What Movies Made Me Do Read Free

brains in black butter sauce, in honor of his work mapping the mysteries of the human brain. He believes he’s going to solve the mind-body problem by proving the brain just another body part, and there is no soul.
    When they arrived he stabbed a forkful and pursed hislips distastefully. “Awful,” he said. Another strike against me. The brains were overcooked and rubbery, not the ambrosia I remembered. Some memories are better than trying to repeat the experiences.
    I recognized the solemn Bach as something Barry played. Better not mention it now. He was once a child prodigy and still owns a Stradivarius violin. But his fingers slowed from lack of practicing. When we first fell in love, he swore he’d sell his violin and buy me and him and my dog Rocky a large cooperative apartment. Better not mention that either.
    He was keeping time with the music, his chin making little nods.
    “How’s your work?” I asked.
    “I had a showdown with that High Episcopalian putz from Salk,” he began.
    I loved hearing his voice, husky with feelings, a little high-falutin; these native New Yorkers broaden their
a
’s and drop their
r
’s. I smiled at him, clasping my hands under my chin, listening. I was dying to avoid the fight sizzling under our conversation.
    “He’s stealing my Indian molecule assistant, but he can’t take two goddamn years of research and my government grant with him. If the kid goes to Salk, he goes naked. I’m afraid all the work I’ve done will come to nothing after all these years.”
    I suddenly remembered how, when we first met, Barry hypnotized me at a dinner party with those suffering intelligent eyes. He wasn’t thin or young, but he wove word spells, describing his work on the mysteries of the brain in glittering and passionate scientific patois. The next day I played old rock-and-roll records and dreamed of introducing him to my mother. She’d love discussing books with a bonafide Nobel laureate-to-be.
    Now he tossed his fork onto the table. “I can’t believe it,you’re not listening,” he accused. “We have got to talk.” My heart sank. I knew this Salk intrigue by heart.
    “I was thinking about the night we met.” I blushed.
    “Don’t sweet-talk me,” he snapped, “like some meretricious movie mogul.”
    “I can’t win with you.” I sagged over my cleared plate.
    “I needed your advice,” Barry added balefully. “But you were out of the office all day.” He admitted my expertise only in office politics. It wasn’t a big moral compliment. He looks down his nose at movies. I think he envies the glamour.
    “I was out working.”
    “Your job is ruining us. That’s the big problem.”
    “I’m in trouble,” I blurted.
    “Oh, my dear.” His whispery voice shook with elegant hysteria. “Tell me what the bastards did now.”
    Tears smarted my eyes. He was being kind.
    “Well, I’m worried. Anita didn’t take my calls today. And Michael Finley’s going to find out. It’s not like her.”
    “Nobody in their right mind spends nine million dollars to make a movie.” He cut a corner of his baked endive. “Maybe she ran off with Jack what’s-his-name, your trampy star.”
    “Jack Hanscomb? No way,” I said too fast.
    In the middle of any discussion Barry likes his little jokes. Everybody in the world knows Jack’s last name.
    “Admit it, you’re drawn to that man,” Barry said.
    “I’m not that dumb,” I lied. For once he had me. He has a fantastic picture of me as sexually uncontrollable; because he’s attracted to me, he believes all men are.
    Barry was saying, “Well, just call the police, a woman like Anita doesn’t disappear off the Israeli coast. It isn’t Nazi Germany.” He chuckled. Any whiff of a reference to the Holocaust satisfies him profoundly. “Forget the movie, find yourself some serious work.”
    I flashed anger. “I spent the last three dinners fixing your Salk fight.”
    “Keeping score?” he asked. “How generous.”
    I closed my