Final Cuts Read online

  And still the image held.

  What at first was confusing—was this a moving picture at all?—became gradually mesmerizing, because the image both fulfilled and defied every expectation. It lived entirely in the paradox of the moving image.

  If you have ever spent a long time living with a child, the old man says to Eleanor Farrell, you may have had the experience of looking at a photo from many months in the past and feeling a moment of shock, an instant of cognitive dissonance, for the child before you is palpably different from the child in the photo—yet the change has happened so gradually, right before your eyes, day by day, that you barely notice it until confronted with her image from another era.

  This was the experience of watching Das Gesicht. The image appeared never to move. You only occasionally awakened to realize that the angle of vision had changed: you were no longer looking at Catrin Amour in pure profile but from a subtly different perspective, as though the camera was tracking slowly, impossibly slowly, in an arc around her. It was a still picture. And then you realized that the still picture had been a moving one all along—and thus the paradox was exposed. Catrin Amour blinked, and you awoke from your trance to realize that she was no longer as she had been.

  The film ran an hour. That’s how long it took to describe that arc around Catrin Amour’s face, how long it took the viewer to progress from perfection into imperfection, from the unscarred face to the horrifically mutilated one: Udo Heldt’s not very subtle metaphor for his vision of the world as he had shared it on the Hansa: Peel back the surface of the world, Heinrich, and it’s all butchery, isn’t it?

  In the moment the scar was fully revealed, you could feel the mood of the audience shift: This was the masterpiece of the man who had made Der Verdammte Schlüssel and Die Wölfe?

  The old man pauses again. He is a long time gathering his thoughts.

  This time Miss Farrell risks a question. “That was it?”

  The old man recognizes the implication in her voice. She too has been duped. She has traveled all the way across the country for this revelation? This was Das Gesicht? The old man is briefly tempted to answer her in the affirmative.

  But he has come too far to stop now.

  “No, Miss Farrell,” he says. “There is more.” He doesn’t wait to hear the follow-up question. He plunges on. “Chaney was right. It was a vile picture. It was a blasphemous one.” He takes a long breath. “What you must understand, Miss Farrell, is that I was there—I was there on the set of the film. I was there in the editing room for weeks. With my hands I shaped the illusion of the unbroken take. With my hands I created the trickery. I had seen every frame of that footage, including the many, many feet we left on the cutting-room floor, a hundred times or more. And what I saw next, I did not see on the set. What I saw next, I never filmed.”

  What the old man had seen next—what they had all seen next—was nothing more, and nothing less, than a fly emerge from Catrin Amour’s left nostril. An optical illusion, a speck of dust on the print, a flaw in the film, Heinrich thought. And then the camera, a camera he had been operating, moved in for a tight shot—a shot he had never taken. And in this new shot, a second fly emerged from Catrin’s nostril. It took flight and landed on the scar Udo Heldt had carved into her cheek. A third fly followed. Another. And then another.

  She might have been a mannequin, the woman on the screen was so still. Then her mouth bulged grotesquely, as though she were going to vomit, and flies boiled forth from within her. She spewed them out in handfuls, in clots, in seething mouthfuls; she spewed them out by the hundreds. They massed on her neck and chin, launching themselves intermittently into the cloud that swirled around her. And still they came, streaming out of her mouth and nostrils in swarms. And Catrin Amour—the Catrin Amour on the screen—remained utterly unmoved.

  Flies began one by one to land on the camera lens, blurring the image of das Gesicht—of the face—into a spume of bodies, engorged with putrescence. They probed the air for the carrion stench of food. Heinrich flinched from the scrutiny of the enormous compound eyes—from the filth and corruption that lay exposed before him, the sordid truth inside the lie. At last, the loathsome creatures obscured the image of das Gesicht’s defiled beauty altogether. Catrin Amour was gone. The screen writhed with insectile turmoil an instant longer—

  —and then it went abruptly black.

  For a heartbeat, silence reigned.

  Catrin Amour began to scream. Someone fumbled on the lights, plunging the room into chaos. Some few of the audience—Lon Chaney among them—sat in stunned horror. Most reeled blindly toward the doors. In the back row, someone retched. Heinrich stumbled in Catrin’s direction, shoving people aside.

  Udo Heldt was already there, tearing away Catrin’s veil.

  Heinrich lurched to a halt, snatching at the back of a seat to support himself.

  He could no longer see Catrin’s face.

  He could no longer see anything but scar.

  * * *

  Eleanor Farrell says nothing.

  The daylight behind the curtains has faded, draping shadows over the photographs surrounding them: still images that move now only in the old man’s imagination, that speak only in his memory.

  The old man wonders if she believes him. He wonders if he cares.

  “Saying it was true,” the young woman says at last. “How could it have happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Heinrich König says. “I know only the things I have seen, Miss Farrell. Whether they are true things—” He shrugs. “The camera also lies.”

  She pauses, clearly unsatisfied with this response, but what is he to say?

  There is mystery in the world.

  “What happened next?”

  “You know the rest. I destroyed the print. I destroyed the negative. I destroyed everything. I did it that night. And when I was finished, I drove east. I was done with pictures.”

  “And Catrin?”

  “I left her to him, to my shame. I did not return to Los Angeles for her funeral after the suicide.”

  “Yet you loved her.”

  “I loved Catrin Ammermann. I loved the woman she was striving to become. I loved the dream of Catrin Amour. But after Das Gesicht, I could not see her any longer. I could see only the scar she made in the world.”

  “And Udo Heldt?”

  “He died in a car accident three years later, Miss Farrell. You know this. The fact is readily available.”

  “I don’t know how you feel about it.”

  “Do my feelings matter?” he asks, and when she does not answer, he says, “I did not grieve Udo Heldt. I am glad his movies—our movies—are gone from the world. I repent the finest work I ever did. I repudiate it. I disavow Der Verdammte Schlüssel and I disavow Die Wölfe. If I had been able to destroy them, too, I would have. I take comfort that only fragments survive.”

  “But—”

  The old man reaches out and touches a button on her recorder. The reels grind to a halt. Into the silence that follows, he says, “You are still young, Miss Farrell. Forget Das Gesicht. Find a happier illusion and hope that it is true.”

  And then, slowly, the old man stands—a difficult process, but, he reflects, not one that he would willingly surrender. He supposes that he will soon have no choice in the matter.

  He straightens his tie and glances at Miss Farrell. He wants to give her the foolish advice that old men call wisdom, but he has already indulged himself sufficiently in that respect: perhaps she will forget Das Gesicht and perhaps she will not. He hopes so—for in unburdening himself, he understands, he has burdened her. And he has given Udo Heldt’s picture new life. He would give her something else, if he could. Perhaps he will not have to adjust the angle of Clara Bow’s photograph, after all.

  She hesitates for a moment when he extends it to her.

  “Mr. Ki
ng, I couldn’t—”

  “Please, Miss Farrell. Let me grant you a brighter memory for your visit than the one I have already given you.”

  She gazes at the photo. “It’s inscribed.”

  “Yes. I was new to America when that picture was made. She was kind to me.”

  “Okay, then.” The young woman tucks the photo into her bag. She smiles—she is more beautiful than he had thought—and thanks him. And that is enough. He sees her out and then he is alone in the dark apartment.

  He sits quietly, listening to the traffic outside, and looking at the photos that surround him—mementos of a life he’d surrendered more than five decades ago. He’d led several other lives in the interim, but it is that first one—the life he’d shared with Udo Heldt and Catrin Amour—that matters.

  After a time, he eats sparingly—a can of soup, nothing more—and then he sees himself to bed.

  Sleep is a long time coming. He keeps thinking of the films he made with Udo Heldt. He keeps thinking of Das Gesicht.

  He disavows it. He disavows them all.

  He lays very still.

  In the darkness above him, a fly cuts circles in the air.

  DRUNK PHYSICS

  Kelley Armstrong

  DRUNK PHYSICS STARTED IN A BAR, naturally. A bunch of physics postgrads hanging out, blowing off thesis stress, getting wasted and getting loud, and pissing off the group of math postgrads quietly working through theorems at the next table.

  Six of us crammed into the booth. Trinity and I were the only girls—I do remember that. We weren’t exactly friends, but if Trinity wanted a drink with the guys, she always asked me to come along. I was her wingman, a warning to the guys that none of them would be escorting Trinity home, however noble their intentions.

  I’m a good drinker. Well, not “good” in the sense I can hold my liquor. I absolutely cannot. I just become someone different, someone fun and funny and vastly more entertaining than sober Hannah. Being drunk doesn’t just lower my inhibitions—it atomically annihilates them while never destroying my common sense. All the clever and cool retorts I’d normally think but never say? They actually come out of my mouth. Plenty of silly nonsense, too, but never anything cruel.

  So, I’m in the college pub with the guys, downing a fizzy pink something—that’s how I order drinks: just give me a fizzy pink something or a blue sour whatever. Bartenders either love me or hate me. This one thinks I’m adorable, and I suspect there are more than two shots in my drink. One minute I’m expounding on this show Drunk History and the next I’m riffing on a Drunk Physics version of it, and the guys are laughing so hard they’re snorting beer. Even Trinity chuckles as she sips her wine cocktail.

  Then Rory says, “You should totally do that. Put it on YouTube.”

  “Be my guest,” I say.

  “No, you, Hannah.” Liu waves an unsteady finger in my face. “You and Trin. Together. You’d rack up the views. You’re hilarious, and Trin’s…Well, Trin’s Trin.”

  Trinity is gorgeous. That’s what he means. She looks like Hollywood’s idea of a physics doctoral student, the sort who makes actual physics majors roll their eyes because, come on, we don’t look like that. Except Trinity does. Long curly black hair, huge amber eyes, a slender but curvy body. I’m embarrassed to admit that the first time I saw her in class, I almost offered to help her find her room because she was clearly in the wrong place.

  “So, Drunk Physics, huh?” Trinity says. “How would that work?”

  “You guys drink,” Liu says. “A lot. You get wasted, and then you try to explain a physics concept and post the result on a YouTube channel.”

  “It would be hilarious,” Rory says. “You should do it, Hannah.”

  The other guys take up a chant of “Do it! Do it!” banging the scarred table. I roll my eyes. Trinity shrugs and says, “Sure, why not.”

  I look at her. “Seriously?”

  A soft smile. “Seriously. It’d be fun.”

  And so Drunk Physics was born.

  Six months later

  I wake on the couch, groaning and reaching for my water bottle, which I’ve learned to put on the table before we start filming.

  As I chug lukewarm water, Trinity’s figure sways in front of me. She’s seated at the desk, and she isn’t actually swaying—that’s just me.

  Trinity’s gaze is fixed on a massive computer screen where my drunken image gestures wildly. Thankfully, the sound is off. It’s last night’s Drunk Girl Physics episode. Yes, we had a name change. Apparently, Drunk Physics wasn’t as original as I thought. We decided to play on the element that made our show unique. Drunk Girl Physics. DGP to its fans, and to my everlasting shock, we actually have those. A lot.

  Six months ago, Trinity and I started with a laptop and a cheap microphone. Now we have this ginormous computer monitor, connected to a top-of-the-line laptop, professional-grade cameras and microphones, all courtesy of Webizode.com, a startup channel for web series. We began on YouTube, but that was an exercise in humility. Oh, we got traffic—thanks to incredibly kind shout-outs from a few stars in the science-web-series biz—but we also got the kind of attention no one wants. For Trinity, that was endless chatter asking her to show some body part or another. For me, it was the opposite.

  Don’t undress, please, Hannah.

  Well, it’s a good thing she’s funny, ’cause no one would be watching her otherwise.

  Despite a rocketing viewership—and actual income—we’d been ready to quit, deciding no amount of money was worth the humiliation. Then Webizode came along, offering us a home with awesome comment moderation. They gave us the equipment, too, plus promotion, exposure, and enough income for Trinity and me to leave grad-school housing. We found this gorgeous old house to rent, and yes, Trinity swears she gets spooky vibes from it, but honestly, I think she’d say that about any house more than twenty years old.

  While we loved having our own house, it was Webizode’s moderation we appreciated most. Still, the morning after our latest upload, Trinity is scrolling through comments, ready to hit our personal report button if anything slipped through.

  “All good?” I croak as I rise from the couch, the floor tilting underfoot.

  She doesn’t turn. “That was a really shitty thing to do, Hannah.”

  “Wh-what?” I blink and stagger to the desk as my head and stomach spin…in opposite directions, of course.

  God, I need to drink less for these videos. Except that’s the point, as Webizode pointed out when I tried subbing water for half my vodka shots. Our fans noticed and were not impressed, and neither was Webizode.

  In six months, I’ve exhausted every hangover remedy on the planet. The only thing that helps is having a full stomach pretaping and then drinking enough water afterward that I might as well sleep in the bathroom. I may have actually done that once or twice.

  I look down at Trinity, my lurching brain struggling to remember why I’m here.

  Oh, right.

  “What’d I do?” I say.

  She turns on the volume and hits Play on the frozen video. I’m saying, “The prevailing theory of time is that it moves in a straight line, like this.” I demonstrate with an empty shot glass, which does not move in any actual semblance of “straight.”

  “Which means that to travel through time, you’d need to…” I did something on-screen with the two empty glasses.

  I groan. “Time travel? Really?”

  On-screen, I continue drunkenly explaining concepts that I don’t even understand sober.

  “But that presumes that time is orderly, when it could actually be,” my drunken self says, and then launches into a Doctor Who quote about time being like a ball of “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”

  “What?” on-screen Trinity says.

  I continue to quote the show with, “Things don’t a
lways happen in the right order.”

  Trinity hits Stop and glares at me. I sink into a chair and blink at the screen. Then I blink at her.

  “I made a fool of myself,” I say. “Situation normal. But I’m not seeing what…”

  She jabs a finger at a section of the comments.

  trekgal98: Twenty points to Hannah for the Doctor Who refs!

  larrybarry: And they both zoomed right over Trinity’s head.

  trekgal98: Are you surprised?

  larrybarry: LOL

  It seems like an innocuous exchange. It is innocuous—all comments pass through Webizode’s moderation. Profanity is removed. Insults and innuendo are blocked. Trinity, though, cannot help scraping away those layers of idle comments to find the insult hidden within, and she’s found it here as she always does when I make a geek-culture reference that she doesn’t get.

  “You promised to stop doing that,” she says.

  I throw up my hands. “I’m drunk, and I’m blathering nonsense.”

  “You do it on purpose. You know our audience, and you play to them, and you make me look like an idiot.”

  “Not watching a TV show hardly makes you an idiot, Trin. In fact, it makes you smart. Unlike me, you don’t waste your study hours watching Netflix.”

  “Because I need to study. You don’t. You’re a freaking genius.”

  And that’s what it comes down to. What it always comes down to. Trinity has decided that I’m smarter than her and that our Webizode audience prefers me. She’s…not wrong.

  Damn it. I hate saying that. I’ve gotten to know Trinity much better in the last six months, and I consider her a friend. Yet the more I get to know her, the less I envy her. Yes, she’s gorgeous. Smart, too, or she wouldn’t be in our doctoral program. But she has an insecure core that desperately needs to be more than a pretty face. She is accustomed to being the center of attention, and when the spotlight slides my way, she deflates, her anxieties twisting into anger that homes in on me, as if I’ve stolen that spotlight from her.