Straight No Chaser Read Online Free PDF Page A

dumb.”
    â€œNot as if the tickets are exactly cheap or anything,” the girl said.
    â€œYour father paid for yours,” the boy said with the disdain only an adolescent can summon.
    â€œIt’s still money, Don.”
    I was a quarter of the way into the vodka and soda. Not a hint of upset tummy. All seemed copacetic with my gastric world. Annie was still writing in her notebook and still oblivious of my manly presence in the restaurant. Would she have sensed the aura of Dennis Quaid?
    â€œWe’ve already seen Stolen Kisses on TV about three times, Karen,” Don said to the girl with the perfect complexion. She had blonde hair and a little bow mouth to go with the skin.
    â€œPlus it’s on VCR,” Karen said.
    â€œThe only thing—”
    Karen talked over Don. She said, her turn for disdain, “I know what you’re going to say, Don. It’s not the same on small screen.”
    â€œThe values, Karen,” Don said. “You have to admit.”
    â€œI still think it’s ridiculous to miss a new David Lynch,” Karen said. “There’s probably going to be a hundred more Truffaut retrospectives besides this one. He is dead after all.”
    Don and Karen were scrutinizing their Festival of Festivals schedule. The schedule folded accordion-style. Open, it covered most of Don and Karen’s table. The Festival ran eleven days and screened maybe two hundred movies. Don and Karen may have been going for the all-time, all-world attendance record. On their schedule, there were tick marks beside four or five movies on each day. The theatres the Festival used were in midtown, an easy hike from the Belair, and Helga Stephenson’s offices were around the corner on Yorkville Avenue. Proximity qualified the Belair as the Festival’s unofficial watering hole. It was done in peach and grey and ficus plants and had a pianist in the bar who didn’t gag at playing “Feelings” half a dozen times an evening. Bernardo Bertolucci once took Perrier at the Belair. I had Karen’s word for it.
    Across the room, Helga Stephenson talked, Annie wrote, and fatso jiggled. Don and Karen stewed over the Sunday-morning blank space. I willed them to take the old François Truffaut instead of the new Dave Lynch. When I saw Blue Velvet , I came down with a severe case of the heebie-jeebies. To celebrate my recovery from the Wyborowa trauma of the night before, I asked the waiter for another vodka and soda.
    Don cranked his head around the room and turned back to Karen in high excitement.
    â€œRoger Ebert,” he said. His voice cracked.
    â€œOh wild,” Karen said. Her voice didn’t crack. “With those two women in the corner.”
    Don and Karen had it right. Roger Ebert was the jiggler with Annie and Helga Stephenson. Could Gene Siskel be far behind?
    Annie folded her notebook, stood up, and smiled at Helga and Roger. Annie had a sneaky smile. She turned it on, and you felt select. She turned it off, and you noticed an ache in your heart that didn’t use to be there. Annie was petite, as they would say in Vogue . No bigger than a minute, as my old mother would have said. Her hair was black like midnight is black, and she wore it cut in a tight cap around her head. She had on a pale-blue denim dress that buttoned down the front and stopped within hailing distance of her knees. Her leather shoes, flats, were the same pale-blue, and the only jewellery that adorned her person was a small gold pocket watch on a gold chain around her neck. Annie saw me, and I got the smile. I knew all about the ache in the heart. So far, two years of Annie and me, the ache hadn’t come close to permanent.
    â€œAren’t you just full of surprises,” Annie said. She leaned over my table and kissed me lightly on the lips.“You’re supposed to be in court. Your Arizona man.”
    â€œThe judge gave us a holiday,” I said. “You were in swift