The girls, who had not seen it coming, were so delighted they nearly fainted on the spot.
Nobody was interested in feelings first.
For these girls the vanity of being publicly attached to somebody the school talked about outweighed everything else in the world.
Introductions took ten seconds; then the one called Ellie swept a triumphant look around at the envy on either side of her, took Alex’s arm in both hands, and began establishing sovereignty over him as his girlfriend.
Down the hall the cheerleading goddess stamped her foot in fury, and the giant guard from the football team hurried over to console her as the spare tire.
Having escaped with his life, Alex had no intention of crossing the river and then tearing down the bridge behind him.
He had picked Ellie out of the crowd because she suited his own taste.
He had never much liked the eighth-grade cheerleader’s blown-out figure; he leaned, if anything, toward the slender and small, the way he had in his other life.
Ellie was mixed, so her coloring and features read more European than most of the girls at school, and Alex thought she was, by any measure, pretty.
And as it happened, having a real girlfriend was going to spare him a great deal of trouble in this building.
At minimum it would lower the amount of hatred coming at him from the boys.
Friday after school, his cousin Connie drove him to the front of the movie theater, dug something out of her bag, and pushed it into his jacket pocket.
“You want me to leave you the car?”
Connie was grinning wide when she said it.
“I know some places you can take a girl after dark and handle your business right there in the seats. Very convenient.”
“Wow. You know a lot.” Alex turned the mockery back on her.
He fished the packet out of his pocket — printed with an AIDS-prevention logo, and one look told him it was the kind they handed out free at school, the kind she’d always been too embarrassed to actually take.
“I don’t have a license. How am I supposed to drive?” This body knew how to drive.
He just couldn’t get licensed until he turned sixteen.
Connie was unbothered.
“That’s nothing. Nobody stops you driving on the South Side as long as you don’t speed. You sure? I can take the bus home.”
“Forget it. I’m not taking even a little risk,” Alex said, opening the car door.
“Right. My family’s got a big man coming up.” Connie patted his cheek.
“Don’t be too trusting with those girls. Be careful.” She pointed at his pocket.
“I know.”
He said goodbye to her and walked to the spot they’d agreed on, and spotted Ellie waiting at a glance.
She had dressed up for it.
The moment she saw him she rushed over and hung off him.
“Honey—”
“Uh — how come you’re so early? Should we get the tickets first?”
They walked into the theater talking.
It was too early for anyone getting off work, so the ticket window was deserted and they could take their time.
“Huh?” Alex found two Chinese characters in the corner of a poster on the wall: Golden Harvest.
They even show movies made by Chinese people here?
He became immediately interested in this one, something called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
“Are you still a little kid?” Ellie, beside him, had seen exactly where his eye was drifting.
“We should be watching a movie for grown people.”
For grown people…
Alex’s mind went somewhere else.
“The girl at the window isn’t going to sell us tickets for that, is she?”
“What are you thinking about!”
Ellie gave him a coquettish swat and pointed at another poster.
“I’m talking about this one.”
“Huh?” Alex moved his eyes to a poster for something called Pretty Woman, dominated by a wide, contagious grin on a white actress.
“Julia Roberts. A romance.”
“Let’s see this one.” Ellie was already digging coins out of her jeans pocket.
“Okay.” Alex pushed her hand back, refused to go halves, and paid for both tickets.
“That one’s very popular. Box office is over a hundred million already, I heard,” the girl at the window offered as she tore them off.
“Over a hundred million?” Alex was honestly startled.
Is making movies that profitable?
They still had time before the picture started, so they wandered the nearby blocks.
Alex had ice cream and fried chicken.
In a clothing store he noticed Ellie lingering over a small purse and checked the tag on it — ten bucks, which was nothing — so he bought it on the spot and handed it to her.
“You’re so good to me.”
He had not expected the girl who took the purse to be moved to actual tears.
“Nobody’s ever treated me this nice. Not since I was little.”
Well.
Poor kids, both of us.
Alex sighed inwardly.
There was something uncanny about the feeling.
His memories of the life before were vague, but this — the standard Chinese routine of a man simping his way through a date — was deeply, uncomfortably familiar to him.
He seemed to have done a great deal of it.
He also seemed to remember it not ending well.
Then it was time to go in.
It was, to his surprise, a very well-made romance.
Julia Roberts was perfectly cast as the laughing, big-hearted beauty, and the score through the whole picture was the work of a master.
The story, on the other hand, was a fairy tale and a half.
“Would a Wall Street guy like that really marry a prostitute?”
Alex was still sighing about it on the way out.
“Love is greater than everything! You’re a block of wood.” Ellie was displeased.
At the most swooning stretch of the movie she had made several initiatives — a small hand rubbing at him, a pout held at the ready — and Alex had failed to notice any of them.
After the movie he found himself less interested.
The girl next to him spent all her energy hiding how young she was and imitating the conversational manner of the senior girls — talking loudly about who in school was doing what with whom, calling some classmate she disliked a bitch, deliberately wedging a word starting with F into the middle of every sentence.
It was exactly the thing Alex could not stand.
From Ellie’s side of it, this was how a grown woman spoke.
From Alex’s side, she had been poisoned by the cultural garbage of a garbage public high school.
“It’s getting late. I’ll walk you home,” he said.
“You don’t love me?” She could feel the shift.
Her mouth went down and the tears came.
“I’m sorry. I’ve never had a boyfriend before. I don’t know how you’re supposed to date somebody who’s a star at school.”
Hm?
Never had a boyfriend?
Alex’s eyes came back on.
“Uh — or, you know what, why don’t I take you over to the music company where I work? Maybe I could even record you singing something.”
Plan restarted.
“Really?” Ellie was all smiles again.
“Of course.” He took her hand and they walked a few blocks over to the street below Old Joe Music.
“Carl!” He banged on the iron door.
Carl looked past him at the girl, spread a thoroughly indecent smile across that murderous face of his, and stood aside to let them in.
“Thanks, Carl.”
Alex led Ellie upstairs.
Apart from Carl there was not another living soul in Old Joe Music, and every light in the place was off.
He walked straight into the studio and hit the switch.
“Wow.” Ellie was thrilled by all the professional equipment, touching things left and right.
“Is this where they record all the songs you write?”
Alex looked at the back of her standing at the mixing desk, at the line of her, and remembered what Eric had taught him.
“That’s right. Every one of them, right here. You want to learn how it works? Come here, I’ll teach you.” He shut the door, walked over and put his arms around her from behind, brought his mouth to her earlobe, and breathed on it.
“Ellie.”
They spent the night on the couch.
They were both tired.
Ellie said she didn’t want to go home, so they held each other and slept.
Bang.
The noise tore Alex out of his sleep, and Ellie woke in his arms, and half a second later she began to scream.
In the doorway sat Eric, on the floor, laughing so hard he’d gone down.
Behind him stood a whole crowd of musicians in loud clothes with instruments on their backs, every last one of them grinning at Alex — and at Ellie.
“Fuck you, Eric!”
He hurriedly wrapped Ellie up in his jacket and swore.