is stupid. Daniel tossed his bleached strands of hair, and it fanned out over his shoulders. It is likely that if you wash off the makeup from Taor, he will be no more handsome than an ordinary guy. And it is even more likely that the early death of the actress gives the supernatural charm to the whole appearance of Alais. It was not for nothing that Edgar Poe sang the charm of the death of a young maiden, when death, as if by mistake, takes a girl too early. Those who died young and will never grow old acquire some kind of special appeal. And the impression left by the film is just the detrimental effect of an overdose of the twenty-fifth frame on the psyche.
And yet how painful! Head squeezed like a hoop.
Above the exit door, someone had just raised the curtain. The door itself is probably already open too. Daniel stood on bending legs. He sat motionless too long. How long did the movie go? An hour and a half, two hours? It seemed like an eternity. It is worth leaving the cinema, and he will find himself in the new millennium, and the golden creature will be waiting for him there.
The floor swayed underfoot like the deck of a ship. It only seems so, because the legs hardly obey. The cinema doesn’t seem to want to let him go.
Something stirred behind the curtain at the exit. It seems like a wing. Someone raised a finger to his lips, urging him to be silent. How beautiful this face is, and how cold it blows. It’s like drawing on top of the frame. Is this a poster or another statue? Daniel pulled the curtain with all his might and saw her – the star of the film.
To say that he was dumbfounded was to say nothing. The girl was the same. With or without makeup, but the look of Alais from the movie. The picture from the screen came to life. He had never experienced anything like this, although he quite often met women in his life, whom he had previously watched only in films or on TV. He had such a job, and he already knew how much the actresses live different from their ideal looks in the films.
Only the beauty standing next to the pharaoh in the film actually turned out to be even more beautiful. Pale, slender, graceful. The golden curls and eyelashes seemed to be natural, not dyed, no matter how unusual it may sound. What country breeds girls with such an unusual hair color and the grace of a fallen archangel?
“Did you play the main role in the film?” His heart beat like a bird in a cage.
The movie star is here! He didn’t even ask when the movie was filmed. Let even millennia ago. Get her autograph. For the first time in his entire biography, he would have asked for a painting, not from him. But where to get a notebook, a pen. The smartphone crashed at the entrance. You can’t take a selfie with it. It’s worth a try though. She dived into the shadows. Well, okay! He still wanted more from her than an autograph.
“Alais!” he did not even think that he called her after her heroine. It’s even good! It can be considered an achievement when an actress is called by the name of her character. This means that she performed the role perfectly. Another thing is the stars, who are known only by their promoted name and only thanks to advertising campaigns. She is no match for them.
“Don’t disappear!” he himself held the curtain that had slipped on the door with his hand, but the girl was already standing by the armchairs. The hall immediately became somehow dark, and the darkness behind her seemed to fold into two large black wings.
“You look like a jewel from an ancient treasury, thanks to the color of your hair,” Daniel never said such poetic words to anyone, but now poetry was closest to reality. All this is not a movie illusion. He saw golden scarabs adorning her shoulders and arms. A blush like ruby dust painted on her cheeks. Curls of hair like red snakes. Truly, it looks like a jewel that came to life and fled from the royal treasury.
“Looked – you will go blind!” a whisper came from the topmost row. There, on the back of a chair, is a winged animal. It hardly speaks well.
“Did you come for the next session?”
“I’m here all the time,” her voice rang out for the first time, and reminded the clink of gold coins falling to the floor. “And you are late.”
“At this time, everyone is already asleep.”
“Not everyone, someone comes here in search of adventure, and we delight them with films that are ready to satisfy the most demanding taste. Be that as it may, people get what they are looking for. But the entry price is sometimes too high for them.
“It’s not surprising if each session is designed for just one viewer. In such a huge hall,” he defiantly looked around. The animal from the upper row disappeared somewhere. “Do they show old films here?”
“Sometimes even the ancients.”
“I’ve never heard of such. A museum piece, a palace, a crypt may be ancient, but not a film.”
“You should get used to the local vocabulary if you want to watch something else from our film program.”
“I did not mean anything bad or judgmental. It’s just that in the places where I visited the cinema, even last year’s films are no longer in the box office.”
“Updates are regularly made here too.”
What did she mean? As in the already shot and edited film that goes to the cinema, you can make updates. Or was she talking about something else? In any case, the phrase sounded mysterious.
“The world is changing, the frames of films too. Nothing stands still, except for the cinema building itself.
“By the way about the cinema. Why is it officially considered closed? I heard there was some kind of tragedy? Something like a terrorist attack during an old premiere…”
She somehow became sad, looked away. Fans of golden eyelashes fell on her cheeks. Eyelashes are definitely not false, but how long they are. And the scarabs on her skin, as if alive. Are they moving?
“You need to live for today.”
Did she say that or did he just hear it?
“I’m sorry if I disturbed any bad memories,” Daniel apologized hastily.
“I have no memories. Everything was filmed a long time ago, like a film.” She nodded at the long-extinguished screen, on which nothing else was crawling.
Daniel scanned the rows of empty chairs. The feeling was as before, as if the golden monster was still in the hall, crawling between the rows and was about to cling to its legs.
“Truth, lies, hidden truths… Everything is not important until you capture it in the frame. People are interested in sights, not memories, and we give them more than they want. In a similar way, the desires of the public were fulfilled in the amphitheaters of Ancient Rome, only the audience there was not touched.”
“It’s hard to understand you.”
“But it’s nice to look at me,” she stepped towards him, and he was so frightened of what that he backed away, stumbled over one of the corner chairs and nearly fell. Looking up at Alais was the same as looking at a deity. She was all glowing, and the darkness behind her was forming into two patterned wings.
Something seemed to be crawling between the seats. Daniel heard claws scraping on the floor, he even saw suspicious claw scratches on the carpet. This is definitely not a cat scratch. Moreover, not five, but six claws were imprinted. There are no animals with six claws on their paws. Or has he just not heard of such?
His first agent liked to say that all actors are extremely dumb, but Daniel persisted in thinking of himself as an educated guy. And even if he managed to unlearn at the university only one course before he received a dubious offer to act in film, for which he dropped out. But he has a wide outlook, he traveled a lot, moving from one shoot to another, he managed to see a lot. But he had never seen anything like it. The cinema is unique. Maybe that’s why they spread a rumor about it that it was abandoned so that people would not besiege it in droves in the hope of peeping at