Now Playing

by Ron Koertge

  A.J. and Rane get out and wave. I can see Grandma peering through the blinds and maybe even nodding a little: this is not a date with a tattooed stoner but with sun-tanned young people who floss regularly.

  Except that Colleen and I didn’t really date. She drove me places, and we did things that scared me and made me glad to be alive.

  I lead the way down the sidewalk, open the door, and in we go. I do the honors. Rane shakes Grandma’s hand.

  A.J. says, “I’m really happy to meet you, Mrs. Bancroft. My mom thinks so highly of you.”

  I look for the teleprompter. Did she actually say that?

  Rane throws one arm across my shoulders like we’re chums at camp. “And I promise we’ll keep our eyes on this bad boy.”

  Grandma frowns. “This is not a laughing matter, young man.”

  A.J. says, “When I got picked up, my mom was just as upset as you were. In a way it was a real learning experience, and what I learned was, I never want that to happen again as long as I live.”

  “I can only hope,” Grandma says, “that Ben learned that same lesson.”

  She shakes A.J.’s hand again, then Rane’s. She smooths the collar of my hand-pressed shirt. Not her hands, of course. Or mine. Rane, A.J., and I make our way to the car.

  “Thanks, you guys,” I say when I’m sure the door is closed and Grandma can’t hear.

  “Well,” A.J. says, “it was either bullshit your grandma or send over a cake with a file.”

  I look at her. “You mean the cops never picked you up?”

  “Are you kidding? My mom’d kill me.” She digs in her purse for keys. “I know it’s not very far, but let’s drive. These shoes are cute, but they’re not real practical.”

  Her shoes are plenty practical. She’s just coddling the handicapped. Colleen hated to walk anywhere, but she was usually wearing totally impractical four-inch heels, so her already killer legs could stop traffic. And if we did walk from the car to some club, she’d outpace me, then taunt me: “C’mon. What are you, crippled?” Then she’d saunter back and kiss me so hard, my teeth hurt.

  A.J. opens the back door for me. Holds it open. Hovers slightly. What does she think I’m going to do, fall down?

  But her Honda is way different from Colleen’s beater. That, I fell into; this I have to climb toward. So I struggle a little. A.J. starts to reach for the seat belt and buckle me in like I’m a sack of flour or Stephen Hawking, but I give her a look and she backs off.

  Rane asks, “So were you and Colleen really smoking a joint when the cops showed up?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “It’s the electronic age,” he says, holding up his phone. “Everybody knows everything.”

  “She was smoking. But she threw it away before they got to the car. I don’t know why they took us in. Basically we were just sitting there, talking about the party.” What I was also doing with my camera and my hands is none of their business.

  A.J. says, “The twins are still talking about that night. How did you remember all that movie lore, anyway? That was very cool.”

  “Conrad didn’t think so.”

  “He doesn’t lose at anything very often. And, anyway, he was in a snit from arguing with his father.”

  “All he does,” says Rane, “is argue with his father.”

  I tell them, “Well, as far as remembering stuff goes, Conrad was right. All I used to do was sit in my room and watch Turner Classics or DVDs from the video store or go to the Rialto. That was pretty much my so-called life.”

  We get lucky and park almost under the marquee. A.J. and Rane wave away my offer to buy the tickets, so we all pay for ourselves because this is a field trip.

  A.J. shakes her head when I ask her if she wants any snacks. Rane pats one of his many pockets and whispers, “I’ve got gorp.”

  I know everybody who works in the Rialto, and when Sonia, who’s scooping popcorn today, asks where I’ve been, I tell her, “Jail.”

  She laughs and the piercings in her eyebrows glitter. She can’t picture me in trouble. I’m Ben the crippled moviegoer, Ben the loser in the dark.

  Inside, Rane asks right up front, “Want to sit on the aisle, Ben? Probably easier for you, right?”

  “A little, yeah.”

  So he files in, then A.J., then me. I met Colleen in the Rialto. Not five rows from here.

  But The Third Man makes me forget that and everything else. I love black-and-white, anyway, and the director and cinematographer order the light around. There are so many great scenes with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. Even their in-the-movie names are super-cool: Harry Lime and Holly Martins.

  My favorite scene is a really quiet one. Holly is talking to Harry’s old girlfriend Anna. Everybody thinks Harry is dead. Holly even went to the funeral. When Anna’s cat snubs Holly and escapes out the window, she says that the cat didn’t like anybody but Harry. And a minute later there’s a mysterious man in an alley, and the cat is curled up at his feet!

  Every now and then, Rane whispers to A.J. or she leans toward me and says, “I love this part.”

  I fall into the movie like I always do. I’m in postwar Vienna. I buy and sell on the black market. I’m Holly in love with Anna and I’m Harry on the run in the sewers of Vienna.

  The lights go up. “Wow,” says Rane. “I’ve seen that about five times, and I could see it again right now.”

  A.J. leads us out. Her blue pants are tight, and her butt is way cute. Rane’s checking her out, too.

  He whispers, “When we go hiking, I always let her take point.”

  I blush, but thanks to the dim lighting in the Rialto, he doesn’t notice. What a dumb thing to do. I know how guys talk.

  “Want to go to Buster’s?” A.J. asks. “Get coffee or something?”

  We drive over and on the way talk about The Third Man. Rane says it’d be fun to go to Vienna and find all the places that were in the movie, like the cemetery where Harry was buried (though he really wasn’t), the theater where Anna worked, that kiosk with the secret door that led down into the sewers.

  The first thing I think is this: He could actually do that. He and A.J. and the twins and Conrad. They could ask their parents and use their Visa cards and get on a plane to Europe.

  At Buster’s we score a table outside, and Rane says it’s his treat. A.J. waits to see if I’m going to topple over after I drop into my chair, then she sits down, too.

  I ask her, “Have you been to Europe?”

  “Oh, yeah. You?”

  “Grandma doesn’t like airplanes.”

  “Do you?”

  “I guess. I’ve never been on one.”

  “No way.”

  She sounds like I’ve just told her that I have a ferret in my back pocket.

  “I used to see a lot of doctors and therapists and stuff, so I think Grandma kind of coddled me.”

  “You get around okay. You could totally fly if you wanted to. You’d even get to board early.”

  It’s a stretch, because Grandma wouldn’t want to. But who’d want her there, anyway? And if right after graduation I went with people she knew and liked and trusted, maybe . . . People like A.J.

  Rane puts down his little cardboard tray and hands things around. “How’d the cat get down from the third floor?” he asks. “Holly’s talking to Anna in her apartment on the third floor, okay? Then a minute later the cat is curled up at Harry’s feet. How’d he get there?”

  A.J. turns to me. “Rane is the blooper guy.”

  “Continuity guy, thank you. Like, in Anna’s apartment the cat is black-and-white, but when she’s down in that alley with Harry, it’s a different cat. Not totally, but different. And you know that balloon-man sequence? First time we see him, he’s got, like, twenty-five balloons. In the next shot, there’re, like, twelve.”

  I suggest, “Maybe a blue-light special on balloons?”

  A.J. says, “And the cat could’ve gone down the stairs. Cats are fast.”

  I like s
itting and talking about movies. The only ones I’m not up on are really recent, and I missed those because I was out with Colleen. And I try not to think about how much fun that was compared to what I used to do, which was hide in the dark and watch other people live.

  Rane looks at his watch and says, “I need a refill, and then I’ve gotta do some errands for my mom. You guys ready to go pretty soon?”

  A.J. and I nod and watch him disappear.

  “Do you want to do something with me?” she asks. “In a day or two, maybe? My dad knows about this jockey out at the racetrack who’s, like, sixteen and just tearing things up. I’d like to interview him. Did you see that Jockeys show on Animal Planet?”

  “Except for movies, I don’t watch a lot of TV.”

  “It’s kind of soap opera-ish. That cute girl from Canada and her boyfriend and all those horses falling down and stuff. I’ll bet we could do better than that.”

  We?

  I tell her, “Sure, I’ll ride out there with you.”

  “Great.” She grins at me. She grabs my good hand and shakes it, like we just made some kind of deal.

  So. Maybe Marcie is right. Not everybody has a partner. They just have friends.

  I get home from school and there’s a message. Every time I see that blinking red light I hope it’s Colleen, but it’s not. It’s A.J., and she wants to go out to Santa Anita Park early Saturday morning and get that jockey on film. Her dad can set the whole thing up: parking, backstretch passes, the whole nine yards. Am I up for that?

  I wonder if Rane will be there. Then I wonder if I care. The three of us had fun at the Rialto and then Buster’s. Just A.J. and me by ourselves would’ve been nerve-racking. What if we’d gone out for Italian food and ended up slurping the same strand of spaghetti, like those dogs in Lady and the Tramp?

  It’s stupid to think like that. I’m really not boyfriend material. And, anyway, I was Colleen’s boyfriend, and look where that got me. In trouble, that’s where. I’ll settle for some friends with similar interests.

  I’m thinking about punching in A.J.’s number when the doorbell rings. I tell Grandma I’ll get it and head that way. I’ve got a funny feeling, anyway. We don’t get door-to-door salesmen in South Pasadena, and it’s not March, so I know it isn’t the Girl Scouts selling cookies.

  I open the door, and there stands Colleen, with what looks like everything she owns in a paper bag from the supermarket. She looks roughed up. Not by anybody so much as by life itself, I guess. Life with a capital L. Raccoon eyes, pale skin, dazed. If she told me she’d just woken up in a bathtub full of ice with one kidney missing, I’d have believed her. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

  “I guess I changed my mind,” she says finally. “I love you after all.”

  “You’re not carrying that dead pony purse, are you?”

  “It’s in the car.”

  “Okay, then you can come in.”

  She makes it through the door before she leans into me and takes a deep breath. She mutters into my shirt, “I don’t know where else to go. Half my friends are stoners, and the other half don’t like me.”

  I love the feel of her against me. “What happened?” I ask.

  “My mom and I really got into it. She’s fuckin’ psycho. I slept in my car last night.”

  I point toward the living room. “Sit down, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  Grandma is in the study when I knock.

  “It’s just for a couple of days,” I tell her.

  “Oh, Benjamin. Really.”

  “You’re nice to people you don’t even know. You send them money and medicine. All you have to do for Colleen is let her use the spare room.” I move a little closer and sit in the same chair I sat in when I was little and she helped me with homework. I say, “That night at the police station, all we had to do was take her home. Five minutes out of our way. Instead we just left her there. That’s why she was mad at me at school the next day, and I don’t blame her.”

  Grandma sighs, like I knew she would. “No drugs.”

  I stand up. “Absolutely not. She knows that. Thanks a lot.”

  When I tell her everything’s okay, Colleen gets a little color in her face, like her heart had been waiting to see what was going to happen.

  I reach for that bag of clothes she’s carrying, but she pulls it toward her. “They’re dirty.”

  “I’ll wash them for you.”

  She just stares at me. “You’d do that?”

  “Sure. Just give me a bunch of quarters.”

  She elbows me, but not too hard. “Very funny.”

  I lead her down the long, carpeted hall. She’s seen the room because she’s been here when my grandmother was at yoga. She liked to romp around in her underpants and make me chase after her like Quasimodo and Esmeralda, so we’ve been pretty much everywhere in the house.

  I open the door, and there it is — the queen-size bed, a purple-and-black kimono bedspread, stacked mahogany chests instead of plastic crates. Light, clear and sweet, pours in from the outside.

  Colleen slumps against the door. “Fuck,” she says, and starts to cry.

  I tell her, “Go to bed. And give me those clothes.”

  She hands the bag over. “Do you want to kiss me or anything?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “If you do.”

  Instead we just lean against each other like tired animals.

  Then she says, “I should take a bath.”

  “Sure. Then try to sleep.”

  I’m in my room reading something for school and watching a Doris Day movie with the sound off.

  Doris Day’s real name is Doris Mary Ann von Kappelhoff. Kind of long for anybody’s marquee. She was singing with a band and liked a number called “Day by Day,” so that’s how she got her name.

  I don’t even know the title of this particular movie. It’s one of those not-till-we’re-married things with Rock Hudson. She did a bunch of those and got herself called the World’s Oldest Virgin. A title I thought I’d hold until Colleen came along.

  I hear one little tap on my door, and when I swing around in my fancy desk chair, there’s Colleen, standing in my doorway wearing one of my shirts, and on the TV there’s Doris Kappelhoff looking coy in Rock Hudson’s shirt.

  I love that! One girl on a soundstage in Hollywood fifty years ago, the other in South Pasadena right now. Art and Life.

  I used to think Art was better, but not anymore.

  She pads barefoot across the room and sits on my bed. She takes in the computer, then the big globe on its stand, the movie posters on the walls. Everything always spotless. Spick-and-span. She says, “This place is nicer than a Motel Six.”

  “Thicker towels, for sure.”

  “My mom would love that bathtub.” She points toward the spare room. “Nothing but a shower in the last couple of places we’ve lived.” She rubs her arms, pushing up the sleeve of my shirt. “What was in the bubble bath?”

  “I don’t know. Grandma buys all that stuff.”

  “I should find out and tell my mom. All she thinks about is how pretty she is. She still works out every day. When I was little, like, five, she was pissed because I was, like, a thousand times more perfect than she could ever be and I didn’t have to do anything.”

  “Was she dancing at clubs then?”

  Colleen shakes her head. “Waitressing but going to dance class all the time and sometimes to cattle calls for jobs that paid zip when she got them.”

  “Where was your dad?”

  “Who knows? Probably on a motorcycle somewhere. But she’s never alone for long. She had this longtime boyfriend once and she let him watch while she gave me a bath.”

  I glance at her, but she’s staring out the window. “It freaked me out at first, but he never did anything except put the toilet seat down and sit there and smoke, so I got used to it. They’d chat and he’d smoke and I’d try to drown my fuckin’ ducky and that was that.

  “When I g
ot into my pajamas after dinner, he’d come in, tell me a story, listen to me say my prayers, and then give me ten dollars. Then he’d say, ‘You looked like an angel. You’re perfect.’”

  “Were you scared?”

  “Not exactly scared.”

  “Even when he was looking at you in the bathtub?”

  She shrugs. “I felt burgled but not, you know, violated.”

  Burgled. I was never not in love with her, but that one word lit me up all over again. There’s so much more to her than anybody ever sees. I feel like I’m the only one who knows.

  I watch her close the blinds and collapse on the bed again.

  “You all right?” I ask.

  “Sure.”

  She’s flat on her back, hands locked behind her head like a guy in an ad for hammocks. “So,” she says, “you get all this eventually, right? The house. The jewels and gold doubloons. You get it all someday.”

  I tell her, “I guess. Grandma gives a lot of money away.”

  That makes her sit up so she can see me better, and I wonder if she needs glasses. And if she does, will she bother to go to an eye doctor? And if she goes, how will she pay for them?

  “Gives it away to who?” she asks.

  “Places that need money. United Way, Project Angel Food, Doctors Without Borders. Places like that.”

  “Hey, I’m not a doctor, but I’m without a ton of shit. Why doesn’t she give me some?”

  Just then Grandma calls me from another room. “Ben? Are you decent?”

  I say, “Come on in. We’re just watching TV.” On the screen is an ad for Friday Night Monster Mash. A creature lurches down a dim hallway, holding its arms out like creatures always do. That’s what my grandma thinks Colleen is, but she’s totally and completely wrong.

  Grandma appears in the door, not really looking at me or Colleen but at a spot somewhere in the air a few feet from the ceiling. Maybe she just doesn’t want to think about Colleen’s bare legs.

  Grandma scowls and says, “Do I have to say that I expect everyone to be on their best behavior? I wouldn’t leave the two of you alone if I didn’t have Schizophrenia. Dinner’s in the refrigerator.” Then she looks at Colleen. Finally. “No drugs of any kind. Did Ben tell you?”