Kate said, "Our folks worried about him sometimes."
"Imagine that," Gia said with a wry smile. She wore a long summer dress that brought out the intense blue of her eyes.
Kate had taken an instant liking to Gia. She'd sensed that here was someone not only very pretty and very bright, but also very much her own person.
"He was something of a loner."
Gia sipped her wine. "He's still not much of a team player."
"He was on the track team but he ran cross-country. Not a lot of friends, either. But it was the movies that most concerned our folks. He couldn't get enough of those junky old horror and sci-fi movies."
"That hasn't changed."
"It would be a sunny Saturday afternoon and Jackie would—"
Gia grinned. '''Jackie? Oh, I love it!"
"That's what our mother called him and we all sort of picked it up. Anyway, on a beautiful Saturday he would say he was going to the park but if you drove by the local theater you'd see his bike chained to a post nearby. Every Saturday the Lenape would show two old horror-sci-fi movies in a double feature and he'd rather sit there alone in the dark than play with the other kids."
"That child was definitely father to that man." Gia said, pointing to Jack.
Jack and movies… Kate remembered when he was nine she heard Jack's alarm go off at two in the morning, then heard him pad down-stairs in the dark. When ten minutes passed and he hadn't returned, she went down to see what he was up to. She found him wrapped in his bedspread cross-legged on the floor before the TV with the sound very low, entranced by some cheap black-and-white movie. She told him to get back up to bed but he pleaded with her, saying he'd been trying to catch Invasion of the Saucer Men forever but it never played in the movies or on TV or anywhere anymore until tonight. He had to see it. He might never get another chance. Pleeeeease?
So she'd sat next to him under the spread, her arm protectively around his shoulders, and watched with him. She soon knew why no one showed it any more: Invasion of the Saucer Men was awful. But to Jack it was some sort of grail he'd finally found and he loved it. Looking back now it was a special shared moment, a closeness fated for extinction with the advent of the VCR.
Kate glanced over to where Jack stood with Jeanette. Would that life were still so sweet and simple.
And then she remembered: "The dip. I forgot to heat the dip."