Read Waking Beauty for Free Online Page B

Can’t Take It with You, Young Frankenstein, Yojimbo
, and
You Can Count on Me
. The list before that was evidently name-based:
Harold and Maude, Zelig
, and
All About Eve
. And the one prior to that seemed to be a simple rhythmic pairing:
A Taste of Cherry
and
A Touch of Class
.
    I once asked Nathan what his favorite film was. He responded with a tortured groan and the look of a parent who had been asked to select his favorite child. “No,” he said, shaking his oddly shaped head from side to side, “no, it’s not possible.” The next time I saw him, he presented me with a list of one hundred of his favorite films—not, I repeat,
not
ranked in order of preference-which, he told me, he agonized over and altered regularly.
    In a dilapidated khaki knapsack, Nathan toted around a giant paperback called
Video Hound—
a guide to every film that had been released on video or DVD. It was his bible. He would invite you to flip to any page and select a movie title at random. He would then tell you who wrote, directed, and starred in it, provide you with a synopsis, tell you how many bones it rated in the guide, and then give it his own cogent review and rating. We would often play this
Video Hound
game when I took my twenty-minute break at ten o’clock. I enjoyed it. I looked forward to it, actually. Not so much the game, just being in the presence of Nathan. He was the one person in the world with whom I felt simpatico, not comfortable—he made me nervous, actually—but temperamentally…correct. I think the New Age notion of humans giving off vibrations is true. It seemed to me that Nathan and I were like adjacent strings on the same instrument. We vibrated at slightly different frequencies, but in good harmony.
    I was already looking forward to seeing him, as I rode the service elevator to the second floor to continue my rounds.The first floor had gone smoothly enough. Apart from a lawyer trying to explain a contract to her mystified-looking client, I hadn’t encountered anyone working late. 505 Richmond had the kind of energetic young tenants who regularly stuck around until the wee hours, but because it was the first summery night of the season, a lot of people had lit out at closing time, slipped out to sip Mojitos in trendy outdoor cafés, or gone home to their loft-style condominiums to rearrange the placement of their Eames chairs. Good. The fewer bodies around, the better. Even though most of the late workers completely ignored my presence—I now know what it feels like to be an apparition, a trash-can-emptying ghost-I found it depressing to be carting away the garbage of people roughly my own age while they were sitting there in front of me, toiling at their glamorous, challenging, and well-remunerated jobs. Still, there were only two offices in the building that I truly disliked going into. One was the
WUT Up
magazine office, the other was IZ Talent Management.
WUT Up
was on the second floor, and as I rolled my cart off the elevator, I could already hear the boisterous shouts of the managing editor reverberating beyond the imposing
WUT Up
doorway. I shuddered and rolled on by. I decided to do the rest of the floor first. Maybe by the time I was done…Alas, no such luck.
    “Hazel, my friend, how’s it going?”
    As usual, the
WUT Up
office was still populated with a bevy of young, attractive hipsters, including the youngest, most attractive hipster of them all, Andrew McKay, the founder/managing editor, reclining in his oh-so-ironic 1970s stereo chair. He was smoking a Nat Sherman cigarillo and drinking a beer, with his long legs and his giant Italian shoes stretched out in front of him.
    I gave him enough of a fake smile to protect my employment status, then went about my business, emptying the bulging trash cans of the filthiest office in the building.
    “Hazel,” he shouted, standing up and moving to his desk. “C’mere, I have something for you.”
    A small titter emitted from a trio of idiot hipsters