Empty Marquee by Paul Hina


1

Empty Marquee
by Paul Hina

I

        The street is wet, though it is not raining. The buildings that lie along either side of the street do not appear to harness any life. They look as if their facades are the only portion on display, or rather the only portion that exists, structures with faces but no minds to express those faces into life. These buildings could easily be mistaken for the phony building fronts on the set of a movie. I would not be surprised to walk behind these supposed complexes to see that they are, in fact, two-dimensional. Even the dim lights, that shine intermittently in an indeterminate order, simulating an almost white lightning, seem to be the stray ghosts of a light source further back, perhaps approaching nearer.
        There would be no possibility of deconstructing these building facades of their apparent lifelessness, because this street is a street that leads to no other street. There is nothing before this block, and nothing beyond it. At both ends of this exposed block of falsely decorated street is a simple curtain of darkness. It is a darkness that refuses to be questioned. It is what it is. There can be no hiding from its nothingness, no approaching it to alter its shade of disturbance. This one block of street is the only truth here, the only place to exist for the moment. Though even the truth is flimsy here, you cannot reveal its lies. Perhaps, even, there is no truth about this place. Maybe this street isn't even real. Either way it is what it is, and there is no escaping this moment, this time.
        It is not raining, though the street is wet. The awnings that hang from the lifeless storefronts aren't dripping, nor does a drop fall from the awnings that drape over the stoops of the virtual apartment complexes to remind one that the rain had fallen at all. The puddles on the street reflect nothing, not even the dim lights that shine intermittently from several of the buildings' windows in an indeterminate order simulating an almost white lightning, which is probably nothing more than the ghost of a light source farther back, but approaching ever closer.
        One of the street's puddles appears to move, as if from a gust of wind, but no wind has blown. All the remaining puddles have remained perfectly still. Though the puddle's previous movement could have been nothing more than a bit of visual play on my part, the puddle ripples once more. This last ripple spreads out the water's entirety to peel away its reflective nothing from the center out as if two pages had been turned outward toward their edges in one simultaneous motion to reveal the image of a young girl.
        As the image of the young girl becomes suddenly, without doubt, a reality, as opposed to her surrounding impostors, the lights of a movie theater's marquee, which stands directly behind her, ignite into life. Her image is centered flawlessly in front of the theater. She is slightly older than her reflection in the puddle had led us to believe. She is wearing a long white gown that would appear to some to be the dress of a bride. However, on this young woman the dress hangs rather foreign on her body, as if it were only a dress of fantasy, or quite simply someone else's dress. She admires the gown, scanning the length of her body, as if she had only just discovered it, and maybe she did.
        It occurs to her suddenly that she hasn't a clue where she is, or how she has gotten here, but she recognizes this street regardless. In a peculiar way she doubts ever having been here before. She turns to look at the theater behind her, not a sudden turn, but rather an instinctive turn. Perhaps she feels she is waiting for someone to emerge from the theater doors. She looks to the doors, through the doors, into nothingness. Her expression becomes anxious, a waiting expression, a wanting expression, an expression of desire. The large grandiose glass doors of the theater do not budge, reflect, or uncover what should be made clear behind them. The young woman looks confident in her expecting that someone is about to emerge from those doors. She is unsure of who, but a life nevertheless.
        This theater is a large building, a classically built movie house, possibly even built as far back as the old nickelodeons. There are many bulbs that chase one another around the border of the marquee. I hadn't noticed the theater until after I had discovered the young woman. It declared its existence by empowering its marquee. The theater appears to have life beyond its glass doors, unlike the surrounding buildings. Its facade seems to front a third dimension, a face with a mind behind it. This building lives. I am drawn to it. My eyes chase the bulbs around the marquee. I become hypnotized by its brilliance, so much so that I confuse myself as being a character intrinsically involved in this world. I want to approach the woman, the building, but I exist elsewhere. She becomes, to me, untouchable, and yet I believe she needs me. Unfortunately, I am worthless in my current state of helplessness. I have no hope of controlling the situation from this especially weak position. I am as uncontrolled, and uncertain, as her world seems at the moment.
        The marquee above the young woman's head is entirely lit. The portion of the three-sided marquee that faces front contains no letters proclaiming title. The two adjoining sides, which stretch at a forty-five degree angle from the forward facing portion to the building, from which the marquee is connected, also contains no letters of title. She discovers this and her expression falls into a tight order, every feature tightening together. Her expression leads me to believe that she is on the verge of uncovering a mystery, frustrated that it hasn't uncovered quite the way she planned. Then suddenly she appears to grow scared. Her body tenses and becomes cold in its obviously insecure posture. She looks up and down the wet street, staring at each end's darkness. She knows now that she is alone, and I am becoming even more aware of my inability to ease that loneliness, or maybe I am far too insecure and scared myself to approach this world, if I may be able to call it a world.

 


2

        She opens her mouth to scream, but there is no sound. Her voice is as dead as the imagined inhabitants around her. She looks back to the theater. The glass doors act as her only hope. She examines them with a desperate intensity, through them, still nothing. She is too frightened to enter the doors, concerned that the marquee's proclamation of nothing is exactly what is inside. She has nowhere else to go. She is scared, and instinctively feels that someone has to emerge from those doors, though she is terrified that they might not.
        The silence is not only from her mouth, but all around her like water in the ears. The silence is beyond disturbing. It is maddening in the way only silence can be. As she realizes that she has no control over this, she becomes all the more terrified. No matter what noise she attempts to create, there is nothing. Her appearance suggests a certain claustrophobia, a dangerous degree of introspection, as if this lack of sound has cornered her inside a place she never desired to be. The silence covers her ears, sinks inside them, swims inside her mind, making her grasp on whatever had been keeping her mind holding to anything, and then there is a sound.
        The sound of footsteps is approaching from somewhere farther back from the street. The steps grow louder with every new step, and subsequently filter themselves into the silence that follows in between. It is a heavy, but rhythmic step, a planned step, a graceful walk. The owner of this walk is being revealed as he emerges from within the curtain of darkness at one end of the block, approaching the young woman on her left side. He is a tall, thin man. He is wearing a brown hat, and though now in full view, he is as mysteriously familiar to the woman as this place that encircles her like a bad dream turning good. The young woman appears to be calmed by his presence, and when he is about four strides from reaching her there is a flash. An intense light, something like the sun, overcomes my view, sweeps through the street like a bright white wash of light. Then there is nothing, only light. The light slowly recedes to reveal nothingness, darkness, loneliness.

II

        A whining saxophone sound travels from the speakers to pour slowly across the bar, unlike the booze, which is poured quick and emptied quicker. The bar is decorated with its usual men. They sit, each one, upon every other bar stool, leaving an empty stool on either side of them. Each man finds his comfort in the space that remains in the emptiness that sits beside him on either side.
        The men that sit upon these stools are all staring forward at the mirror that lines the wall ahead of them. They face their reflections, but not one man's face is completed within its reflection. Despite the shadows that one might assume hid their image, there is something of a tiny glass staircase, filled with liquor bottles, that steps about a quarter of the way up the mirror that does the job of hiding their faces quite well. Each man appears to be staring more at the bottle that corresponds to his seated position than his reflection. In fact, when the bartender removes a bottle from the glass staircase whomever's face is revealed to himself immediately turns away as if someone had just won him over in a contest of stares.
        It is possible that the men here know one another's name. As a matter of fact, it is quite likely considering the time most of them spend here--the same men during the same times everyday. Though the men might know each other by name, they would never consider acknowledging that knowledge for any friendly reason. This is not a place for friendly banter, not a place for sports on television, nor is it a bar to meet women. The few times a woman has gotten as far as to open the door, the threshold is never crossed. This is not a good time's bar. If you come here, you come to drink. You come early. You stay late.
        Of these men most barely look to be holding tight to life, at least not for any other reason besides the drink that is gripped inside their hands. Each set of hands grasping to the drink as a child is made to drink from fear of spilling. Many of them lean so far into the brass rail that outlines the bar that they appear to become a temporary fixture of the structure, and if someone were to move the bar, they would surely move with it. Traveling down the line of stools, every other one unoccupied, all the men that are attached to the bar want nothing more than to become a permanent fixture of the smooth surface. However, there are a few guys who seem to maintain some kind of hold on what is left of their lives. Though, you can see by their eyes that they are not far from sliding out of control, to fall, themselves, happily into the brass rail.

 

 


3

        One guy, who is sitting on the stool closest to the entrance/exit door, seems to constantly look from his partner, the corresponding bottle across from him, to watch the door. If there is a cough he looks to the door. If someone sets their glass down a little harder than usual he looks towards the door. There is a waiting game he is playing. He wins the game if the door remains shut. The door wins if it opens. It is still early in the evening, right on the fringes of the workday's end. If that door opens everybody loses. If the door would happen to open there would be a rush of tumult that would blow across the bar. Each man would look from his corresponding bottle, squint his eyes, and look towards the door with his one arm propped up to simulate a protective visor from the sunlight while the other hand would continue to grip tightly to the drink in front of him.
        The sun is not anyone's friend in this place, especially not the guy who is continually looking towards the door, waiting, knowing that its opening is inevitable. He only hopes he'll get a fair warning, maybe an inadvertent bump on the door by whatever drunk's shaking hand might create while searching for the knob. Maybe, perhaps, he'll happen to be in the bathroom when it opens, or there is the possibility that the workday's end is quieting and the door won't open until the sun itself has become silent.
        It is not long before the door does eventually open, and as predicted all the heads in the bar lean down, arms go up as a protective visor, and the eyes squint as the outside sunlight screams into this otherwise musically silent location. The man who had most feared the door's opening is sitting closest to the door. There are four empty barstools beside him that lead all the way to the door. The man's face is wincing. He appears to be caught in the headlights of the sun even after the awaited silhouette has covered the better portion of the doorway, preventing the strongest part of the light from entering. The light is so strong that it swallows the edges of the darkened figure as the door slowly closes to reveal the figure's identity little by little until the door snaps shut causing the light to become nothing more than a memory burned in the man's mind.
        The bar collectively lets out an almost simultaneous sigh of relief. The place quiets, arms fall back to the bar, hands clasp their waiting drinks tilting them immediately back towards thirsty throats, and heads rest back to the bottle that covers every face's completeness. The musical silence returns to its comforting hum of melancholy brass.
        The enlightened character emerges from the doorway and takes the stool directly beside the man closest to the door, the man who fears the sun. This disturbs the man who fears the sun. He wonders why this character has chosen not to follow the bar's unspoken rule: the stools should be set upon in an alternating order. There were four empty stools laid out side by side that were all equally as welcoming, if not more so, as the stool next to him. The man sees that in the mirror above this character's corresponding bottle sets a brown hat. He immediately concurs that this is a newcomer to the bar. This would explain his inability to follow the sacred rule of the bar, which is if you speak and someone can hear you then you're too close. Because no one wants to listen to whatever it is that might have brought you here. Everybody's got their reason, and everyone seems to have a better reason to keep it to himself, and therefore expects the same from everyone else.
        The man who fears the sun considers asking brown hat to move down a stool, but realizes that this gesture could either offend, or worse than that, incite a conversation. It's just that he feels extremely uncomfortable being this close to the man in the brown hat. He feels as if he is being weighed down on his left side, whereas his right side is free to lean lightly against the brass rail of the bar, his home. If only he could somehow make this character aware of the importance of conforming to the usual system that has been maintained and preserved in this place for years, the illusion of eternal anonymity.
        The man in the brown hat removes his hat in one practiced gesture and sets it down on the bar. The man who fears the sun realizes that the bartender has not visited this character. He notices that the bartender seems to be looking right in the direction of the man in the brown hat, but hasn't yet made the slightest move in his direction. Actually, the bartender's expression is frozen, and still frozen, remaining without motion. He looks down across the bar at all the other faces of this place. Every face frozen, staring at the corresponding bottle that covers their reflections, nothing new there, but still everything about the bar is disturbing, an unrelenting stillness.
        The man who fears the sun turns and looks at the character next to him. The character picks up his hat and coolly places it back atop his waiting head, and in one slowly graceful movement, without one obvious step taken, he returns to the door. As he exits, the man who fears the sun goes through the usual motions to avoid the outside light, but there is no sound of the remaining patrons continuing the process. He turns to look down the bar. Everyone is in exactly the same position they were in at the moment of his last glance. He turns back to the stool that was occupied by the man in the brown hat. On the bar there is a photograph. The picture is located in the exact spot that the hat had sat upon. There is also a ring of dust that encircles the photograph in the shape of the man's hat.

 

 


4

        The picture, a black and white photograph, contains the character of a young woman in profile looking down the right side of the street. The man in the brown hat is walking towards her, frozen in mid-stride. He is only a few steps from crossing to the opposite side in which she is looking. Directly above the photograph's two characters there is a movie theater's marquee that is lit up, but without title.
        The man who fears the sun picks up the picture, studies it. The man wearing the brown hat is looking directly into the lens of the camera, passed the lens, maybe into something else. The man who fears the sun shudders suddenly as if he had felt the stare. He, again, looks down the bar, no movement, nothing that might suggest that any movement might occur. This, however a preoccupation, does not take him over considering that the position that each person is holding is their normal position. He has not forgotten that no one was affected by the light that just a moment ago rushed into the room, filling it with the blinding sun of falling evening, but the photograph is currently occupying his attention.
        He recognizes the theater in the photograph as the theater that is located just two blocks away. He passes the theater every night on his way home. He places the picture in his shirt's breast pocket, and continues to nurse what is left of his drink.
        After a few hours of waiting for the bartender to refill his empty drink, he decides it would be best to leave. Not one soul has moved, even slightly, from their seats. Every man continues to stare straight ahead, which isn't unusual. However, their drinks have remained untouched since sometime after the man in the brown hat had entered. The bartender is also sitting in his usual spot on a stool staring out at who knows what. He has never been late filling a drink. He is normally standing in front of you with the bottle of your choice, ready to pour when you tilt it for the finish. So, something isn't right.
        The man who fears the sun gets up to leave. He walks over to the man closest to him, two barstools to his right, and bravely grabs his drink. He quickly throws back the drink and sets it down hard on the bar. There is still no movement. The only thing that suggests a change of time in this place at all is the music, which has continued to moan its dry saxophone sound across the bar, humming on the rail that frames the outside of the otherwise wooden structure. Even the clock has remained still, but he wonders what time it was when the man in the brown hat came in, and concludes that the clock could have very well been broken before today.
        He is fairly certain that the sun has set, but not one to take chances, he puts on his sunglasses. He takes a deep breath as he approaches the door. He opens the door, and since the sky is blanketed by darkness, he sighs, and lets the door shut him out of the bar.

III

        Though it is uncommon, even for him, he keeps his sunglasses on to shade from an already dark, getting darker, world outside the bar. The moon seems to have hidden itself behind the high walls of city that line his path on each side of the street. This path is his usual way home. His journey never alters, only possibly is skewed on certain occasions depending on his degree of inebriation upon leaving the bar from night to night.
        He is well aware of the fact that he is extremely protected from the sunlight, but there is an amazing amount of distrust defined in his posture. It is as if he believes that the sun is lurking just around the corner, and that it is hiding only to rise above him to express the shame he would most definitely feel underneath its immense power. To shield himself, as best he can, from the nonexistent sun, his whole body leans forward at a ludicrous, almost comical, angle. He is leaning near a position of falling, but he doesn't seem to stumble in the slightest bit. It is hard to say if his animated posture is from a current lack of balance, or if this is just simply how he normally walks.
        His head is hung at an even lower angle than the rest of his body, which makes for a slovenly ridiculous profile of his reflection in the shop windows as he passes by one after the other. It is hard to understand, presuming that this is how he normally travels, how he could get to where he wants to go. It is usual for people to travel by landmark as opposed to traveling by instinct, or by sheer memory, but he seems to be the exception. It is hard for me to fathom him being able to see anything other than the sidewalk directly below him, and even that seems rather unlikely considering his sunglasses, which surely cannot compliment his vision in this dim light that is supplied by the unusually blackened sky. The only possible source of light to accompany him on his journey home would be the street lamps that aren't very consistent because of the darkness that quickly fills the spaces in the distance from one to the next. His only other option for light would be from the shop windows, the few that remain lit, as well as the erratically scattered lights from the apartment buildings, which can hardly be considered a sufficient light source. The darkness, however, doesn't seem to effect him in the slightest. He walks flawlessly, leaning unrealistically, never faltering.
        He turns onto the block that contains the movie theater from the photograph he had inherited from the man in the brown hat. There is, somehow, a significant change in light on this block. It has become darker, and this is incredible considering the darkness that had taken claim to the sky previously. He stumbles a little to catch himself from falling face forward. He immediately removes the sunglasses and rubs at his eyes to try to reduce the alcohol induced fade that is occurring.
        He notices how suddenly the city has grown silent. There is no sound, no cars, no voices, no soul. He examines the somewhat familiar surroundings, but they are curious, foreign. He checks for the street sign, but it is gone. This has to be the same block in which he has walked everyday for the past several years, but now it is deserted, dark, deaf. The only sign of possible life is from the few lights that shine from within several of the apartment building windows that line the block, and even they are gone as quickly as they were there at all. As a light shines through one apartment window it quickly recedes into the darkness, and is seen immediately shining from within a different window. This continues with no foreseeable pattern, and from the look of the light, it appears to be shining from farther behind the buildings. This light from behind seems to be from nowhere in particular, only blackness.
        He quickly concludes that he has crossed the final threshold. He has finally misplaced his sanity. First there was the peculiar nature of the man in the brown hat, then the disturbing behavior, or rather non behavior, of the men in the bar, and now this.

 

 


5

        He begins to walk at a quicker pace away from the darkness behind him, towards the darkness ahead of him. Though his pace is quickened, his posture remains slovenly, maybe even more so then before. He walks through puddles as if not knowing they were there, kicking at the water. The thought occurs to him that he doesn't recall its raining, and remembers nothing of the streets that led to this street being wet. The thought comes and goes as he again turns his focus on getting to the darkness at the end of the block.
        He begins to walk by the movie theater, which is placed across the street, when the marquee suddenly lights up. This startles him at first, but his stride continues and he ignores the light. Then something as strong as the sun sweeps through the street like a tidal wave. He stops in his tracks, dazed, and nearly fall down. His head turns to avoid the light, his arm propped up to act as a protective visor. As quickly as the light came, it is gone. He opens his eyes and he is looking towards the theater. The same woman from the photograph is standing still in front of the theater, and the man in the brown hat is a few strides away from her, frozen in mid-step.
        The man who fears the sun pulls the picture from his shirt's breast pocket. The picture is identical to the scene that is set before him. As a matter of fact it seems to have been taken from this precise angle. He decides that he's got to get to the other side of the block, but at the moment he attempts to take a step forward the same extreme wave of light fills the street. He looks again towards the theater and there they are still frozen in position, the exact positions from that of the photograph.
        After several moments of contemplating what effect his attempting to interact with them might have, he concludes that there is the possibility that he is not given a choice. Though, this does unsettle him a bit, his curiosity is taking him over. He begins to cross the street. His footsteps resound throughout the street, and then die in a deafening space of quiet until a new step is taken to continue the process.
        He approaches the young woman and notices that she looks very scared. He tries to speak in an effort to comfort her, but nothing comes. His voice is nonexistent. He reaches out his hand to touch her, but she is not a woman at all. She is the perfect image of a young woman, but after inspecting her closer, she is as lifeless as the buildings that surround them. The young woman, as well as the man in the brown hat, are two-dimensional. He removes the picture from his pocket again. He looks at the picture, and it is the same as before, only now there are two men, both of whom are wearing brown hats, standing in the photograph. One of the men is completely still and in mid-step. This is the man who had been in the photograph previous to the appearance of this second figure. The other man seems more lifelike, his head down in examination, his feet planted firmly to the wet bricks of the street. This second man is standing between the young woman and the first man in the brown hat. He suddenly realizes that he is this second man. He is standing inside the photograph. This photograph, like all photographs, is a moment from time past, and though he realizes the poignancy of the situation, he is still unsure of what part his role is destined to play.
        The lights that embody the marquee of the theater blink off and then back on. He looks up at the theater. It is the only building on the block that look as if there is something within its walls. Besides himself, the theater appears to be the only part of the street that is not in any way peculiar. There is something very comforting about it, and he feels that the answer to his question about what has just occurred is inside. He walks towards the theater. He reaches for the door trusting that it will open. It does, and so he enters through the classically grandiose door.
        As he emerges from the doorway he is drowned by the darkness. This does not surprise him considering the previous circumstances. He walks forward trusting the darkness. Then he crosses an unseen line that places his next step onto the same block of street he was just on. Only now the street is as he remembers. There are people, cars, lights, and, most importantly, there is sound. He walks forward, wanting only to leave this street, and this night behind him.
        He notices that standing in front of the movie theater is a young woman who is identical to the young woman in the photograph. When he gets within several steps of her, a light, as bright as the sun, washes over the street. He walks through the light, as if not noticing it. He approaches the young woman. She looks to him, and then looks to a photograph that she has in her hands. He grabs her hand, and she distrustfully pulls it back. He turns and begins to walk in the opposite direction. She follows, almost in a run at first, to catch up with him. They begin to walk together towards the opposite side of the street. She smiles.
        As I watch them walk away I notice that he isn’t wearing a brown hat, and that she isn't wearing a white gown, but their reflections in the storefront windows tell a different story. In their reflections, walking, is a man in a brown hat, and a young woman in a long white gown.
        The young woman has mistakenly dropped the photograph she was holding. It doesn't appear at closer look to be a photograph at all. It is a postcard. The theater is pictured on the facing side, and there are no figures in this portrait. On the backside is a message written from a man to a woman. It is of no importance what it says. It has been read.
        The man who fears the sun continues to walk with this young woman. They move easily through the fluid of the street on this bright, sunny morning. His sunglasses dangle from his breast pocket, where a photograph used to be, but is no longer needed. The moment is past.

 

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