“Because the timing,” he says, then closes his eyes and exhales in frustration, an actor blowing a line and starting again. “Because the timing is important. Timing is always important. Nothing bad happened to her, I’m sure. She just went somewhere. So if I go to the places where she went, then maybe I’ll figure out what particular things happened to her the day that she disappeared that led to her going wherever she went.”
“Because every day happens exactly the same?” Kelly says, raising an eyebrow—and, yes, maybe even smirking, goading him just a tad.
To answer her attitude, Max widens his eyes into a quick, unhinged look that suggests her worst fork-related fears might come true. But then he shakes his head and issues a shallow snort. “Magically appear, yes. You’re right. You were right the first time.” He rolls his eyes and makes a get-a-load-of-this gesture with his thumb, performing for nobody in particular.
Hearing him talk like this, Kelly isn’t sure how she should feel—angry that he almost blew off his sister today for this wandering nonsense? Of course, it’s possible Evelyn could be in some real trouble. But Kelly remembers her well enough: a little flighty, a little mysterious, the kind of girl who gets labeled odd all through childhood. Sometimes people need to disappear for a little while. Sometimes it’s nothing to worry about.
“Well, what do I know?” Kelly says. “I mean, I guess you knew her better than anyone if you hung out every day. Maybe if you go out looking, you can find something the cops missed.”
No answer—just eyes tipping like a capsized boat as he glances down at his book, still on the table between them.
“Can I see this?” Kelly asks, tapping the cover.
“I don’t know,” Max says. “Can you?”
She sighs. “You were always such a wit.”
Max pauses for a second as the jukebox music—that whiny Neil Young song about being an old man, which always sounded to Kelly like a feeble-minded fellow in a nursing home wrote it between bouts of yelling at the grass outside his window—fills the air. Somewhere, somebody bangs glasses—a sound from behind the bar, not a noise made by one of the two or three other patrons here, all of whom are old men in overalls. After a second, Max nudges the book toward her, granting her permission to look by scraping the cover against the patina of sticky beer mess on the table. “It’s about a film,” Max says. “What do you care about that anyway? You don’t like films.”
She picks up the book before her brother changes his mind. “Maybe not compared to you. But in my defense, I don’t think anyone watches movies the way you do.”
“Mom did,” Max says. “And Evelyn.”
“Well,” Kelly says, opening the book, “I stand corrected.”
The book feels awful in her hands, flimsy, the paper poor quality, and she can tell immediately, even with her limited knowledge of publishing, that this book wasn’t made professionally; instead, it feels like the sort of thing somebody paid to publish—maybe even ran off the copies at Kinkos. The book, called Land Without Stanford: A Cult Film and the Reclusive Genius Responsible, claims (according to the cover anyway) to tell the true story about Land Without Water, a little indie film Kelly has never had the patience to watch all the way through, but about which she still knows three things: First, it was filmed in Portland a few years after she and Max graduated high school. Second, the very fact of the film, which Max loathes, reminds her brother of his own—um, what’s the polite way to put it?—unfulfilled ambitions. (Years ago, after seeing it for the first time, he phoned her and ranted for an hour without asking a single question about her life. After that, she made a point of being too busy to take his calls.) And as for the third thing Kelly knows about the film? Let’s not mention the third thing, because Kelly would prefer not to think about it right now.
As for the book, though, the author is a guy named Ford Hunter, and as Kelly flips through the pages, she picks up a bit here and there: Hunter was an actor in Land Without Water, apparently, and the book is full of jazzy bits of reminiscences, a lot of stuff about a guy named Darren, who seems to be the film’s director. “Is this even a real book?” she asks.
“The guy self-published it a few weeks ago,” Max says, “but you can buy it in bookstores here. Just in time for Day Without Water.”
“What’s Day Without Water?”
He rolls his eyes at her. “What kind of a Mainer are you?”
“Oh come on, I haven’t lived here in ten years.”
“Eleven,” he says—and it startles her that he knows well enough to correct her. “It’s a winter arts festival they do each year. They do screenings down on the pier. People sell things. Next one’s on Sunday.”
“And it’s all about Land Without Water!”
“No,” Max says. “More like inspired. Just an excuse to have a festival.”
Kelly looks back down at the book and glimpses one passage: And Darren didn’t believe me, but I told him, “Man, after we make this film, we’ll get all the girls we want.” Kelly grimaces. “God, I thought you said this movie sucks.”
“I don’t like the film, no. But it’s more complicated,” Max says. “I sent you something I wrote about it once, remember?”
She was wondering if this would come up. For years after she left home, Max had sent her things—mostly movie reviews that he typed up and mailed to her with notes that said things like Keep an eye out for this one in the Phoenix (as if she still got copies of the Portland Phoenix all the way out in Tucson)—but she shrugged at them and put them in a box. Of course, she can’t tell him this. So she says, “Oh, right, maybe I remember that one. You sent me a lot of stuff, though. Then you stopped. I was bummed.”
“Sure,” Max grumbles. “I’m sure you really miss getting them. I’m sure they were the highlight of your life. Especially after you changed your address and forgot to tell me.”
She scrunches her nose, narrows her eyes, rattles her head a bit—one of those expressions (in this case, meaning fuck off) that somehow people recognize, even though its individual components seem absurd. Flipping through the book again, she notes underlined passages, at first just a couple, then more and more:
…a loft on Congress Street…
We got takeout from Tandoor, right across from where Darren was living at the time.
…in Tommy’s Park, where a group of our friends gathered to watch.
Everything underlined has to do with some geographical location where they did something or other with the filming; the kind of notes a fan would make, wanting to visit Portland to find all the behind-the-scenes locations related to his favorite obscure movie. “I really don’t get you sometimes,” she says, closing the book and putting it back on the table.
Without hesitation, Max reaches forward and snatches the book, stowing it on the chair next to him, away from Kelly’s grasp. “I’m looking for Evelyn, and I’ll do whatever I can to find her.”
Often it’s best to ignore her brother’s edges, like a mess of broken glass you try to clean up without hurting yourself—but this remark breaks the skin of their conversation, draws a dab of blood. “Evelyn?” Kelly says, drawing her voice out a bit, perhaps to prolong saying the rest of what she needs to say. “I don’t understand. She was in your movie, not Land Without Water…”
Max shakes his head, mouths, No, no, but makes no sound, like a TV on mute.
“Are you okay? You seem a little confused, or something—”
Max cuts her off with a wave of his hand. Eyes still slits, he glances around the bar. “Nobody knows what I’m about to tell you, and I don’t want