A/N: Here we are yet again gentle reader…. Yeah I was going for a deep message and failed. Enjoy!
Cat woke in the darkness once more, the familiar white screen already playing a new film. This time, the screen showed a man, not old but not young, his slightly lined face dignified in its handsomeness, even his slanting scar spoke of youthful good looks. She tried to resist its pull but failed as the glowing images drew her forward and consumed her.
Alone at home, he watches this old film, imagining that it is he who rises from the third row as the movie-house lights come up and, as he lifts his hat and coat from the adjoining seat, catches a glimpse of the flame haired, sorrowful woman four rows back, who seems to be tearfully staring at him. A source-less music rises, throbbing, as if from their shared gaze. As the man in the film pulls his coat and starts up the aisle toward where he and the woman will jostle each other, intentionally or accidentally or as if both compelled to so collide (it's purposefully ambiguous), he also dons his coat—he knows how the movie will turn out—and heads off for a drink at the neighborhood bar, called there by what he feels to be his vocation to rescue sad maidens. Of whom, no shortage, he has only to choose or wait to be chosen.
Meanwhile, drink in hand; he watches the old movie that is playing silently on the TV over the bar, one he remembers well. It once had the power to excite him inordinately, and it excites him now: A man, out hiking, meets a young red haired woman on the trail. She looks up, pauses, her smile fading, holds his gaze for a timeless moment, and then, as if deflected by the stunning power of it, veers off the trail and into the wilderness. The man continues on his path, but he too is stunned, and after a few steps he changes his mind and leaves the trail to follow her.
The wilderness is thick, confusing, no sign of her, easy to get lost, he decides to go no farther—but then he sees her, standing knee deep, nude, her back to him, in a softly lit pond. Film nudity was rare in those days and never more than a teasing glimpse, but in this restored version using recovered footage the camera remains fixed on the woman, approaching her from behind as the hero of the movie spellbound (as he, too, perched at the bar, is spellbound, before an ancient mystery being spectacularly revealed), approaches her. After pausing to gaze tenderly upon this vision (she knows he is watching her, he knows that she knows), the man strips down and steps in front of the camera and into the pond, their paired bodies bathed in a strange, unearthly light.
"Their backsides are beautiful…" a woman, her red hair seemingly ablaze in the late afternoon sunlight, says.
Absorbed in the film, he hadn't noticed her sit next to him, and he's not sure if he's pleased by the interruption. This is the best part.
"But what always gets me," she says, "is that first moment when they look into each other's eyes.
He nods in agreement, unable to take his own eyes off the screen until the actors have entered the water up to their shoulders and have turned towards each other.
"That's when it all happens," he says, turning at last as the actors have turned, to stare into her gazing eyes. "The rest is just mechanics."
"Like a spark to a fire," she replies throatily.
"Which, sadly, always goes out," he adds smiling wistfully, "but before it does…"
She doesn't object to leaving the bar; she went there hoping for something like this, the spark-to-fire lady. Nor does she regret missing the rest of the movie—she knows how it will turn out: the two strangers will make love in the water, but will never see each other again, she walking away into the wilderness, he, momentarily sated, smiling as he watches her go, but later overtaken by a terrible longing that sends him all over the world in a futile search for her. A fairy tale of sorts.
Not so the present encounter. They have somehow got to the sadness of such affairs without experiencing the ecstasy that is supposed to come first. To break the awkward silence that has fallen, they pull their undergarments back on and turn on the TV to see what movies are showing.
"Ah, I like this one," he says.
She knows it. It's about a blind flower girl from whom, every afternoon at the same hour, a gentleman buys a fresh bouquet. For his fiancée or his wife, the flower girl assumes, and she always wishes the recipient well, though it is clear that she is falling helplessly in love with the man's kind, mellifluous voice, and she waits every day, listening for him with transparent longing.
It reminds her, curled up there on the sofa in her underwear, her shirt draped over her shoulders, of another film she likes much more, also ultimately about a blind person, in which a winsome governess with flowing red hair falls in love with the scarred but handsome master of the house and he, after only a moment's hesitation (either it happens like that or it doesn't), with her. The mistress of the house, his wife, is a cruel and vindictive woman, and the movie takes a tragic turn—it's the master who ends up blind—but before that there are about ten magical minutes as beautiful as anything in the history of movies.
Now, on the TV, the soothing voice is saying in a soft whisper perhaps not meant to be overheard that the flower girl is very beautiful, and she turns her face toward the whisper with abject adoration burning in her blind eyes. They see him now. He is a hideously scarred war veteran, but the flower girl, of course, doesn't see this—she sees only the noble soul within, as a disembodied voice seems to say.
In the other movie, the one she prefers, the master is not yet blind when his wife coldly dismisses the governess, mainly because of the good ten minutes that have gone before, and at the door, before the poor governess steps out and disappears into a winter storm, there is a final shared glance between her and the master that tears her heart. The expressions on their faces, as best she remembers them, are much like those of the scarred veteran and the flower girl now, the soldier stunned by the worshipful way the girl looks at him, even if unseeing—he could not believe that something like this would ever happen to him again.
Unfortunately, he is also guiltily aware that he has been misleading the poor child, for the flowers he buys are indeed for his wife, who is lying in the hospital in a coma brought on by the shock of his return, a coma from which she is not expected to rise. Consequently, though it wrenches his heart, he forgoes any further contact with the flower girl, who waits and waits in gathering dismay, listening in vain for the voice she loves.
In the other movie, the one she remembers, the master suffers a similar agony. His sight gone, his wife institutionalized, he spends his fortune sending emissaries around the world in search of the governess. Most of theses emissaries are merely taking advantage of his anguish, accepting his money without even trying to find her. One invents a rumor that she is dead or dying, others that she is believed to have married a desert sheikh or entered a nunnery under an assumed name.
In utter despair, his fortune exhausted, his false friends departed, the master leaves his house and, following the sound of the breaking waves, feels his way with his white cane to the edge of the cliff. He is about to take his final fatal step when he hears a beloved voice calling his name. He turns, staggers backward toward the edge, dropping his cane, but the governess rushes forward and pulls him to safety and they fall into a tearfully ecstatic embrace.
Not so lucky the flower girl. The disfigured veteran waits until the first anniversary of his wife's burial before returning to the flower stall, only to see the blind girl, having abandoned all hope, step out, unseeing eyes to the heavens, into the onrushing traffic. Brakes squeal, people scream, there is a sound of crunching metal. He rushes to her side. She lies crushed on the pavement, a confusion of wrecked vehicles all around her, blood leaking from her wounds into her hair staining the locks an even deeper red.
"My love!" he gasps.
Her eyes flutter open and seem to see him and, with a faint ethereal smile, she dies.
The rescuer of sad maidens and the spark-to-fire lady are both weeping as the darkness rises and again oblivion claims Cat.
Fade
Sean wakes slowly to the beeping of an EKG machine. He lifts his head slightly and winces before focusing on the individual pains. His back feels hot, as if there were a warming pad behind him, he feels the various scrapes and cuts along his legs and arms, his vision is obscured on the right side by a large white bandage.
"Nothing broken."
He sighs to himself. Then it hits him. The restaurant. The car. The wreck. Cat. Cat, Cat, Cat, Cat! Sean flings himself from the bed, ripping the IV from his hand and the sensors from his body. The EKG goes flatline from lack of a body to read and the nurse is through the door almost as if she was waiting for him to wake. She freezes upon seeing him out of his bed and hits the button on the wall summoning help.
"Mr. Knight, please lie back down, you are very injured. You were in a car accident—"
"Where's Cat?"
He's pleased to note that his voice is calm despite the panic that has suddenly taken hold of him.
"Who—"
"MY GIRLFRIEND YOU STUPID BITCH!"
So much for calm.
"She was in the car with me, she was driving, I got her out before the car caught fire, she was still breathing when it went up and that's the last thing I remember."
Two massive male orderlies entered the room from behind the nurse, one brandishing a syringe.
"Keep that away from me."
"Now Mr. Knight, you're over exerting yourself in a weakened state, you're confused and disoriented. This sedative will help you relax and rest…"
While the nurse was speaking, one of the orderlies had inched forward and was suddenly lunging at Sean, trying to grab him. Sean reacted without thought, his fist slamming into the man's solar-plexus as his foot darts behind the man's leg, tripping him. The orderly's hand gazes his face, ripping the bandage from it and hot blood poured down his face. Sean didn't care. His adrenaline surged as the second orderly approached, syringe in hand. He dodged a clumsy thrust of the needle and the fumbling hands of the man and then drove his knee into his crotch. As the man bends over in pain, Sean slams his fist into the man's temple knocking him out. The nurse screams for help but Sean is already out of the room, running.
As he turns a corner, he sees a tall, slim figure he recognizes: Cat's mother.
"Sean, what, what is going on?"
He stops in front of her, breathing heavily, his back and face on fire.
"I just woke up, they wouldn't tell me where Cat was or if she was okay and I panicked..."
Mrs. Valentine saw the tears running down his face, tears he couldn't stop now had he wanted to, and she grabbed him in a fierce, crushing hug. She quickly let go as he cried out in pain, tears standing in her own eyes.
"Cat's fine, Sean, less hurt than you are, but…"
"But what?"
"Honey, she, Cat won't wake up. The doctor's say that there is some mild head trauma but they just can't tell what going to happen yet. I'm sorry, Sean."
Shock overtook him and he sank to the floor, blood still coursing down his face, mixed with his tears. He doesn't protest as someone sinks a needle into his arm.
He welcomes the oblivion that rises to take him.