“Get out of here,” she says and he turns with a surprised look, then follows the focus of her eyes.
“Yes, of course,” he says, sort of relieved, “the film fanatic.”
“This is ridiculous,” she says. “There’s no way …”
He folds his arms over his chest and widens his eyes, then reaches up without looking, pulls down a canister about the size of a fat pancake and frisbees it to her. She grabs for it and makes an awkward catch, runs her finger over the tape that reads Greed — von Stroheim (1924).
“I’ve got all twelve hours,” he says.
“Ten,” she says. “It ran ten hours.”
“Trust me,” he says. “It’s twelve.”
“This is impossible. It doesn’t exist.”
“You’re holding it in your hand, Sylvia. ’Course it’s been reduced to sixteen millimeter.”
She’s just shaking her head and he clearly loves this reaction, so he throws another canister and she catches it and reads The Other Side of the Wind — Wells (1984).
She looks up. “But he never finished it—”
“He finished it, Sylvia.”
“—and what prints there were are in some bank vault in Iran.”
“Not anymore,” he says.
Sylvia is stunned. She looks up to the shelf and reads Further Ecstasy — Machaty, (1934), The Godless Girl’s Daddy — de Mille (1930), Berlin Melody of l936—Reifenstahl, Norma Jean & the Camelot Kids — Hoover (Compilation), The Day the Clown Cried II–Lewis (1972), Last Love Scenes from the Bunker — Braun (April, 1945).
She wants so much to believe this isn’t a prank. None of these films are supposed to exist. They’re all just wishful rumors, fever-dreams of movie nuts everywhere.
“How do you …” she says, “I mean do you ever …”
“Screen them?” he helps her out. “Of course. You know the old Ballard Theatre? The Loftus Brothers just bought it. They’re reopening next week as Impact: The Car Crash Cinema. But I know a way in. Would you like to—”
“Would I like to,” she says and Propp laughs.
“Calm down,” he says. “There’s time for everything.”
He brings their cups over and slides into the booth opposite her. They both take sips. She burns her tongue, ignores the sting and says, “You’re really Terrence Propp?”
He sits back. “Who else?”
“And you really live down here?”
“Where else?”
She sits back, matches his posture and says, “How’d you find this place?”
He shrugs. “Exactly how you’d think. I was out at night, prowling, looking for shots. I used to do that. Take some speed and just wander all night. Find a way into the old buildings. Shoot the old machines. Shoot angles. Abandoned cars. Then I started to get hooked on old furnaces. Old boilers. Peerlesses. American Standards. Even a few industrial Marville — Negres. The bigger and greasier and more sinister looking, the better.”
“When was this?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know anymore. No, really. You see any calendars hanging on the walls? Time gets fairly irrelevant down here.”
“I know that feeling,” she says.
“You do?”
“You were shooting furnaces,” she says.
He agrees to move on. “I discovered I had a talent for getting into any building. So I spent nights moving through every basement underneath Verlin and Aragon and Waldstein. Must’ve shot a thousand prints—”
“Could I see them?”
He just shakes his head no, without any emotion. “I destroyed them all. One big bonfire—”
“The negatives—”
“Of course, the negatives. That was the point.”
“It’s just—”
“Please, Sylvia, don’t say it. They were horrible. Agonizingly boring. Who wants to look at a thousand prints of heavy machinery? What kind of man would take a thousand shots of old furnaces? One night I just woke up and realized what I was doing. Got disgusted with myself. And just started walking.”
“Underground.”
“It was chance. I just kept moving. I simply didn’t care where I ended up or just how lost I got.”
“And you ended up here,” Sylvia says, looking around the diner again.
“It wasn’t in this condition, believe me. But the moment I came upon it, I knew it was the end of the line. I just knew, it, you understand, in that way we all hope to know something. With that kind of certainty.”
“Can I ask,” she asks, “where you lived before this?”
“No place dramatic,” he says. “I moved from rooming house to rooming house. The weekly hotels. One room. Pay as you go.”
She leans back in the booth and stares at him.
“What?” he says.
“It’s just …”
“Go ahead.”
She takes a breath and says, “Why?”
He stares back at her as if trying to decide which of several possible answers to give. As if his decision will be determined by the look on her face.
“I like my solitude,” he says.
“So join a monastery.”
“Too many monks. And they’ve got that awful requirement these days.”
She raises her eyebrows and says, “Celibacy?”
He picks up his cup, self-satisfied, and says, “Faith.”
“You’re not a believer?”
He puts the cup down, comes forward on his elbows and suddenly looks exhausted.
“I believe in a lot of things,” he says. “I believe in my own mortality. I believe in sleeping when I get tired—”
He’s getting cute and she hates it. “Why did you bring me down here, Mr. Propp?”
“God,” he says, “such formality. Propp will do, Sylvia. Just Propp.”
“Why am I here?”
He looks down at the table, lifts his cup almost absent-mindedly and throws the remains of his espresso out the window. He looks up at her and says, “I heard you had something that might belong to me.”
She doesn’t want to give anything away.
“Who did you hear that from?”
“Oh, Sylvia,” he says, “you know how the Zone is. You just hear things.”
“From Rory Gaston?”
“Gaston?” he says, amused. “I’ve never met the man but I’m told he’s an idiot.”
“He holds you in pretty high regard.”
“Case closed.”
“Was it Quevedo?”
“Who the hell is that,” he says.
“You don’t know Mr. Quevedo? From Brody’s?”
“Brody’s?”
She stares at him, annoyed. “Okay, fine. You never heard of Brody’s. Good.”
“I’m not trying to be difficult, Sylvia. I swear to you. I know it doesn’t seem that way, but it’s very … it’s extremely difficult.”
“Maybe I should go,” she says.
“If you want to leave,” he says, now seeming to hold back a genuine agitation, “I’ll take you back up to the street. It’s possible, it’s entirely possible I’ve made an enormous mistake here.”
“Then maybe that would be best.”
He pulls his bottom lip in and chews on it. The action seems to calm him down. He says, “First just tell me. You’ve got something of mine, don’t you? What did you find, Sylvia?”
They stare at each other over the length of the table. Though they’re locked on each other’s eyes, Sylvia can see the fingers of his right hand flexing out and retracting, doing this awful, nervous fidget that Propp might not even be aware of. She should probably be terrified at this moment. She should probably be preparing herself to ward off some kind of attack, to defend herself in whatever manner she might find available. But she simply doesn’t feel any threat.