"Jack, have you considered the possibility that you're embarking on this elaborate building scheme to distract yourself from your sexual frustration?" Oz asked.
With a grunt, Jack ripped the last corner of the mouldering carpet from the floor.
"You're wrong, Oz. For one thing, I've wanted to do this for years, you know that. Remember how we always drove by this place and imagined what it must've been like when it was new?"
"You always imagined. I always thought, Man, what a dump."
Jack ignored his friend. "And remember my ambitions in our high-school yearbook? 'To own my own cinema, and make my life like a movie'? I've fulfilled the first part. And it's only taken me ten years." He pushed the massive roll of carpet forward against the wall, exposing the full extent of the wooden parquet flooring underneath. "If someone will make a film about fighting with smelly carpets, I'll have fulfilled the second part, too. What do you think—Rocky VI: Rocky Hits the Carpet?"
"That one would go straight to video." Oz didn't look up from where he knelt studying the floor, his blond hair dangling in front of his eyes.
"Another thing. 'Sexual frustration' implies that I can't get sex. And I can get sex. In fact, I ran into Sally McKenna last night, and she seemed very interested in reliving old times with me."
"Sally wants to sleep with you again? And you turned her down? Did you give her my number?"
"Get your own girlfriends, Oz. The point is, if I chose to have sex, I could. But I'm choosing not to. Until the right time."
Oz spread his big hand over the parquet tiles and pushed. "I hope your working parts are holding out better under neglect than this floor has. How long has it been since you chose the path of righteous chastity? A year?"
"Eleven months, six days and eight hours. Approximately."
With a mighty heave, Jack wrestled the roll of carpet upright. "And there's nothing wrong with my working parts."
"It's good you're so certain of that, because the purchase of this immense architectural erection could be interpreted as a compensatory response to inadequacies in your physical performance."
Jack laughed, wiping sweat from his forehead and pushing his dark hair back. "Okay, Dr. Strummer, you can quit using those degrees in psychology on me. I bought the Delphi Theater because I wanted it. It has nothing to do with my penis."
Oz finally looked up at Jack. He opened his mouth to respond, but instead broke into a huge grin. "You might say so, but it doesn't take a Ph.D. in psychology to understand the significance of that."
He pointed over Jack's shoulder to the roll of carpet that towered above him. Jack turned in time to see the roll sag in the middle and slowly topple over to lie limply on the floor.
He threw back his head and laughed. "No way, Oz," he said, walking across the dusty floor toward his friend. "That did not mean a thing. I have absolutely no trouble getting a ha—aaaaaagh!"
The floor opened up underneath Jack's feet and he came crashing down into darkness. He lay, winded, on his back, and saw Oz's shaggy blond head appear above him.
"Hey, buddy, you okay down there?"
"Yeah. Yeah, just surprised." Jack sat up and ran his hand through his hair, dislodging dust and splinters.
"I think you fell through a trapdoor," Oz said. "Looks like your weight ripped out the hinges and it just fell in."
"So this is how you get to the basement." Jack looked around; he was about seven feet below the floor. He'd landed on a heap of dirty rags that had broken his fall. The speckled light, filtered through flakes of plaster and dust motes, showed him that the space extended around him in all directions.
Oz tested the floor with his foot and, satisfied that it was safe, sat down near the lip of the trapdoor. "I'm sure I don't need to mention the symbolism of your falling down a hole."
"Ha, ha. Very funny. Will you help me out of here?"
"Not yet. I'm glad I've got you trapped, jack, because I want to tell you seriously that I'm worried about you. The pickup king has gone eleven months without sex? It isn't like you. And all because of some random dream."
"It wasn't any dream. It was the best dream of my life. It made me realize that I was wasting my time jumping from one woman to another. Sex in that dream was the most incredible thing I've ever experienced. And I don't see the point in having sex until it can be that way for real."
"Jack, dreams are fantasy. Reality can never be as good. It's the nature of dreams."
"No. Not this dream. It'll happen. I know it." Jack pulled a long splinter of wood from his T-shirt. "Did you know my grandmother was a stage psychic? She used to tell the future for a living. It probably runs in the family."
Oz snorted. "You don't believe in that crap, do you?"
"Hey, that's my grandmother you're insulting. I should fight you."
"Okay," Oz said, in his let's-be-reasonable psychologist's voice. "Let's grant that you had some amazing dream that showed you the true extent of how great sex can be. And that instead of being the product of your oversexed and very imaginative mind, it has some basis in objective reality. Even if all of that is true, how will you know when you meet the woman you'll be having this incredible sex with?"
"I'll know."
"How?"
"I just will. Have you seen The End of the Affair? Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes look at each other and from that moment it's only a matter of time before they tear each other's clothes off. Like that."
Oz threw his hands up in frustration. "This is why I'm worried about you, Jack. You've never committed to anything or anyone in your life. You've skated through everything you've done and come out the other side without so much as a bruise. Now you're suddenly taking on a huge commitment with this cinema. And you've given up a very active and, frankly, enviable sex life because of a dream. Are you really ready to commit to this dream woman, if you ever do find her?"
"Whoa. One step at a time, big guy. I want to find her, and have sex with her. Let's leave the 'c' word out of it right now."
Oz shook his head. "Jack, have you ever considered that you want to make your life like a movie because movies only last for two hours?"
"Gone With the Wind lasted over three and a half hours. And don't even get me talking about The Lord of the Rings."
"You know what I mean. Movies aren't messy, like reality. You watch them, you walk away. There's no risk involved, no emotional investment. Isn't that why you want to make your life like them?"
Jack shrugged. "And your point is?"
"How long have you ever stuck with anything? A job, a project, a woman? And now suddenly you're taking all of this on. It's a commitment, whether you know it or not. Even the dream woman. I wonder whether you're ready for it."
"Stop psychologizing me, Oscar. I can have an attention span of more than two hours. I'll prove it to you." He stretched his hand up toward Oz. "I promise you that within a year the Delphi Theater will be a fully functioning, beautiful cinema. And I will have had the best sex of my life. And I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make both of those things happen."
Oz nodded and extended his hand down the hole to shake Jack's.
"So now will you help me up?"
Oz's hand stopped moving. "Yeah, just a second." He pulled out of Jack's grip and disappeared.
"Oz? Oz?" There was a pile of bricks and rubble near Jack's feet; he stepped up on it, but still couldn't see over the edge of the hole. He could hear his friend's footsteps walking away, and a door opening.
"Hello. Are you the new owner?" A feminine voice reached his ears.
Something went funny in Jack's chest. A tightening, a jolt. He stopped trying to look out of the hole. He stood very still and listened.
"No, he's stuck in a symbolic hole at the moment. Come in."
"I'm Katherine Clifford, the interior designer. I'm looking for a Mr. Taylor?"
The interior designer he'd picked out of the phone book. Her voice seemed so familiar. The upward lilt at the end of the sentence, something about how she said his name.
Jack felt his heartbeat speed up and his hands become damp with perspiration. He tensed every muscle in his body, trying to catch what it was about her voice that called to him, sang to him, made him want to jump the seven feet out of the hole he was in.
Oz was speaking. "Well, as you can see, you've got your work cut out for you here." Jack heard them stop walking. "Hey, I know you, don't I? Aren't you from around here? I'm Oscar Strummer."
"Oh!" There was a faint breathiness there, a little huskiness in her voice, that made Jack's mouth go dry. "You're Oscar Strummer? Oz?"
"That's right."
"So—um, hold on. Can you just clarify—? I mean, the message I received was from a Mr. Taylor, spelled T-a-i-l-o-r."
"Nope. T-a-y-l-o-r. First name Jack. He's the owner. I'm just the idiot friend who said he'd help out in his spare time. So how do I know you, Katherine?"
"Yes, Katherine, how do I know you?" Jack breathed, down in the darkness.
Had they met eleven months ago, one night in his sleep?
"Jack Taylor owns the Delphi?" There was a little pause. "We went to high school together," he heard Katherine say.
"You were both the year ahead of me. I didn't recognize you when I came in, you're much taller than you were in school."
"You mean I used to be a short, skinny geek," Oz said, laughing. "I got my growth spurt late. I recognized you as soon as I saw your hair. The name Katherine Clifford didn't ring a bell, though."
She'd gone to high school with him and Oz. That was why he recognized her voice. He stepped forward, trying to hear better, and knocked a brick off the pile he was standing on, which meant he missed half of her reply to Oz.
"....came back to Portland about six months ago to start my own business. And, yeah, people tend to remember my hair."
She laughed, and Jack broke out in a sweat.
He swallowed and tried to calm himself. They'd met in high school, not in his dream. It was because he'd been talking about the dream that his body was reacting so extremely. And delayed adrenaline from his fall.
If there were such a thing as delayed adrenaline.
He had to get out of this basement. Jack looked around him again. By now, his eyes had adjusted to the light and he could see farther. About five feet from him were some large objects covered with gray sheets. Above his head, he heard Oz asking the woman questions, what she'd been doing since high school, if she still had family in the area, things like that. He couldn't concentrate on her replies; what he heard instead was her voice, sweet and throaty, like a feather tickling his ear with playful, erotic strokes.
And Oz, that rat, that handsome single rat, had her undivided attention.
Jack pulled the sheet off the nearest object: a shabby velvet-covered chair. He dragged it over the rubble to underneath the trapdoor.
Who was she? He couldn't remember any Katherines from high school. What was it about her hair?
She laughed again, and there was nothing delayed about the adrenaline rush he felt when he heard her. Jack scrambled onto the chair, seized the edge of the opening and hurled himself up onto the floor. He slid a few feet on the wooden tiles, then sprang to his feet and ran. Heart pounding, Jack dashed across the foyer to where Oz stood, looking down at a slender woman who was facing away from Jack. She had luxurious hair the color of blazing autumn leaves, loosely pulled back to her nape. It looked familiar.
He skidded to a stop beside her and held out his hand. "Hi, I'm Jack."
It seemed like forever until she turned around. Jack saw her as if she were moving in slow motion—delicate neck and chin; fine, straight nose; full pink mouth; pale skin. And that bright red hair.
He knew her all right.
She was probably the only person in the world who'd ever hated him.