Rental (Part 1 of 2)

 

Back to the Future plays silently on a wall-mounted TV. It’s the scene where Marty promises to take Jenn out in his Dad’s truck. I don’t need the sound; I know the words by heart.

Not for the first time, I’m struck by how Jenn in the film looks like Emily. I wonder if Em would ever let me take her for a ride in a truck. Not that I can drive. Not that my dad even owns a truck.

The bell rings as the shop door opens. It’s him again.Third time today, the same guy in the same weird get-up, looking like he’s seen too many of those black and white movies where people smoke and sneer and grease their hair. Long beige coat, buttons all over the place, the tails swishing around his legs. He strides past the shelves, past the chart singles and the Sega games, and slams a hand down on the counter, like he owns the place.

“Is it here yet?”

“I told you,” I say, teeth clenched, “we’ll call when it comes.”

I glance at the security camera on the wall, mindful that Mr Hall sometimes checks if there have been any ‘incidents’.

“It is very important I get the video before anyone else.” His face is jittery, twitching in places it shouldn’t, like his eyebrows, lips, and nose are holding a secret conversation. “You’re sure it’s not here?”

“Three times, man! Three times in one day, you come in here, you ask me the same thing, over and over.” I rest my hands on the counter, a mirror of his. I make a conscious effort to slow down, reduce my volume. Mr. Hall would not be happy if I caused a scene. “The video is on order. It will arrive soon. I’ll call you when it gets here. Okay?”

“Let me check,” he says, pacing over to the ‘new arrivals’ shelf, peering intently at the cover of Golden Child and Platoon and The Three Amigos, like they’re suddenly going to change into the movie he wants.

“It’s not there,” I say, “It’s not anywhere on display.” But this only encourages him. He moves along the shelves, glancing up, then staring at the blue movies. There’s a whole shelf with naked women on the covers. I find myself blushing, which is stupid because I’m not even looking at them.

When he’s in, Mr. Hall gives me a wink and a smile as customers rent the blue movies, like he’s caught them out, even though he’s the one who puts them up there in the first place. Once they’ve left, he talks about how they go to church or he bets Mrs. so and so doesn’t know what hubby’s watching when she’s not home.

I look at my watch. My shift is almost done. Emily and Jazz are meeting me here, soon, so we can go for the Big Walk. It was Emily’s idea; she’s always been the peacemaker. The three of us walking out to Fell Mill, down by the river, to talk, get it all off our chests.

I wring my hands and sigh. Jazz knows he did wrong, he must do. “Is this it?” The crazy guy is brandishing a copy of The Color of Money at me, Tom Cruise chalking a pool cue with Paul Newman’s oversized head looming in the background.

I snatch the cassette cover out of his hand and read the title to him, one word at a time. “The. Color. Of. Money. Can’t you read?”

He sniffs, as if the question is unworthy of him. “Not your kind of words.”

Behind his head, on the wall, Iranian terrorists shoot Doc Brown with machine guns. I frown and wave the customer away. “I got work to do.” I start unboxing the returns on the counter. They must all be rewound to the start (Mr. Hall says this is important) and then put back in the side room library. Mr. “Where’s My Video” doesn’t seem to realize that all the display cases are empty anyhow.

“Is it one of them?” I turn around and see he’s looking at the returns box. I can’t help it anymore, he’s broken me.

“Don’t you have anything better to do? The film is not here!”

He narrows his eyes and then smiles.

“What’s your name?” I’m not sure why I ask him this, except for a vague feeling that his identity is more important than I’d first thought.

He shakes his head. “I don’t have a name. I just need the video.” I am about to scream, I mean actually lose it, but we’re interrupted by the bell.

Ding-a-ling

It’s Tom, the delivery guy from our distributor. He’s carrying a large plastic box. “Hello, hello!” He says, his cheer jarring with the fury I’ve suddenly had to push down inside.

“Hi Tom,” I say, friendly as I can manage.

He stops in the middle of the shop. Looks from me to Mr. Where’s My Video, then back to me. “Everything okay?” he asks.

I give him my best knowing look, lips pursed, eyes wide and I think he gets the message. Tom approaches and places the big plastic box on the counter and flips off the lid to reveal the spines of 30 or so video cases.

Instantly, the customer is shoving him out of the way and burying his head in the box, running his finger over the titles.

“Hey!” Tom says, “watch it fella!” I circle my finger next to my head and Tom nods, backing off a little.

“It won’t be there, sir.” The ‘sir’ drips with sarcasm, but he doesn’t seem to notice me, so I try again, “They can take weeks to arrive…”

“Aha!” he says, pulling a video case from the box and holding it in front of my face. “This is it!” The case is unlike any other I’ve seen delivered to the shop. No pictures or bright colours or showy block-capital fonts. The cover is black, save for the white title which is all lowercase. It looks like something Jazz made on his Mum’s PC and printer.

all that we leave behind – what sort of a name is that for a movie?

“That’s the one you wanted?” I ask.

“Oh yes. I can read these words. This one is special.”

His smug expression is annoying, but at least I can finally get rid of him.

“Two-day hire, £2.50. Video card please.” I say.

The customer stares at me, face blank.

“Video card. Membership, so we can record the rental.” I hold out my hand for the card or the money or both.

“I’m not renting the film.” he says, “I want to watch it. Here.” He points at the TV on the wall. In Back to the Future, Marty is ordering a Tab in Lou’s Café.

I laugh because this is the most ridiculous thing he’s said yet. “No mate. People don’t watch the videos in the shop. Give me your card and the cash or give me the video and get lost. I don’t mind either way.”

None of this penetrates, I can see it in his eyes. It’s like talking to a living breathing mannequin, which makes me laugh again because that film is literally on the shelf behind him. The customer just stands there, gawping.

I turn to Tom and hold out my palms as if to say, “What the hell!” But Tom is looking at me funny now, brow furrowed, like he’s working out a tough maths problem. After a beat, he juts out his bottom lip, straightens up to his full height, and wags a finger at me. “You know, I think we should watch the movie.” he says.

I feel something drop inside of me, somewhere below my chest and above my stomach. For a moment, I get dizzy, holding the counter to stop myself from falling. “What did you say?”

Tom nods, “We need to watch the movie, Ryan. You need to watch it most of all.”

The customer is nodding too, perfectly in time with Tom.

I have to get out, Emily and Jazz will be walking down Church Street by now, on their way to collect me. Mr. Hall would be furious about me leaving without a handover. I’ll probably get fired, but I can’t stay here any longer with these bizarre men.

I step out from behind the counter and start to move past the customer, but he reaches out and grabs the sleeve of my T-Shirt.

“You can’t leave,” he says, “We need to watch the video.” Tom reaches over the counter and grabs the bundle of keys from the hook underneath. He sorts through, selects one, and goes to the door. He locks it and puts the keys in his pocket.

I shiver, ice running down my neck and spine. I try to shake free from the customer’s hold, but his grip just tightens. When I speak, my voice is smaller, higher-pitched than before. “What are you doing?”

“We’re going to watch the movie,” the customer says. I would cry out, shout for help, throw punches, something, anything. But before I can move, before full panic can take over, I see something that stops me cold.

On the wall, the TV is still showing Back to the Future; George McFly falling from the tree, Marty saving him from being run down. But the film is flickering, switching between colour and black and white, the action playing out with an unpleasant juddering quality.

Behind Marty and the car, stood on the pavement, two figures, young like me, a male and a female, stand shoulder to shoulder facing the camera. Both appear to be drenched in water, droplets cascading from their clothes and hair, forming pools at their feet. Despite the picture quality and the flickering, I know who they are.

I’d know them anywhere.

Jazz and Emily.

Their expressions are vacant, almost disinterested, paying no mind to the Hill Valley scene playing out around them. They each hold a black rectangular shape in their hands, proffered towards the camera. I cannot read the white lowercase letters on the cases, but I do not need to.

all that we leave behind

I turn to Tom and the customer, my resistance gone, no longer seeing them as the aggressors holding me against my will. Now I need them to explain, to tell me why my friend and the girl I love are soaked to the bone and standing in the background of a movie that was released years ago.

“How?” I say. Then, “Why?”

When Tom and the customer speak, they do so in tandem, their voices melding, overlapping, using precisely the same words with precisely the same intonation.

“The video. We have to watch the video.”

I go limp, might even lose my balance entirely if it weren’t for the customer. He whisks me up in his arms like I’m a sleeping child, carries me around the counter and places me down on my stool. He stands behind me, both of us looking at the TV on the wall.

On-screen, Marty is sat at the dinner table with his (younger) mother and her family. In the background, Jazz and Emily are there, same as before, still dripping, still holding the video cases. Their skin deathly pale, almost blue. I try not to meet their empty stares.

Tom goes to the VHS and presses stop. There is momentary relief as Jazz and Emily disappear from the screen. He ejects the cassette and replaces it with the other, then presses ‘play.’ The VHS whirs into life.

In the space between the flicker of the screen from and the progression of the opening frames, I already know I do not want to see this film. It is an instant, gut reaction, like flinching away from a huge, thick-legged spider crawling onto my bare skin.

I turn away but the customer is behind me, his big hands locked on either side of my head, twisting me back towards the screen.

“Watch,” he says. “We will do this again and again and again until you watch.”

On the TV, a young man with shaggy brown hair is walking through a field. We cannot see his face, the camera follows him from behind, somehow moving at the same pace, but a few feet above. The boy, or the teenager, is me.

 

part 2 is here https://www.abctales.com/story/charlie77/rental-part-2-2