When Night Falls
The Video Saloon store wasn’t very popular. It’s big, old and crusty. Movie posters peeled off the wall and paint flaked off the white ceiling. Everyone in town called it the “Video Loon” because the “S” and “A” were missing from “Saloon” on the sign outside. I thought Vince should change the name completely. I mean, we don’t even rent videos anymore. Should it be called the “DVD Saloon” or “The Movie Saloon” or something?
It was too big as well, almost four times the size of the other shops on Main Street. It looked bare and cold when there were no customers, and dark and dreary in winter. The counter was right at the back of the store and customers were always complaining because they had to walk all the way down the store to make a return, unlike other rental stores, where the counter is always at the front door.
Still, at least I had a job. There weren’t many jobs in Rosedale. Not for year ten secondary school girls, unless you put your name down on the Coles waiting list or didn’t mind putting up with greasy hands and the smell of fried fat at the Chicken Shack.
I worked with Crass on weekends and an evening or two during the week. Crass worked at the Video Saloon full-time where he spent most of his day watching the store TV. My dad would have called him a no-good slacker before my dad actually became a no-good slacker himself. That’s why I got this job. Anyway, one thing for sure, when I’m 19 I won’t be working in a video store like him. I’ll be out of this town. Live in Rosedale all my life? That’s not for me. Who’d want to live in a town in the far reaches of the galaxy? It’s so far away from anything.
Not everyone thinks like I do though. My friend Skye lives in the Bracken Lake estate just outside of Rosedale and she loves the place. ‘Stacey Fallon, you’re wrong, Rosedale is so cool,’ she said to me during my last rant about the town as we walked around the lake that her estate is named after. ‘It has tennis courts, bike paths and it even has a skating rink.’
A skating rink? Whoopee! Awesome! Let’s stay here forever! Anyway, compared to a hole like Bracken Lake, Rosedale would seem like some bustling metropolis.
The best thing about getting out of Rosedale? I wouldn’t have to put up with Robert’s total weirdness.
Robert looked tired, like he had just got out of bed. To my relief he ignored me and went straight to Crass. He gave Crass a DVD disc. Crass walked to the counter and casually dropped it in front of me. It was the Night Falls disc. Crass had obviously rung Robert and asked him to return it.
Robert followed Crass to the counter. He looked embarrassed and kept his eyes on the ground.
‘It’s illegal to burn DVDs mate,’ Crass said to him with the same soft-as-barbedwire tone as my principal, Huffy Kilpatrick (named because of her habit of huffing at you before the start of any conversation) used during school assemblies. He handed back the blank silver disc Robert had accidentally returned to us, which I thought was overly generous. It was a copy after all. I thought he should have thrown it away. Crass held it away from Robert’s grasp for a few seconds, as if leaving the disc where we could all see it magnified the crime.
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Robert, his shoulders hunched and hands in his coat pockets. ‘It was just for my own collection, you know, just so I could watch it again.’
‘Pretty stupid to give back the copy then. Or were you trying to rip us off by keeping the original?’
‘No! It was a mix up. I’m sorry man, yeah, it was stupid.’
Crass turned to me with a smile. ‘So Stacey, think we should slap a ban on him for this or what?’
For copying one DVD? When there were hundreds right under our feet in the basement? I told Crass that it wasn’t a big deal. Robert paid to rent the DVD, that was the most important thing.
‘Paid?’ laughed Crass. He looked at Robert with a sneer. ‘I’ve always wondered Robbo, where do you get all the money for your DVDs? You’re unemployed, right?’ Robert nodded his head sullenly. ‘So then, a DVD is six dollars a night and half-price during the week. You watch a couple of hundred a year. That’s a lot of dosh. You must be raking it in.’ Robert didn’t answer. ‘Go on, get out of here,’ said Crass. ‘And if you want to copy DVDs, burn them from Blockbuster. Not from us!’
Robert gave Crass a sharp look, then hurried out of the store with his bouncing, gaping walk. ‘I don’t know if I’d have said that, Crass,’ I said when he’d gone. ‘He’ll never come back here again and he’s out best customer.’
‘Doesn’t mean anything to him. He’s a geek,’ said Crass, dismissing Robert with a wave. ‘He’s used to people talking crap to him. Anyway, he’ll be back tomorrow. He likes the staff.’ Crass gave me one of his thin lipped smiles and walked back to the console games shelf. He could be so obnoxious sometimes. It made me want to thump him.
I snatched the Night Falls DVD and squeezed the scanner trigger. The movie was added to the “Returned Rentals” list. If a customer returns a DVD late a warning flashes onto the screen. You could also press the F7 key and take a look at the customer’s profile: address, fines, rental history, how much money a customer had spent. Usually I took little notice of customer profiles.
I saw that Robert’s fines were zero. He usually came in every Saturday afternoon I worked and as far as I knew he’d never handed in his rentals late. I wondered just how much money he had actually spent on rentals. It must have been hundreds and hundreds of dollars. If Robert was unemployed that’d mean he spent most of his money in the store. Was it possible? I suppose if you don’t have a job, watching movies is one way to pass the time. Then why didn’t he just download them from the Internet for free?
Feeling slightly self-conscious and sneaky, I pressed the F7 key and then selected “rental history”. At the top of the screen was a text box which read: TOTAL RENTAL SPEND FOR YEAR: $34.00.
Thirty-four dollars in ten months? That couldn’t be right. That’d be only eight or nine rentals, even if he did get them at half price. I downloaded his rental history. Holding down the cursor I ran through the list of rentals. It was long. I knew it would be. 277 films in the past year, exactly the same number as Crass had told me. He has a good memory. I scanned through the names: Wolf Creek; Saw IV; Land of the Lost; The Notebook; Semi-Pro; American Gangster; Wrong Turn; Blade Runner; The Hills Have Eyes. They weren’t all horrors, that’s for sure. And what was with The Notebook? That was like a mega weepie film from years back. That was a really weird choice for Robert.
Next to each film on the rental history was the charge for each rental. Nearly every one of them was listed with the same charge: CREDIT $0.00. A credit meant we’d rented it out for free. Robert hadn’t paid for hardly any of his movies. Fair enough, he may have used the odd shop-a-docket voucher or his privilege card to get free rentals, but surely he had spent more than thirty-four dollars?
Next to the charge was a code for the staff member who completed the transaction. You had to logon each time you used the computer. That way if you didn’t collect fines or if you charged the wrong amount or the end-of-day balance didn’t add up, Vince would have known who stuffed up.
Next to nearly every one of Robert’s recent rentals was Crass’ login name: COL. I kept scrolling until I saw STA. My login name was only next to a handful of titles. I always made him pay. I looked at some of the titles under my login name. The last one was a gory slasher flick. I remember renting it out to him a month ago, because Crass had gone to lunch and Robert had gone on and on about the director of the film being the best new director out there. The film had been paid for at half price, as Robert had a Saloon privilege card – a scheme Vince had tried a couple of years before, but it had never caught on with customers – that gave you half price on new releases during the week. Soon enough you could get half-price overnighters any weekday regardless. But Robert still liked to use his card.
It was weird that Robert rented so many videos but hardly any from me. Always from Crass. Yet I remember him constantly returning DVDs to me, sometimes up to three or four on a weekend. I saw him every weekend, yet I’d only ever rented four or five titles to him.
I scrolled back to the top of the list to look at the transactions from earlier in the year. Again, Crass completed nearly all the transactions until around March. Then I saw another regular login name – KAT – beside a number of titles. The dates for KAT’s transaction ended in June. I started in mid-July when I answered an ad in the local paper, along with nearly every other teenager in town. Again, nearly every rental charge of KAT’s read: CREDIT $0.00.
KAT? Who was KAT? I thought back to the previous assistants. I never took much notice of them when I was a customer – which was rare anyway. Topps or Skye seemed to do all the renting, as I couldn’t afford a movie every week. I remember a guy who always wore a red baseball cap. I didn’t know his name. And an older girl from school. A pretty blonde. Was she KAT? And if so, what was her name? Kate? Katrina? I’d ask Topps. He’d been a regular at the Video Saloon for years.
I was so absorbed I failed to notice a customer standing at the counter. I looked up to see him politely waiting. He had put his hands on the counter and was staring at a movie playing on the store TV – an old kid’s super-hero animation film, The Incredibles, that I still found cool. That was the one really good thing about working at The Video Saloon. You could watch any movie you wanted. At other DVD stores you were supposed to run a preview tape of all the latest releases. So it was like watching an eighthour clip of the same movies, over and over again.
The man had on the crispest, best ironed shirt I’ve ever seen. I noticed the sharply ironed folds, like the ridge of a inclined hill, on his sleeves. He was old, maybe fifty, with a pepper-and-salt moustache splashed with silver and streaks through his thin hair. He looked tired, his eyelids were slightly droopy and when he smiled it looked like it took a lot of energy out of him.
Crass was at the other end of the store pretending to tidy up the comedy section. He looked like he was counting the number of videos, a strange habit of his I’d noticed not long ago. He didn’t bother to make a move when he looked up and saw the customer at the counter.
‘Hi,’ I stammered. He had given me a fright.
‘Hello there, I wondering if Mr Gurrieri is in.’
‘No, he doesn’t work on the weekends.’
The man reached into his pocket and took out a business card and showed me. The title on the card read: Detective Sergeant P C Rooks, Croydon CIU.
‘I was talking to Mr Gurrieri a while back,’ the man, obviously Detective Rooks, said. ‘Can you ask him to contact me? My number is on the card.’
‘Okay, I’ll leave it for him.’
‘It’s nothing important, get him to give me a call sometime next week. I’m visiting all the video stores in the area. I’m part of a regional response unit dealing with pirated goods.’
‘Oh, really, like pirated discs?’ I asked, my voice raising a higher octave than usual. I felt my face flush slightly. The detective looked at me for about a second longer than I felt comfortable with.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We’ve caught a few people selling them at local markets. I’m asking around to see if any of the stores have had any problems. Any distributors offering to sell illegal discs or computer games to them, that sort of thing.’
‘Okay, I’ll get him to call you.’
‘Good girl,’ said the detective, giving me a smile and walking out. Crass, listening, watched him go and then sauntered to the counter.
‘What was that about? After copies of Police Academy: Pigs on Patrol, or what?’
‘No. He was asking about illegal discs. Copies. Caught people selling them at local markets.’
I had to watch what I said. I wasn’t sure that Crass knew about the DVDs downstairs.
‘What did he ask you?’
‘Wanted to know if Vince had been sold illegal copies.’
‘Don’t think so. Have you noticed any?’
Me? Yeah, Crass, as a matter of fact I had noticed a few. Such as the huge pile sitting in the basement. Perhaps I should have told the detective about them. I could have got myself a big reward. Would I have dared to? If I did Vince would be in big trouble.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I could tell the difference between an original and a copy anyway.’
Crass snorted. ‘I don’t like cops,’ he said. ‘My older brother was always getting in friggin’ trouble with them. They had it in for him big time. Got him driving an unregistered GT Ford doing 150 down Main Street. Also turned out to have some contraband in the back seat – a decent bag of dope that wasn’t his. Got done big time. So let Vince deal with ‘em. It doesn’t worry me. As long as they leave me alone.’
That was when Crass saw the computer screen. I followed his gaze to Robert’s rental profile. I had forgotten to logout of it when Detective Rooks had turned up.
‘What are you looking at that for?’ Crass asked.
‘It’s just Robert’s rental history. Remember you said I should check it out? Well, I thought I would see how many horror movies he had rented. You’re right, it is scary!’
I left it at that. I knew when you tell a lie you shouldn’t go into a long explanation. Leave it short. Otherwise it gives you away. I got that from Law and Order. There’s always someone lying on that TV show. You can tell when they’re telling the truth or are all shifty and flat out lying.
Crass thought about what I’d said for a moment. ‘Perhaps I should have told that cop about Robert pirating our movies.’
‘You’d really do that?’
‘Nah. Just joking. After all, he’s our best customer.’
Beef Lasagne
I ’d been cooking for Dad for a couple of years. It was either that or live on a constant diet of fish & chips and BBQ chops with over steamed vegies. Dad was never a good cook and it gives me something to do at night instead of watching TV. My favourite is lasagne. It took me at least five attempts to get it right though. The first few times I kept tearing the pasta layers apart, the white sauce could have been used in art class for glue and the pasta sauce was bitter.
So I did some surfing and came up with a sure fire hit. First, use instant lasagne sheets. Second, make the bolognaise sauce yourself with tomato soup, crushed canned tomatoes and a couple of spoons of brown sugar to make it sweet. I also use celery, mushrooms and a few slices of bacon strips. Beautiful. The white sauce still gets me, but as long as you keep stirring it, no problems.
The best thing about lasagne is freezing it. I can get three, sometimes four meals out of one tray. There’s no way I’m cooking every night, and lasagne actually tastes better with age. It can be too sloppy when freshly made.
When I got home from work I threw two pieces in the microwave and then cooked up my second speciality – roasted vegetables. It’s something I worked on at school and have perfected over the past year. The secret to good roast potatoes and pumpkin is to smother it all in heaps of olive oil and sprinkle on seasoning and garlic powder. Dad doesn’t like buying olive oil because it’s too expensive, but since I do the shopping with him I always smuggle it into the trolley. It’s way better than sunflower oil.
The roasted vegetables sizzled in the oven as I set the table. Dad was watching a reality cooking show in the living room. This was bad news, as Dad hates reality TV. When he watches crap it usually means he’s on a downer. Usually I’d just plonk his plate on a tray and we’d both eat in front of the TV, but my lasagne and roasted veggies deserved better than that, especially as I actually worked all day as well. I think I was beginning to realise what a lot of married women’s lives were like. Work hard, come home and have your partner sitting in a recliner itching his bum with you in the kitchen. Sounds kind of sucky if you ask me.
I don’t think we’ve had new utensils or a table cloth since Mum died, but I tried my best anyway. I used the two plate coasters with the Matisse paintings, two clean glasses and even put out some paper napkins.
‘Table’s looking good.’
Dad stood leaning on corner wall watching me finishing the table.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You know that lasagne and roasted vegetables deserve the full
treatment. May as well put some effort in.’ Dad rubbed his whiskered cheeks. ‘Perhaps I could go whip down the shop and buy a Danish for dessert?’ he said.
‘Nah, we’ve got ice-cream, and I can open a can of fruit salad,’ I said. Dad look relieved he didn’t have to go out, and I knew he didn’t want to spend any money on dessert. The ice-cream and fruit salad were both cheap home brand and they were for special occasions. The only time we’d get away with a Danish would be if Queen Mary of Denmark popped around for a chat.
I made sure the lasagne and vegetables were steaming hot before I served them (nothing worse than a lasagne with a cold centre) and we both sat down to eat. I did most of the talking, as usual. Dad just smiled and listened.
‘Vince is really angry because the games are coming back scratched,’ I said, giving Dad the highlights of the day. ‘He just bought another copy of Assassin 2 and now we get it back today, and I go to return it, and there’s an awesome scratch right across the disc. He’s going to go, like, off his head when he finds out tomorrow. They cost a hundred dollars each.’
‘Crazy,’ Dad said, smiling. He usually perked up a bit after my lasagne.
I went quiet for a bit, thinking about what else happened. There was no way I was going to bring up the pirated discs until I spoke to Topps. I thought I’d just leave that one lie for a while. It was when I went quiet I noticed how big the kitchen table was. I used to sit against the wall, Dad next to me and Mum across from me nearest to the kitchen. It took a couple of years for me to change seats and sit where Mum always did. But the table still looked too large even with half of it full of bills and letters and hardware tools. I suddenly decided I preferred to eat in front of the TV. It wasn’t as if Dad had a huge deal to say anyway.
‘It’s amazing how customers treat the games and DVDs,’ I said. ‘They must play Frisbee with them or something.’
Dad laughed. ‘You wouldn’t believe some of the items they return at the Hardware Barn either,’ he said, scooping up a fork full of lasagne and roast carrots. ‘The other day, or was it the other week, well, a lady brings in a gardening fork and asks to return it. Too heavy for her, apparently. Only problem is it’s caked with dirt. She’s used the fork in the garden, probably planted what she needed too, then when she’s finished with it she’s decided she wants a refund!’
‘Did you tell her to fork off?’ I laughed. Dad pointed the fork at me. ‘No, but that’s what we should have done. Good one Stacey.’
The laughter sort of broke the unspoken feeling of sadness that sometimes descends on us at dinners. It still happens. It’s good to see Dad laugh.
‘Oh, I need a beer,’ he said, still smiling and getting up from the table. ‘Want anything?’
‘No,’ I said, wishing he could leave the beer alone for one night. ‘But you can’t have beer with lasagne, it ruins the taste.’
‘Nothing can ruin the taste of a cold beer,’ Dad said, opening the fridge.
‘I meant the taste of lasagne,’ I said.
Later I piled the dishes into the sink while Dad sat down with his beer and his icecream and fruit salad. This’d be the best dinner we’d have for a few weeks, that’s for sure, because I wasn’t going to put in an effort like this every night.
I started to fill the sink, then turned the tap off. Let Dad do it, I thought. He wasn’t going anywhere for the next few days. It’d give him something to do. Why should I do all the work? But then I saw the lasagne dish. White sauce and burnt pasta had dried along the rim of the dish and bolognaise stained the base. It looked so dirty and Dad wouldn’t clean it properly either. He’d probably leave it in the sink until the end of the week. I hated having the dishes pile up. So I ended up washing them myself. I didn’t even use the dishwasher, a horrible old thing that was loud and wasted too much water.
Sometimes I feel like I’m nothing but a fifteen year-old housewife.