Joseph McElroy - Lookout Cartridge

I had an impression of New York, but it passed.

I did not say to Monty Graf, What’s Phil Aut to you?

Instead I said wearily, There were two films.

That I know, said Monty Graf.

Oh you know that, do you? Well do you know that also there are two films? The film and my recollection of it.

All right, you mean your diary, said Graf. But I’m afraid I meant two real films. That is, before yours got burnt.

What’s the other?

Don’t you really know?

I put a ten-dollar bill on the table and Monty Graf reached and pushed it into my lap and I took it and got up.

Let me see the print, Mr. Cartwright, I’m with you , he said.

I lifted my coat off the hook and walked between two tables toward the bar wondering what would happen and wishing I’d waited for a coffee. Monty Graf was right behind me.

The man who’d made me a cup of tea was still at the bar. I said hello and as Graf arrived I looked at the two of them, but Monty didn’t seem to know him. He wore a fringed pale buckskin jacket and a dark purple neckerchief and a dark denim shirt with pearl snaps.

He held out an envelope. Your diary, man, all two pages. I know it by heart.

A delicate rain settled down, and I spotted an Off-Duty cab light coming. Monty Graf said I seemed to get around, and would I at least sleep on the prospect of a proposition and phone him tomorrow.

I said I was sure Dagger would show him the print. Dagger could borrow a projector.

If you, said Monty Graf, gave me an introduction. When are you back in London?

But he’s Claire’s uncle, I said, and waited. He hadn’t known I connected him with her. Just tell Dagger you’re a friend of Claire’s.

All right, I know Claire, said Monty Graf. Then he said, You know you’re in trouble, you know that.

I put the envelope in his hand. Give these pages to Claire; I told her they were technical sentiment, but she might be interested.

I was getting into a cab pointed downtown when I wanted to go uptown. Inside the restaurant the man in glasses peered through the glass door and for a second in the amiable light behind him everyone seemed to be turning away toward the interior.

I wanted to ask about Jan Graf, but expected Monty to speak; but he didn’t. So I said, Do you know a painter named Jan Graf?

He smiled, to make me feel he knew something. He stuck out his hand. I bent up into the cab and through the opposite window saw two headless bike-riders flick past. I fell into the seat and reached and pulled the door.

I gave the driver Sub’s street.

Monty rapped on the glass. My God, he said, the sound , the sound! They didn’t get that! Where is the sound?

He may not have heard me say, Filmless.

Two films? Which two had he been talking about? Monty Graf was on the lookout for prospects that were started and had momentum so he could tune in on the energy.

Was the energy mine and Dagger’s? If so, was there something in my own film, my own diary, that I didn’t know about?

I didn’t want to talk to Sub I wanted to end the evening right there in the cab, and wake tomorrow with new thoughts.

But Sub was waiting.

Why not?

My eye looking at someone I’ve known since we were eight saw someone seated on a couch that could not change into a bed until he absented himself. I wasn’t tired, I just wanted either Sub’s place to myself or something new to happen.

Two films, Monty Graf said.

OK he didn’t mean two views, mine and Dagger’s, or camera versus words in a diary. He meant two films, unless he was in the dark and merely holding on.

So I was in trouble, was I.

The camera never wearies. But apart from its inserted film that comes and goes, a camera is unremembering. Granted it can break — which is memory of a kind; still, the lens is dumb.

I had in my head I felt sure why they destroyed our film. In my head or on paper. I could probably remember most of what I’d put down. Most of it Jenny had typed.

I hadn’t needed to say I had those two pages in my head.

Well, I asked Sub what sort of day it had been. He stretched, and said Rose had been livid. I shook out a cigarette and wondered if Jenny had thought about the pages she’d typed. She might be able to help after all.

Sub got up and turned off the telly. Rose was fit to be tied, he said, she came for Ruby and Tris and nobody was here. Almost.

You said you’d phone her, I said.

I almost meant to and forgot. Talking to Ticketron about going to work for them, Rose went right out of my head.

Rose keeps in touch, I said.

She’s not threatening a comeback, said Sub.

She have a key?

That’s almost what I wanted to ask you.

You said she was livid.

By phone and in the note she scrawled me.

Sub was leaning back on the couch that turned into my bed. I looked for an ashtray. On a bookshelf stood some old coffee tins painted purple.

Who’d you give your key to? said Sub.

I let myself in, didn’t you notice?

The labels on the coffee containers read PENCILS, PENNIES, BUTTONS, SHELLS, STRING, MISC. There was a slit in the plastic top of the PENNIES tin. My ash dropped on the carpet. I found an ashtray between two glass candlestick holders.

You see, said Sub, a man said to Rose you’d lent him your key.

To Rose? I said — which lucky for me was just about what I’d have wanted to say.

Rose came here expecting to find the children, said Sub, and when she didn’t find them she phoned me but couldn’t get through. So she phoned the school and found out what had happened. She was writing me a note when the buzzer went. She asked who it was and the man said a friend of Cartwright’s and he had your key but didn’t want to startle anyone if there was anyone in the apartment. Rose let him in. He said you’d been tied up at a studio and were meeting him later and had asked him to get something out of your suitcase. Rose couldn’t care less.

Perhaps, I said, I shouldn’t have.

She said he had a suede fringe outfit and big round glasses.

That’s him, I said. Steel-rim.

And said he was in films, that was how he knew you.

I’ve been running around all day, I said. New York confuses me. I didn’t think you’d mind.

Sub had gone into the kitchen. The fridge door smacked.

Want a beer? I got Heineken’s.

I said no thanks.

They might never tell me what it was they wanted in my pages.

Sub leaned against the doorway. He was tired. He tipped the bottle up.

I hoped he would say something else. I got my suitcase up onto the couch and got my pajamas.

I said I appreciated this — it was much more than a place to crash.

Saying the words I found them true.

But I’d begun to say them because Sub had had another lousy day; and he might say something else about the man, and I couldn’t very well ask without weakening my position. But the uttered words brought up the real feeling and real years. I was sorry Sub’s marriage had busted up. But why?

Sub nodded.

He turned toward his bedroom and I mentioned that Will had got interested in Babbage. Sub had once written something for a house organ on that peculiar English genius and his proto-computers. Sub murmured, Drain Babbage, brain dommage .

But then from his bedroom he said, Rose asked who he was, and he said Monty Graf. But you know it was Monty Graf.

My fingers were on my diary but from some lower layer of packing an odor as of Lorna reached me; I felt and found a waxy ball of her pine soap; it was American.

Sub came back: But didn’t this man with the suede fringe tell you he ran into Rose?

It was a good question and I kept my hands moving.