Lookout Cartridge Read Online Free Page B
trailing out of a cartridge.
You’re not saying it was burnt by the English sun.
During a bright interval.
Is it so easy to pull film out of a cartridge?
Sixteen-millimeter comes in spools. This that was burnt by the magnifying glass was eight.
Did you plan on a mixture of eight and sixteen?
We planned to blow the whole lot to thirty-five. Eight doesn’t blow to thirty-five, though we did have a cartridge of eight that Dagger’d been against using one evening when we were out of film, but I wanted to blow it to thirty-five so you’d see sprocket holes and frame lines.
This was what was incinerated.
No, the eight that was burnt by the magnifying glass was a baby movie Dagger’s wife Alba took of a friend’s baby.
What happened to the sixteen-millimeter film that was yanked out of the cans?
It was unspooled and exposed.
Ah, Burnt by light, as it were.
You should be endowed.
My father is entirely too old to have a thirty-five-year-old son on a permanent family fellowship. Why don’t you take some money out of the Cartwright trust and endow me; sell some of that cheap land you bought in the Norfolk Broads, you’ll never build there.
I’ll let your father take care of you.
Let him give me what he’s going to leave me, then leave me and disappear into his retreat in Sussex and if he lives long enough escape death duties or the added hazard of dying before he endows me, for then we might find that not having in the end to face me, he’s posthumously endowed the retreat instead.
Someday Will and Jenny will sell my Millan originals for ten times what you let them go for.
No one knows what they are.
Admit they’re hard to describe. Music, painting, sculpture, dolls, even in my humble view engineering.
Why describe?
It might help you finish things. Look out for yourself.
Look, you start things, others finish them. But how was the magnifying glass fixed? I should have thought sort of on end. That is to say, on its side. Was the sun burning through the glass when your friend came in?
This was later. When Dagger and Alba came back from shopping, there was a smell. The sun had gone in.
The smell of course was from the eight-millimeter baby film. Your vandal was indiscriminate.
He didn’t get it all. But what he got is almost irreplaceable.
Why don’t I know Dagger? I feel I know him.
Dagger DiGorro. Everyone else in London knows him.
American of course.
Irredeemably.
Now why should someone want to destroy your great American film?
I should have stayed in waterbeds.
Wasn’t it water bumpers?
You do listen.
So do you.
Who was the American they were talking about tonight?
No name mentioned. Lana was the one who knew him—
The splendid dark-haired woman—
And she only knows through a friend of hers. But why did you say a moment ago almost irreplaceable? And if the baby film wasn’t part of yours with Dagger DiGorro, then there must be some more eight-millimeter unaccounted for.
At least you listen. They don’t always listen in New York.
2
Looped London minutes with pink-faced Millan, I insert them in front of Claire even though they haven’t happened yet. They come equipped with what I don’t like about him-his automatic ironies-and what I do like-his attention. Once looped, those moments of friction will never run out of sprocket holes, the loop runs as long as you want, its hard data too hard a vita of me I cannot pause to understand for if I do I cannot, or not yet.
I forgot, said Claire, to ask about Lorna and Jenny and Billy.
He wants to be called Will.
That’s wonderful.
He went on a school trip to Chartres.
That’s great.
The long room held little in it-only beige and cream and pale orange and light lavender tones amid which Claire in a brown pants suit possessed the sinister vividness of the only painted thing in a drawing. Dark lip gloss thinned her mouth.
Newhaven, Dieppe, Rouen, Chartres, I said.
Imagine.
Coming back, Rouen, Dieppe, Newhaven.
Recently?
Oh no. A
You’re not saying it was burnt by the English sun.
During a bright interval.
Is it so easy to pull film out of a cartridge?
Sixteen-millimeter comes in spools. This that was burnt by the magnifying glass was eight.
Did you plan on a mixture of eight and sixteen?
We planned to blow the whole lot to thirty-five. Eight doesn’t blow to thirty-five, though we did have a cartridge of eight that Dagger’d been against using one evening when we were out of film, but I wanted to blow it to thirty-five so you’d see sprocket holes and frame lines.
This was what was incinerated.
No, the eight that was burnt by the magnifying glass was a baby movie Dagger’s wife Alba took of a friend’s baby.
What happened to the sixteen-millimeter film that was yanked out of the cans?
It was unspooled and exposed.
Ah, Burnt by light, as it were.
You should be endowed.
My father is entirely too old to have a thirty-five-year-old son on a permanent family fellowship. Why don’t you take some money out of the Cartwright trust and endow me; sell some of that cheap land you bought in the Norfolk Broads, you’ll never build there.
I’ll let your father take care of you.
Let him give me what he’s going to leave me, then leave me and disappear into his retreat in Sussex and if he lives long enough escape death duties or the added hazard of dying before he endows me, for then we might find that not having in the end to face me, he’s posthumously endowed the retreat instead.
Someday Will and Jenny will sell my Millan originals for ten times what you let them go for.
No one knows what they are.
Admit they’re hard to describe. Music, painting, sculpture, dolls, even in my humble view engineering.
Why describe?
It might help you finish things. Look out for yourself.
Look, you start things, others finish them. But how was the magnifying glass fixed? I should have thought sort of on end. That is to say, on its side. Was the sun burning through the glass when your friend came in?
This was later. When Dagger and Alba came back from shopping, there was a smell. The sun had gone in.
The smell of course was from the eight-millimeter baby film. Your vandal was indiscriminate.
He didn’t get it all. But what he got is almost irreplaceable.
Why don’t I know Dagger? I feel I know him.
Dagger DiGorro. Everyone else in London knows him.
American of course.
Irredeemably.
Now why should someone want to destroy your great American film?
I should have stayed in waterbeds.
Wasn’t it water bumpers?
You do listen.
So do you.
Who was the American they were talking about tonight?
No name mentioned. Lana was the one who knew him—
The splendid dark-haired woman—
And she only knows through a friend of hers. But why did you say a moment ago almost irreplaceable? And if the baby film wasn’t part of yours with Dagger DiGorro, then there must be some more eight-millimeter unaccounted for.
At least you listen. They don’t always listen in New York.
2
Looped London minutes with pink-faced Millan, I insert them in front of Claire even though they haven’t happened yet. They come equipped with what I don’t like about him-his automatic ironies-and what I do like-his attention. Once looped, those moments of friction will never run out of sprocket holes, the loop runs as long as you want, its hard data too hard a vita of me I cannot pause to understand for if I do I cannot, or not yet.
I forgot, said Claire, to ask about Lorna and Jenny and Billy.
He wants to be called Will.
That’s wonderful.
He went on a school trip to Chartres.
That’s great.
The long room held little in it-only beige and cream and pale orange and light lavender tones amid which Claire in a brown pants suit possessed the sinister vividness of the only painted thing in a drawing. Dark lip gloss thinned her mouth.
Newhaven, Dieppe, Rouen, Chartres, I said.
Imagine.
Coming back, Rouen, Dieppe, Newhaven.
Recently?
Oh no. A
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