The Film Club Read Free Page A

you, David,” she said, holding my eye.
    David?
    â€œHow’s your day going?”
    â€œHow’s my day going?” I repeated idiotically. “So far, so good.”
    Did I enjoy living in the neighbourhood? Why, yes, thank you.
    â€œI have an aunt who lives a few streets over,” she said. “She’s very nice. Old country but very nice.”
    Old country?
    Rebecca Ng (pronounced Ning) was dressed to the nines, spotless white jeans, maroon, long-collared blouse, leather jacket, Beatle boots. You had the feeling she’d paid for these clothes herself, an after-school job in a Yorkville boutique, Saturdays serving drinks to ring-removing executives in the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel (when she wasn’t polishing off an early credit in calculus). As she turned her head to speak to Jesse, I caught a whiff of perfume. Delicate, expensive.
    â€œSo here we are,” she said.
    Then he took her downstairs to his bedroom. I opened my mouth to protest. It was a pit down there. There were no windows, no natural light. Just a bed with a ratty green blanket, clothes on the floor, CDs splashed around the room, a computer facing the wall, a “library” consisting of an autographed Elmore Leonard (unread), George Eliot’s Middlemarch (a hopeful gift from his mother), plus a collection of hip-hop magazines with scowling black men on the cover. A collection of water glasses squatted on the night table. They cracked like a pistol shot when you pried them loose. There was also the occasional “adult” magazine ( 1 - 800 -Slut ) peeking from the space between his mattress and box spring. “I don’t have a problem with pornography,” he told me matter-of-factly.
    â€œWell, I do,” I said. “So keep it hidden.”
    Next door in the laundry room, half the towels in the house fermented on the cement floor. But I kept quiet. I sensed that now was not the time to treat him like a child: “Why don’t you kids have some milk and cookies while I get back to mowing that darn front yard!”
    Soon the whump of a bass guitar rose up through the floor. You could hear Rebecca’s voice floating above the music; then Jesse’s voice, deeper, confident. Then bright bursts of laughter. Good, I thought, she’s discovered how amusing he is.
    â€œHow old is that girl?” I asked when he returned from walking her to the subway.
    â€œSixteen,” he said. “She’s got a boyfriend, though.”
    â€œI can imagine.”
    He smiled uncertainly. “What do you mean?”
    â€œNothing in particular.”
    He looked worried.
    I said, “I suppose I mean that if she’s got a boyfriend, why is she over at your house?”
    â€œShe’s pretty, isn’t she?”
    â€œShe certainly is. She knows it too.”
    â€œEverybody likes Rebecca. They all pretend they want to be her friend. She lets them drive her around.”
    â€œHow old’s her boyfriend?”
    â€œHer age. He’s kind of a nerd, though.”
    â€œThat speaks well for her,” I said primly.
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œIt makes her more interesting,” I said.
    He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the kitchen sink. Turning his head slightly to the side, he sucked in his cheeks, pursed his lips and frowned gravely. This was his “mirror face.” A way he never looked otherwise. You almost expected his hair, which was thick like a raccoon’s, to stand up on end.
    â€œBut the guy before him was twenty-five,” he said. (He wanted to talk about her.) Pulling his eyes with some difficulty from his reflection, his face returned to its normal cast.
    â€œTwenty-five?”
    â€œShe’s got guys all over her, Dad. Like flies.”
    In that instant he seemed wiser than I was at his age. Less delusionally vain. (Hardly an accomplishment.) But the whole thing with Rebecca Ng made me nervous. It was like watching him get