Read Online The Last Days of Video by Jeremy Hawkins - Free Book Online Page A

late?”
    â€œNo reason. I watched Chop Shop .”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œAnd it’s fucking incredible. I think it’ll be a good renter, so I’m ordering ten copies.”
    â€œBut something’s wrong.”
    â€œWhy is Jeff’s nickname Blad?” she asked with a curl of annoyance. “That’s not even a word.”
    â€œBlad is fun to say, that’s all.” He squinted at her. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong with you?”
    â€œNo, I’m not.”
    Alaura felt him staring at her for a long time.
    Then he smashed out his cigarette in the overfilled ashtray.
    â€œWhatever,” he said. “Sorry you overslept or your life hasn’t turned out the way you wanted or yadda yadda yadda. Stay up here if you want. I was watching this High Fidelity thing again. Something about it is just . . . not . . . good. I mean, the book was good, I read it back when the movie came out, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s because John Cusack looks so stocky. He’s sort of built like Edward G. Robinson—”
    â€œI don’t care.”
    â€œFine, jerk face. And FYI, Blad is short for bladder infection. I don’t remember why.” He grabbed his book off the coffee table, climbed over the edge of The African Queen , and began to descend the staircase. “Stay up here if you want,” he called back. “It’s not like we have any customers anyway.”
    Alaura spotted a bottle of Sierra Nevada, picked it up, popped it open against a corner of the coffee table. She lit a cigarette. Finally good and ready, she restarted High Fidelity , which she had seen years before and which she would soon reevaluate as a flawed but endearing portrait of music store snobs, who were in many ways similar to video store snobs, and that Waring had probably been offended not only by Cusack’s fading charm (he was too beefy to be that neurotic), but also by the basis of the movie’s humor (thatthe characters’ snobbishness was fundamentally ridiculous). Nonetheless, she found herself drifting easily into the mesh of the film, into the interdependent professional and romantic plot threads, because being engaged with a film was her favorite craving, the relief of images, the dependable escape, the conflicting empathies, the forming of plot hypotheses, the subverting of expectations, the satisfactions of suspense, all of it, all the tricks of narrative, all the lies they use to tell the truth. This was her truest religion, her most reliable form of meditation, and she knew it.
    â€œAre you okay, ma’am?”
    Alaura’s attention jolted from the movie onto Jeff’s face floating above the wall of The African Queen. She was crying again. Eye shadow probably ran down her cheeks. So she turned away from him. On screen, John Cusack and some no-name actress were reuniting after the sudden death of her father. They sat in a car, kissing, their hair wet from rain. The scene was nothing special, not visually original in the slightest, but the expression on Cusack’s familiar face, his amazement that the girl of his dreams wanted him back . . . Alaura had not been able to restrain the tears. Normally she preferred indie and foreign films. But even Hollywood movies (especially Hollywood movies, she had to admit) could make her cry.
    She paused the DVD.
    â€œJeff?”
    â€œYes, ma’am?”
    â€œIf you call me ma’am again, I’ll rip out your eyeballs.”
    No response.
    â€œOh, you know what I mean,” she said weakly.
    â€œAre you okay . . . Alaura?”
    â€œPeachy keen.”
    She massaged her temples, tried to straighten the neckline of her tee shirt. Still facing away from him, she said, “Did you need something, Jeff?”
    â€œIt’s, well . . . Waring’s on the phone. I think it’s Clarissa Wheat from that Guiding Glow Distribution place again. It sounds like bad news.”
    Alaura: