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wearing kneesocks, a plaid skirt, and a little beret thing pinned to her hair that matches her skirt. I can just hear Colleen: “Everything but a f**king bagpipe.”
    She’s got a big smile, and her teeth are amazing. Movie-star teeth. Out comes her hand, and I shake it. She holds on while she says, “Just to make sure it’s you, name a movie where a train station figures prominently.”
    “Three-ten to Yuma.”
    “Nice. How’ve you been, Ben?” She frowns. “‘Been, Ben.’ That sounded redundant.”
    “I’m okay. How about you?”
    “Busy.” She points across the street. “Let’s score a table, okay?”
    We cross in a little crowd of people, ten or so, and they’re all faster than I am. I can see A.J. checking both ways for enraged motorists, and when we’re almost at the curb, she touches my elbow. Just barely, just a nudge, but it makes me feel officially handicapped. She’s the Girl Scout, and I’m the good deed for the day.
    We find a table with some shade, and she puts her laptop down. “This is my treat,” she says. “Name your poison.”
    “I can get it, okay?”
    She doesn’t look away. “I know you can, Ben. But I want to.”
    While she’s gone, I tell myself,
Settle down,
Benjamin.
Don’t blow this.
    I struggle to my feet so that when she comes back with the coffee, peppermint tea, and a bagel, I can help her.
    Once we get situated, she butters her bagel and offers me half, which I say no thanks to.
    “Brief Encounter,”
I blurt. “Another train station movie.”
    “And
Doctor Zhivago.
Lots of trains in that one.” She chews vigorously and then asks, “Did you see my friend’s video on YouTube?”
    “Not yet.”
    She brushes invisible crumbs off her hands and opens her laptop. She hits a few keys, then just hands the whole thing to me. “Check it out.”
    It’s called
Dog Bytes Dog,
and it’s just this Rottweiler with a controller that he doesn’t really use, but the quick cuts back and forth from the pooch to the
Reservoir Dogs
game make that not matter.
    When I hand the Mac back over, she says, “It’s getting tons of hits. If Rane had just sent in Bowser watching TV, no way. And even if it was Bowser watching
Reservoir Dogs
maybe, maybe not. I think the title was the clincher. I guess what I’m saying is, whatever you’re going to submit has to be pretty sharp to get any kind of play. Anybody can upload anything. It’s fine to just be funny or cute, but it’s better if what you upload matters, right?”
    “Absolutely.”
    She starts to pick up her plastic chair. “Let me scoot over there and show you how to submit —” She stops in midsentence. “No, wait. You come to me. Because you are totally able, am I right?”
    That smile of hers is pretty irresistible. So maybe that little touch on the elbow at the curb was a one-time thing. Nerves. “Maybe not totally able, but I can make it if I try.”
    So we sit side by side; she hits keys and points, and I take some notes. YouTube looks absolutely doable.
    I say, “
High School Confidential
isn’t digital. How do I get that done?”
    “It’s just a swap. I don’t have the equipment, but I know somebody who does.”
    “Are you going to send in a clip from
Roach Coach
? Or have you already?”
    She falls back in her chair dramatically. “Oh, God. You don’t know about that? No, how could you? Oh, man. Five of those food-service guys I interviewed got deported because of my movie.”
    “No way.”
    “Oh, yeah. My friends are passing
Roach Coach
around, or parts of it, anyway. Just one computer to another. But somebody somewhere looks at that footage a whole other way. It’s not, ‘Boy, these are hardworking, interesting guys.’ It’s, ‘Who’s got a green card?’”
    “And there’s nothing you can do?”
    She shakes her head. “I talked to my dad — he’s a lawyer — and nada.”
    “Maybe filmmakers are like doctors: ‘First do no harm.’”
    She nods. “Sometimes I’m watching a documentary