Benny headed over to Joon's apartment. He locked his car and headed inside. He knocked on their door.
Sam answered it. "I need to see Joon alone."
"O-kay," he said.
Joon was at her easel painting. "This better not take long Benjamin."
"Sam, would you mind leaving or going in the bedroom?" Benny asked.
Sam turned around and went to their room.
Joon knew something was up because Benny had never shooed Sam out of the room.
"Close the door," Benny told him. "Can we sit down?" he asked Joon.
Joon put down her paintbrush and they both took a seat at the table.
Benny unfolded the newspaper and tried to speak. "I saw this article and I-and. Will promise me you won't get upset?"
"Sam got an audition somewhere?" Joon said.
"No he didn't. This isn't about him, well sort of."
"Why?"
"Just promise me you won't get mad. Sam isn't going anywhere. I just want to hear your opinion."
"Okay."
Benny set the article in front of Joon and pointed to it.
"It's too long," she said.
"Only half a page," said Benny.
"You did say you would leave it here so I can read it later."
Benny had forgotten about that. "Oh right, I'll leave then. When you do read it, will you call me and tell me what you thought?"
"Yes," she nodded.
"Okay, I will see you soon then. Call later."
Benny left.
Joon told Sam he could come out.
"What was that about?" he asked when he came out.
"Benny wanted to show me some article so he left it on the table for me to read later," Joon replied
Sam went to the table and picked up the paper. He realized it was the same article he had found in the dumpster but the article wasn't cut out of the paper and it wasn't all wrinkled.
Sam looked up but saw Joon was back to her painting so he placed the paper down. Joon didn't like to be disturbed during her painting.
When Sam's reading lesson came, Joon put her brush down and got out some work books.
"Okay Sam it's time."
Sam was sitting on the couch watching The Birds. He was waving his arms in the air as the birds flew around attacking the villagers.
"Sam, I'm waiting,"
He went to the VCR and turned it off and the TV set. Benny had gotten them one for last Christmas.
Sam loved it when Joon acted like the mother. She made it sound like he was the child watching his favorite TV show and his mother calls for him to do his homework.
Back when he was a kid, his mother would call him and when he wouldn't come, she would come in the room and turn off the TV and yanked Sam out of the chair and pull him into a room to do his homework. She would even get mad at him for not spelling well and reading well. She hated how she had to help her son with his homework everyday after school and on weekends. Why couldn't he do his homework like all the normal kids?
Joon was the mother he never had. She bought all these fun work books and preschool story books from the local supermarket she find in the magazine section. She never yelled at him or called him names or made him feel bad. His reading and writing had improved in the past year so he was now reading at the third grade level than at the first grade level.
Sam sat down at the table with Joon. She picked up the paper.
"Do you want to try reading this article?"
What could he say? He wanted to impress her so he took the paper and tried to read it once again. After all it was about Singin in the Rain, he thought.
He started to sound out the letters. Joon helped him sound them out. After reading a paragraph, he gave up. He hated reading things that were too hard. They were just too hard to sound out.
"We'll move on to these," Joon said as she opened a work book that was for the second grade level.
They worked for the next hour and then Joon called it quits.
"Will you read this article to me?" Sam asked.
"After my shower," she said.
Sam went back to watching his movie as Joon showered. She always showered every other day while Sam did it everyday. Cleanness was important. When he get a spot on his clothes, he would wash it.
After the shower, Joon dried her hair off and brushed it and put on a pair of underwear and a t shirt and loose pants.
They both lied in bed and Joon read the headline. "The mild version of Rain Man."
She had heard of the title. It was at one of her groups she quit a long time ago and they played the movie there. Joon vaguely remembered it. She knew it was about an autistic guy and she hated Charlie because he was using his brother for money.
She remembered everyone made Rain Man jokes and acted like him and teased each other calling each other Rain Man. "That is so Rain Man" they kept saying. One of them who had a fear of flying due to an incident on an airplane when he was a kid so he suffered from post traumatic stress disorder, everyone called him Rain Man for it.
Joon started to read the article.
"What does this have to do with Singing' in the rain?" Sam asked when Joon was one forth way through the article.
"This isn't about the movie."
"It's not? But it said rain man. He sings in the rain."
"Rain Man is the name of the movie Sam," Joon said.
"Really? I never heard of it."
"That's because it's not an old movie. It's only a few years."
"Oh."
Joon kept on reading. "I'm not interested anymore," he said despite the story being about the boy who couldn't fit in with his peers and every time he tried to make friends, he kept being pushed away and made fun of and he has knowledge about trains.
After she was done reading, she put the article on the floor. She would call Benny in the morning.
Sam and Joon got close together and started to do the mattress mambo.