The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen Read Online Free Page A

grimaced. “I know I’m not. It’s an obsession. I have no explanation for it. All I know is what I feel for Barbara is love that transcends easy explanation—or perhaps any explanation at all.” He put his elbows on the cluttered desk, laced his fingers, and set his chin in the cradle. “She’s not even what I want. Not really. I would prefer her to be shorter and more delicate. She’s not. I love red-headed women. Barbara is a blonde. She is far too—” Mr. Carrigan hesitated “—far too buxom. And there is more which is less apparent. Barbara wished to have no children. She told me this. I would like a family, but—” He closed his eyes. I wondered if he was going to cry. He didn’t, but he kept his eyes closed for a long time. “She is everything I should loathe, yet I find myself fatally attracted.”
    Another minute went by. Two. I stirred restlessly on the hard metal seat.
    Mr. Carrigan looked up. “Ah, Robby. I’m sorry I’m keeping you. I simply needed to talk, and you are my only friend.” He smiled. “Thank you very much.”
    “You’re welcome,” I said automatically, not really understanding what I had done for him.
    “I’m going to see Barbara on her birthday,” he said, still smiling. “She said so tonight.”
    “I’m glad,” I managed to say, wondering if I should be crossing my fingers for him.
    “Life is strange, isn’t it, Robby?” Mr. Carrigan stayed seated and motioned me toward the door. “If you wait long enough, you can change things the way you want. If you want things badly enough. If you’re willing to do what needs to be done.”
    Later, I tried to remember back, listening in my memory to tell if his voice had sounded odd. It hadn’t, not as best I could recall. Mr. Carrigan had sounded cheerful, as happy as I’d ever heard him.
    “She’s going to stay after the last show on her birthday. And then we will go to the Dew Drop Inn for a late supper. She told me so. When her—friend—tried to argue, she told him to shut up, that she knew her mind and this was what she wanted to do. I must admit it, I was amazed.” The smile spread across his face, the muscles visibly relaxing. He looked straight at me. “Thank you, Robby.”
    “For what?” I said, a little bewildered.
    “For seeing me like this. For being someone who saw my happiness and will remember it.”
    I was very bewildered now.
    “Good night, Robby. Please convey my best to your family.”
    I knew I was dismissed and so I left, mumbling a still-confused good night.
    All these years later, I’ve come to live in Los Angeles, and it’s where I’ll probably die. Southern California drew me away from my small town. It must have been the movies. I walk Hollywood Boulevard, ignore the sleaze, the tawdriness, and pretend I move among myths. I tread Sunset and sometimes stop to look inside the windows of the restaurants and the shops. I soak up the sun, even while realizing that the smog-refracted rays must surely be mutating my tissues into something other than the flesh I grew up in.
    No one ever sees me, but I realize that must be because they are akin to the figures moving on the flickering screen and I am the audience. But I am not only the audience, I control the projector. And, like Mr. Carrigan, I am the cutter.
    Miss Curtwood’s birthday was Friday, the first night of Tarantula . The crowd was large, but I didn’t notice. I was just impatient to see everyone seated so that I could take my place in the far back row of the theater and watch the magic wand of the projector beam inscribe pictures on the screen.
    I did see Miss Curtwood come down the sidewalk to the Ramona. I knew a ticket was waiting in her name at the box office. She was by herself.
    Her friend, the big man in the leather jacket, arrived ten minutes later, just before the previews started. He sat on the other side of the theater from Miss Curtwood. I noticed. I saw Mr. Carrigan paying attention to that too.
    Then Tarantula