INTERVIEWS
  
Here´s the truth: our biggest money came from porn. Most of our rental library was Hollywood legit, but the hottest items were in the adult video closet and on the mag rack behind the counter. One dude in spandex and a crash helmet lugged his bike in on his shoulders and lectured me on physical fitness while he bought reams of printed smut. But most men bought that stuff with their eyes cast down. Shame lingered in that place like cigarette smoke, and yes, some of it was mine.

A guy named Eric Ambler was our most loyal porn fiend. He jotted notes on a notepad while he scoured the adult closet with the door wide open. He´d duck his bowl-cut head of hair through every doorframe, nodding his Roman Polanski nose. He´d glance at me like maybe he also expected any minute a drama would unfold in the pitiful quiet of the store–a surprise twist, a sudden jolt into the second act.

All Nite Video had a few seemly patrons, like the albino Bailey Dannon, whose hair was like dreadlocked cottonpuff. She had unraveled Q-tips for eyebrows, fingernails shining tender pink without polish. Probably nineteen or twenty like me, she wore kid´s sneakers with fading Super Grover decals. I kept a private inventory of her rentals on an index card–Woody Allen, David Lynch, John Cassavetes, Ingmar Bergman. In case we ever ended up talking.

She´d thrust through the entrance and march toward a shelf with her fists curled tight. Kneeling in the aisle, she focused video boxes inches from her convex glasses. She slapped the tapes back in place and groaned like she was always settling for less than she expected. Me–I´d already hatched this nutcase dream that one of my six unfinished screenplays would someday be the exact film she was hunting for.

One night both Bailey Dannon and Eric Ambler showed up around the same time. Bailey´s over here squinting at the artsy films in the foreign section while Ambler´s over there slouched inside the porn closet, stacking a pile of tapes on the floor, amending his notes and crunching numbers into a pocket calculator.

Ambler spotted Bailey the second he ducked out of the closet with three tapes in his grip. He paused, soaked up her image, cocked his head, like that scene in Frankenstein with Karloff and that little girl tossing flowers into the pond. I could only guess at his sick thoughts when he saw a girl half his age, an exotic girl like Bailey.

Even during checkout, he kept pitching glances at her, and I wished something in my power could stop him. He trudged away eyeing her until he shoved the door open and an arctic blast struck him. Then he lurched outside and loomed there by the display window, fished a wrinkled cigarette pack from his jacket. Still he watched her through the smoke and steam he exhaled.

“Hi," Bailey said. I caught a waft of coconut suntan lotion from her direction, but it couldn´t douse my nerves. I fretted through her payment, slid the bagged video into her hands, and only when she turned toward the door did I manage to say, “Wait. I don´t trust that guy out there."

She pinched the frames of her glasses and winced.

“Over there," I said.

Bailey strutted to the storefront window and rapped her knuckles against the glass. She waved at Ambler with both arms like some manic groupie at a rock concert. He sidestepped away into the dark between the dim streetlamps.

“Do you know that guy?" I asked.

“Never seen him before in my life."

“His name´s Eric Ambler. He´s a pervert. You should stay here at least until we´re sure he´s gone."

She twirled the video bag beside her hip like a lasso. “And why should I trust you instead of him?"

“Because you know me–or at least you´ve seen me enough times. I know that´s not logical, but I´m an employee here, and he´s some scary dude lurking in the dark."

“Fair enough," she said. Bailey had silver irises that gathered light like solar receptors. I don´t know why but I asked if she´d take off her glasses.

She looked at them on her face, cross-eyed. “Why?"

“I´d like to see your eyes better."

“Aren´t you afraid I´m pathetically self-conscious–that I might feel like, what, some freak show attraction?"

“I´m sorry," I said.

She tipped the glasses down the slope of her nose and folded them into her fist.

“Albinos get a shitty rap in the movies," she said. “They were all vampires in Omega Man. They were homicidal kids in Village of the Damned. An albino stalked Goldie Hawn in Foul Play."

I said, “Some pagan cultures celebrated the birth of an albino female. They thought she was their moon goddess reincarnated."

“Yeah," she said. “Nothing magical happens anymore."

We popped popcorn in the microwave and played the video Bailey rented, something called Ice Castles about figure skaters falling in love and going blind. When Bailey got bored she grabbed a shrink-wrapped package of dirty magazines from the rack behind us. “Three for the price of one," she read. “What a steal. Dirty bitches get nekkid together. Hmm. Cocksucking princesses? Such colorful detail."

“Let´s microwave this crap video," I suggested.

“Win a pair of Jenna Jameson´s panties? Who´s that?" Bailey shoved a cluster of popcorn into her mouth and snickered at the gravity of smut.

“I want to be a filmmaker," I said. “But not adult videos, and not Hollywood blockbusters, either. More like regional filmmaking. You know, independent movies."

Still chewing, Bailey flapped the popcorn bag at me, spilling kernels into my lap. I told her that I wanted to film our little village of Hammersport, New York, in black-and-white silence, lingering on the grit and workaday and rust and freeze. Bailey listened until an hour before dawn when she tugged her pom-pommed toque over her head and trudged away through the snow.

At sunrise my boss Josephine came to read the nightly profit reports. She hobbled through the rear office on a forearm crutch, holding her kindergartner Bobby by the hand. This boy, according to Josephine, had been born dead, but, she´d say, “Just look at him now." Bobby sprang into dizzying laps around the previewed video bins, squealing.

“Just found out my ex-husband´s out on parole," Josephine said. “He called us four times last night. This is the guy who stands in our driveway with a rifle and shoots out all our windows. And they go letting him out of jail?"

“Did you call the police?" I asked.

“Just if he shows up here, don´t go giving him our address. We had to move the trailer because of him. Did I tell you this? Tell him I said leave us alone."

“What if he brings that rifle?" I asked.

“Don´t worry. He´s just a stupid ass."

Three nights passed before Bailey came back. She rushed in with a coffee from Java Queen´s, saying “figured you´d probably need caffeine." All evening I´d been eyeing the door for Bailey or Ambler or Josephine´s gun-toting ex. I was worried that the blinking fluorescence overhead wasn´t enough light to stage either a showdown or a love affair.

“My father gets pissed at me for being up all night," Bailey said. “He claims he can´t sleep with me pacing around. I don´t pace. We both can´t sleep–that´s the thing. So I leave him alone and rent my movies."

“I sleep all day," I said. “In the winter I hardly ever see the sun. Makes one gloomy after a while."

“Yeah, well, zero sleep makes one hallucinogenic," Bailey said, and that´s right when Eric Ambler lurched through the doorway, snow dusting his shoulders like dandruff. He reached deep inside his jacket lapel and produced what, it turns out, was just a videotape. “Return," he said. Bailey stood back, warming her hands with the coffee she´d bought me.

“He´s been following me," she said when he was gone. “Java Queen´s, now here. He asked me if I wanted to ‘grab´ breakfast."

“You should call the cops," I said.

“Why? A man has a right to ask. He´s harmless."

“He´s a pervert. A middle-aged, married one."

“I can handle myself."

“But I can´t believe his nerve."

“You want me to come back later when you´re done working yourself up?" In her pale smirk, I saw she meant only a minor sting, but hours later when I was drifting asleep in my third-floor studio apartment, I wondered how much these months of nothing but moon glow had corroded my passions. I stared at my vintage posters of A Clockwork Orange and Taxi Driver, thinking that maybe too many years of prowling in the dark had ruined Eric Ambler, and now it was eating away at me. I wanted Ambler punished for that. I wanted maybe just a little sunlight, but I was dozing, breaking up like a TV signal going static.

Around midnight my next shift I found Ambler´s phone number in the membership files and called. If he answered I´d just disconnect, but the voice was groggy and female, asking, “Who is this? What´s wrong?"

“This is All Nite Video calling to remind you that you have a rental three nights overdue."

“All night–a video? Rental? What time is it?"

“The video was rented by Mr. Eric Ambler. The Devil in Miss Jones: Part 6."

“The devil what?"

“It´s an adult title, ma´am. An X-rated movie."

The dead air between us chilled like frost. “My husband doesn´t rent those. He´s never even been to–what´s it called?"

“You might want to check with him."

“I don´t know," she said. She lilted her voice like she hoped this was a mistake, but she knew. I was almost nauseous with triumph because I wanted to think Ambler had nothing but dust and desire in his heart. Our OPEN sign glowed, inviting his revenge.

Instead, Bailey arrived, but not until five hours later, lugging a vinyl satchel. “I come bearing gifts–well, a loaner," she whispered. “JVC camcorder. It´s got one of those nifty little pop-out screens, but you can still stick your eye in it too. I´m letting you borrow it."

“I can´t just start taping–"

“It´s my dad´s," she said, “but he doesn´t use it. He bought it to film my mom when she was a stage actress at the community theater in Rochester, but she wanted bigger gigs in New York, so she split. Last year."

“I´m sorry," I said.

Bailey shrugged and passed the satchel. “You wanted to make a movie, so let´s go. Improvisation."

“I only have a half-hour lunch break."

“We´ll probably need an hour–tops," she said.

So twenty minutes later I sat dangling my legs through the canal bridge railing with the grates freeze-branding their shape into my ass. Through the camera lens I taped Bailey, fifteen feet below me in the canal basin, drained almost empty for the season. She slid on ice and arched her arms like a figure skater, twirling in her Super Grover sneakers. Her body caught the glimmer of the downtown streetlights like a living constellation spinning through a black galaxy.

“I wanted to be a skater," she said to me or the camera, “but my mother was afraid my vision would cause some trouble, that I would fall and bleed and never clot. So I didn´t–no success story, no defying the odds." She seemed unreal, like a clockwork ballerina in a music box.

“I called Eric Ambler´s wife," I said. “I got him back for what he did."

Bailey stopped. “What´d he do?"

“You know, stalking you. Trying to pick you up."

“I was just joking. He didn´t say shit." She began to slide again, disinterested. The picture streaked as I tracked her elusive routine.

“I told his wife he had an overdue porno," I said.

“That´s crude. Now she´ll go ballistic, kick him out. He´ll torch the store out of spite."

I lost sight of her, then I heard scrambling on the sandstone canal bed. I tried but I couldn´t target her location with the viewfinder. I said, “At least my boss will get the insurance."

“Done filming, Hitchcock?" She stood beside me with a dust of snow flickering around her. Through the camera it looked like tiny bits of her face falling away.

“Ambler deserved it," I said. “He was a pervert."

“And you´re a saint?" She leaned closer until her features blurred into whiteout.

I stopped filming and lowered the camera against my chest. The subzero wind tried to beat us, but Bailey grasped my face with her frozen hands.

Somehow, a footrace ensued. My shoes crunched over hardened sidewalk slush, and I lost her through the village shopping district, caught her distant shadow leaking across the vacant Superette parking lot. I found her heaving for breath beside the entrance to All Nite Video. “Kicked your skinny ass," she gasped.

Inside the store we warmed ourselves with the heat blasting from behind a missing hardwood panel. Bailey´s glasses fogged and then cleared while I filmed her browsing through comedies, horror, musicals.

“Have you ever considered acting, like your mother?"

“She didn´t even say goodbye, you know. My mother. I remember the night she and my dad were dancing to ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart´ in the living room. Mom sang along and Dad did the ‘turn around bright eyes´ part. Candles lit all over the place–pretty sticky stuff. I went to bed, and then later mom peeked in and said goodnight. Not goodbye. Just goodnight. Then the next morning she was gone, like nothing." With both hands she flattened her white hair, but it plumed back outward again.

I peered through the camera and cradled its gentle whirling body in my hands and felt a kind of security I never knew before. My movie eye followed her through a doorway into orange light and a wall of coverboxes drenched with smut. The porn closet.

“There´s a whole lot of fucking in here," Bailey said.

“I should have warned you," I said.

“Chill out," she said. “Can you imagine? Albino porn? I´d make a killing. You know there´s a thirsty market for it."

“You´d have to be another kind of person," I said.

“You´re right," she said.

The video image must have jittered while she spoke. I thought of Ambler, how I´d indicted him for less than I was considering now.

“No customers around," Bailey said, and she wiggled the army jacket from her shoulders. Below she wore a silk tropical buttondown; I noticed with that careful attention any guy pays to a girl´s clothes when they´re about to be removed. She unclasped buttons, exposing white skin.

She shoved past me, back into view of the storefront window as big as a cineplex screen. I shivered and tensed and several times stumbled while I trained the camera on her bare shoulders as they drifted down another aisle. The microphone captured her chilly laughter. The camera tracked her as she peeled away her clothes–through the open video racks that flickered her image like vintage film. She screeched, laughing, and dashed for the checkout station wearing nothing but sneakers. Her body was like the outline of a woman carefully snipped from each frame, white as projector light itself.

She ran again, toward the office, and she splayed herself across the futon there. I zoomed inward, revealing just beneath her skin all the veins that spilled over her shoulders and arms, collecting in blue currents at her wrists. I gawked, allowed by the camera to gawk, and wondered why I should be granted this gift over anyone else, over Eric Ambler. For a second I might´ve even imagined myself more handsome or smarter or worthier, but please–

The image went blue and the battery icon flashed.

“Uh-oh," I said.

“No, no–damn it," said Bailey. She lunged and snatched away the camera. “It´s dead, isn´t it? The battery?" She punched buttons like her panic might spark a backup.

“We got plenty of footage."

“Why don´t they make eight hour batteries?"

“People don´t have the patience," I said. Subtle chimes jingled with my words. This sound was not magic but, rather, the entrance bell. Bailey hugged her knees, balled herself up to hide the nudity. I threw myself around the office in search of coverings. Nothing but empty boxes and packaging.

“Just go," she whispered.

I pulled the office door shut behind me. On the floor below the sci-fi section Bailey´s army jacket lay discarded. A little further down was her tropical shirt. I scooped these up on my way toward the checkout, where my customer waited with his pants seat leaned against the countertop. A scruffy guy maybe forty in a flannel shirt and dusty hiking boots. Eyes concealed by his Mets baseball cap. He loafed like the place belonged to him. That´s how I knew he was Josephine´s felon ex-husband.

“Where´s Jo?" he asked.

I froze beside a Christmas-themed endcap. Bailey´s boxer shorts–yes, with smiley faces–lay crumpled on the counter near the ex´s elbow. “She´s not here."

Dull dawn had washed over the widescreen backdrop, lighting the grime and the gray-crusted snow. Now was the hour of Josephine´s arrival, but a rush of loyalty forbid me from telling him. Plus she always came through the back, where Bailey now hid in the buff.

“Bullshit. She ain´t at home, so she´s here."

“But she´s not," I said.

I considered his dry, ruddy knuckles and the larger bulges in his jacket where a weapon might be stuffed. He nudged the boxer shorts with his thumb to check if they were really dead. “What´s going on around here, Chief? What´s this all about?"

Boldfaced honesty seemed appropriate–admirable even. “My girl–"

“Jo´s in the back room, ain´t she?" Ex unzipped his jacket.

Mortal danger, panic–these disarmed my aptitude for clever banter, so instead I said “Don´t you have a restraining order?"

“How the fuck you even know who I am? Who´re you?"

“I work here," I said.

A car veered into the parking lot and its headlights tracked upon us through the window. Eric Ambler exited the shotgun seat with a cardboard box in his hands. I saw nothing of the driver except her permed ball of hair, but she had to be his wife. Ambler nudged his hip against the entrance. His box was overflowing with more than a dozen porn tapes, all in their original lurid boxes.

Ex-husband reached into a jacket pocket. I squinted, feeling woozy.

Oblivious, Ambler came to the counter and dropped his collection. I couldn´t budge from where I obstructed the aisle that might lead these men toward Bailey.

“I need to return these," Ambler said.

My senses revved, ready to capture every beat of what they witnessed. I´d remember it all for Bailey.

From his pocket, ex-husband produced a tissue and blew his nose into it. He studied his emissions like they were his fortune, then he shoved the tissue away. “Son of a bitch," he muttered.

I told Ambler: “We don´t really accept purchase returns that have been opened unless they´re damaged."

“Damaged," the ex-husband said with a snort.

Ambler cleared his throat. “I don´t need a refund. I just need you to take this merchandise because I can´t keep it. You can resell it for profit."

His wife honked her horn and startled all three of us. With that jolt, we were diffused. The Amblers, our saviors. The ex nodded his cap brim at Bailey´s clothes, at the office door behind me, at Ambler´s smut stash on the counter. “You know who I am, then you tell her I was here, right?"

The Amblers´ car had rumbled away by the time I collected Bailey´s clothes–one sock draped over a copy of Rear Window on the Hitchcock shelf. Where Josephine´s ex-husband had gone I didn´t know. Out of sight, off screen, he didn´t exist.

Bailey had succumbed to a fetal sleep on the office futon. She´d cloaked herself with sheets of bubble wrap packaging, and her skin magnified in the domed cells as if they were infused with milk. Over her hazy nakedness I laid her pants, her shirt, her jacket. I knelt beside the couch, listening to her breath, tapping the effects buttons on her camera. Somehow the videotape ejected with the clatter and whirl of robotics, but Bailey didn´t wake.

Back at my station I chose a screwdriver from Josephine´s miniature toolbox. I set the videotape lengthwise on the countertop and shimmied the screwdriver through its midsection until the cassette broke and spilled its two white spools and celluloid reams like the entrails of a gutted animal. Now those images it had captured were forever mine alone. No one else would ever see them like I had. No one else could judge whether or not I deserved them.

I lifted a handful of videotape, held it like a loose pom-pom. Just then Josephine limped through the office door, and her son Bobby burst out from behind her and barreled toward the gumball machine. He strangled it with both hands, throttled it so the gumballs jostled inside the glass.

My boss didn´t seem to have noticed Bailey on the couch back there, but I wasn´t surprised. Apparitions are not meant for everyone´s eyes. And now: here´s Bobby in his berserker glee filching my video ribbon and jogging a marathon of circles, hands aloft, fluttering the ribbon through his fingers like a banner for some sort of cause. Bailey and I are riding inside of those twisted reels. We are staging an overnight dream-play that will sleep now for always.









Derek Nikitas has been teaching creative writing at SUNY College at Brockport, but this fall he will be moving to Atlanta to begin a creative writing PhD program at Georgia State University. His short stories have appeared in The Ontario Review, Chelsea, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Traffic East. His first novel, a noir thriller titled Pyres, will be published by St. Martin's Minotaur in 2007.
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