| Portland Weekly - International Film Fest / Portland, OR 2001
Now...
I couldn’t watch her pack her things, so I stood around in the kitchen, drinking red wine and laughing nervously. Every few minutes she’d pass by with another box or bag and add it to the growing stack by the front door. The stack had doubled since I helped her move out of her father’s house long ago, but it still looked the same and meant all the same things: She was leaving. But this time, she was leaving me.
She shot me a glance as she passed by with another load. “It’s only eight in the morning.” She said, rolling her eyes.
“Doesn’t matter. They’re going to fire me anyway.”
She shook her head and kept moving. From the bedroom I heard: “You did it to yourself!”
Which was true, I think, on both fronts. The job hadn’t been what I expected, but jobs never are, and I thought that was enough to get me through. I was wrong. I couldn’t conform to the changes of the paper, nor could I find a good enough reason not to, and somewhere in the midst of it all I had dumped her because I thought she was the problem.
There was no problem, of course. And that was the great joke that made me laugh while drinking red wine in the kitchen. I think she knew the joke, too. Maybe she knew it all along. But she had never bothered to tell me, and that was the most confusing of all.
Now, I didn’t want her to leave. She was leaving anyway.
Again, another box. “They won’t fire you right in the middle of the Fest. You’ve got another week, at least,” she said.
“I know… But, my deadline is… Listen, maybe I like drinking in the morning. Did you think of that?”
She ignored me. “What do you want me to do with the key?”
“Who’s helping you with your stuff?”
“A friend,” she said. “Where do you want the key?”
“A friend? What time is your flight?”
She slapped the key onto the kitchen counter and went back to the bedroom. I didn’t know how to talk to her (maybe I never did), so I did what I always had. I yelled. “I asked you a simple fucking question! Why don’t you answer me?”
She said nothing.
“Hello? Are you just going to ignore me?”
“Feels like shit, doesn’t it?” she jabbed.
“Please, that’s the last thing I want to hear. Just tell me when you’re flying out. I can see you off.”
“I don’t need you to see me off. All I want to know, is where to leave the key.”
She spoke with that tight, condescending voice that always rubbed me the worst, and then I realized I might have drank too much because of what I said next. “You know what? FUCK… YOU… Do you hear me? FUCK… YOU…!”
Her face contorted into a tangled mess, and she looked as she was preparing to spit venom. But the scorn melted into a broken string of sobbing, lumpy coughs. And she fell to the bed in tears, the pain welling up from somewhere so deep I never knew it existed. She looked broken as she slumped on the mattress. And I wanted nothing more than to go to her, and help her, and make her want to stay.
Yet, I didn’t approach. Didn’t move a muscle. All I could muster was, “Please, just stay. You don’t have to leave.”
“Yes I do. Already got my ticket.”
“So what. Just…”
“My aunt is expecting me. The job is, too.”
“Its only Friday. Stay the weekend. Leave on Sunday, if…”
She stopped me. “You’ve got a screening in forty-five minutes. You’re gonna be late. You can’t afford to be late.”
As usual, she was right. I had a growing suspicion my editor would fire me if I missed one more screening, regardless if the festival was only half over or not. I had somehow managed to miss nearly all of the screenings at that point, but I always blamed it on the fighting and the break-up and the general weirdness of the movies themselves. None of this was true, naturally. But I think now that I was better at calling myself a film critic, and a boyfriend for that matter, than actually being either of these things.
She finally lifted her head from the mattress. She began to speak, but caught herself, carefully putting her thoughts together. When she did speak, her voice was even, controlled, and void of any familiarity. She said, “We have to work out our resentments, first. Maybe then I’ll come back.”
“Why do we have to work them out separately?”
She sighed. “We don’t need each other anymore. Besides, you told me to leave.”
“I was wrong.”
“I don’t have the time,” She said. “I’ve got to get my stuff together. You’ll be late, too.”
So, I swallowed that last bit of wine and headed for the door. I paused, just to tell her to drop the key in the mail; and over my shoulder I saw her, collapsed still on the floor, her breath limping along in quick, weepy gasps. Resentments? Maybe. But I don’t really know.
That was the last time I saw her. And though I try, it's hard not to remember her this way.
378 Days, 22 Hours, 16 Minutes Earlier…
The man looked over the top of his reading glasses down at my resume. I already knew the question he was going to ask at any second, but I played it cool and acted like nothing bothered me. He flipped through my very small collection of clips, pausing from time to time to read the reviews, I imagine, even cracking a smile. He then gathered it all up into a neat, small pile in front of him, and it looked pathetic to me very suddenly, this supposed body of work.
He motioned to the stack. “How much money did you make from these?”
No, that’s not the question.
“None,” I said. “I did it because of the opportunity.”
“So, you’re unable to make money, then?”
“Well, with these clips… yes, I imagine.”
He pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. “You want to make money, don’t you? Or, are you content to be a freelancer?”
No, that’s still not the question.
“I want to make money, of course.”
“You won’t make good money working here, but you will make some.”
“That’s all I need,” I said. Things were looking good. “Just the chance to get my foot in the door.”
“Your foot is already in the door, Mr. Whitecliff. The question is: why should I let it stay there?”
Ah, yes… there was the question.
Why? Why? Why? I knew it was coming, and I still had not prepared myself. I wanted to say, ‘Well, sir, you have to give me this job because I have traveled from the other side of the country, changed my life, dragged my girlfriend along, traded the sunshine of Florida for the gloom of the Northwest, usurped every other important factor of my existence, and drained my bank account with the vague hope of getting this position. Also, did I mention I would starve? Other than that, I don’t really need it." But, instead, I blurted out the most sensible thing I could: “I’ll work for less.”
“How much less?”
“What does the job pay? 25?”
He nodded.
“I’ll do it for twenty,” I said. “But I do need this job.”
He smiled at me, though I don’t think he was amused. He had me where he needed to have me, and that was the best thing any editor could ask for. He adjusted his glasses once more and finally handed over a stack of screener passes. “Tomorrow’s Tuesday. We always have an eight o’clock editorial meeting with both News and Arts. This meeting is mandatory. Deadline for A & E is Wednesday at 10, and we go to press at 11. Do you have a problem with deadlines?” I said no, but I didn’t quite understand. “Good, now, there’s four screenings today and tonight, so you better hustle. For this week only, pass out the other passes to your interns. There are always a couple of those hungry bastards hanging around. Oh, and one more thing: This is a free news weekly. Do you understand what that means?” Again, I said no. “That means we are made or broken on the strength of our advertisers. No dollars, no paper, no editor, no writers, and no 25 a year. I may be your boss. But they are mine. Do you understand?”
“They’re more important than me?”
“They’re more important than any of us, Whitecliff. Now get going, you have a screening in an hour, out in Tigard.”
I looked down at my stack of passes, all them for movies that had yet to be released, and for a brief shining moment I felt like this was the biggest joke in the world. I had thought about a shot like this many times over, and it was always more formal. But he was still staring at me silently, that half smile still cracked, and I thought, well, maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
“I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.
“Eight AM sharp. And, Whitecliff, never take less than what you’re worth. That’s the first mistake in the business.”
To be continued next update! |
