The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup Read Online Free Page B

the time we spent together, he provided a running commentary on merchandise, media, and entertainment:
    “The only shoes anyone will wear are Reebok Pumps. Big T-shirts are cool, not the kind that are sticky and close to you, but big and baggy and long, not the kind that stop at your stomach.”
    “The best food is Chicken McNuggets and Life cereal and Frosted Flakes.”
    “Don’t go to Blimpie’s. They have the worst service.”
    “I’m not into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles anymore. I grew out of that. I like Donatello, but I’m not a fan. I don’t buy the figures anymore.”
    “The best television shows are on Friday night on ABC. It’s called TGIF, and it’s
Family Matters, Step by Step, Dinosaurs,
and
Perfect Strangers,
where the guy has a funny accent.”
    “The best candy is Skittles and Symphony bars and Crybabies and Warheads. Crybabies are great because if you eat a lot of them at once you feel so sour.”
    “Hyundais are Korean cars. It’s the only Korean car. They’re not that good because Koreans don’t have a lot of experience building cars.”
    “The best movie is
City Slickers,
and the best part was when he saved his little cow in the river.”
    “The Giants really need to get rid of Ray Handley. They have to get somebody who has real coaching experience. He’s just no good.”
    “My dog, Sally, costs seventy-two dollars. That sounds like a lot of money but it’s a really good price because you get a flea bath with your dog.”
    “The best magazines are
Nintendo Power,
because they tell you how to do the secret moves in the video games, and also
Mad
magazine and
Money Guide
—I really like that one.”
    “The best artist in the world is Jim Davis.”
    “The most beautiful woman in the world is not Madonna! Only Wayne and Garth think that! She looks like maybe a . . . a . . . slut or something. Cindy Crawford looks like she would look good, but if you see her on an awards program on TV she doesn’t look that good. I think the most beautiful woman in the world probably is my mom.”
    COLIN THINKS A LOT about money. This started when he was about nine and a half, which is when a lot of other things started—a new way of walking that has a little macho hitch and swagger, a decision about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (con) and Eurythmics (pro), and a persistent curiosity about a certain girl whose name he will not reveal. He knows the price of everything he encounters. He knows how much college costs and what someone might earn performing different jobs. Once, he asked me what my husband did; when I answered that he was a lawyer, he snapped, “You must be a rich family. Lawyers make $400,000 a year.” His preoccupation with money baffles his family. They are not struggling, so this is not the anxiety of deprivation; they are not rich, so he is not responding to an elegant, advantaged world. His allowance is five dollars a week. It seems sufficient for his needs, which consist chiefly of quarters for Nintendo and candy money. The remainder is put into his Wyoming fund. His fascination is not just specific to needing money or having plans for money: It is as if money itself, and the way it makes the world work, and the realization that almost everything in the world can be assigned a price, has possessed him. “I just pay attention to things like that,” Colin says. “It’s really very interesting.”
    He is looking for a windfall. He tells me his mother has been notified that she is in the fourth and final round of the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. This is not an ironic observation. He plays the New Jersey lottery every Thursday night. He knows the weekly jackpot; he knows the number to call to find out if he has won. I do not think this presages a future for Colin as a high-stakes gambler; I think it says more about the powerful grasp that money has on imagination and what a large percentage of a ten-year-old’s mind is made up of imaginings. One Friday, we were