The Missing Film

1. The blue boxes

The cinema had been closed to the public for three weeks, but Elisa still went up to the projection booth every Thursday. She put screws into envelopes and wrote their sizes on the back. The film cases were empty. They had been collected before the seats, as though the pictures had been in a greater hurry to leave.

Sarelunia found her kneeling beside a drawer. She had come to return a torch borrowed during the final screening. Elisa had lent it to her to search for an earring between the rows. The earring turned up in her jacket pocket while they were already dismantling the foyer. Sarelunia could not think of an elegant way to explain and had waited a week before returning.

“So it wasn’t under the seat,” Elisa said.

“It was close to me.”

“That’s what you said that night. You weren’t lying.”

The torch went into the wrong envelope. Elisa took it out, laughed and sat on the floor. She had to hand the building over tomorrow morning. The buyer would retain the facade, or so she had been told. She still did not know what would happen to the sign with its movable letters.

Through the booth window Sarelunia saw a pale rectangle on the screen, surrounded by dust. Two seats stood halfway up the aisle, facing each other like people who had stopped speaking. She asked whether Elisa needed help.

Elisa pointed at three blue boxes. One held programmes, another a coffee maker and the third lost property: gloves, glasses, a cap and a wallet with no identification. They had to take them to the community centre across the square. Then they would lock up. Elisa said “then” in the same voice she had used for “not yet” a week earlier.

At the back of the drawer they found a home recording. The label read “For when we go out”. No date or name. Elisa held it towards the light.

“My brother filmed the staff parties. He always promised to make a film.”

“Did you see it?”

“Neither did he. He could never find the cable.”

Elisa put the tape in her handbag. Sarelunia expected her to suggest looking for a player. Instead she stood and went on filling envelopes.

2. Closing time

Outside, light rain was falling. They loaded the boxes onto a delivery trolley that veered right. Sarelunia pushed while Elisa corrected its course with her foot. Halfway across the square a programme blew away. They chased it to a closed cafe terrace, where it caught beneath a chair.

Elisa crouched before Sarelunia could help. She stood with the wet programme and a laugh that turned into a cough.

“That opening was a disaster. The print arrived without its ending.”

Sarelunia expected complaints and angry customers. Elisa described her brother standing in front of the screen, explaining the ending with two plastic cups. Nobody got a refund. Several people returned for the next screening to check whether he had told it correctly.

There was nobody at the community centre. Its manager’s phone was off, and Elisa could not find the key she had been given. She searched her bag, producing the tape, a handkerchief and a teaspoon wrapped in paper. The key turned up inside a glove. They opened a room full of folding tables.

From nearby came a dance rehearsal. A voice counted steps, lost count and started again. Elisa wanted to take the lost-property box back to the cinema.

“It’ll get lost here.”

“People won’t be able to collect it there.”

Sarelunia sounded sharper than she meant to. Elisa tightened her grip on the cardboard handle. Sarelunia considered apologising, but every phrase made the box seem far more solemn than she intended. Finally she suggested photographing its contents and putting a notice on the centre’s door.

They arranged everything on a table. Elisa placed the glasses beside the cap, then moved a glove. Minutes passed. The dance teacher looked in to ask for quiet and recognised the little umbrella at the bottom. She had lost it two winters earlier.

“Don’t open it in here,” Elisa said.

She was already opening it. A wire came loose. They needed someone to hold the fabric while they folded it again. By the time they finished, the other boxes had found a corner. Elisa left the lost property too.

The teacher asked whether anything else belonged to her. Elisa remembered a red scarf, but it was thick wool and the woman shook her head. They searched until a pupil’s phone rang. Elisa closed the box slowly and wrote collection hours on a sheet of paper. She gave it to the teacher to display. She could no longer be there personally whenever somebody returned for an object. She added a contact number, then checked that the notice did not cover the class announcements.

3. The remaining light

They returned by a different route. The corner shop’s awning dripped onto a row of crates. Elisa insisted on walking beneath it, although there was room to go round. She emerged with wet hair and said a word Sarelunia had never heard her use.

The last job was to turn the power off. Every room needed checking because the fuse box was badly labelled. Elisa switched on a lamp; Sarelunia lowered a switch. They shouted instructions from opposite ends of the building. The foyer went dark, then the toilets, then a bulb nobody remembered behind a curtain.

The booth lamp remained. Elisa asked to leave it until last. On the desk she found an envelope of photographs. In one her brother held a tray. In another a woman taught somebody to dance between the rows. Flash had erased almost every face.

“This one’s worse,” Elisa said, passing a picture.

It showed a ceiling. Sarelunia recognised part of the lamp above them.

Elisa laughed and covered her mouth with the photographs. Then she said she did not want to watch the tape. Sarelunia had no answer ready. She had assumed the evening would lead to an old machine, a screening, some orderly farewell.

“You can keep it,” she said.

“Everyone thinks I have to watch it. My brother said he’d filmed us going outside after a screening. Perhaps there’s nothing on it. He did that.”

She did not explain why her brother was no longer there, and Sarelunia did not ask. Elisa put the photos away, folded the envelope wrongly, then took them out to straighten the corners. Outside, a shutter rattled down.

Sarelunia went to the main entrance. From there she could see Elisa through the booth window, small among objects that still fitted no particular bag. She waved. Elisa raised one finger: a minute. Sarelunia leaned against the wall and waited.

When Elisa appeared on the landing, the lamp was still on.

“Your turn,” she said, handing over the fuse-box key.

Sarelunia went back up. At the click of the switch, the booth stopped being a room and became the edge of dark glass. She needed the newly returned torch to find the stairs.

4. The one that starts with the ending

Elisa wanted to go home. She said so while putting the keys away, checking the lock and crossing the square. She stopped outside the centre. The dance teacher was there, fighting the umbrella again. She recognised them and asked them in for a moment to hold a table.

Rehearsal had finished. Three people remained, a bag of shoes and a player that changed songs halfway through their titles. They moved the table to make room for the next morning’s class. Elisa sat on it before they finished shifting it.

The teacher put on a track and asked whether anyone remembered the steps. Elisa shook her head, stood up and did them deliberately wrong. Sarelunia tried to follow. By the third turn she could no longer tell whether the mistakes were rehearsed. A pupil joined them without removing her coat.

“Play the other one,” Elisa asked when it finished.

“Which?”

“The one that starts as though it’s already ending.”

Finding it took several songs. While they searched, Elisa brought out the tape again. Did anyone know somebody with a player? The teacher thought her father might still have one, though she could not promise it worked. Elisa wrote his number on the back of a cinema programme.

She would not call that night. She put the paper in her handbag and pushed it under the table. When the song she wanted began, she was helping Sarelunia untie a knot in a shoelace. She looked up, recognised the opening and was still for a second.

“This.”

Sarelunia was still crouching. Elisa offered her a hand and pulled her up before she could finish tying the lace. They danced with it loose, taking care not to step on it. At the end the teacher played the track again. Outside, the cinema sign was dark. Inside the centre someone was still asking for another song.

Much later, remembering their crossing of the square, Sarelunia would mix up the lamps they had switched off and the windows that remained open. Elisa’s laugh was easier to place: it travelled across the table just before they found the song. She began with that laugh when she went looking for the first words.