Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good Read Online Free PDF Page A

“That’s the thing with friendship, isn’t it, that you … Well anyway, where was I?”
    “Jane.”
    “Pardon me?”
    “Your friend Jane.”
    “Oh, Zane, actually. But right, so his eyes? They’re different colours too.”
    “Different than what?”
    “Than each other. Like David Bowie, but the other way around.”
    “What?”
    “Bowie. On the cover there? Yeah, see his eyes, one blue, one brown?”
    “Weird.”
    “Yeah. Hey, my wife met David Bowie once. She designs websites, for magazines and stuff but also for rock stars and movie stars and stuff. I’m in movies too.”
    “Really?” The girl raked him with her eyes, raked him again. Finally, an ember of interest. “Hey, were you in
Home Alone?
Were you that bad guy, the tall one?”
    “What, Daniel
Stern?”
Matt hadn’t realized he was looking quite so hangdog these days.
    “Yeah. Was that you?”
    “No.”
    “Oh.”
    “Actually, I’m not really … I’m a critic, more than anything. I, you know, rip movies up? I’m not really
in
them. Well, except … have you ever seen
Kissed?”
    “No.”
    “Of course not.
Bordello of Blood?”
    “Sorry.”
    “No, no, that’s okay. But so yeah, I write movie reviews and my friend, we grew up together? He
makes
movies. Wild, eh?”
    “Do you rip them up?”
    “Pardon me?”
    “Your friend’s movies. Do you rip them up?”
    “Oh, no. No, they’re good.”
    “But what if they sucked? Would you say so?”
    “Probably not, no. Anyway, we used to make movies together back in school.” Matt gave his empty Chardonnay a hopeful waggle. No sign of that flight attendant. “Purple Jesus, do you kids still drink Purple Jesus? Grain alcohol and Kool-Aid? No, of course you don’t, not at your—”
    “Vodka coolers,” said the umgirl, clearly warming to him now. “Up to four I’m okay, but then it’s puke city.”
    “Oh, right. Well anyway, my friend and I made a movie once called
Purple Jesus.
About, you know, Jesus.”
    “Huh.”
    One night, six months or so ago, Matt set up a private screening, just him and Mariko, of some of the old Matt-Zane collaborations. He’d recently got them transferred from Super 8 onto digital,
Purple Jesus
and half a dozen others. “Zany,” Mariko called them, hardy har. But that was just about right. The movies were funny, and full of reckless energy, and all lined up like that they made Matt sad. His plan had been to draw Mariko closer, to re-spark their passion by introducing her to a younger, more devil-may-care version of himself. In a way it worked. She went tender on him, but wistfully, as though she too were overcome with nostalgia, an achy longing for some other trajectory through time.
    Had she started up with Sophie by that point? Close, anyway, close enough that not saying something was a lie. And before long Matt was lying too, though of course he did it in print.
    “Anyway, I do the website thing too,” he said to the umgirl, “work on that with my wife. For my wife.”
    “That’s nice. What about swollen members?”
    “Pardon me?”
    “The band Swollen Members? Did you do their website?”
    “Oh, no. Sorry. But back to this friend of yours. Twenty years go by, okay? You live thousands of miles apart but that doesn’t matter, none of it matters. One day he—”
    “Headsets?”
    “Pardon me? Oh right, thanks.”
    The umgirl ripped frantically into her little plastic pouch—a toddler greedy for her party favour—and set about fussing with her earphones. It must be tricky, Matt thought, what with all that hardware. She had the standard earring in the lobe, but also one high on the arch, in the little runnel there, and one in the toughest bit, the flap you press when you don’t want to hear something. That must have hurt. It looked inflamed, as though maybe she’d done it herself with an ice pick earlier in the day. She couldn’t be thirteen, could she? That would push her into the previous era—sweet, nutty Meg.
    Matt said, “Ouch.” He