Wallace had a glance and a grunt for me when I tossed the negatives on his desk, scooping them up with sausage-fingers before they could knock the butts of two stale glazed twists off the cigar-charred oak.

I plopped in the armchair facing him. The inside of my mouth was thick with a bitter coat of coffee, and the rims of my eyelids were raw and sore. I was beginning to smell myself under the dirty t-shirt. Sweat soaked, and dried, and soaked again. The Chevy's air conditioner had croaked at the Arizona border.

But the rose on the passenger seat stayed fresh, even dewy, all the way back to L.A. It was there now. With the windows rolled up in the August heat the temperature would top 120.

Wallace raised the first plastic sheet to the dim light and squinted at the black and ochre images. "Copy negatives?" he said.

"They're not going to give away the originals," I said. "Not even for your beautiful eyes."

He bared his teeth, a reflexive gesture, showing tobacco-stained teeth, then reached for his loupe. Holding it with surprising delicacy, he bent over the negatives, giving me an unrestricted view of the dandruff-flecked scalp beneath the sparse, greasy hairs.

If the rose is still fresh, I thought. If the rose is still fresh when I get back to the car, I'm going back to Devil's Creek.

Always up for a road trip, me.

That's why, when some grad student stuck with cataloguing archives unearthed a previously unknown set of John Ford's production stills at Texas Podunk University, I volunteered to drive out and make the copy negatives. Wallace was drooling at the idea of publishing them in the 3rd edition of "American Cinema," Aperture Press's annual cash cow; he even offered to pay airfare, a generous impulse unprecedented in his publishing career. But with three years of editing smarmy little essays on cinema aesthetic under my belt I needed a vacation. A road trip. Pack the Chevy with Coca-Cola and beef jerky and get my kicks on Route 66. Roadhouses and 1930s motor courts with green linoleum. Souvenir stands and mysterious historical markers in the middle of nowhere. Giant dinosaurs and Carhenge. Stagecoach. It Happened One Night. Thelma and Louise.

The second morning I woke up in a concrete tepee in Holbrook with an aching butt and jerky-induced constipation. Then the cassette player in the Chevy committed suicide, taking my pirated Fairport Convention medley with it.

I made Dallas in record time, shot the copy negatives and reassured Wallace long-distance. The next day I was at the Arizona border before dusk. Day Four and counting, and the only things I wanted from the charming Devil's Creek was a hot meal and a bug-free bed.

Devil's Creek. With a name like that, it should've been barren hellhole, burning in the sun and the fierce glare of God's wrath, straight out a Sergio Leone Western.

I would've missed the turnoff if it weren't for an elaborate plaster shrine that stood in lieu of the crosses that studded every junction: four feet high, with a simple iron gate across the front and sheltered by two or three oak trees. I slowed into the turn and in the gathering dusk saw the jeweled flicker of the candles in their little votive pots: ruby, blue, forest green. The candles lit the gentle curve of a painted face: the Blessed Virgin Mary, presiding over the dusty little grove, guarding the entrance.

The town was mostly Main Street, fronted by 19th century storefronts and mid-century neon. The girl behind the counter of the Desert Rose Motor Inn recommended the Lost Dutchman Café as the local purveyor of fine cuisine. Like everything else in town it was just down the street, so I dumped my luggage and my camera equipment and Wallace's precious negatives in my room and took a walk in the neon-tinted air.

The night was clear and warm, dry enough to pull at your skin. Stars shone hard and bright overhead. The Lost Dutchman Café, all shiny plate glass, glowed down the block. And across the street…

No, it couldn't be.

Yes, it was. The façade was perfect, and little deco squiggles of neon chased each other round and round the marquee. A vintage movie palace, circa 1930s. The Bijou. Devil's Creek must've been bigger, once upon a time. I peered at the black lettering on the marquee: BUSTER KEATON'S THE CAMERAMAN WITH TWO SHORTS.

A revival house, then. I crossed the street, checking for non-existent traffic, and knocked on the ticket window. No answer. No lights on inside. Maybe it had closed.

Disappointed, I crossed back to the Lost Dutchman (look to the left, look to the right-nothing) and joined five or six locals in their daily allowance of meatloaf. The waitress could've been a clone of She of the Desert Rose. I asked her when the Bijou had shut down.

"Oh, they still show movies. Mr. Ramirez opens at quarter to eight, every night 'cept Sunday. There he is now." She gestured with the coffeepot.

I turned around and looked through the acre of plate glass. A dark figure in a snap-brim fedora was unlocking the front of the theater. It disappeared inside and a light came on in the ticket window.

"Does he always show old movies?"

"Yeah. Different one every week. Black and white, mostly, sometimes silents. I saw the one he's got now last night."

"Did you like it?" I fumbled for my wallet. Keaton doesn't appear in the middle of the desert everyday, and I didn't intend to miss it.

"Oh yes. Takes a while to get used to, those old things. But he was funny, that Keaton guy. Him and the monkey."

"Monkey," said Wallace. My eyes snapped open. Had they been shut? I stared at him. "What?"

"You need to get some sleep."

"I thought you said 'monkey.'"

He grunted, and I hoped my eyes never slitted like that. "You should've stopped another night. I said these are fine."

I blinked. "Oh."

"Releases?"

Releases. Where…

The rose must be wilted by now, petals scattered over the passenger seat, the air inside cheap-perfume cloying.

"Releases. In the file underneath. There." I tapped the manila at the edge of his desk.

Wallace almost smiled.

Mr. Ramirez, still as a wax figure in the ticket booth, smiled slightly as I slid four dollars across the counter. He pushed back an orange ticket and I joined the line: a young couple and a thin nervous boy tapping his foot on the sidewalk. Presently Mr. Ramirez tucked his metal cashbox under his arm with a ceremonial air and left the ticket booth, careful to snap off the light and shut the door behind him. We waited expectantly, and then watched as the theater doors swung open slowly. One by one he took our tickets, tearing them across precisely and returning the stubs. He was a small man, slightly shorter than me, neat and compact in a pinstripe suit and a spotted bow tie. A scrappy audience, we entered the cavernous red plush theater, dimly lit, with dark brown stains across the ceiling. The couple sat in the back row and the girl giggled as her beau leaned over, whispering in her ear. The nervous boy flashed me a sidelong glance as he slid into an aisle seat. I chose a worn velvet seat in the very middle of the auditorium.

The theater still used two projectors: two small square windows shone diamond-white high in the back wall. The silhouette of the projectionist appeared; I was unsurprised to see the fedora-topped figure of our host.

He turned a handle and light blazed from the lens. I turned back to the front and watched the lush maroon curtain rise as the dim theater lights extinguished.

To my pleasant surprise the promised shorts were a pair of Ruby Rabbit cartoons, some of the legendary Michael Munter's early work. Ruby was basically a female Felix the Cat (the wonderful, wonderful cat). Ruby never made it big in mainstream but was sophisticated for 'teens animation. Munter was a brilliant and certified hophead and it showed in the psychedelic gyrations and grimaces of the deranged back and white animal. His later, commercially viable work for Warners never reached the same lunatic level. These must've been a couple of his earliest; I'd never seen them before.

The Keaton was a pristine print, with a nice little musical track. The Bijou's sound system had been updated recently. I wondered how Ramirez afforded it, and if he was the owner.

About twenty minutes into the film I realized that something was wrong.

If you haven't seen "The Cameraman" you should. No excuses; it's brilliantly funny, and at one point I swear you get to see Keaton's naked butt (Wallace disagrees with me, but what does he know). The hero-Keaton-in moonstruck pursuit of a girl and accompanied by a Capuchin monkey secures a newsreel camera and goes in search of saleable footage. He sets up his camera at a political rally and the typical mishaps occur: gags and pratfalls raised from the banal to the sublime by Buster's timing and athleticism. The entire sequence was genius.

The only problem is it doesn't exist.

Oh, it existed in the 1920s, of course. But this scene, the entire third reel, hadn't been seen since the thirties. Nitrate films disintegrate or burn up and no one thought about film preservation back then. Miles of film we'll never see.

I remembered to breathe. I glanced at the audience. Did they have any idea what they were seeing?

The explanation was simple, if fabulous. Somewhere a print existed with that marvelous third reel intact. Amazing that it hadn't come to light before. Maybe this Ramirez guy had access to a private collection. I had to find out. If I could find out, make a copy, it would be a stupendous coup. I'd be the toast of cinema scholarship. Those snots at NYU would just die.

Remember…to…breathe…

For the first time in my life I was impatient for a Buster Keaton film to end.

Buster got the girl and "The End" scrolled up the screen, the lights came on and the opulent curtain fell. I lingered in the lobby, waiting for the couple to weave out, arm in arm, and the nervous boy to vanish. Ramirez clumped down the steps from the projection booth, crouching crab-like beneath the low ceiling.

I introduced myself as a connoisseur of old movie houses, and he nodded politely.

"Could I see the booth?" I asked. "There aren't many two-projector systems left."

He invited my up the steps with a courtly wave. His voice was soft, with a ghost of an accent and he spoke with the careful articulation of an educated man in a language not his own. I wondered how long he'd been in the States.

The booth was antique, although the projectors had been modified for sound. I noted with grim amusement that the emergency doors remained, remnants from the age of flammable nitrate. Should the film burst into flame, metal safety doors would slam shut over every egress, saving the audience but dooming the projectionist.

On the rewind table sat six hexagonal film cans.

"Is it from a private collection?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

"Oh no. All the prints come from a distributor." He tapped the side of the nearest can. I bent closer and squinted at it. The battered white shipping label said "Random Access Films."

Never heard of it. Was it a dub house? An archive? There was a scrap of an address on a tattered shipping label. Somewhere on Sunset. I flipped back the top of the can and fingered the loose end of the reel. Safety film. 35 millimeter.

"Do you order them from the distributor yourself?"

He carefully closed the film can, latched it and placed it cheek by jowl with its five brothers.

"No-the owners of the Bijou arrange everything."

"You're not the owner?"

He shook his head. "I only project the movies they send. And I take care of the place, cleaning, some repairs." He moved towards the door of the booth. "Come down and have some coffee while I close up."

He didn't seem that lonely but he was happy to talk. I sat on a velvet ottoman in the lobby, cradling a thick mug of thicker black coffee, Mexican-style coffee, while he shut down the electrics and dusted every surface within reach.

"The owners send a new program every week. Shorts and a feature. I show it, clean it and send it back to Random Access. Six nights a week." He grinned, showing strong, discolored teeth. "I don't work on the Lord's Day."

"Do you ever play to an empty theater?"

"Oh yes, sometimes. Mostly two, three people. Sometimes people passing through, like you, with nothing else to do."

"Seems a waste."

"I suppose. But the owners want it run, audience or no. We get kids in, couples. And some old folks." He smiled his slow smile. "Old folks like me, who like the old movies. A few weeks ago, we had the Eric von Stroheim film, 'Greed.'" His cultured Mexican voice made the German name a rich trill.

"Two nights it played to nobody. But the last day we had a crowd. Saturday." He chuckled. "Date night, you know, so not everybody stayed."

"That's a long movie for two projectors. Two and a half hours, almost."

"Oh no. Longer than that."

"The restoration? Wow. Four hours."

Ramirez smiled. "Not quite. Nine."

The only extant copy-all nine hours-of Stroheim's original cut of "Greed"-then called "McTeague"-was rumored to be in a Brazilian vault, viewed once a year by a secret society of decrepit millionaires. This was beginning to seem like an elaborate put-on.

"When do the owners come by?" Maybe I could catch them tomorrow.

He folded his dustcloth with an air of finality. "They don't."

"But they must come to see the movies."

He shook his head. "Never."

I laughed. "Never?"

"Nope."

I realized that a little girl-seven or eight, maybe-was leaning against the doorway of the auditorium. She had enormous dark eyes, almost hidden by untrimmed black bangs. She wore a pink cotton dress with a tiny pattern of flowers. I wondered how long she'd been there.

Ramirez stretched his hand to her and she went to him, leaning against him and staring at me with those drowning eyes. He put his arm around her gently.

"Katrina. My sister's girl. She died a while ago. I take care of her now."

"I'm sorry. About your sister, I mean."

Bored in the sudden way children have, Katrina turned and scampered into the darkened aisles of the auditorium. I wondered if she watched the movies.

"Doesn't she get scared in the dark?"

"Not that one. She knows every inch of the place. She's my little helper."

It seemed a lot for an old man and a little girl. "These owners, they'd hire you some help, wouldn't they? Some local kids?"

"No. None of them have the, what? The interest. The passion. They like to see the movies, yes, but they are not in love with the light and the dark. With the image. But you are." He stared at me. I felt pierced by the light in those bright brown eyes. "You could, perhaps, stay. Help with the theater, the films. Katrina and I must go, some day. You know what to do. You could run the Bijou."

"Run the…" I stopped, frowning, and stared as the pink squiggles from the outside marquee licked at the glass of the lobby doors and caressed Ramirez's brown face. Because of course it was a ridiculous notion. Give up a publishing career and a hard-won reputation? Give up LA for this backwater? Just to see the movies? Six days a week, 52 weeks a year. Never on the Lord's Day.

Give up Wallace and his beet-red face yelling about deadlines. Give up a mildew-smelling Mid-Wilshire apartment. No dependants, not since the fish died. Give it up for this hot, sage-smelling town in the middle of nowhere. And the Bijou. And those movies.

I felt breath on my arm and knew without looking that Katrina was sitting on the ottoman beside me. Brown-black hair fluttered in the corner of my eye. Pink squiggles danced across my knee.

Her shoulder leaned into me, just a little. Warmth beneath the thin cotton. I didn't look at her, because I was shy as a child, too, inclined to run away.

I opened my mouth. I was going to say no.

"I need to deliver some negatives to Los Angeles," I said instead.

Ramirez nodded. He understood negatives.

Wallace pursed his meat-colored lips together as he examined the file. "You couldn't get reprint rights?"

I was too tired for him to get a rise out of me. "They weren't going to give up reprint rights, Wallace. We were lucky to get First North American. You're trumping American Cinematographer and Film Scene in one fell swoop. Be happy."

He grunted to show his happiness.

"You look like crap," he said, not looking at me. "Go get some rest. Don't come in for a day or so. Not 'til you take a shower, at least."

All heart, my Wallace.

"I'm going now," I said at the door.

"Umm," said Wallace.

"I'm not coming back," I said.

"Umm," said Wallace.

"Ever," I said.

He didn't say anything. Parting is such sweet.

The air inside the Chevy was hot, and I gulped the air like strong, Mexican coffee.

The rose was perfect. A faint perfume, shy and unassuming, tinged the air.

A dewdrop clung to one unfurling petal like a tiny diamond.

I touched it, cautiously, with the back of my hand. In the roasting hot oven of a Chevy, it was cool and slightly damp.

They were in a vase in the faded-splendor lobby of The Bijou: a bunch of roses, pale pink and yellow. Even across the room I could smell their faint scent.

I turned to put down the coffee cup, and the warmth of the child almost-leaning against me vanished. When I looked around for her, there was no trace. She had vanished into the dark passages of the theater.

The touch of a cool breeze on my cheek startled me. Ramirez had propped open the lobby door, letting in the night air. The neon lights of Main Street were gone, and stars hung bright and sharp in the Arizona sky. It was time for me to go, although he was too polite to say so.

I smiled, and thanked him for the coffee and the conversation, and he escorted me to the door, plucking a yellow rose from the vase as he passed. He presented it to me with an old-fashioned bow.

"You have seen the Chaplin film, City Lights, of course?"

I nodded, the thornless stem between my fingers.

"The flower, you will remember. The Flower Girl gives Chaplin a rose at the end of the film. He holds it so, against his face, and everyone's heart breaks."

Was it a rose? I couldn't remember. So I nodded again.

"Perhaps, as long as this rose lasts, you can come back, to the Bijou. Perhaps it will last a day, two days, but no more. Until then, you are welcome here. To see the light and the dark, so rich together. When the air was like wine. Until the petals fall."

Halfway down the street I turned to wave but I saw no old man, no little girl. Only a dark theater with pink squiggles wobbling across the marquee, slowly now, as if they were tired.

The next morning, before I hit the road, I tried the door, knocking on the glass, but the theater was shut tight. Shut tight until quarter to eight.

The rose lay beside me on the passenger seat, and it was only when the soft morning light turned hard in the near-noon that I realized it wasn't yellow, but gray, with white highlights and darker gray shadows. It was a black-and-white rose. Like Charlie's.

Then I began to understand.

I wondered if the other theatergoers-the couple; the nervous boy, the waitress-I wondered if they knew. If they cared.

I wouldn't care.

Leaving L.A., backtracking. I didn't even hit my apartment. Nothing missed me there.

Sunset stained the hills orange as I crossed the county line, and by the time I reached Arizona the sky was a matte black dome with holes punched through for starshine. Now everything was black and white, and the rose didn't seem so strange.

Its bloom was starting to spread, however, and once when I hit a pothole it rolled, leaving a ghost-white petal behind. The elusive scent was getting stronger.

It felt like grit was trapped beneath my eyelids, and the lights studding the snaking freeway were blurry balls. I opened the window, hoping a blast of cool air would wake me up, but it just dried out my eyes more.

I stopped for coffee three times. I couldn't drink any more of the stuff. Coffee, Coke, all black as night and sugar-sweet. I was swimming in the black bittersweet sea.

Swimming, and drowning. Blinks grew longer and longer, until I was asleep for seconds at a time. I had to stop, or I'd end up in a ditch or veering over the center lane, head-on into a semi.

I pulled over into the void beside the freeway, feeling cans crunch beneath the tires, and forced the seat to recline. Just a few minutes. I'd just close my eyes a few minutes. The occasional passage of a semi rocked the Chevy gently.

Daylight shone redly through my lids, and I jerked awake. Late morning sun lay flat on the cracked asphalt, and the prickly-looking fields at the side of the road that were black velvet the night before. It was hot. And the cloying smell of rose was thick in the car.

A dry scatter of yellow petals in the passenger seat. I touched them again with the back of my hand. They felt like thin scraps of leather. The stem was a muddy green, with a hairy bristle at the head.

A bad feeling settled in my stomach, like when you play hooky from high school and realize you've missed the SATS. Maybe it was hunger, and too much coffee.

It was early afternoon by the time I pulled off at the oak grove, and I couldn't see the Blessed Virgin's votives. I thought I caught a glimpse of her face, hiding between the branches.

The Bijou's sign was dead and dark in the amber afternoon, and no pink squiggles danced around it. Plywood sheets masked the ticket office windows, and double lengths of thick chain were padlocked around the handles of the lobby doors. A BB pockmark starred the darkened glass. No movie name on the marquee, just a few letters dangling from their places. I'd seen a dozen like it in LA, before someone buys them at a deep discount and turns them into swap meets and jewelry centers.

I stared and stared but nothing changed. I went to the smeared glass of the lobby doors and peered inside. Nothing to see but tattered carpeting. I pounded on the doors.

I turned and saw the Lost Dutchman Café. I hadn't dreamed that, at least.

The waitress was still there. I smiled at her in relief.

"What happened to the theater?" I asked.

She gave me a look as she splashed coffee in my cup.

"The Bijou? It's been closed for years. Ever since I've been here. And I was born here."

"But I was here a couple days ago."

"Were you?" she said, indifferently.

"And there was a movie showing. 'The Cameraman.' Buster Keaton. You said you liked it."

She shrugged. "Never heard of it."

"And you told me about Mr. Ramirez." I could hear my voice rising, getting hysterical. "The man who runs the theater."

"I told you, it's been closed forever." She pulled out her pad with an air of finality. "Are you going to order?"

I couldn't eat, not to save my life. "Just coffee, I guess."

Her nose twitched and she dropped the pad back into her apron pocket. "Whatever."

"Ramirez!"

The thick chain around the theater's door handles were still hot from the sun. I ran my palms over the links.

"Because I didn't get back quick enough? Because I pulled over for a damn nap?"

I shoved against the doors, which clunked back heavily into my hands.

"I needed the sleep! Can't you see that? I would've dozed off. I would've…"

Gone. We must go, some day. I take care of her now.

I backed away from the chained doors, hands spread open.

"You ask a lot, Ramirez," I call, into the starred and shattered glass. "You ask too much."

If any one was watching, from the café, from the other buildings, I must've looked crazy. I didn't care. I opened the Chevy's passenger door with a jerk and swept the dried petals, the crumpled stem into the street. They lay, pale yellow, in the gutter.

I wasn't tired anymore, so I drove back to L.A., non-stop. Never told Wallace. He was pleased as punch about the Ford photos, anyway, and wouldn't have noticed anything wrong.

I tried to find Random Access Film, tried to remember the fragmentary address, but I couldn't find a listing anywhere, and all the buildings on that block of Sunset had been bulldozed after the last quake.

I thought about getting another fish, but I'm not much for second chances.

I live in L.A., and it's hot and smoggy, and the air is nothing like wine.

The End

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