himself.
But this was an artistic piece, complicated. People seemed to be talking to each other a good deal and with a mainly unreadable calmness. As soon as the child disappeared, he was lost.
So he stood, let the chair’s seat bang vaguely as it flipped out of his way, and strode up the incline of the invisible floor towards the invisible wall and its hidden doorway.
Outside, the projectionist’s box was clearly labelled and its door was, in any case, ajar, making it very easy to identify - an unattended projector purring away there, a dense push of light darting out through the small glass window, thinning as it spanned the cinema and then opening itself against the screen. It was always so cleanly defined: that fluttering, shafted light. Frank briefly wondered if the operator had to smoke, or scatter talc, raise steam to make sure it stayed that way, remained picturesque.
In the foyer, there was the boy with the dirty shoes, leaning against a pillar and looking drowsy.
‘There’s no sound.’
‘What.’
‘I said, there’s no sound.’
The boy seemed to consider saying what again before something, perhaps Frank’s expression, stopped him.
‘I said, there’s no sound.’ Frank not enraged, not about to do anything, simply thinking - no one helps and you ask and it doesn’t matter because no one helps and I don’t know why. He tried again. ‘I can’t hear. In the normal way I can hear. But at the moment I can’t. Not the film. Everything else, but not the film. That’s how I know there’s something wrong with the film and not with me.’
The boy was eyeing him, but didn’t seem physically strong or apt to move abruptly.
Frank believed that he felt calm and was not at risk. He continued to press his point. ‘There is a problem with the film. The film is playing, but there’s no sound.’ And to explain what he’d been doing for all of this time: ‘It’s not been started long and it has no sound.’ Although this maybe made him seem foolish because who would have normally waited more than half an hour in a cold, dark room for a film to start?
‘There’s no sound?’ The boy’s tone implied that Frank was demanding, unreasonable.
Frank decided that he would like to be both demanding and unreasonable. If he wasn’t the man he had been, then surely he ought to be able to pick the man he would be. ‘There’s no sound.’ Frank swallowed. ‘I would like you to do something about it.’
This wasn’t a tense situation, he’d thought it might be, but he’d been wrong. His potential opponent simply shrugged and told him, ‘I’ll go and find the projectionist.’
‘Yes, you should do that.’ Frank adding this unnecessarily because the boy had already turned and was dragging across the foyer carpet.
Something would be done, then.
Frank sat on the small island of seats provided, no doubt, for short periods of anticipation - people expecting to be joined by other people, parties assembling, outings, families, kids all excited by the prospect of big pictures, big noise, a secure and entertaining dark. The door to the larger auditorium was open and he could see a portion of the screen, the giant chin and mouth of a woman. There were also figures in some of the seats, film-goers. Or models of film-goers, although that was unlikely. They must have been stealthy, creeping in: or else they’d arrived before him, extremely early. Either way, he’d not heard them, not anticipated they’d be there.
That was surprising. Frank prided himself on his awareness and observation and didn’t like to think they could fail him so completely. In a private capacity this would be alarming, but it would be disastrous in his work. He was resting at the moment, of course. Everybody who’d said that he ought to rest had been well intentioned and well informed. He’d needed a break. Still, there would come a day when he’d return and then he’d need his wits about him.
Expert. That’s what he was.
‘There are other things you can do.’
She hadn’t understood. When you’re an expert then you have an obligation, you must perform.
‘There are other things to think about.’
She’d never known the rooms he’d seen: rooms with walls that were a dull red shine, streaking, hair and matter; floors dragged, pooled, thickened; footprints, hand prints, scrambling, meat and panic and spatter and clawing and smears and loss and fingernails and teeth and everything that a person is not, should not be, everything less than a whole and