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  It happened that way for Colleen and me at the Rialto. Dreary old me, dragging one leg, and a totally amped Colleen in a lime-green miniskirt.

  “Oh,” A.J. says finally. “A friend of mine got something on YouTube. It’s just his Rottweiler playing the Reservoir Dogs video game, but it’s kind of cute.”

  I’m happy to not think about Colleen. “I’ll take a look at it. Which reminds me: do you know how to get something on YouTube? A guy at my school wants me to make him famous.”

  “Sure. What do you want to submit?”

  “A piece of High School Confidential, maybe.”

  “It’s no big deal, really. You just, like, log in, hit the Upload Videos link, choose the right file, give your piece a title, then select the category. It sounds more complicated than it is. Why don’t I come by and show you? I take the Gold Line to Sierra Madre all the time. You live in South Pasadena, right? I could bring my laptop, get off at Mission on the way, and meet you at Buster’s for coffee or something, okay?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  When we hang up, I fall backward onto my bed. A date. Okay, not a date date, but a coffee date. With somebody who’s interested in the same things I’m interested in. I know I’m getting way ahead of myself. A.J.’s probably got a boyfriend just as cute as she is and with a functioning set of extremities. It’ll still be fun. And maybe somebody from school will see me sitting with a mysterious girl, snap me on their cell, upload that to the Net, and I’ll be on YouTube starring in The Spaz Experiences a Shiver of Delight. Maybe even Colleen will see it and eat her heart out.

  I’m too excited to sleep, so I turn on the TV and check out Sundance and TCM. Too many earnest ecologists on the first one. But Turner Classics is showing — wouldn’t you know it — Sleepless in Seattle, where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fall in love almost without ever meeting.

  How does stuff like that happen, anyway? Not the Meg and Tom stuff, but the Ben and A.J. stuff. I’m thinking of meeting a girl and then there’s a movie about meeting a girl.

  I know — just a coincidence. Law of averages, with so many movies on TV and so many people watching. But it’s still eerie. Like me meeting Colleen at the Rialto. What were the chances of that?

  It makes me wonder if something (or Somebody) isn’t in charge. But in the great scheme of things, if I was supposed to hook up with Colleen, we’re talking about Somebody with a real sense of humor. A god from Comedy Central.

  MEETING A.J. MAKES ME NERVOUS. I spend way too much time worrying about what to wear. Is there a pair of pants that will make this leg look straight? A shirt that’ll put a nice triceps on that left arm? That arm. That leg. Not my or mine.

  I decide on jeans and a long-sleeved polo shirt. I never wear anything but long sleeves. If there’s a Hell and if I go there, I’ll be the only person not in a tank top.

  Treasure of the Sierra Madre is on. I turn the volume up so I can hear it while I’m in the bathroom, and I watch it in the mirror while I brush my teeth and especially when I’m right out of the shower, buck naked. I don’t want to look down at that body if I don’t have to.

  So I concentrate on Bogart and Walter Huston and Robert Blake as the little boy who sells Bogart the winning lottery ticket.

  What would I do without movies?

  When I make it to the kitchen, Grandma’s on the phone to another gazillionaire. But Grandma’s an honest-to-God philanthropist and not just — as Colleen so delicately puts it — “another rich bitch.” I eat an apple, then do some homework until it’s almost time to meet A.J.

  I walk as only I can up to Buster’s. Past Vidéothèque, past the yoga studio, and past the big new bakery with a few tables outside. A couple of little kids are sitting with their mom. They’re trying to get honey on chunks of fresh bread, and you can almost hear her thinking, I wish I had a picture of this.

  They stop what they’re doing, though, when they see me. I don’t mind it when kids stare. They don’t know C.P. They don’t really get it. They think I’m interesting, and I hate it when their folks make them stop and the kids are, like, “Why?” and the mom has this sick, apologetic smile.

  Colleen was like those kids. She thought my body was interesting. She was curious about it. Once when Marcie drove up to Santa Barbara to see a boyfriend, Colleen and I were at her house so I could use her camera and computer to work on High School Confidential. We ended up in the bedroom. And, among other things, Colleen picked up my almost useless, semiwithered arm and kissed it. That just killed me. Man, if she liked me enough to do that, why doesn’t she call me back?

  I get to Buster’s and I’m faced with a dilemma — do I wait for A.J. on the platform or sit here until she gets off the Gold Line, at which point I’ll wave jauntily?

  She knows I’m a spaz, or at least I think she does. And if she’s forgotten, then it’s probably a good idea to just get that part over with fast.

  So I wait at the light with three tweens, all of them checking their phones, texting and tweeting and saying like about twelve times per sentence. Weird way to hang out, though: talking to three other people.

  I’m invisible to them. But then maybe everybody is except the cutest boy in school, the one who lights matches and lets them burn all the way down to his fingertips.

  Then the train pulls up, half a dozen people get off, and one of them is A.J. She’s wearing kneesocks, a plaid skirt, and a little beret thing pinned to her hair that matches her skirt. I can just hear Colleen: “Everything but a f**king bagpipe.”

  She’s got a big smile, and her teeth are amazing. Movie-star teeth. Out comes her hand, and I shake it. She holds on while she says, “Just to make sure it’s you, name a movie where a train station figures prominently.”

  “Three-ten to Yuma.”

  “Nice. How’ve you been, Ben?” She frowns. “‘Been, Ben.’ That sounded redundant.”

  “I’m okay. How about you?”

  “Busy.” She points across the street. “Let’s score a table, okay?”

  We cross in a little crowd of people, ten or so, and they’re all faster than I am. I can see A.J. checking both ways for enraged motorists, and when we’re almost at the curb, she touches my elbow. Just barely, just a nudge, but it makes me feel officially handicapped. She’s the Girl Scout, and I’m the good deed for the day.

  We find a table with some shade, and she puts her laptop down. “This is my treat,” she says. “Name your poison.”

  “I can get it, okay?”

  She doesn’t look away. “I know you can, Ben. But I want to.”

  While she’s gone, I tell myself, Settle down, Benjamin. Don’t blow this.

  I struggle to my feet so that when she comes back with the coffee, peppermint tea, and a bagel, I can help her.

  Once we get situated, she butters her bagel and offers me half, which I say no thanks to.

  “Brief Encounter,” I blurt. “Another train station movie.”

  “And Doctor Zhivago. Lots of trains in that one.” She chews vigorously and then asks, “Did you see my friend’s video on YouTube?”

  “Not yet.”

  She brushes invisible crumbs off her hands and opens her laptop. She hits a few keys, then just hands the whole thing to me. “Check it out.”

  It’s called Dog Bytes Dog, and it’s just this Rottweiler with a controller that he doesn’t really use, but the quick cuts back and forth from the pooch to the Reservoir Dogs game make that not matter.

  When I hand the Mac back over, she says, “It’s getting tons of hits. If Rane had just sent in Bowser watching TV, no way. And even if it was Bowser watching Reservoir Dogs maybe, maybe not. I think the title was the clincher. I guess what I’m saying is, whatever you’re going to submit has to be pretty sharp to get any kind of play. Anybody can upload anything. It’s fine to just be funny or cute, but it’s better if what you upload matters, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She starts to pick up her plastic chair. “
Let me scoot over there and show you how to submit —” She stops in midsentence. “No, wait. You come to me. Because you are totally able, am I right?”

  That smile of hers is pretty irresistible. So maybe that little touch on the elbow at the curb was a one-time thing. Nerves. “Maybe not totally able, but I can make it if I try.”

  So we sit side by side; she hits keys and points, and I take some notes. YouTube looks absolutely doable.

  I say, “High School Confidential isn’t digital. How do I get that done?”

  “It’s just a swap. I don’t have the equipment, but I know somebody who does.”

  “Are you going to send in a clip from Roach Coach? Or have you already?”

  She falls back in her chair dramatically. “Oh, God. You don’t know about that? No, how could you? Oh, man. Five of those food-service guys I interviewed got deported because of my movie.”

  “No way.”

  “Oh, yeah. My friends are passing Roach Coach around, or parts of it, anyway. Just one computer to another. But somebody somewhere looks at that footage a whole other way. It’s not, ‘Boy, these are hardworking, interesting guys.’ It’s, ‘Who’s got a green card?’”

  “And there’s nothing you can do?”

  She shakes her head. “I talked to my dad — he’s a lawyer — and nada.”

  “Maybe filmmakers are like doctors: ‘First do no harm.’”

  She nods. “Sometimes I’m watching a documentary and the person it’s about is sick or bleeding, and I think, Hey, you with the camera! Put that down and do something!” Then she takes a deep breath, runs both hands through her hair, and says, “Well, before we both give up our budding careers, tell me your all-time top-of-the-list number-one totally adored favorite movie.”

  “Just one?”

  “Just one.”

  I think for a few seconds. “Ghost World, maybe.”

  “Oh, my God. Talk about alienated youth. Scarlett Johansson was so good in that.”

  I tilt my cup in her direction. “Your turn.”

  She looks down at the initials of people like B.K. and L.M., who loved each other so much, one of them carved up a table. “I’m embarrassed. Don’t tell anybody, okay?”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “It’s The Searchers.”

  “Sure. John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Natalie Wood.”

  “I think about John Wayne looking for Natalie Wood for five years, and I just want to cry.”

  Then she blushes. I try to remember if I’ve ever seen Colleen blush. Colleen. Man, I think about her all the time. I don’t want to, but I can’t help it.

  I tell A.J., “If I went missing, Grandma would just call up the chief of police. She knows everybody.”

  “That was her at the gallery, right? Really elegant lady. There’s everybody else all in black looking like they’re trying to absorb as much radiation as possible, and there she is in pastel cashmere separates.”

  “She pretty much totally took care of me after my dad died. Got killed, actually.”

  “What about your mom?”

  I waggle one hand — the good one — in that back-and-forth, who-really-knows-I’m-not-sure-I-want-to-talk-about-it way. “Just out of the picture.”

  Then we watch the traffic for a while. Bicyclists pull up in those Cirque du Soleil spandex outfits. A dog on a leash angles toward A.J., who pets him.

  Finally she says, “Well, look at us get all serious.” She glances at her iPhone. “I should go. You know the YouTube drill, right?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “And we’re gonna e-mail, okay? Talk on the phone. You go to the movies at the Rialto, right?”

  “All the time.”

  “We could do that. Everybody I know loves the Rialto.”

  She’s on her feet then, one hand out. I struggle a little but not too much. She holds on to my hand. “Ghost World. Good for you.” Then a quick little kiss on the cheek like she probably does to everybody, and she’s gone.

  I sit down again. The first thing I think is — nice. She seems really nice. I’ll e-mail her. I’ll talk to her on the phone. I’ll go to the Rialto with her and her friends, but I’ll sit by her. I can’t depend on Colleen. I never could.

  After dinner I doze off watching Robert Mitchum in The Friends of Eddie Coyle, so when the phone rings, I paw for the receiver like a cop who already knows there’s another body down by the river. I don’t even get to say hello before I hear, “Where’s Granny?”

  I sit up straight. “Colleen?”

  “Is she home?”

  “She’s at a fund-raiser.”

  “Start taking your clothes off.”

  “Where’ve you been, anyway? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “You don’t get to ask those questions. All you get to do is kiss me all over. Deal or no deal?”

  “I’m already in my pajamas.”

  “All buttoned up, too, I’ll bet. Well, you do your one-handed best with those buttons, Quasimodo, and I’ll get the rest. Now shut up and get to work. We’re wasting time.”

  Thirty minutes later, Colleen is sprawled beside me. One hand, her left, mouses around — playing with my hair, pinching me, tickling. The sheets are tangled and damp. And I can’t help but think, Tangled sheets. Wow. I’ve seen that in a hundred movies!

  The blinds are half open, and the moonlight looks extra-fragile.

  “I wish we could sleep,” Colleen says. “I’m so sleepy.”

  I glance at the clock, then get out of bed and pick up my new camera. “You can sleep for twenty minutes if I can shoot some film.”

  She starts to roll over. “Want to see my tits?”

  “No. It’s not about that. It’s about how you look in this light. Stay like you are.”

  “Wake me up before Grandma gets home.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  I pull the covers up a little. I want part of the Firebird tattoo that erupts from her underpants, but I don’t want the waistband. And I like the way one foot sticks out from under the sheet.

  I adjust the blinds, then shoot another minute or two of film. It’s easy to make her pretty because she is. Or could be. And I’m not sure pretty is the right word, anyway.

  Finally I open the blinds as wide as they’ll go and tilt the lamp on my desk. The oldest tats bleed and fade. There’s a callus on her other foot. A bruise on her left shoulder, right beside the Grim Reaper tattoo — a skull smoking a cigar, a banner under that with the name Johnny Too Bad.

  Then I sit at the desk, and play it all back on my Mac. Maybe my next movie is about her. She’s what’s on my mind. So I go over and wake up the most unlikely muse ever.

  “Time to go home. Grandma will be back pretty soon.”

  She looks at me, tries to focus. “You’re cute.”

  “You’re half asleep.” I tug at her. “C’mon.”

  She holds on tight. “I know I’m a pain in the ass sometimes, but don’t give up on me. I’ll be a better girlfriend. I promise.”

  Colleen picks me up for school every morning. We do homework together. I make sure she eats things that are at least slightly good for her. Grandma tolerates her.

  Then one Friday, Oliver Atkins meets us in the parking lot. When I get out of her VW, he screams, “Well, if it isn’t my Judy.”

  Colleen warns him, “Take it easy, Oliver. Ben is mine. All one hundred and twenty handicapped pounds of him.”

  “Fifty thousand hits so far,” Oliver says, “and the beginning of I don’t know how many meaningful dialogues.”

  I tell him, “You’re welcome.”

  “You should thank me, Benjamin. I am going to put you on the map.”

  Colleen watches him prance away. “Did Oliver put the moves on you?”

  I just look at her. “Get serious.”

  “Did you ask him why he wears that ridiculous hat with the feather on it? He looks like one of Robin Hood’s extremely merry men from RumpRanger Forest.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong
way, but you’re wearing panty hose that you’ve ripped up on purpose, shorts with holes in them, and a tank top with green zombie hands on your boobs. The phrase ‘You should talk’ occurs to me.”

  She drapes one arm around my shoulders. “Yeah, but I look hot; Oliver just looks gay.”

  “You don’t know him like I do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “For High School Confidential I talked to Oliver for a long time. I told you what it’s like making a documentary: you shoot an hour of film and use a minute and a half. So I know him.”

  “Are you saying he’s not gay?”

  “I’m saying he’s not just gay.”

  We’re on our way to class when she tells me, “I got a postcard from Ed. Boot camp is killing him.”

  “At least he’s clean and sober.”

  “Get serious. He says he could get high every night if he wanted to.”

  I want to ask if she still likes him, but I don’t want to hear the answer. I’m afraid he’ll come back on leave bigger and stronger and better-looking than ever.

  Instead I say, “I’ll see you at lunch.”

  She grabs my T-shirt and pulls me in to her. “He’s history, okay? He’s poison. I can’t be around him or guys like him ever.”

  I let one hand slip into the back pocket of her thrashed shorts. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I can read you like a book, Benjamin.”

  “Since I’ve seen you read, that doesn’t exactly scare me.”

  Colleen pretends to beat on me and I pretend to cringe. I’ve seen kids do this a hundred times. Couples horsing around. Just regular kids. I like it that that’s what Colleen and I are.

  At noon, I beat her to the cafeteria, and I’ve barely settled down behind a chef’s salad when my phone rings. It’s A.J. She’s in a hurry but wants to invite me and “anybody else” I want to bring to her house Saturday night. Just a few people. No big deal. Kind of a movie party.

  Debra, one of the girls with babies who was in High School Confidential, sits down across from me and scowls till I hang up. When I do, she barks, “I don’t want to be on YouTube.”