“It’s this way,” Pigtails said as she led us through a narrow hallway and down a set of stairs into a basement.
“Watch your heads on the stairs,” she said. “The ceiling is pretty low.”
* * *
—
We stepped into a narrow room that smelled like old leather and damp newspaper. There were two short walls of old lockers, numbered 1 to 30, on either side of a long, worn wooden bench sitting on the polished concrete floor. It looked like a compact version of a changing room at a YMCA or a boxing gym circa 1982.
“We use these for the staff. Number 29 is one of the lockers we don’t have a key for. I don’t think it’s been opened the entire time I’ve worked here. We haven’t needed the extra space, so we’ve never bothered to have a locksmith open it. Do you think there might be something inside?”
I recognized that look in her eyes. She was getting excited about the mystery.
“We’re not sure, but we think there might be,” I said.
Pigtails nodded, and was about to open the locker when she turned to Chloe.
“You should do it,” she said. “Your brother would have wanted it this way.” She handed Chloe the key.
“Thank you,” Chloe said, grabbing the key.
Did I see a tear rolling down her cheek?
I shook my head. We were horrible people.
Chloe opened the locker. There was something small and circular inside.
“What is that?” Pigtails asked.
“Looks like a movie,” Chloe said as she pulled out an old film canister, about six inches in diameter.
Chloe opened the canister. Inside was a roll of film. There was a worn label on the inside of the lid that featured a familiar logo.
A small circle atop a triangle.
“Do you think it’s a movie of your family?” Pigtails asked, hopeful.
“I’m absolutely sure it is,” Chloe said. “My brother loved making old-school home movies. Thank you so much for everything. This means a lot.”
“You are so welcome,” Pigtails said, and then she led us back upstairs where she asked us to leave our information, just in case. We returned the locker key, and she made us promise to let her know what we found on that film.
* * *
—
“I’ll drop you off on my way home,” Chloe said as we got into the car. “I promised my neighbor I’d walk her dog. First thing in the morning, I’ll dig up a film projector.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
On our way to my place, I rolled down the window and Chloe put on some music. As we drove through the city, I did my best to let the Belle and Sebastian album Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant take my mind off what had happened to Fatman Neil.
I closed my eyes and leaned back.
I remember hearing the first song from that album—“I Fought in a War”—the evening of the day I’d found out that my parents had died.
I was standing in line at a grocery store.
I suppose I could have asked somebody to bring me some groceries, but I needed milk and just didn’t have the emotional energy to start a conversation with anyone I knew.
It wasn’t so much that whoever I saw would be feeling pity for me—although that definitely would have been hard to take. It was more the idea that I might have to look at somebody else’s face and give a shit what they thought about me, or about the way I presented myself in that moment of grief.
I couldn’t handle the idea of being forced to consider somebody else’s opinion of my reaction to my parents’ death. Was I crying enough? Was I crying too much? I really didn’t need anybody else to be sorry for my loss.
It was none of their fucking business.
While I was waiting to pay for my milk and bread, a young woman stepped into line behind me. She was around twenty years old. She was wearing two different-colored flip-flops on dirty feet, ripped jean shorts, a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt, and a vintage puka shell necklace. The smell of the watermelon gum she was chewing filled my nostrils as the loud music coming from the huge headphones she’d pulled off her head and left dangling around her neck filled my ears.
The song was “I Fought in a War” by Belle and Sebastian.
When I looked back at that girl, slowly swaying to the music, blissfully unconcerned with anything else in the whole world, I was pretty sure I’d never seen anything so carefree and beautiful in my entire life.
I started crying, and I couldn’t stop.
35
NO SPITTING ON STAGE
I called Chloe the next morning. She was in a thrift store haggling over the price of an old 8 mm projector. She told me to be at her place in fifteen minutes.