"

"You're not allowed to explain," her companion shot back as she strode to the
van.

"Listen." Dad held out his key ring. "Meet me back at my place." He smoothed my
hair back and smiled sadly.

"You're-- you're going with them?" I ignored the keys, remembering Sophocles and
Oedipus at Colonus: "...something invisible and strange/caught him up -- or down
-- into a space unseen."

"I'm going with you." I gripped his sleeve.

"I won't be long." He put his hand on my shoulder. "Well, not too long."

I shook my head and refused to let go. "You're not leaving me behind. Not again.
Not ever."

I don't know why I said it, but it worked. When the long-haired girl saw us both
climbing into the back of the van she hissed out a profanity and turned to
Karen. "This is too much!"

"You owe me this!" Dad pointed at her threateningly. "I got you in there with a
minimum of subterfuge, which is what you wanted. And don't worry about either of
us giving away your precious damn secrets. Who's going to believe a couple of
fiction writers anyway?"

She rolled her eyes and fumed, but in the end took her seat behind the wheel.
Karen sat next to her.

"We'll barely make it!" The long-haired girl started the van and pulled out so
swiftly Dad and I were thrown in three directions at once. Several piles of
amassed "stuff" in the storage area tipped over: books, movie reels,
manuscripts, vinyl records, canvases loosely wrapped in brown paper. Some of the
names on these things were unfamiliar to me. Others were all too famous -- as
the subjects of dreams and speculations: an eleventh Mahler symphony; a very
thick edition of The Last Tycoon; a film case marked Something's Got to Give --

"Leave that alone!" The long-haired girl scowled at me through the rear-view.

I sat back iust as the van made another sharp turn onto Howard Street, where we
really began to pick up speed.

"They've been busy, haven't they?" Dad glanced back into the storage area.

"How did this stuff get here?"

He shrugged. "They probably wouldn't mind knowing that themselves." His voice
was just above a whisper. "From what I gather, someone or something has been
throwing these things into different probabilities all over the place. The job
of these girls is to track it all down and return it to the universe it came
from. Sort of a 'paradox conservation.'"

"They're just kids," I whispered.

"I wouldn't say just.'" I looked at the Voyageur's dashboard. I'm used to
illuminated controls and digitized readouts, but never before had I seen so many
in one place, and never with such unfathomable functions, like one with a yellow
grid on which red and green wave lines wobbled over each other in a sort of
strange tango.

The Voyageur rolled down Howard Street as if that bumpy, potholed mess had
become a clean steel trackway. There was no way for me to tell which of those
glowing readouts was the speedometer, but I knew we weren't moving anywhere near
the posted limits.

"I think you missed that red light," I said.

No answer. Before I could repeat my observation we shot through another one.

Koren looked over the back of her seat. "Let me explain one more time: we're
going to a very remote place. There's nothing else around it for at least two
miles. A man of your age, in your condition --"

"Few things give me chest pains, Koren," he replied in full voice, "at my age,
in my condition: bad art, deliberate cruelty, and people who worry about my
health."

She turned back in her seat and said nothing more on the matter.

The Voyageur turned onto Central and from Central to Oakton, at no time dropping
speed. The play between streetlights and darkness took on a stroboscopic effect.
Neon signs became gaudy smears of color. The farther out we went the darker the
road became. Our headlights caught the bare tree branches, making them look like
hairline fractures in the shell of night.

As to how we managed to continue this way without being pursued by the combined
forces of several suburban police departments, I can only defer to the girls
with the gadgets and the cyber-dashboard.

We careened on into the patchy peripheries of the suburbs, where pockets of land
had somehow been missed by developers, through areas so dark we may as well have
been traveling through a tunnel, or the depths of space, or along the track of a
particle accelerator. Light itself huffed and puffed behind us, and ahead of us
was nothing but the target with which we were destined to collide. Dad may not
have been suffering chest pains, but my palpitations were growing audible.

"Tell me one thing, Koren," Dad said, "since all your inquiries about me seemed
sincere: your interest in coming here wasn't just to retrieve these misplaced
artifacts, was it."

She smiled as if she had expected to be caught with this question eventually.

"You came looking for some answers. Answers that, for whatever reason, you
couldn't find in your own probability."

She nodded with the slightest movement of her chin.

"And what answer did you find?"

"I found this." She held up the novel of Dad's she had borrowed, opened it,
pointed her computer book light at one page and read aloud: "'Forget recording,'
Gideon told her. 'Even the best recording by the best artist is ephemeral. The
record saves the performance, which is all well and good, but the score saves
the music. And it's the music that matters.'"

He looked surprised but not entirely unpleased to hear his own words, written
more than two decades before, read back to him. "And what does that passage mean
to you?"

"It means that whatever you do, in whatever probability you exist A or existed--
you can't help being an auteur, even when the budget stinks, the producer's a
moron and all your allies are far away." She closed the book and handed it back
to him. "Thanks."

"Keep it."

"I can't." She smiled shyly. If there had been more light in the van I might
have seen her blush. "You know why."

Dad tried to look impassive, but he's always been completely transparent. He
looked straight through the darkness to whatever, if anything, lay beyond it. I
took his hand and for once he gripped mine as if he were in greater need of my
assurance than I of his.

I was still thinking: "Something invisible and strange / caught him up -- or
down."

"Don't go," I whispered, the last word catching in my throat.

He looked at me as if I had said something silly and endearing. "Cath, I haven't
the --"

The van decelerated just enough to press us back against our seats and allow our
driver to execute a sharp right turn onto a vestige of an old gravel road that
had once been closed off by a chain tied to two posts. The chain was rusted and
in pieces; the posts were weathered stumps. Much of the gravel had sunken into
the dirt and clay or was covered with dead weeds and grass.

A waning moon found its way through the cloud cover as we rolled much more
slowly over this ghost-road, past a bizarre Boot Hill of dead refrigerators,
stoves and washing machines. The gravel and weeds led to an upgrade, at the top
of which was stationed a cinder block shed with boarded-up windows and doors,
layers of graffiti covering every inch of its surface. Next to it were what must
have been the remains of a larger building, barely a pile of bricks, and a
foundation obscured in winter-dried undergrowth. Beyond these ruins was a gently
downsloped field of ruined macadam and sere brush that ended at the stark steel
skeleton of some tall, wide, flat structure, like a monstrous billboard --

-- or a movie screen.

"An abandoned drive-in," Dad said. "Why not?"

The Voyageur came to a halt. Koren handed us each several eyeglassshaped pieces
of polarized film -- eyeguards -- the sort you have to wear when the optometrist
puts those nasty drops in your eyes.

"You'll need these. They're not as good as what we make where Antonia and I come
from, but we can't leave anything of ours behind." Antonia was already strapping
on what looked like the sort of heavy-duty goggles a barnstorming aviator might
wear, except that the lenses were solid black. "Wear them all, one over the
other. Try not to look directly at the gate when it opens."

"Gate?" I looked at the eyeguards in my hand. "You're kidding! We won't be able
to see a thing!"

Koren strapped on her pair of goggles. "Trust me." She leaned over and opened
the side door. "I suggest you get behind those ruins."

Only when Dad indicated he was getting out with me did I step down into the cold
night, holding him by the arm.

"Be careful, you two," Antonia said -- the only sympathetic words I ever heard
from her.

"It's been an honor, Mr. Ulaszek."

"Koren, you're a good kid." He patted her shoulder.

He still had one foot in the van when Koren stretched back and kissed him on the
cheek. He has that effect on people. When he stepped out, the door shut firmly.

"Dammit," I said. "I forgot to ask her what H.E.L. stands for!"

The Voyageur rolled on toward the skeleton screen. Dad gave them a final wave as
I nudged him toward the cinder block ruins. It was hard enough to see in the
dark, with the rough terrain, and utter madness to put on the eyeguards. I
looked all around, expecting something wild and frightening to reach out and
snatch my father from me " -- into a space unseen." I pushed harder, until he
almost lost his footing.

"Cath, what in the --"

The air split with a roar like a thousand revving jet engines.

It was accompanied by the sun, making a surprise guest appearance about twenty
yards in front of the old screen.

We couldn't get the eyeguards on fast enough. I thought it was some horrible
atom bomb explosion and in the next instant we would be vapor, except that if it
were a bomb I would have been vapor long before I could have formed the thought.
There was no accompanying heat. No flying debris. A rectangle bright as blazing
magnesium stood suspended before the old screen like the ghost of every frame of
every film that had ever shown there.

And into that frame of overpowering light rode the Voyageur.

I pushed Dad down and dropped down myself, gravel biting into my knees. I clung
to him, half to protect him and half for protection. I couldn't feel him
breathing, which frightened me, until I realized that I wasn't breathing either.

The light and roar continued for half a minute, then cut off as abruptly as it
began. Dad and I rose, pulling off our eyeguards and grunting like a couple of
sea lions.

When the ringing in my ears faded away, I heard Dad say, as he stared out toward
the ruined screen, "Thank you, God. I can die now.

"Then to me: "Loosen up, Cath. I don't mean at this moment."

I was on the verge of squeezing him to death, and eased my grip considerably.
"Ss-sorry. It's just -- I thought that -- you might --"

"No," he whispered, smoothing my hair. "I couldn't leave any of you. This is my
world, for better or worse. I just wanted to see, with my own old, cynical eyes,
what I've believed as a storyteller all these years."

I felt his frail form, the steadiness of his breathing, then looked around at
our desolate surroundings, darker than ever after the intense barrage of light
we'd just witnessed. The moon, in contrast, seemed no more than a tarnished
coin.

"Oh shit, Dad. Have we got a hell of a way to go to get to a phone."

Dad walked the three or so miles without complaint. On the way, he told me that
what Koren said about him was true for me too. "For better or worse, Cath."

"At this moment," I said, cold, hungry, exhausted, feeling every pebble on the
shoulder through the soles of my shoes, "don't ask me which I think it is."

We called Richard from an all-night gas station in Des Plaines. While we waited,
we bought some scorched coffee in the minimart and a pack of forbiddens. We
stood outside, smoking and looking up at the unruly April clouds, their bellies
illuminated by the great metropolis below and their heads outlined by the
steadfast moon.

"I wonder," Dad said, "how many probabilities have a moon, and in what phases
are they now?"

"And which ones," I added, "have cloudy nights, or rain, or snow. Which ones
have minimarts with bad coffee and stale donuts? Which heroes soar on the covers
of their comic books? How many of them chase after dreams, visions, ideas?"

"There are moments," he flicked away the forbidden and filled his lungs with the
cool night air, "when it's all there. When you can see and hear all those things
in all those worlds as clearly as you can hear the piano notes from the little
girl practicing her scales across the courtyard."

The attendant in the minimart told us about the "big light out west" he saw. He
thought it might have been a blown power transformer or a UFO.

When Richard finally arrived, he said, "I am waiting to hear one hell of a story
from you guys."

Unfortunately, we had to defer on that request until later.

Dad's little dead end block was in a commotion when we returned. Two squad cars
and an ambulance were parked down by the townhouses. The sidewalk was thick with
gawkers, banded into several muttering conferences as they stared at Boyle's
place.

From our experience at Boyle's earlier that evening, what the neighbors told us
and a few things Dad picked up later on, we pieced together what had happened.

When Boyle came out of his daze, he quickly discovered that his "recent
acquisitions" were gone-- replaced with reels of Army documentaries on the
making of asphalt. Then he discovered that every tape in his basement was erased
(Koren's cricket was a powerful little beast indeed). He flew into a fury and
made for the door to pursue the thieves, only to discover that the security
locks no longer recognized his access code. In an insane rage, he ripped the
door off its hinges, setting off his own alarms, and rolled out into the
gangway, hurling curses in all directions. This provoked a number of calls to
911, and Boyle made it halfway down the block before old Mr. Feldman, out
walking his sheltie, pointed out to him that he was standing on his own two,
ample legs.

When Stacy returned from work, she flat-out fainted. The ambulance was for her.

We walked Dad to his door as the flashing lights danced in irregular patterns on
the walls of his building.

"You knew what was going on right from the start. How?" I tucked the end of his
scarf back into his jacket.

He mussed up my hair and smiled. "I just did what you did. I followed the story.
All I know is stories. It may not be right, but it's all I know." He turned to
Richard. "Does that make me a Platohist or an Aristotelian?"

"It makes you a national treasure." Richard hugged him.

"He's right," I said. "It enrages me, how little recognition you've gotten. I
want to see you honored in the way you deserve."

"I am." He put an arm around each of us. "You don't know how honored I feel
right now."

I gave him the same sort of fleeting kiss Koren had given him a few hours
before.

He has that effect on people.

SOON, I WAS BACK in the routine, leading discussions, grading papers, holding
conferences, scribbling my poems, drinking too much coffee.

The last I heard of Terry Boyle, he was distributing Christian videos.

The student production of Colonus went on. The people who saw it liked it,
though the auditorium was never full. A critic for one of the university papers
liked the idea of placing the chorus in the audience, "like spectators at a
sports event, spurring the players on. Some of the theatergoers joined in with
them when they hissed Creon." She called it, "a neat bit of staging."

Near the end of the term I received another little boost. A friend in the French
department showed me a copy of the latest Positif. In it was an article, "Les
redemptions improbables des Andrew Ulaszek," strewn with inaccuracies but quite
laudatory. The opening paragraph mentioned that the Cinematheque francaise was
assembling a retrospective of his films.

Jon was right, I thought. He'll outlive that third doctor. In some ways he'll
outlive all of us, even if my life ever straightens out.

But the article that really caught my attention in that issue of Positif
concerned a storm brewing over the authenticity of an alleged "complete" version
of Erich yon Stroheim's Greed, recently discovered in the attic of an old
building on the rue Desiree. Apparently, even the defenders of the print's
authenticity are at a loss to explain why the woman playing Trina in the film in
no way resembles Zasu Pitts.

Wasn't it Napoleon who said, "'Impossible' n'est pas francais"?

It doesn't matter. I happen to know that Koren Hume speaks impeccable French.