THE RORY CALHOUN FILM FESTIVAL

They met at the Rory Calhoun Film Festival. She was wearing a black cowboy hat just like Rory Calhoun wore in The Rider. He sported a fedora, a replica of the one that Rory Calhoun wore in Hijack. Her first words to him were, You look like a holy barbarian. Ah yes, he said, you refer to The Beatniks, Rory Calhoun’s least-known picture, in which he was unshaven, wore a sweatshirt and played bongos in a dive where Beatniks read poetry; but actually, he was a detective on the hunt for a missing heiress. Impressed by his knowledge, she knew in that moment that she wanted to die with him in a black Studebaker that plunged over a cliff, tumbled down a hillside and exploded, just like Rory Calhoun and Veronica Lake in Diamonds to Dust. Veronica Lake, that’s who she reminded him of. The blonde hair flowing, covering one side of her face, revealing, concealing. They would never know that they had been in the same kindergarten, that they had been born on the same day in the same hospital, that they were twins, separated at birth, stolen by baby traffickers. They would never know that even before they were born they were Rory Calhoun fans, as their mother sat alone in the dark watching Rory Calhoun in Dark Angel, while they lay side by side in her womb, each of them attempting to devour the other.