Read Online The Film Club by David Gilmour - Free Book Online Page B

hooker. So is the guy, the young writer. They both do it for money.”
    Holly Golightly, a hooker?
    Jesse asked me once, did I think Rebecca was out of his league? I said no, but I had private worries; that the competition for such a stunning creature, particularly the arena in which it might be played out (stylish superficialities) might defeat him. I remember him turning his pale, despairing face to me in those weeks after “the incident” and saying, “I think God is going to give me everything I want in life except Rebecca Ng.”
    So once he “got” her, I was relieved—because it meant that, for the next while at least, he wouldn’t be haunted by the suspicion that a higher happiness lay just beyond his fingertips. Thinking back on it, I imagine it was the cafeteria rumours about Claire Brinkman that revived Rebecca’s interest in him—in old “huggable” Jesse. Rumours that blew her nerdy boyfriend far out to sea and sadly took Claire with them.
    The truth is though, once you got past her dazzling looks, Rebecca Ng was a weapons-grade pain-in-the-ass. She was a stirrer of the pot, a lover of intrigue and distress, a creature who seemed to draw oxygen from the spectacle of people at each other’s throats, everybody in a state of upset and talking about her . It put colour in those sunken, movie-star cheeks.
    She’d telephone Jesse late at night and imply disturbing things. She was having second thoughts. Maybe they should “date” other people and see if it was “a good fit.” All this reserved for the final seconds of the call. It was her way of keeping him on the line. She couldn’t stand for him to be the one to say, “I have to go now. Goodbye.”
    Hours and hours went by like this, conversations that left him ragged and feeling as if there was sand in his eyes. I worried she was going to scar him.
    But there was a small unhaveable part in Jesse, something all the other boys gave her which he, for reasons I still don’t understand, withheld; a single, dark room in the mansion to which Rebecca had no access and it obsessed her. You knew the moment she got in there with a flashlight, the moment she understood she could come and go, it would be a valueless room, he would be valueless, and she’d move on. But for the moment it was a locked door and she waited outside, trying to find the key that would turn the bolt.
    On warm afternoons, birds chirping, lawn mowers buzzing, hammers banging on the converted church across the street, Rebecca Ng appeared on our porch, her black hair gleaming with health and vitality. For two or three minutes, she engaged me in breezy, impersonal conversation, the kind you expect from a politician at a fundraiser. Chat, chat, chat. Fearless eye contact. The kind of girl who was going to run a string of world-class hotels one day.
    Duty done, she descended into the basement. The door at the foot of the stairs closed with a soft, firm click. I heard the murmur of young voices and then, wondering if I should remind Jesse to brush his teeth or put a pillow slip on the pillow (and deciding not to), I removed myself to a distant, soundproof part of the house.
    How perfect, I thought, that “straight-A” Rebecca Ng should be having a fully realized love affair with a high-school dropout. Wasn’t that just what her parents had in mind when they fled Vietnam in a rowboat?
    On those other afternoons when she was overachieving at a manager-in-training course or preparing a debate with the Young Conservatives Caucus, Jesse and I watched movies on the couch. I can see from my yellow cards that we spent a couple of weeks on a “unit” (there’s a despicable “school” word) called Talent Will Out. This was simply a small group of films, sometimes not very good, where an unknown actor turns in a performance so good that, to put it vulgarly, you know it’s only a question of time