imposter’s origins, he was reminded of certain films from which answers
might be garnered when he had a chance to view them again. Both
versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the first starring Kevin
McCarthy, the second, Donald Sutherland. John Carpenter’s remake of The
Thing, though not the first version. Perhaps even Invaders from Mars.
Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin in a film whose title he could not recall.
The Prince and the Pauper. Moon Over Parador. There must be others.
Movies had all the answers to life’s problems. From the movies he had
learned about romance and love and the joy of family life.
In the darkness of theaters, passing time between killings, hungry for
meaning, he had learned to need what he didn’t have. And from the great
lessons of the movies he might eventually unravel the mystery of his
stolen life.
But first he must act.
That is another lesson he has learned from the movies. Action must come
before thought. People in movies rarely sit around brooding about the
predicament in which they find themselves. By God, they do something to
resolve even their worst problems, they keep moving, ceaselessly moving,
resolutely seeking confrontation with those who oppose them, grappling
with their enemies in life-or-death struggles that they always win as
long as they are sufficiently determined and righteous.
He is determined.
He is righteous.
His life has been stolen.
He is a victim. He has suffered.
He has known despair.
He has endured abuse and anguish and betrayal and loss like Omar Sharif
in Doctor Zhivago, like William Hurt in The Accidental Tourist, Robin
Williams in The World According to Garp, Michael Keaton in Batman,
Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night, Tyrone Power in The Razor’s
Edge, Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands. He is one with all of the
brutalized, despised, downtrodden, misunderstood, cheated, outcast,
manipulated people who live upon the silver screen and who are heroic in
the face of devastating tribulations.
His suffering is as important as theirs, his destiny every bit as
glorious, his hope of triumph just as great.
This realization moves him deeply. He is wrenched by shuddering sobs,
weeping not with sadness but with joy, overwhelmed by a feeling of
belonging, brotherhood, a sense of common humanity. He has deep bonds
with those whose lives he shares in theaters, and this glorious Epiphany
motivates him to get up, move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and
prevail.
“Paige, I’m coming for you,” he says through his tears.
He throws open the driver’s door and gets out in the rain.
“Emily, Charlotte, I won’t fail you. Depend on me. Trust me.
I’ll die for you if I have to.”
Shedding the detritus of his gluttony, he goes around to the back of the
Honda and opens the trunk. He finds a tire iron that is a prybar on one
end, for popping loose hubcaps, and a lug wrench on the other end. It
has satisfying heft and balance.
He returns to the front seat, slides in behind the wheel, and puts the
tire iron on top of the fragrant trash that overflows the seat beside
him.
As he sees in memory the photograph of his family, he murmurs, “I’ll die
for you.”
He is healing. When he explores the bullet holes in his chest, he can
probe little more than half the depth that he was previously able to
plumb.
In the second wound, his finger encounters a hard and gnarled lump which
might be a wad of dislocated gristle. He quickly realizes it is,
instead, the lead slug that didn’t pass through him and out of his back.
His body is rejecting it. He picks and pries until the misshapen bullet
oozes free with a thick wet sound, and he throws it on the floor.
Although he is aware that his metabolism and recuperative powers are
extraordinary, he does not see himself as being much different from
other men. Movies have taught him that all men are extraordinary in one
way or another, some have a powerful magnetism for women, who are unable
to resist them, others have courage beyond measure, still others, like
those whose lives Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have