108.
In the small lobby of the building beyond the glass door, the receptionist behind the counter takes one look at Vikar, jumps up from her chair and vanishes into a back room.
107.
The receptionist returns with another woman, who looks around fifty but may be younger. She has chopped peroxide blonde hair and enormous breasts beneath a tight t-shirt; a cigarette burns between her fingers. She reminds Vikar a bit of a female punk singer he once saw who performed wearing only shaving cream. “What do you want?” she says.
“Is this Caballero Films?” says Vikar.
“What do you want?”
“Did you make a movie called Nightdreams?”
“We can’t help you,” says the blonde.
“I want to buy a print of Nightdreams,” says Vikar. The receptionist appears terrified and backs into the wall.
“Nobody can help you,” says the blonde.
“I’ll wait,” Vikar says, “for someone who can help me.”
106.
The woman regards Vikar and takes a puff on her cigarette. “I’ll call the police,” she says.
“The police never come in Los Angeles,” Vikar advises her.
“Maybe you’re the police.”
“I’m not the police.”
She takes another puff. “It’s on video,” she says, “why don’t you rent it?”
“I don’t want to rent it. Are you sure you don’t have a print?”
“I’m sure.”
Vikar isn’t sure she’s sure. “Do you have a cutting room?”
“Why?”
“If you can’t sell me a print, can you rent me the use of the room?” He says, “I’ll pay a hundred dollars an hour to rent your room and look at a print of the movie. I won’t do anything to the print and I won’t leave the building with it.”
The woman glances at the receptionist. “A hundred an hour?”
“Yes.”
“How long will it take?”
“Perhaps the rest of the day, if I start now.”
“A hundred an hour for the rest of the day.”
“Yes.”
“We lock up at six.”
“I hope before then that I find what I’m looking for.”
105.
Vikar waits in the small lobby ten minutes until the woman with the cropped hair reappears and motions for him to follow. They cross the warehouse to a line of rooms on the other side. “You can use this,” she says, opening the door to one.
“Thank you.”
“A hundred up front. Every hour I’ll come by and collect another hundred.”
Vikar hands her two fifties.
She looks at the money and says, “In about an hour, a guy comes by selling sandwiches. There’s a soda machine over by where we came in.”
“Thank you.”
“You must have a thing for this movie.”
“I believe it’s a very good movie.”
“Yeah,” she says, “a very good movie. I’ve never had anyone like a movie so much they wanted to look at the print. You’re not going to jerk off or anything in here, are you?”
“What?”
“Just keep it in your pants, is all I care about.”
104.
Inside the editing room, he’s surprised to find a relatively sophisticated flatbed table, which is good for looking through more film quickly but not as good as a moviola for locating a particular frame. Several canisters sit on the table. He takes the film out and begins unspooling it, running it through the table’s prism and searching.
103.
An hour passes. There’s a knock on the door and the woman sticks her head in. “Got an extra sandwich here,” she says, holding out a cellophane-wrapped sandwich.
“Thank you.”
“Want a soda?”
“Thank you.”
102.
The hours pass, then the afternoon, interrupted only by the hourly collection of another hundred dollars, until Vikar isn’t sure he trusts his eyes anymore, when
101.
around five o’clock, frame by eight thousand frames into the film
100.
he finds it
there in the Hellfire sequence, all shimmering heat, the constant, relentless surging sound in the background of machinery grinding and people crying, like hydraulics bashing and engines being stoked, the clanging of metal to metal slightly muffled as though by a volcanic sea, and beyond the Devil’s
shoulder is the dim naked figure of the slave chained to the molten walls of the underworld urging the Devil on, and the madwoman bending over before him as the Devil stands behind her, spearing his pleasure, saying things just barely more than sounds and groans, grunting meaningless proclamations over and
over and pulling out of her now and then for no other reason than to reveal a satanic cock, all to the same ongoing muffled industrial roar, and then, spliced wetly between the frames of the PornHell, so that any untrained eye not searching so intently would glide right over it and never see it or ever know it was
there, he finds the single frame
of the horizontal rock, out of its open chasm a sound roaring as though it’s the crashing machines of the PornHell, as though another movie is trying to emerge through the rock’s portal, and the glowing white writing across the top of the rock, and there, draped across the top of the rock, the still silhouetted figure
waiting; and Vikar reels, shoving himself back from the table. Although he can hardly stand it, he looks again
99.
and is overcome by a kind of panic. “Oh, mother,” Vikar says out loud, or perhaps he doesn’t say it out loud but just feels as though he does.
He catches his breath, regains his bearings. Then he removes an exacto-knife and a plastic baggie from his pocket. He locks the door of the editing room. He removes the single frame from the print, puts it in the baggie, puts the baggie back in his pocket. Then he splices the film back together.
98.
He walks quickly from the editing room, crosses the warehouse, passes the two women, pushes out through the glass exit and keeps walking.
97.
At some point he realizes he’s walking the wrong way, away from the first of the four buses home. On the bus he has to make himself focus in order not to miss his connection. When he arrives home at ten-thirty, Zazi is waiting; he isn’t through the front door before she’s screaming at him, “Where have you been? Where did you go?” and then barricades herself in her room.
96.
He hears her crying in her bedroom as he has before, when he would stand at her door wondering what to do. When he opens the door, she’s stopped crying but lies on her bed with her face in her pillow. “I would never abandon you,” he says, and goes into his own room, closing the door behind him.
95.
Zazi is gone the next morning when Vikar wakes.
He takes from his pocket the baggie with the frame of film, half expecting it will have vanished with the morning.
94.
The curator at the UCLA film school says, “Of course you understand I can’t let you take the print.” He looks more like a banker, a short stout man with thinning hair and glasses.
“What if I use one of your editing rooms here?” Vikar says.
“What are you looking for anyway?”
“I’m not going to hurt the print.”
“You’re not Vikar Jerome the editor, are you?”