Broken Kaleidoscope

MONDAY, 28 JUNE 1982

HARPER’S FERRY INDEPENDENT THEATER

BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA

Delaney snagged her headphone cord on a doorknob as she strode to the back door, ripping Todd Rundgren from her ears.

She shouted some real classy things that rang through the small lobby/concession stand.

Matt was dropping off the reels for her Marx Brothers retrospective around back, the massive canisters containing Duck Soup, A Night in Casablanca, and A Night at the Opera. She would play her brace of mainstream fare (this month it was The Thing, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, and E.T.) and then show these early talkie-funnies late at night for the nocturnally-inclined, affable young film geeks of IU Bloomington - her kids, as she called them.

Matt was sympathetic to her cause. He had been a member of University of Chicago’s legendary cinema collective Doc Films, where they had met at a screening of Meshes of the Afternoon the weekend she was in Chicago for family matters. He was her supplier, her dealer. He brought her into the greater film world. He was currently facilitating a connection with a nice man from Chicago who would let her borrow his colossal beast of a 70mm projector so that she could show Lawrence of Arabia and West Side Story in their original wide format glory for her kids to salivate over.

Matt Larson was a freelance writer, and a bachelor, which allowed him to feed his film addiction. He had his own projectors, a couple dozen prints, many walls full of posters, and a 16mm Arriflex with his own Moviola editing station. Delaney was always the first one he’d show his films to. Rather grating, experimental stuff, but she came over for his company. To sit in his lap and stroke his beard, her head on his shoulder, being here now with a man who went crazy over her brown eyes and the things that swirled behind them and not her T&A, under the flickering celluloid metronome.

Delaney swung the door open for poor Matt, who had been cradling two canisters in his trembling arms and knocking with his foot. She apologized and lent her arms, and they engaged in an awkward dance across the lobby to the projection room door.

“Hey Harpie”, he sighed.

An amalgamation of her last name. She preferred it over Del, the pet name assigned to her by most everyone.

They got everything squared away and locked the place up. She treated him to breakfast at the food truck, just as long as he drove. They sat on the curb, rubbing shoulders. His hands were still trembling from the exertion when he lifted his croissant sandwich to his fuzzy mouth. He didn’t have to explain. At 37, Delaney could not run for any duration without properly stretching beforehand, or she would be left stiff and jittery for a while after.

The quad was blissful in the way that only a brisk gray early morning could be.

She held a danish in her mouth as she rummaged through her bag for the paper. She reckoned she only read it out of a quaint morning reflex, knowing full well that it would only detail Reagan sending out coded dog-whistles to his constituents, people she would never know dying in creative ways, and a feature about some local yokel. That wasn’t news.

“Did you hear about that prison bus that got hit by a cement mixer?”

She tore herself away from the rag. “Damn. Ahh, I don’t think so”, she said.

“Twelve hardened criminals escaped.”

After a short pause, a wonderful dumbass smile crept over his face, and it hit her. What started as a knowing snort built into a hearty tear-filled fit of laughter that threatened to bring back her hernia. It was so stupid. She probably would be laughing this hard if it wasn’t. It seemed a while until she was left breathing heavy in the listless glow that comes after hard laughter.

Some kids pulled into the space adjacent to them in a Continental. They got up and ambled over to the open field, still giggling and bumping into each other. She could feel the young eyes on them.

What the hell are they so slap-happy about? It’s a Monday morning.

They got up and answered the ingrained human urge to simply stroll when faced with open spaces. While making their way towards no place in particular, Matt pulled something out of his pocket that Delaney smelled before she saw. Weed.

She went to Berkeley from ‘64 to ‘69. There had been days at a time when she smelled nothing but that stuff. It hit her how different the world was in those lucid times. Or rather how different her world was. It seemed she could actually see the edges of her horizon now. Delaney knew that every decade in which people were young was regarded as the best. But she couldn’t shake the notion that her times were different. That there had really been an awakening, and that the times themselves were new and young. The young people of the new times were striking sparks everywhere, and when the times finally came crashing down, the people did. Harder.

After the rush of memories of Haight-Ashbury and the Dead faded, she laughed incredulously.

“Really?” she said.

The grin faded from his face. “What?”

“We’re just gonna… get high? Like a couple high school kids in the backyard?”

She heard what she was saying, but the words seemed to come from the damn Twilight Zone. Would she really mind smoking a joint? Absolutely not! Why would she object to this? This is something that should never be complicated, but she had just made it so.

“Sure!”

“I dunno.”

“Why the fuck not?”

There was the slightest edge in his retort that made her neck tighten.

“Maybe because we’re fucking mature adults.”

“God, look at you!”

Her face stung.

“I mean, it's pretty damn illegal here."

His face stiffened, and as he went to holster it, she said “Wait.”

She pulled out her zippo from next to her Camels.

The smile returned.

The pot was making her feel foggy and more anxious than she would have liked, her thoughts making like a skipping record.

There was no lilting feeling of euphoria, no toasty calmness. Nor any exhilaration. Just a pressure behind her eyes.

What muddy retention basin did this shit come from?

They ended up outside the school Arboretum. They sat on a bench and listlessly watched the people that passed. She struggled to see their features. Matt droned about the Techniscope camera from the 40’s that he was gonna save for and refurbish.

She gave nothing but minimal affirmations in terms of conversational exchange.

Delaney watched the sun pass between the clouds, imagining that it was a needle passing through thick gray fabric. Making a blanket.

She couldn’t remember the walk back to the car. She felt preposterous. She felt awkwardness nip at her heels like a dog. There was none of the old giddiness.

They didn't say much of anything on the ride back, mostly let the radio do the talking. Matt switched between a local institution that mostly aired ads and news flashes on the Falkland islands invasion, until he settled on the tail-end of Hello It's Me and the beginning of Come Sail Away

Matt got them back safely. He dropped her off, leaving her worrying about whether or not she should have invited him in to test the print, let the stuff wear off.

She noticed that Matt’s back left tire was flat as he drove down Union.

She struggled to lace Duck Soup through the projector, and let it go as she felt her way down the hall and into the sole theater. She picked a seat in the very back row, and settled in for some cheer, ready for her head to be clear.

Just as the opening fanfare blared, and she was about to be enveloped in the arms of the brothers Marx, the film ripped. The silver image melted into a myriad of vomit colors and white flashes while the music folded in on itself in grotesque distortion until it bottomed out and there was silence.

The projector sat there in the dark with her, the reel flapping.

Delaney Harper was left staring at a wall.