“What?”
“Human. Humans who need other humans,” I said, glancing quickly at Dani.
“That was so beautiful, Kevin.” Dave pulled me into a crushing hug and kissed the top of my head. “Mother, our little Kevey’s all grown up.”
I pushed Dave away hard. “Not everything is mockable.”
“Then you’re not trying hard enough,” Dave shot back, and even though I loved him, I wanted to punch him, too. Because I was gutted about the Cinegore closing down. I loved the old place like crazy—the sneaker-flattened, rose-patterned carpets; the ratty projection room that always smelled vaguely of weed and BO; the gaudy chandeliers with their fluttering, unpredictable lights; the popcorn-littered rows of red leather seats; the billboard-sized marquee out front with the letters frequently rearranged by drunken pranksters to say rude things. After my dad took off and my mom’s drinking got worse, the Cinegore had been my safe place. It had become more home than home.
“I get it,” Dani said, surprising me. “When you watch one of these old movies in a place like this, you’re connected to everybody else who’s ever watched it. You can practically feel them around you.”
“I hope you brought condoms, then,” Dave said, pinching the end of the joint to put it out. “Safety first, kids.”
“Oh my God.” Dani’s eye roll was a thing of beauty.
“Dave,” I said, a little sharply. “Make yourself useful. Take out the trash. It smells like a bag of your farts.”
“Kev, how do you expect me to get my curse on if I can’t watch the movie? Why can’t you take out the trash?”
“Because I’m the manager, that’s why.”
Dave sighed dramatically as he staggered to his feet and headed for the door. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Discuss. Oh, and one more thing.” He turned his ass to us, farted loudly, and shut the door. I heard him shouting “Victory for the proletariat!” on his way down the hall.
“Admit it: He’s your community service project,” Dani said, waving her hand in front of her nose.
“Sadly, I get no points for befriending David Wilson. Just a lifetime of painful stories to tell my children someday.”
In her flimsy Misfits tank top, Dani shivered from the Cinegore’s icy AC. She steadfastly refused to wear the beribboned usher’s jacket, citing her reasons, alternately, as “I don’t do butt ugly,” “Dress codes are basically fascism,” or “It’s not like the boss is around to fire me.”
She offered me an apologetic smile that made my stomach tingle. “Sorry. Forgot my sweater again. Can I…?”
Automatically, I peeled off my jacket and draped it around her shoulders, as I did practically every shift.
“Thanks.” Dani threaded her arms through the sleeves and gave my jacket a surreptitious sniff. I hoped it didn’t smell bad, but she smiled, so I figured it was okay. She picked up a Cthulhu plush figurine from the elaborate horror diorama she’d been adding to over the months. In his current incarnation, Cthulhu wore a Strawberry Shortcake dress. “Is it weird that I’m gonna miss this place so much?”
“No. It’s not weird at all.” I couldn’t help hoping that I was included in the things she’d miss. “Maybe we’ll have to get together on Friday nights and dress up in our uniforms and throw Coke on the floor just to relive the experience.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, in case she wasn’t interested.
“I’ll spray some Scorched Popcorn air freshener so we can have that feeling of being nauseated but strangely hungry at the same time.”
“For sure,” I added, my hope making me a little dizzy. “And then one of us can shout, ‘Please deposit all trash in the receptacles. Thank you. Good night.’”
My imaginary movie cranked up again. This time, we drove a vintage Mustang through the desert like a couple of badass outlaws.
“Do it, Kevin,” Dani says, sliding behind the wheel while I jump up through the sunroof, my sawed-off shotgun trained on the semi full of undead trying to force us off the road. “How do a pack of revenants know so much about driving?” It’s a legit question. Dani’s a smart girl.
“I don’t know, baby. I’ll work it out in post,” I say, and toss a hand grenade behind us, where it explodes in a fireball of zombie-infused glory. “That’s for remaking Psycho with Vince Vaughn!” I shout.
Dani was playing nervously with Cthulhu Shortcake’s dress. “Hey, um. I’ve never really said thank you.”
“For what?”
She used Cthulhu to gesture toward her diorama. “You were the first person to ever take my art seriously.”
I shrugged, embarrassed. “That’s because it’s awesome. You’re awesome. I mean, an awesome, awesome artist. Your art is … awesome.” Jesus.
“Still, it meant a lot,” Dani said, thankfully ignoring my babble. “You’re the reason I applied to UT and got that art scholarship.”
I was the reason she was leaving Deadwood. Great.
“You should let me draw you sometime.”
My face went hot at the idea of posing for Dani, maybe on her bed. Shit. I did not want to get sprung now. “Um. Like in Titanic?” I splayed my hand against the wall. “Jack! Ja-a-ack!”
Dani laughed. “Just for that, I’m never giving back your jacket. It’s mine now.” She pulled it tight around her. Her eyes shone with challenge. The inside of my chest was a cage match between heart and breath, and both were losing.
“Moot point now,” I said. “Keep it.”
Dani nodded, but her smile faded. “It’s sad that all this history can be gone just like that.” And I knew she didn’t mean the Cinegore.
Six months before Dani had landed in my homeroom, her mom and her little brother had been flying to a family wedding in Mexico City. The weather had been shitty, thunderstorms up and down the Gulf. They’d just cleared Corpus Christi when lightning struck an engine. The plane had floated, powerless, and then plunged. The wreckage had been scattered for a mile along the pretty spring break beaches of South Padre. Up in the dunes, somebody found the wedding present Dani’s mom had been carrying. It had washed ashore, perfectly intact.
I rifled through the dusty cardboard box for a pair of black-framed 3-D glasses. “So, um, apparently? These help you see things that are invisible otherwise,” I said, hoping to bring her back from the brink of sad. “Supposedly, there’s a special effect where it looks like demons are coming out through the screen—that’s how the whole gateway to hell rumor got started. The effect was a huge deal. And nobody knows how they did it.”
“Really?” Dani spun a pair of glasses around by the temple piece. “Should we give DemonVision a try?”
“On three,” I said. “One.”
“Two.”
“Three,” we said, and slid them on.
On-screen, it was just an early 1960s take on an old mansion. Lots of wood paneling, framed oil paintings, and taxidermied animal heads. The James Dean–like Jimmy Reynolds leaned against a fireplace in full angst-rebellious mode, even though he wore an early nineteenth-century suit with a cravat. Fact: Nobody looks badass in a cravat. Beautiful Natalia Marcova lounged on a divan, her raven mane curled over the shoulders of her ball gown. Beside her, square-jawed Alistair Findlay-Cushing gulped what I supposed was a manly Scotch from a crystal tumbler and delivered his lines in a world-weary Mid-Atlantic accent: “I’ve heard the rumors about your family. Madness is in the blood. You’re originally from the Carpathian Mountains, if I’m not mistaken.”
Lightning flashed, revealing waxwork-like creatures with hideous mouths peering in through the mansion’s windows. And then, suddenly, Jimmy Reynolds raced toward the screen in a panic: “Please, get out while you can! Take off your glasses and leave this theater at once. You’re in great danger!”
“Whoa. Super meta,” Dani muttered.
“Yeah. Very Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” My shoulder touched hers, and I wanted there to be a word for the current that shot up my arm, a word like ShoulderSplosion! or AlmostSex.
“Please, you must believe me,” Jimmy Reynolds continued. “They’ll come for you, soon. I’ve seen it before. You won’t survive. Turn it off now, I beg you! That’s the only way!”
Natalia Marcova glanced nervously toward the audience and back to Jimmy Reynolds. “Now, Thomas, what are you saying? You’re not yourself.”
“Man, this is so-o-o bad. Still. It’s oddly … compelling,” Dani said, her words a bit dreamy.
“I love how inventive they were with the special effects back then, you know? All those models, double exposures, split screens, and stop-motion. They used foam latex to make the outfit for Creature from the Black Lagoon. And all those stabbing sounds? That’s just guys dropping fruits and letting them splat.”
“Yeah? Cool,” Dani said.
For the first time ever, I didn’t care about the movie. I just wanted to be with Dani, talking about stupid shit that eventually became meaningful shit, and then, if everything went well, we could stay up all night and watch dawn creep over the flat grassland, turning everything a golden pink as we shared our first kiss.
Sweat slickened my palms, and I rubbed them against my jeans. “Hey, um, are you, like, sticking around this summer?”
Dani was still engrossed in the movie, so I tapped her arm.
“Huh? Oh. Sorry.” She turned to me. The oversize 3-D glasses gave her a mutant bug creature quality. I dug it. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. I’ve got a job nannying for the Cooper twins. They’re total booger-eating firestarters. But the money’s decent.”
Lame dialogue drifted up from inside the theater: “You know this old house has its secrets…” “Why are we continuing this pantomime? We know how it ends. I want out of my contract. I want to leave!” “Sh-h-h, Jimmy. He’ll hear you.”
“Well, this summer, when you’re not, like, tending to the children of the damned…” It was like I was trying to swallow an air egg. “I was just wondering if maybe you’d want…”
The door to the projection room swung open and Dave burst in, cradling three giant Cokes and several boxes of no doubt stolen candy. “Refreshments!”
“Awesome.” Dani removed her glasses. She pocketed a box of Milk Duds, then took a sweating paper cup from Dave and punched a straw through its plastic top.
“Yeah. Thanks. Great timing,” I snarked, grabbing my Coke.
Dave dropped onto the stool by the projector and slipped Dani’s abandoned glasses over his eyes. “Whoa. You guys are green. No, red! Green and red. Why, you’re three-dimensional!”
Dani snorted. “At least some of us are.”
“Harsh, García!” Dave pushed the big black frames up on the top of his head like a starlet. “You know what? Alastair Findlay-Cushing is kinda hot. I’d do him.”
“Your list of men you’d do isn’t exactly discriminating. You have a crush on Coach Pelson,” I said.
“Coach Pelson is a hottie. In a former-wrestler-going-to-seed kind of way. I’ll bet he talks dirty.”
“A-a-ah, stop!” Dani laughed. “You are ruining my beautiful, sepia-toned memories of gym class.”
That was the thing about Dave—everybody liked him. Even his obnoxiousness had a certain charm to it, like the time he’d scarfed down my red Jell-O in the cafeteria and pretended to “vomit Ebola” on a screaming Lyla Sparks, who was mean-girling Jennifer Trujillo for having a “starter mustache, just like a baby lesbo.” Junior year, when Dave had come out, he’d actually gotten a bump in popularity. He’d been my best friend since seventh-grade science class. In two months, he’d leave for Stanford, and I wasn’t sure how I’d cope with the loss of him.
Downstairs, the movie continued, unconcerned with my fate: “It’s the cloven foot—the calling card of the one who must not be named. Lucifer himself.”
“Dude, he just said he should not be named, and then he’s all, ‘Oh, yeah, let me just say Lucifer right now.’ Hey. You know about old Alastair, don’t you?” His thick eyebrows drawbridged up and down. Dave was practically a walking Google search of salacious Hollywood gossip. “Total Team Dorothy. He tried to kill himself once.”
I raised my soda in toast. “That’s a big party upper. Thanks, Dave.”
“Slow your roll, holmes. He didn’t try to kill himself in some tired, tragic gay-hatred moment. No. Before his attempt, Alastair begged a priest to perform an exorcism and cleanse his soul. He claimed that he’d made a deal with the devil for fame, and he hadn’t had a moment’s peace since. He claimed that I Walk This Earth wasn’t a movie; it was a living thing that demanded souls and a willing sacrifice. Don’t you think it’s weird that the only two times they showed the movie, the theaters burned down?”
“Yeah. That’s pretty freaky, all right,” Dani said, dangling Cthulhu Shortcake by its string. “But this is not a night for the tragedies of the past. This is about avoiding the tragedies of the future.” She looked me right in the eyes. It made me want to be a better man. “The old gods demand an answer to last week’s burning question.”
The week before, Dani had agreed to be Creepy Balloon Girl in Zombie Ennui, the fourth opus in my series of six-minute horror films. Honestly, it wasn’t much of a script, just something I’d come up with on the fly as an excuse to spend more time with her. Halfway through filming, we got chased out of the cemetery by some kind of tweaker squirrel, and then we couldn’t stop laughing long enough to get back on track. Punch-drunk and sweaty, we’d retreated with a couple of Big Gulps to the town park, taking refuge from the Texas heat under the measly shade of a drab brown live oak.
Dani sucked up helium from one of the drooping balloons. “It is I, your guidance counselor, Titus Androgynous. What are your future plans, Kevin?” she’d asked in her Minnie Mouse voice. Then she pressed the edge of the balloon to my lips, her fingers warm and soft against my face.
I hesitated for as long as I could, greedy for the feel of those fingers. At last, I inhaled. “I will be on my home planet of Totallyfuckedtopia, aka working at the Deadwood Froyo shop.” I was grateful that the helium made it sound funny instead of painful.
Dani wiped at eyes still smudgy with stage makeup. “How come?”
I had wanted to reach for the familiar rip cord of an emergency joke. Instead, I told her the truth. “Money, for one. Unimpressive grades, for two. And three…” I sipped some Dr Pepper. “I gotta look after my mom. She’s got some … health issues.”
“What about your dad? Can’t he help out?”
“My dad’s in Arizona,” I said.
Every Christmas, we got a fancy holiday card featuring a smiling photo of him and his New and Improved Family 2.0 in matching shirts and smiles, hugging it out in front of a big-ass, professionally decorated tree. It was a far cry from the cigarette-stained walls of the crappy apartment that my mom and I shared, where she spent most of her time passed out in her bedroom or hungover on the couch watching daytime TV. The booze had wreaked havoc on her diabetes, and now she was drinking down the disability checks as fast as they came in. In rare sober moments, she’d kiss my forehead and murmur, “I don’t deserve you. You should get out.” But I didn’t want to be a bailer like my dad.
“Well, as your guidance counselor, I feel obligated to remind you that you have options,” Dani had said, and the way she’d looked at me, so full of hope, I wanted to believe her. The only thing I was solid about were my feelings for Dani. When I dared to imagine a future that didn’t totally suck, somehow, it always started with the two of us—her painting and me making indie horror films. But breaking into the film industry would be impossible, stuck here in Deadwood. And there was no way Dani would want to waste her time with a nowhere dude like me, anyway. The truth was, Dani had options, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t one of them.
“Kev?” Dani prompted. “Plans?”
I snatched away Cthulhu Shortcake, avoiding Dani’s gaze. “I hear there’s a future in contract killing.”
“My man Kev’s going to direct the first hipster horror movie,” Dave said, throwing me a bone.
“
Totally.” I slurped more soda to ease the ache in my throat. “The thing is, you won’t be able to tell who’s a zombie and who’s not, because who can tell the difference between the terminally ironic and the undead? It will be called—wait for it—The Undudes. It’ll be all ‘Narghhhzzmnnnn,’ and then the other undudes standing in line outside the concert venue in bloodstained, sardonic beer caps will be like ‘Mnnngggggrrrr,’ which translates to ‘That flesh was too mainstream.’”
Dani nodded. “Got it. So, the Undudes plot: what happens?”
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
Dave grinned. “Which is why it’s the perfect Kevin movie!”
He was kidding. I knew he was. But it lodged in my chest like a piece of truth shrapnel. I shoved Cthulhu Shortcake deep into my pocket. “Not cool, Dave.”
He looked at me, hard, and that was almost worse. “Dani’s right. Not too late to be a part of the future. It’s coming, pal. Ready or not.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I hear it’s gonna have a Starbucks.”
The lights started doing their taunting flicker-dance. The voices on screen slowed to a drunken crawl, and then the film stopped altogether. We were plunged into darkness. Power surge. A real one this time.
“Shit,” I said to the dark.
A chorus of protests erupted down below in the theater. People were actually screaming. Jesus. Fucking entitled wankers. In that moment, I hated them all.
Dave shook his head. “Dude, I went last time.”
I sighed. “I’m on it.” Maybe I’d just stay down there in the basement for the rest of my shift.
Dani grabbed the flashlight from its perch on a two-by-four beside the door. “I’ll go with you. You know, in case Scratsche keeps his coffin down there and you need backup.”
And, just like that, my hopes for the night came back online.
* * *