Jessica and I, Reunited

We had both heard the warnings and we talked about them before we went in, but we decided to do it anyway. We weren’t the only ones. When the movie started there were about twenty of us in the theater and while we sat and waited in the dark after the film ended, we guessed that just about everyone was still there. We knew the risks going in and the theater staff reminded each person individually as we entered the theater that the threat to our town from the militia group was real and that if anyone changed their mind about going in, that they would refund any ticket with no questions asked. But this was a case where everyone going to the theater saw that merely being out in public was a sort of act of resistance. If we couldn’t even go to a movie anymore, even though here in 2029 there weren’t many theaters left, or many people going out to movies anywhere anymore, what could we do? In one way or another, we were probably all of the resistance as it was, especially once we had accepted how difficult and often uncomfortable, life in so many places had become. I should also mention that we were in the middle of a heat wave and the theater has one of the area’s more reliable air conditioning systems.

           When I ran into Jessica at the food pantry a couple of days before, it was the first time I had seen her in almost two years. We’d gone to the same film school a few years earlier and we spent about a year and a half together in a larger group of students working on each other’s projects. The slowly deteriorating conditions throughout the area limited the equipment that was available to us, and we all got pretty handy shooting guerilla-style movies with hand-held cameras. The group consisted of eight of us, five men and three women, and we all mostly got along, but I bonded the most with Jessica, initially because we were the two people in the group who hadn’t decided on a direction that our filmmaking should go. We were both regularly changing our minds about whether we wanted to make feature length narrative films, documentaries, short films, or TV shows. Over the three years I knew her we both must have tried a little bit of everything, with neither of us ever being completely satisfied with anything we produced, though I still have a particular soft spot for her mockumentary-style short film about the local ghost gun trade. I felt it was simultaneously informative, brutally critical of how badly local authorities responded to the problem, prescient about where we were going, all while also being absurd, surreal, and laugh out-loud funny. It was brilliant, despite my own very average performance in a very supporting role.

           We didn’t spend a lot of time outside of class together just the two of us, but we gravitated toward each other in group settings and nearly always ended up sitting next to each other or across from each other at dinners and other get togethers. Her straight dirty blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, her wireless glasses over her hazel eyes, and her knowing smile with the slight lift of the left corner of her mouth were all imprinted in my memory. Nothing ever happened romantically or sexually, nor did either of us ever broach the topic. She had a pretty serious boyfriend at the time, a guy named Weston I never met, and despite the feelings I had, I was always wary of doing something that could damage our friendship.

           When everything started to fall apart two and a half years ago and the school had to go on hiatus, I saw Jessica less and less frequently and then about two years ago, she left town and shut down all of her social media accounts. We still had occasional contact until about a year and a half ago when I started to get bounce backs on anything I sent her in any way, which meant only one thing: she had decided to go underground. In that time, I kept busy writing screenplays and stories and making occasional short films with one of the handhelds I’d taken from the school, which I still plan to give back if and when it ever re-opens. I have a few friends I see from time to time, but I mostly keep to myself and publicly at least, I try to keep my head down. People connected to militia groups have infiltrated just about everything and I decided that it was better for me to spend most of my time alone rather than being paranoid about nearly every conversation I have in public, though at this point, there aren’t many public places still open. Though the way I’ve lived has kept me out of trouble, I’ve also been living with the nagging feeling that I haven’t been doing enough to counter everything that’s been happening around me.

           Because of my only having had odd jobs and no regular employment other the past couple of years, like many, I’ve been going to food pantries as much or more than grocery stores for the last several months, and volunteering at some of them along the way. That is what I was doing two days ago when I saw Jessica standing in line with a scarf over her head and dark glasses. Even with her wearing those, I knew it was her right away. Since I was helping hand out some of the items, I eagerly waited for her to get through the line to my station, where thankfully she recognized me right away, put down the bags she had and without saying a word we gave each other a hug that I’ll remember as one of the best I’ve ever had.

           “There is so much I want to tell you,” she whispered.  

           I was intrigued, but I was also just so happy to see her that I would have been happy talking to her about anything.

           “When can we go do something?” I asked. “We can do something totally normal like go to a movie. The Rialto is still open. How great is that?”

           “I saw that,” she replied, still close to a whisper, but with a note of excitement, “And they have the new Nadia Nicolescu movie.”

           “I know, isn’t that just perfect? It just opened and I haven’t seen it yet. That wouldn’t matter anyway, I’d probably want to see it again.”

           “She is still just the best. There’s no one like her.”

           Not knowing what the showtimes were, we agreed to meet at the theater at 6:00 a couple of nights later, which was earlier tonight. I arrived first, and it was only a couple of minutes before she got there too, and she looked amazing, even though she was dressed very plainly and inconspicuously in blue jeans, a black long-sleeve pullover, and black running shoes. Her now much longer hair was still pulled back into a ponytail. Before doing anything else, we checked with each other to make sure we still wanted to do this because there had been warnings during the day that the 1776 Patriot Brigade was planning an armed incursion in our town that might be tonight. There’d been warnings on and off for weeks and we both still wanted to do this. We picked the 6:45 show. That would give us a little time to talk before the movie and a lot of time to talk after it. It seemed like the perfect balance. Thankfully one of our former classmates was working the box office and she let us in for half price.

           Stepping inside, it was good to get out of the heat and humidity and it was just good to be doing something that felt halfway normal. The concessions stand didn’t have much besides a random assortment of flavored bubble waters, some baked goods, granola bars, and bags of popcorn. Fresh hot popcorn at this theater hadn’t been available since the popper broke about three months earlier. Evidently the parts they needed where still on a ship somewhere.  

           There was only a smattering of a few other people around the theater, which was still in surprisingly good shape, and I knew from being there just a couple of weeks before that all the equipment was still in really good shape and once the lights were out, the place still gave off the magical feeling that comes with being out at the movies.

           We chose seats about two-thirds of the way down and close to the center, right where we had long agreed was the best place to sit in any theater. She told me as much as she could about her life in the underground and what she had done, which was mainly working to sabotage the militia groups whoever possible and to make videos and short films to expose the true intent of the groups. She and Weston had split up about a year and a half before and not long after that he had been killed in a car wreck while fleeing an action somewhere upstate. My life in comparison seemed so calm and ordinary, but I could see that she was truly interested in hearing about my writing, my film ideas, the short videos I had done about the conditions around town, and anything else I’d been up to the past two years and before we knew it, the lights went down and after a couple of very brief ads, The Séance, Or the Unwanted Guest began.

           I read the short story it was based on several years ago and I had really liked it. I decided to try to block out all the differences were between the two. Most filmmakers take some liberties and only now am I starting to not hold that against them. I’m OK with filmmakers doing that as long as they are truly putting their own thoughts and visions into it and not what they think the audience wants to see.

           We quickly settled in, and it started as a straightforward film where the main character Luca is trying to come to terms with his unhappy and possibly damaged childhood. He seeks out a medium to hold a séance in the hopes of being able to speak to his long dead father and his also long dead Aunt Matilda. Instead, he winds up with a childhood rival named Graham Albescu who the medium is subsequently not able to vanquish from Graham’s home and they are stuck there with each other perhaps permanently after the medium flees the home as soon as Graham leaves the room for a moment. What follows is mostly a dialogue between the two along with Graham trying to explain it away to any guests that appear and trying to track down the medium who made it all happen in the first place, a journey through the back alleys and side streets of Bucharest.

           We were both enjoying the film as much as any of her works. The story has all the hallmarks of a Nadia Nicolescu film, among them: smart dialogue, varied pacing, awkward silences, and occasional forays into dream logic. About three quarters of the way through The Séance, the look changes completely as the lead actor, Cameron Pearson, wasn’t able to physically finish the film because of injuries suffered in an explosion at a Belgian film festival while this film was shooting. He still did voice work though, and the last half-hour of the film is done with an alternating combination of stop-motion animation, Claymation, and crudely drawn stick figures arguing and fighting with each other until during the final scene when the last page featuring stick figures is scrunched up and thrown away. The end.

It is truly one of the most “what the hell?” kind of films and endings we’ve ever seen, and we both were thinking mostly in a good way. As the credits are running, we noticed that none of the lights were coming on, and I noticed the exit lights were turned off. An usher headed down the outside aisle to get to the front as the credits ended. He turned on a flashlight to keep the theater from being completely dark. And that is when we heard a few shots from outside.

“OK, shits gotten real out there,” the usher said with a big exhale. He was a chubby looking thirty-something who looked like he’d probably worked in tech for most of his adult life.

“But we are going to keep it together in here,” he continued. “All the lights in the theater are out. We had the outside lights out already; we’d heard they were coming. They might think we’ve been closed all along and that nobody’s here. If you want to stay here, you are welcome to stay here. If you want to leave, please leave whenever you’re ready. There is a gun on the premises, which I have. I am trained and it will only be used if one of those fuckers gets in here. I’ll keep the flashlight on in here so you’ve at least something to help you, but please keep all other lights off. I want to get through the night. If you want to see me, I’ll be at the corner entrance, in the back right. I’m Oscar, thanks, and please, let’s try to stay calm, I know it might not be easy.”

           The gunfire was sporadic, and there were a couple minutes without any shots. Jessica and I were still in our seats. She took my hand in hers.

           “How much do you trust me?” she asked.

           “One hundred percent.”

           “I hoped you’d say that,” and she kissed me slowly on the cheek. “We are getting out of here. I know where we are, and I know where we can go. Just follow my lead, OK?”

           I nodded. I’d never been more ready to follow somebody my entire life. We could hear a few others whispering and some rustling of belongings which made me think that we weren’t the only ones ready to make a break for it. But I was with Jessica, and I felt at peace despite everything going on around us. She would know what to do. I took her hand and through the faint beam of light from the flashlight we got to emergency exit to the right of the screen and with the sound of shots coming from the front of theater, we ventured through the door and out through the weeds, the broken glass, and the garbage strewn through the alley, but I am doing this with a feeling of hope because whatever happens next, I am with Jessica.