The film had premiered on the island, but Ondalune hadn’t walked the red carpet. She’d been wheeled down it, perched atop a giant papier-mâché shell. The seamstresses had sewn her into her sequined costume. After the screening, they rolled her out of the theater and all the way up to the ballroom for the party. She’d finally bribed a waiter to find some scissors so she could use the toilet.
Standing in the same building nearly a century later, looking almost identical to the woman in the poster, was surreal. She wished she could reach through the poster, slap some sense into her face, and cut herself out of the costume. She was done with acting.
She hadn’t thought about that night for ages. She’d forgotten so much of it. Goldie strode boldly across the lobby, forgetting herself for a moment, thinking only of getting closer to examine the poster. She pushed the sunglasses up on her head and the scarf fell to her shoulders.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” The young man hanging the poster spoke suddenly, startling Goldie. “They just don’t make movie stars like that anymore.”
“No,” Goldie agreed softly, “they sure don’t.”
“Are you here for the festival?” he asked, studying her with interest.
“In a manner of speaking. I’m helping with some of the archival footage.”
“Oh! You must know Goldie Pearlmutter, then? She’s the one who donated those monolithic antique projectors. I hear she is a film preservationist extraordinaire, that woman.”
Goldie smiled enigmatically. “Yes, I know her quite well.”
“You know, it’s the strangest thing,” the young man continued, “but you remind me of someone...” He tilted his head, but his eyes darted between Goldie and the poster.
“Did you go to summer camp?” she ad libbed. She might also have asked if he’d been to “that new club” in LA. But this man was barely college aged, and he had the earnest air of a camp counselor. The most important thing was to provide a plausible context, even if it didn’t pan out.
“No, unless you count band camp that one summer …” The man studied the poster and then his eyes flicked back to her, and to the poster again. His mouth curled into a knowing smile. “But honestly, I don’t think that’s it at all.”
“Oh, well, I get that sort of thing all the time,” she said quickly. Too quickly, perhaps, but she didn’t care. She needed to get away from this kid. “Must have one of those faces. If you’ll excuse me, I have to catch up with my party.”
She waved breezily and sped away before he could respond, heart hammering in her chest. She pulled the scarf back over her head.
So she would need to be more careful if she didn’t want to explain why she looked so much like the girl in the posters. She tucked in behind the last tour group, winding her way through the building she knew so well, and biding her time.
* * *
Goldie waited patiently,wandering the corridors and avoiding the remaining staff. She hid in a bathroom stall until the last tour guide departed. Finally, an hour later, the Casino was empty.
She loved being there alone after hours. Goldie made her way to the projection booth, her footsteps echoing.
The booth was her domain, her sanctuary. The donated film projectors, once her father’s pride and joy, stood ready, their metal fittings polished to a gleam. How many hours had she spent at the Oceana theater as a child, crammed into the small booth, watching her father thread the delicate film through its gates? It was one of her earliest memories.
His lessons had served her well. Whenever he could not do his job, because of illness or the drink, she could sneak into the booth and do it for him. Anything to keep the theater running, and her father employed.
Goldie set her bag down and removed the two trays, examining them more carefully now. The first reel was labeled “Ondalune - 1907” in that faded blue ink. 1907? That would make her—what, two or three years old? It must have been a mistake. She hadn’t even started acting till 1920. The second canister read “The Mermaid’s Whisper- Outtakes, 1930.”
Both labels looked authentic, aged appropriately, though she couldn’t recall any camera rolling during her off-script moments while making that picture. Film was so dear back then, they didn’t waste it on frivolous things like making blooper reels.
With practiced hands, she readied the first reel, threading the film and checking the tension. The projector hummed to life, its mechanical heart beating in rhythm with her own pulse. The blank screen before her flickered, and then … she no longer felt like she was sitting in the theater. She was immediately plunged into the scene, observing it as if she were the one holding the camera.
She was in a garden. Not just any garden, but one she recognized with a breathtaking jolt of déjà vu. It was her uncle Burnie’s summer home in Maine, with its lush green sloping lawn that led down to a private cove. Although the scene was filmed in black and white, somehow she could feel the colors trying to bleed through. Pink and yellow tulip borders skirted the stepping-stone path. A bright red tricycle lay discarded beside a tall shade tree. Oh, how she’d loved that trike.
They hadn’t visited her uncle Burnie often, but when they had, it had been such a treat. Unlike her parents, Uncle Burnie was very well to do—at least he had been until the crash. Afterward, like so many others who lost everything, he’d just quietly disappeared from their lives. Goldie never learned the true story of what happened to her uncle. Her mother was long gone by then. Burnie’s theater, where her father worked, had been sold and her father hadn’t wanted to talk about it. She hadn’t pushed him. He was already three sheets to the wind by noon on most Tuesdays. Thankfully, by then, her acting career was taking off.
The camera panned unsteadily, amateur in its movement, until it settled on what must have been a copper bathtub set out on the lawn. A woman, Goldie’s mother, looking younger than she had ever remembered seeing her, lifted a small child into the tub.
The shock of recognition gave her gooseflesh. She gasped.
The child in the film was none other than Goldie herself, only two or three years old. She had the same wild hair that somehow looked bright red, even in black and white. The little girl laughed as she splashed in the water, her mother smiling indulgently. There was nothing remarkable about the scene at first. It was just a wealthy-looking family home movie, capturing a child’s beachside bath on a warm summer day.
Until the child stopped splashing.
Little Goldie looked directly at the camera, her expression suddenly serious, almost knowing. Then she slipped beneath the water, completely submerged. Her mother reached forward in alarm, but before she could pull the child up, the water shimmered with an odd, electric blue light. It was almost like a special effect from a modern film. But Goldie knew well that no such special effects existed back then.
