The Oracle could be found at all times in the projection booth of the Green Street Cinema. Rumor had it she only left to buy fermented probiotic beverages. Her name is Angela, but everybody calls her Anjo. If I had to guess, I would say she’s thirty. But it’s a tough call. Her eyes look super bright behind her signature cat’s-eye glasses, but when she takes her hair out of its thick braid she looks much older all of a sudden.
I was told when I was first hired at the Green Street that she spent most of her twenties getting paid to do medical studies. She moved into hospitals and tried new pharmaceuticals to see if they had side effects. Some of them did. Some of them didn’t. Does she still have side effects? I don’t know. But there is definitely something a little glazed about her. Her pupils have never quite un-dilated from her years of prescriptions. She also happens to be one of the most genuine people I know. And one of the smartest.
Sadly, I didn’t see her much. She liked to hide in the booth, and I never pretended to be her boss. I gave her a list of the film prints we needed for the month, and she tracked them down and had them sent to the theater. All I ever saw were the invoices. Then, right on time every day, she would fire up the projector and show the films without any trouble. When we were done with them, she’d ship them back. She was reliable. She’d been there since the early days, and part of me felt like she always would be.
I walked up the old stairs to her booth, holding a Green Goddess salad from the restaurant down the street, which I knew to be her special occasion dinner, a small offering for her counsel. When I reached the door and knocked, it only took a second before she pulled it open and put a finger to her lips. She waved me in, and I tiptoed into the dim room, which she had spent years turning into her own personal lady cave.
There was a mini-refrigerator and an old microwave. There were some extra clothes in stacked cardboard boxes. And in the corner, there was her shrine to Steve McQueen, the handsome sixties leading man, nicknamed the “King of Cool.” On the poster hanging above a single burning prayer candle, he wore aviator shades, with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip, suspended there for all of eternity.
Anjo took the salad from my hands without comment. I opened my mouth to say something about burning candles and flammable film stock, but she frowned at me.
“Shhhhhhh,” she said. “This is the most beautiful part.”
She directed my attention to the rectangular peephole where the light of the projector flickered toward the screen below. As I got closer, I heard the flutter of Vicky, the house projector (a Victoria 35mm), as the film spooled through. On the screen below, there was a silent film playing. We’d been doing mostly Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton on Saturday afternoons lately. The old scratchy prints were really beautiful and you could always count on a few old-timers to wander in with their grandchildren.
In this one, Buster Keaton played a cameraman, trying to impress a woman who works for the News Reels at MGM. Sweet Lou provided the meandering score on her organ, her bifocals reflecting the warm light of the screen. The film was at the part where Buster has just been chewed out for loading his film wrong and losing his footage. Then the woman he loves comes out to give him a pep talk in the hall. He tries to hide behind his camera, but she leans around and puts a hand on his shoulder. The title card comes up with the dialogue.
“Don’t be discouraged. No one would ever amount to anything, if he didn’t try.”
The woman shows him how to use the camera, and when he turns around they almost kiss. Sweet Lou’s organ playing reached a crescendo, only to fall off when the kiss didn’t happen. Then the actors just stand there in the dazzling light of the old black-and-white film.
I looked over at Anjo. She had taken off her glasses, and I could see the light from the projector strobing in her wide pupils. When the scene ended, she wiped a tear away and plopped down on a beat-up futon she had scavenged from the dorm Dumpsters on move-out day.
“It’s a tragedy,” she said in her soft, calm voice, opening the to-go container that held her salad.
“What is?”
“Once sound came to the movies, nobody cared about him anymore. He was stuck making cheesy low-budget stuff. He disappeared in the name of progress.”
She forked a bite of salad in her mouth, and stared into space.
“Anjo, I have to tell you something,” I said.
A desk lamp shone on her face from a nearby table.
“I already know about the eviction,” she said.
My mouth fell open.
“How?”
She closed her eyes and pressed her palms together beneath her chin.
“The Oracle hears all,” she said.
I felt myself blushing. I had no idea she knew about her nickname.
“How long before the hour of our fate, fearless leader?” she said.
I sighed.
“The end of the month.”
She clucked her tongue and took a long breath.
“It’s a big debt, Ethan,” she said.
Anjo was the only one who still called me by my given name. She’d worked here when I used to come with my dad, when I was just a volunteer. She used to see me, down below her perch, sitting next to my dad, trying to make sense of experimental Swedish cinema. She had admired Dad, like everyone else who knew him. Which is probably why she let me come up here to chat.
“I don’t suppose you have any amazing ideas,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “I get it. This salad wasn’t free.”
In the theater below, a smattering of laughs rang out. Keaton must have taken a pratfall. Anjo got up from her chair and opened the door to her mini-fridge. She pulled out a jar of strange green juice and poured a little in a plastic cup.
“Here,” she said. “Drink this down, boss-man.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Absinthe,” she said.
I held it farther away from myself.
“Relax. It’s wheatgrass juice.” She smiled. “Cleanses the liver.”
I took a hesitant sip. It tasted like lawn clippings. Anjo started to talk.
“In the nineteen thirties, Buster was at his lowest. He had just been fired by MGM. His wife had divorced him and he couldn’t even see his sons. His kind of humor was out of style. Everybody wanted screwball comedies, with fast-talking wise guys. Like I said, the only movies he made were low budget, B-grade things where he was forced to become a kind of caricature of himself, rehashing old gags. But here’s the thing: If you watch the movies, you can still see flashes of brilliance. Even though he’s been backed into a corner by studio bosses, and forced to humiliate himself in bad movies, the innocence and optimism is still there. Even though he probably felt defeated, they couldn’t rob him of his spark. They couldn’t completely break him.”
I looked down into my shot of wheatgrass.
“Bottoms up,” she said, and touched my hand.
I drank it and for a moment I felt a little better. Like I’d downed a magic potion. But soon enough, the feeling started to dissipate.
“So, what does that mean for the theater?” I asked.
Anjo walked to the projector and a made a few small adjustments. Her glasses slipped down her nose, and she nudged them back up with a thumb.
“The Oracle has spoken,” she said.