He shows her where the film feeds from its reel into the intricate wheels of the Kinetoscope, and holds the stock up before a single hot bulb to show her the nearly-identical frames.
“Now blink like this,” Elijah says, “that many times a second, and watch–”
His hand is on hers, cranking the handle; Corbett’s fist withdraws before her eyes, and Fitzsimmons’s head whips around.
“I should be getting back,” Proserpina says, at last and with regret.
“Come by Saturday,” he says.
“You know I can’t–”
“Say I kidnapped you.”
“They’d never believe,” she says dryly, “you won that struggle.”
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Half a world and twelve hours away, another crank is turning on a reel of film, this one crisp and virginal.
“Speed,” says the nervous cameraman, “I think.”
“Cue!” shouts the director. Then: “Go!”
“Is that for me?” asks the chapped and holstered bushranger, squinting dawnward. His voice is squeaky, but his face is all stone and leather.
“Yes! I cued you!”
“But last time you said ‘start.'”
The director’s neck veins pop. “I’m sorry. What word would you like to settle on?”
“You could try ‘action,'” mumbles Dacelo, perched on an apple box in trousers too nice for this dust.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
“And anyway,” she says, “I’m only fourteen, and more anyway, I already have a–a suitor, if you must know.”
It would be different if he were threatening her somehow: she’d know how to deal with that. But instinct tells her that fists are not the proper tools for this situation. Proserpina, exasperated, wishes she knew how to counterpunch a grin that makes her back tingle.
“So which is it,” Elijah says, “you’re too young to pursue, or already caught?”
“Neither,” she finds herself whispering.
Her overall impression of kissing is that it is sort of wet, and rather defuses everything.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
“They were just here when I arrived for practice,” says Radiane with some chagrin.
Proserpina surveys them: a smaller gathering than at the big match, but still far too conspicuous a crowd of teenage girls to be clattering around in a closed wing.
“What do we do?”
“Start teaching them in shifts, I suppose,” Proserpina says.
“But you haven’t finished teaching me yet!”
“Exactly how much do you think I know?”
“Proserpina!” shouts Ernestine, traipsing over. “Where have you been?”
“Yes, out alone?” asks Radiane.
“No,” says Proserpina, too quickly.
Radiane cocks her head. “Not alone?”
“Not that either!” Proserpina says.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Miss Havisham, in a rare concordance with simple student beliefs, actually does live at school. She started doing so during the winter break, when things were even emptier than usual; no longer afforded residence at her boarding room in town after a violent disagreement with its proprietor, she packed her things and paid the cinema boy a nickel to stow them in one of the empty wings. She eats in the dining hall and bathes in the gymnasium lockers. She’s almost always first to class.
In her shame, she doesn’t go exploring much of the school–until one restless April night.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
They’ve figured out that they can get away with having six girls a night out in the wings; any more and the dorm monitors get suspicious. Their ring is chalk and their gloves filched leather. Proserpina does Mondays and Wednesdays, Radiane Mondays and Tuesdays, and on Saturday mornings you can come in to spar.
The novelty wears off soon, and takes most of the girls with it. A core group possessed of a curious intensity remains. They’re learning how to take a punch; they’re learning how to answer. They are not strong, but they know what to do with their hands.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
“I wish you’d come out to the matches,” says Radiane, under the high-pitched chatter and scuffle of practice.
Proserpina contains a blush. “I don’t feel like it lately.”
“The real boxers don’t punch like us. Did you know that? They jab or swing, from the forearm or shoulder, but you taught us to uncurl from the upper arm out–”
“I taught you what works. We don’t have muscles like they do.”
Radiane smirks. “Maybe you don’t.” She feints high; Proserpina’s already up, anticipating, and soon everyone stops to watch the old partners spar.
Miss Havisham watches too, then slips away.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
They watch the girls sneak back in pairs, waiting until last to leave themselves. Radiane rests her head on Proserpina’s shoulder.
“I was happy, you know,” she says suddenly. “Eating with Georgette, playing field hockey, hoping Father would buy me a horse. I was.”
Proserpina is silent.
“What happens to all that now?”
“It’s still there.”
“No.” Radiane cracks her neck: an awful habit they’ve all picked up. “You took it away.”
“I haven’t taken anything,” says Proserpina, a little coolly.
“That’s true,” says Radiane. “All you do is give. But your gifts are the kind with hooks in the ribbons.”
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Proserpina’s grades have not improved.
One stolen Saturday, Elijah takes her ragged disguise of a sleeve and leads her up on top of the cinema, then over a series of other roofs to a viewpoint down on Maple Street. Horse drovers and motorists shout elaborate curses as a phalanx of silent women march very, very slowly, bound together by a hand-stitched banner: SUFFRAGE.
“They’re mad,” says Elijah admiringly. “Half-dollar says one of them gets her head kicked in.”
Proserpina doesn’t think Miss Havisham makes eye contact from the front of the ranks, but at this distance she isn’t sure.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
No one pays much mind when Miss Havisham isn’t in class the next day, but then, nobody else has spent quite as much time creeping about the abandoned wings as Proserpina.
She startles the headmaster as he leaves his office. “Oh, I’m afraid she was arrested last night. Some kind of riot or to-do,” he explains kindly. “But don’t you worry! She was of course released from her employment as soon as I heard the news. No need to have her bad influences around sweet girls like yourself!”
“With respect, sir,” she murmurs, “I count three mistakes in that statement.”
Thursday, February 19, 2009