Her Favorite Movie
They find the pop-up store in an old shopping arcade on the walk home. DVDs fill baskets out the front, and racks and shelves inside.
There are probably hundreds here, he thinks. They strike him as memories in cases, sealed in plastic wrap and sold on the cheap.
“Wow,” Jane says. “Can you believe it?”
“Believe what?”
“DVDs!? I mean, do you even have a DVD player anymore?”
“I don’t even have a television.”
“Let’s look inside.”
He kneels down and takes a DVD case from a basket. Turns it in his hand.
“What is it?” she says.
He shakes his head.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “Hey, what kinds of movies do you like?”
He thinks it has been a long time since he thought about old movies.
“Didn’t you have a favorite movie growing up?” Mari asked.
“Well, yeah. But this is a DVD.”
“But that’s the point. That’s how I remember it.”
“Ah.”
She held it up like a prize or trophy.
“I had to borrow it from a friend the first time,” she said. “But she would only let me have it for the weekend. I must have watched it at least three times over those two days.”
“Three times?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to give it back.”
He liked her in that moment. Wished he could pause it.
“You want to watch it tonight?” she said.
“Yeah, sure.”
“They were on special.” Mari said.
“Well, yeah. They’re DVDs.”
He looked at the cases stacked on the kitchen table. All of it late 90’s and early 2000’s. Modern classics, he thought.
“I always wanted to watch them,” she said. “But for whatever reason, I didn’t.”
“Life got in the way, maybe.”
“Yeah, life got in the way,” she said. “Now it’s giving me a second chance.”
He thought about that a lot.
Second chances.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I know I said I wouldn’t buy any more. But…”
“No, no, it’s fine,” he said. “You couldn’t help it, could you?”
Mari looked at her feet.
“What was it this time?” he said.
“I used to watch them with my dad.”
“James Bond?”
She nodded.
“Yeah.”
“I wonder why you never mentioned that before?”
“But we don’t have anywhere to put them, do we?”
He looked at the modified bookshelf. At the rows of DVDs.
“We’re going to need more shelves,” he said.
“Do you want to watch it tonight?” he asked.
“Oh, sorry. I watched it last night.”
“While I was sleeping?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
He thought about that for a moment.
“Well, how was it then?” he asked. “Did you like it?”
“Well, most of it was good, but… I don’t know. I just can’t get into movies where the good guy dies at the end.”
“I still… I still haven’t watched it,” he said.
“Oh. Right.”
She shrugged.
Later, he would enjoy telling this story.
People were often surprised when he told them about it. The collection. The way it grew. Why she never stopped. Why he never stopped her.
He told them the DVDs were more than movies. He said Mari didn’t watch them for the stories or the actors, but the memories. Even the movies she buys and never watches, he said, there’s memories and feelings that come with them.
They all mean something, he said. It’s not just a movie collection, it’s a library of memories.
“You want to watch a movie?” he asked.
“Yeah, okay.”
“What do you feel like?”
“Anything is fine,” she said. “You pick.”
“You know I hate it when you say that.”
She mustered a weak smile. Winked.
“You pick,” she said.
She fell asleep in the middle of the movie, but he still watched it to the end. She always knew if he didn’t.
“Did I fall asleep again?” She asked.
“You did,” he said, “but it’s okay. You know what happens anyway.”
She laughed, then sighed.
He turned off the television and the DVD player, and lifted her into his arms.
“Let’s go to bed,” he said.
“You’re too good to me,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“There are lots of really good movies where the good guy dies,” he said. “You’re missing out.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t care,” she said. “I just don’t like them.”
“But why not?”
“Because if you were in a movie, you’d be the good guy.”
He would remember that moment, but he would never share it.
Not with anyone.
“You want to watch a movie?” he asked.
He ran his fingers along the spines of a row of DVD cases, and played them over in his mind. He saw his favorite scenes. The starts and the endings.
He didn’t know what to watch. Didn’t know how he felt.
Didn’t know what to do.
“What do you feel like?” he said.
But the room was empty.
Nobody answered.
“What are we going to do with all of them? Do you want to keep them?”
The shelves were still filled with DVDs. More than he remembered, now that most everything else was gone. Each one is a memory, he’d said. They’re part of a library, he’d said.
But without the librarian, it was little more than a collection of books filled with empty pages.
He shook his head.
“No.”
He watched them place the DVDs in cardboard boxes and put them on a table next to a rack of summer dresses and winter coats.
It hadn’t occurred to him that you could sell memories as easily as you could buy them, but there it was.
He sat on a folding chair surrounded by her things and he waited.
That first day, nobody came.
The man handed over some money, and said, “You see? This is why I love garage sales!”
“But Jack,” the woman said, “Where are we going to put them? We don’t have any room.”
“Then we’ll make room.”
“But we don’t have room.”
“So I’ll make room.”
He watched the woman sigh, then groan, then help the man put the DVDs in the trunk of the car and drive off.
Just like that, he thought.
Just like that.
He takes a DVD from the shelf and looks at it for a time. It’s wrapped in warm, faded feelings.
“What’s up?” Jane asks.
“I think I’m going to buy this,” he says.
“But you don’t even have a television.”
“Yeah, I know. But didn’t you have a favorite movie growing up?”
“Well, yeah. But this is a DVD.”
“That’s the point,” he says. “That’s how I remember it.”
And this time, he thinks, he doesn’t want to forget.
— -
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— Hengtee
