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The interviews with Delia continued. Now that he had her recollections about the video store down, he mostly talked to her about the mechanics of closing. “What are we doing today?” he would ask, not because he didn’t know, but because he wanted her to explain it for the audience. Before each one, Arthur let his camera survey the store, each time a little changed – more movie posters taken down and more “CLEARANCE” and “LIQUIDATION” signs taking their place. The shelves of videos were subtly beginning to thin out. When the store was busy, people were attracted to buying out the old stock, not renting anything.
Arthur spoke from behind the camera he had trained on Delia and shared his plan for their last night working. He wanted to break the PG-13 rule. “We should put on whatever we think will most disturb the customers.”
“Or customer,” Delia corrected him.
“Or customer,” Arthur amended.
“Dead Alive,” Delia said playfully.
“Re-Animator,” Arthur parried.
“Eraserhead.”
“Un Chien Andalou.”
“Willy-effen-Wonka.”
“Touché.”
Delia laughed and leaned closer to the camera. “You have to cut this part out of the movie,” she said. “Or Constance will find out.”
“True,” Arthur said from behind the camera. “And not just Constance, but all of those potential buyers at the Sundance Film Festival.”
Delia nodded gravely. “Them, too.”
Arthur interviewed Constance next. They sat in the break room and she told him how happy she was to see him holding a camera again. He trained it on her.
“Why did you decide to open a video store?” Arthur asked.
“To make a quick buck,” Constance said. Arthur laughed, and Constance continued. “Actually, Morris and I got into this purely out of love. We opened fifteen years ago. Morris had been a contractor until he was about fifty and couldn’t do that kind of work anymore with his bad back. I had a good head for business, and our kids were grown, and we just loved movies. So we went for it.”
“Do you feel bitter about the closing?”
Constance shook her head. “Fifteen years? That’s a good run. We’ve made friends and learned so much. I’m at peace with it.” Her throat caught, and Arthur kept rolling. “I will miss it,” Constance said.
“Me too,” Arthur replied.
Arthur began to loosen up about his past, once he had a camera in his hands again. In the first week of August he mentioned The Cure for Amnesia to Delia, told her details about the different screenings – how after the student film festival, he and Dean and a few other friends had found an all-night diner and ordered huge stacks of pancakes, how no one would let him pay for anything, because he would pay them back with cameos in his big Hollywood blockbusters later, how he probably hadn’t ever laughed as hard as he did that night, not before and not since.
“I have to see your movie,” Delia said. She’d been too young to run with his crowd at the time and had missed out. She pestered Arthur about it for the rest of their shift, but it wouldn’t have taken much to convince him. They agreed to have a private screening after the next time they closed up the store – Constance wouldn’t mind.
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About Victoria Large
