Sinister Century (Omnibus)

“The cinema is an invention without a future.” 
―Louis Lumière



***

Ruby’s father started taking her to picture shows when she was a little girl. Even then, he rarely stayed to watch them. “Off to see a man about a dog,” he’d whisper when he handed her a ticket. “I’ll come and get you later.”
Ruby was small and smart enough not to be noticed by the ushers when they cleaned up in between shows. Only when the lights went down once more did she sit up in whatever seat she’d been hiding under and watch the picture again.
Ruby wasn’t quite so little now, but she still loved the picture shows. By now, the theater on 13th Street felt more like home than any of the tenements she and her father rented. She always felt a little sad when it was over and she found herself back on the sidewalk waiting for her father. She felt even sadder when she recognized his silhouette lurching down the street. The father who picked her up from the theater always walked, talked, and most of all, smelled different from the one who dropped her off.
“What’d you watch today?” he asked her as they walked home one night in the rain. “I like the cowboy pictures best.”
It was never easy for Ruby to describe the film she’d seen, no matter how many times she’d sat through it. Today, there’d been a young man who got involved with gangsters in an effort to save his father’s farm—no, his father’s grocery store. Ruby rarely paid attention to the details of the plot. She got used to doing that when she was too young to read the title cards. She’d been happy enough just listening to the music and gazing at the images that flickered on screen, like a whole other world, more magical and manageable than her own.
And then she saw the Smiling Girl.
That’s what Ruby called her to herself. She wasn’t named in any picture, never did anything of note. She just appeared—in nightclubs, on streets, at train stations, mixed in amongst the crowd. Sometimes she was glamorous in an evening gown, sometimes down and out in rags. But no matter what she wore or what she was doing in the picture, Ruby always recognized the smile that spoke of secret joy, all the more obvious thanks to the white powder makeup and dark lipstick.
In this picture, she’d been a guest at a fancy party to which the hero had somehow gotten invited. There was a champagne toast, Ruby remembered, and just before she drank, the Smiling Girl looked right at her. Right at Ruby, as if she could look right through the movie screen at Ruby in the twelfth row, looking back.
She was so surprised she didn’t even notice when a man a few seats away from her moved closer. Not until he put his hand on her knee. Then she froze.
Once, when she was younger, a man in the theater suggested Ruby sit on his lap for a better view. She had run away then. She ran away now, and waited in the lobby until the theater closed and her father turned up.
“Why didn’t you find some nice lady to sit next to?” her father said when she told him about it.
“You said I shouldn’t let anyone notice me too much, because I…”
“Looks like you got noticed all right. What a goof. Shoulda moved away before the sap sat down. What a bunny.”
They walked in silence for a moment. “’Course, there was no reason to be rude about it,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe the fella just wanted to chat. You’re too old to be a baby about everything. You’re almost grown up.”
She didn’t dare ask her father’s opinion on the Smiling Girl. That would really make him think she was a goof. So she thought about it on her own that night, while her father snored across the room. And the next day at school. And in the afternoon, mending a pair of socks for a nickel. Had the Smiling Girl really been looking at her? She desperately wanted it to be true.
The Smiling Girl was beautiful, she realized, with pale white skin and dark eyes full of bright movie lights. Ruby allowed herself to imagine being in a movie herself as she darned. Perhaps she would meet the Smiling Girl in person. They might become friends, and Ruby’s own eyes would be as bright as her smile...."