A young movie fan plays Jack The Snipper
I would steal them.
After all, we couldn't afford a subscription. And hey, maybe those people, those anonymous Joes and Janes who inhabited those apartments, the ones lined up beside ours, never read the entertainment section. Or at least, didn't value it, or value it as much as I did - and how could they. The movies were what I lived for, and eventually, as an extension of that love, those photos of the celebrities appearing in this week's films were what I lived for, so much so that they were worth stealing, worth taking other people's papers for.
It was easy.
The papers were delivered around four o'clock, about the time I got home from school. I would take the elevator up to our floor, the door would open, and there they'd be, lined up before each apartment like paper welcome mats - each apartment, that is, but ours.
I would look around - an empty ritual but who knew? There might always be that odd day where somebody would come home from work early, not the usual five thirty or six o'clock - and help myself to one - a different one each day, of course; I couldn't risk suspicion by going serial.
I would then hide it among my homework, walk into our apartment, greet my grandmother - who, in those years when neither parent was quite set up for me, was playing caregiver - and excuse myself, slipping into the bedroom (there was only one, hers; I slept in a sofa bed in the living room, but her bed was my makeshift homework table.)
Then, after closing the door on some convincing premise about the requirement of absolute concentration, I would carefully lay the paper out, close enough to the edge of the bed so that at the sudden sound of the opening of the door, I could quickly slip the contraband under it, and slowly pour over each page, drinking in the faces and names of my favorite stars, and/or the artwork of each piece of promotional propaganda.
After selecting my prized pieces, I would proceed, with my trustily silent school scissors, to cut whatever it was I had deemed the day's keepsakes out, leaving great big square holes in an otherwise pristine evening edition.
I would then silently open my bottom drawer - though the bedroom wasn't mine, a set of drawers, atop of which stood glow in the dark models of famed movie monsters, was - and add the images to those hidden beneath tidy piles of underwear and socks, where they would lay until taken out again later to be treasured anew in a stolen moment, like when my grandmother made off to run an errand or to visit a friend on another floor.
After finishing my homework, I would complete my criminal activity by stuffing the paper carefully inside my clothing, making some excuse before six o'clock - the hour at which I might very well get found out - to leave the apartment, such as volunteering to get that one ingredient that would make that night's dinner extra special or, more likely, make myself a candidate for "being a good boy" by offering to run for those magical three words: large Players filter.
Setting out, I would silently return the paper, sans select images, to the apartment from which it had been plucked, then be on my merry way to the smallish mall across the street, thrilled that I had lived - in other words, not been caught - to snip another day.
At night, while attempting to sleep in the sofa bed, I would sometimes hear rumblings through the too thin walls. I often wondered if they were Charlie or Harry, the kind of old fashioned, middle-aged grump I imagined inhabited the other apartments on our floor, finally getting to the evening's paper, and bitching at Mildred or Harriet about what the hell might be going on at The Ottawa Citizen through a mysterious rectangle.
