The next day, there were no signs of exterminators at the Green Street. No equipment or traps. No truck parked outside. And, most importantly, no sign of Jasper in his moon suit. The one measure Ronnie Magic had actually taken was to change the locks on the doors, which would have been really helpful if rats knew how to use keys. So, I was stuck outside with Raina, cupping my hands over the glass door to see inside of the darkened theater lobby.
“I can’t believe he changed them,” I said. “Is there any end to this man’s depravity?”
I had made a phone call this morning to the president of the university to tell him about the situation, but his assistant wouldn’t connect me. She told me she’d relay my message, which was, essentially: I know suspicious things about Ron Marsh.
“It’s kind of sad in there,” said Raina.
Which was an understatement. Inside, the space didn’t catch much light from the sun. Around the concession counter were a couple objects that hadn’t been put away before our forced evacuation. A new shipment of popcorn bags. A book about the anime director Hayao Miyazaki that Lucas was reading. It seemed like we’d abandoned the place Pompeii-style, running for our lives.
“It looks like one of those life-size dioramas at the Natural History Museum,” I said. “You know, of dead civilizations.”
Raina’s breath fogged the glass and clouded my view, but I didn’t step away.
By the time I had gotten home last night from my stakeout, she had moved from the floor to my bed, and was taking up the whole thing, sleeping diagonally, arms splayed like she was falling through the sky. I had dreamed of a scenario like this basically since junior high, but now that she was there, I couldn’t make myself lie down next to her. It didn’t seem right. I couldn’t ask her if she wanted me to, and she probably just moved there because she was tired of the floor. So I turned off my desktop lamp, covered her with a blanket, and slept on the couch, curled up like a pill bug.
In the morning, I didn’t hear her come into the living room, but when I opened my eyes she was just looking at me.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
For a second, she didn’t move. Then she blinked and turned away.
“Sorry,” she said. “Just . . . thanks for the blanket.”
Then she walked into the kitchen to call her mom.
Now, at the theater, she was so close to me that I could almost taste her breath.
“On the left we have the hall of North American Mammals,” she said, pointing distantly into the darkness.
“And on your right,” I said, “is the death of the Midwestern art house movie theater. There was a time when people liked interesting things, but now that age is through.”
Raina smiled at me, and she was about to say something else when a familiar voice came from the alley.
“It’s not through yet.”
Raina and I both turned to find Anjo standing there with a pair of birding binoculars hanging around her neck. She looked sleep-deprived, but her eyes were bright behind her glasses.
“Got your message, boss,” she said.
Just seeing her back in the vicinity of the theater made me feel a little better. If there was any hope at all, the Oracle would have to be involved.
“You remember Raina,” I said.
“Of course,” she said. “Harold and Maude.”
“Whoa,” said Raina. “That was a long time ago.”
“I remember every time I summon the spirit of Terrence,” she said.
Then she lifted her binoculars and trained them on the wall of the run-down apartment building across the alley from the Green Street. We were all silent as she let them rove from window to window, finally stopping and adjusting the focus. She licked her lips. Then she took the lenses from her eyes, and looked at me.
“That’s the one,” she said, pointing to a unit on the third floor. “If it’s going to work, it’s got to be that one.”
The shade was half drawn in the middle of the day. A small spider plant sat on the sill, spilling its long tendrils over the edge.
“How would it work?” asked Raina.
“Well,” said Anjo, “I’m afraid we can’t use Vicky. She’s too big. But there’s a portable DeVry projector in the storage closet up in the booth. It’s old, but the last time I tested it, it seemed to work okay. We set up in that window and project on the wall facing the back lot. Sound is gonna be dicey, but we’ll figure something out.”
There was quiet for a moment.
“So,” I said. “Let me get this straight. All we have to do is break into the Green Street to steal a projector, convince the person in that apartment to let us use their home as a projection booth, and then show outdoor movies without a permit on a building that’s just been shut down because of a rat infestation. Did I forget anything?”
Anjo thought for a second.
“Yes,” she said. “You did. We’re going to need film prints. And I assume we’re broke.”
“A correct assumption,” I said.
Raina looked from the window on the third floor to the projection booth.
“Well, I’m on board,” she said.
She took a step toward the Green Street, eyeing the locked door.
“I would just like to remind everyone,” I said. “That two of the three of us here have a criminal record and a court date.”
The two women looked at me. Then Anjo sat down on the gravel of the alley and took her binoculars off. She brushed her bangs off the top of her glasses, and looked toward the Green Street.
“Can I tell you a story?” she said.
She must have known that it was impossible for me to say no. I had never even tried to ignore one of Anjo’s lectures. I sighed and sat down across from her. She rubbed her eyes and then, with closed lids, began:
“When Steve McQueen played Captain Hilts in The Great Escape, his character was captured again and again trying to escape a Nazi POW camp. Every time he tried to escape the camp, he was brought back and thrown in the ‘cooler.’ Solitary confinement. But each time he tried to escape, he learned more about the area around the camp. And his fellow prisoners gradually used this information to design a tunnel that would actually work. His enemy, the head of the camp, Von Luger, tells everyone there will be no escape from the camp on his watch. And a friend of his is even shot trying to get over the fence.
“Finally the time comes for the great escape, the one they’ve all been planning for the whole movie. McQueen’s character makes a valiant attempt. He steals a motorcycle and even jumps it over a wall to evade the soldiers coming after him. But in the end, he gets caught in barbed wire and returned to the camp. It seems he has been defeated. Yet, when he returns, his enemy, Von Luger, has been dismissed from his position because of the escape. And he will probably be executed by his own superiors. McQueen is thrown back in the cooler, but he lives to see another day.”
“So,” I said, taking a moment to soak this in, “are you saying that winning isn’t necessarily what I think it is?”
Anjo didn’t speak.
“Or that I need to give all of this up and buy a motorcycle?”
Raina looked at me and then at Anjo.
“No. She’s saying it takes a little danger to come out on top, right? You have to take risks, act like it’s a matter of life and death!”
Raina knitted her brow.
“Right?” she asked.
Anjo picked up a pebble from the alley and skipped it along the asphalt. Then she stood up and polished her glasses with her shirt.
“The Oracle has spoken,” she said.