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“Does the pope poop in the woods?” Sasquatch replied.
“I don’t think that’s a saying at all,” Lucy said. “Kind of offensive, even.”
Sasquatch looked unconcerned as he threw an arm around CeeCee and grinned. “Oh well.”
“Movie time,” Wiley suggested, and I took Emily’s hand and followed the group toward the lower wing that housed the theater.
“I’ll get the popcorn going,” Antonio called, leading the charge.
I saluted one of our new staffers who looked slightly confused as she watched from the front desk as we all passed by. “Don’t worry about that,” I said, pointing at the painting. “We’ll get it back up tomorrow.”
She nodded and waved, and soon I was adjusting the reel onto the old-fashioned projector in the booth and returning to my seat at Emily’s side just in time to watch Uncle Marvin’s final film.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dreams of Booty
EMILY
I’d watched only a few of Marvin’s films while I’d been working on my article, but Archie had told me about them too, explaining his Uncle’s role in writing films back in the 1950s and 60s, and about his wife’s star status prior to their marriage.
With that brief history in mind, my expectations were much more silver screen than home movie, but that’s not what this was, at least not at first.
The opening shot was of a building covered in snow, one that vaguely resembled the Kasper Ridge Resort, if the place was much smaller and parts of it looked like they might be crumbling to the ground. But as I watched, that shot began to morph, and it took a few seconds for me to realize it was some kind of time lapse effect, only it was rolling backwards. The weather around the building was the clearest shift—as the seasons rewound, there’d be snow on the ground, snow piled high against the woodface of the resort, then greenery and bright sunshine, followed again by snow.
Years rolled backward, and in those frames, the resort grew taller, prouder, and simpler too. But in the last few shots, the building disappeared almost entirely, as I saw it built in reverse motion, and finally, there was just a clear spot on the forest floor, a young man standing in its center, waving and smiling.
And suddenly, the film was rolling forward as music swelled. The man on the screen was joined by a woman, and I heard Aubrey cry out, “That’s Lola. Annie Lowe. They’re wearing their wedding clothes, Arch—just like in the photo.” A burst of excited sentimentality grew inside me. This was it; this was the thing we’d been searching for.
The couple stood for a moment, staring into the camera, and then they turned to one another and kissed, the man dipping Lola dramatically before they broke apart, laughing. They stared at each other for a long moment, and moved farther away from one another, each of them stepping off screen as a title screen appeared.
Kasper Ridge. The Treasure Hunt.
The words splashed across the screen, and suddenly, the images pulled into a more traditional movie, and the story soon had me following along in a hushed silence. The movie was well done, clearly actors had been hired, sets created.
The story followed one man—Marvin—as he made his way up in Hollywood as a writer. It showed a close friendship with another man named Rudy, and a shared love for the third member of the threesome, a beautiful woman.
Rudy and Marvin discussed the woman when she wasn’t around—Lola was her name—and they formed a pact. Because they both loved her, they agreed that neither of them would act on it. Their own friendship was too important.
But in the next scene, Lola and Marvin become closer and she confided her love for him in a stolen moment after a passionate kiss. He tells her that even though he loves her, he could never marry her because of his admiration for and a promise to his friend.
But in the next scene, Rudy proposes to Lola. When she asks about the pact Marvin hinted at, Rudy pretends not to know anything about it, and tells her perhaps Marvin made it up to protect her feelings because he doesn’t love her. Lola is shattered, but accepts Rudy’s proposal, acknowledging to her mother that she has deep feelings for him, even if they aren’t the passionate ones she feels for Marvin.
I swallowed hard, thinking of my own deception.
“That rat!” Lucy cried out then, sending a wave of laughter through the group.
Marvin, heartbroken, leaves Hollywood feeling betrayed by both of his friends. He goes to the mountains in Colorado, arriving to a low rustic outpost with a sign that reads “Kasper Ridge Hotel.” It becomes clear that the operators of the place are his parents, who discuss their plans to shut the place down to retire. Instead, Marvin agrees to take it over, and during the next year, he buys extensive land around the hotel property and marks out an area where he intends to build a grand resort.
During the initial groundbreaking, he receives a letter, forwarded from his residence in Los Angeles, from Lola. In the letter, she confesses her feelings for him again, her disappointment at his departure, and her hesitation about marrying Rudy. She tells him that he has always been the one she loved and that she is planning to break her engagement.
Marvin goes back to Hollywood but tells no one. He arranges to meet Lola secretly and convinces her to run away with him. She agrees, and the pair head back to Kasper Ridge, leaving no trace of their whereabouts for Rudy to find.
Furious, Rudy erases any trace of Marvin from the work they did together.
“I knew it!” Fake Tom calls out, and there is general agreement around the theater.
Archie’s hand found mine then, and I leaned closer, dropping my head onto his shoulder. Emotions warred inside me. I’d gotten what I needed, but I worried about the cost. The elation of Aubrey’s wedding night had disappeared, and without the benefit of the champagne’s bubbly reassurance, I knew the news I still had to share would not be a small thing. It would ruin everything. I forced the knowledge down and watched the end of the film, gripping Archie’s hand tightly, knowing it might be the last time he let me.
