ScriptFrenzy 2011: "Dead and Breakfast", pages 48-56

by Diane Duane

 

(back to pp 43-47)

[scrippet]INT. RESTAURANT — EVENING

A nice restaurant. Joy and Harry are in the middle of the meal. An empty bottle of wine is taken away and a new one is brought. Both of them seem edgy.

HARRY
And on top of it all, you forgot to leave the key at the hotel again. I couldn’t get a clean shirt.

Joy starts going through her “secret pockets” with much VELCRO-RIPPING, hunting for the key in an abstracted way.

JOY
Oh, honey, I’m sorry. It’s just been — a weird day, that’s all.

HARRY
At least I was able to thank George. That was one heck of a tip he gave me.

JOY
Was it?

HARRY
It won me six hundred quid. I wish I’d bet more.

JOY
Oh, honey, that’s terrific! See what I mean about it being such a nice place.
(ready to tell him)
Harry — there’s something unusual about the people there.[/scrippet]

[scrippet]

Harry is quiet for a moment: looks at her.

HARRY
So I gather. How was lunch with your boyfriend Gunter?

JOY
It was more of a snack, he doesn’t —
(blinks)
He’s not my “boyfriend”. Don’t be snide.

HARRY
That’s just how it looks.

JOY
It’s not like that. I think he’s lonely.

HARRY
Like you?

Joy says nothing for a moment. She busies herself cutting up her food.

HARRY
Look, I know this isn’t turning out the way I said it would. I had no idea the trip was going to be this busy. If I’d —

JOY
If you’d known.

HARRY
I’m glad you understand. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, or the next day —

JOY
(looking haunted)
Yeah? Is there going to be a tomorrow? How can you be so sure?

HARRY
What’s that supposed to mean?

JOY
Harry —

HARRY
Look. I know I’m a workaholic. I want a good life for us, that’s all! After the way things went downhill with Mary because there was never enough money —

JOY
Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that money might not be the issue? And I don’t think it was for Mary, either. I don’t want stuff, or a big fancy house. It’s you I want. But you’re always working so hard, sometimes I think I’m running a hotel myself. Food and laundry service, travel agent, secretarial, everything but wife stuff! Sometimes I think Mary got tired of being married to “sales”, instead of a man!

A long silence here. Harry is beginning a slow burn.

HARRY
If I thought you were seeing so much of this Gunter just to make me scared I was messing up our marriage by overwork, I’d get really angry. But I don’t think you’re calculating enough for that. So all I can assume is that you want me to know that you’re lonely. Okay! You’re lonely! I’m sorry! But it can’t be helped, not this trip. Don’t you realize how terrific it was that I asked to come here? It could mean a promotion, even a transfer over here —

JOY
“Not calculating enough?” God, what a backhanded compliment. Not smart enough, you mean.
(angry too, now)
You don’t believe a word I’m saying, do you? Even though you haven’t come right out and said “liar”. There is nothing between Gunter and me. He hasn’t touched me. He can’t touch me: he’s dead!

HARRY
(aback again)
What?

JOY
He is dead. He died in nineteen forty.
(wry beat)
His bomber was shot down and crashed into a Burger King.

Harry simply stares at her, completely confused.

JOY
You saw how people in the hotel were just picking at their breakfasts —

HARRY
With that bacon, it’s no surprise.

JOY
It’s not the goddamn bacon! They only eat for practice! They’re from all kinds of times, and they’re stuck here, near where they died. Doris just gives them a place to stay. She has to!
(beat)
George is dead, too.

Harry rubs his face, finding all this a little too bizarre.

HARRY
George. And here I thought Gunter was the problem.

JOY
(cranky)
George is fine. He gave me a little scare when he came through the bedroom wall at me, but we’re friends now.

HARRY
Have you stopped taking the Zoloft?

JOY
(shocked)
Harry!

HARRY
I tried to be understanding about it, I really did. The doctor told me you were going to need some room and some time to get through the stress, the divorce going final and all, and dear God I tried to give it to you. But if you think you’re going to get some petty little vengeance on me now by acting like you’re going nuts — at this moment in time, when if I perform well enough, it could make my career —

Joy stares at him, stony-eyed. Harry glares back.

HARRY
I can’t believe you’d be so selfish, so petty. I can’t believe it.

JOY
Believing does seem to be a problem for you. Doesn’t it…

Harry GETS UP, tosses his napkin onto the table, STALKS OUT.

HARRY
Just get back on the pills.

Joy sits there stunned.

INT. COMPUTER SHOW PARTY — NIGHT

One of the endless PR-driven boozefests that surround such events, this one thrown by Erickson Computers. A loud band, a lot of media and computer people talking and drinking nonstop. Harry wanders through this disconsolately, having come down from angry to vaguely miserable.

Off to one side, propping up the bar, are Harry’s immediate boss, Boyce, and another of the young Salesguys seen earlier at the computer show, NIGEL. Harry WANDERS over to them.

BOYCE
Harry! Great day!

HARRY
(unenthusiastic)
Yeah, thanks, Boyce. Hey, Nigel. How’d you do?

NIGEL
A hundred and fifty units, all by myself. I am a happy lad. What’re you having?

HARRY
A beer, thanks.

BOYCE
Hey, cheer up, Harry. You did just fine. And the whole group had a super day. Nine hundred units! The boss is pleased.

HARRY
(glancing around him)
That’s great. Looks like some people aren’t, though.

The others follow Harry’s glance. In B.G., MICHAEL CARLYLE, a tastefully dressed, slender, silver-haired older man, sits reading one of the trade papers (even in this bad light) and drinking doubles. No one sits with him: there’s a feeling that he’s being avoided.

BOYCE
Oh. Take more than a good sales day to cheer that one up.

HARRY
Who is it?

NIGEL
Michael Carlyle.

BOYCE
Formerly of Carlyle-Erickson.

HARRY
Thought he was bought out years ago.

Nigel hands Harry his beer. Harry takes a long drink.

NIGEL
He was. Still gets invited to these shindigs, though. Elder statesman, good will gesture and all that.

BOYCE
Not that the gesture produces much good will in him. Sour old sod.

HARRY
What’s his problem?

BOYCE
Oh, the usual. He was there when little Bobby was just getting started, Erickson would never have come to anything without him, blah blah blah.

NIGEL
I think it’s just ‘old school tie’ stuff.

HARRY
You lost me, Nige.

NIGEL
Oh, Carlyle was at Oxford, degrees out to here, and Erickson never made it past his local vocational school. Drives him nuts that Erickson was so good with the business angle, and now gets all these wads of money and the media attention as well.

Harry looks curiously over at Carlyle. Carlyle glances at him, an assessing look: then away again, dismissive.

HARRY
Is it bad to be seen talking to him?

BOYCE
Politically? Naah. Waste of time, though. He’d talk the ears off a donkey, that one. Listen, you coming to the Sega party later? They’re celebrating that new Russian helicopter-gunship game. Unlimited caviar, fountains of Stoly.

HARRY
Uh, yeah. Gotta catch up with the wife first.

He pulls out his cellphone, salutes the other two with it: they grin, move on. Harry goes off to one side, dials, hears:

PHONE NETWORK
The ErickNet customer you are trying to reach is out of cell or has their phone turned off. Please try again later. The ErickNet customer…

Harry puts the phone away, looking unhappy: then takes his beer and moves slowly over to where Carlyle sits by himself. Carlyle glances up. When he speaks, it is plain that Carlyle is several drinks along, but not at all slurred.

HARRY
Mr. Carlyle?

CARLYLE
Welcome to the leprosarium, Mr. —
(squints at Harry’s badge)
Collins.

HARRY
Call me Harry.

CARLYLE
The adorable instantaneous intimacy of our transatlantic cousins. Well, you may call me Michael. Not Mike.

HARRY
Thank you, Michael.

CARLYLE
So doubtless the young minions of British mammon have suggested that you come over and poke the hoary old fossil to hear his sullen borborygmal complaints.

Harry SITS DOWN by him.

HARRY
Wow, you know big words, Michael. I didn’t really have poking in mind.

CARLYLE
Oh come, young man. Grant the spectre at the feast enough intelligence to know what’s going on at the far end of the table. They all loathe me, these wretched little market-driven parvenus, for having had what they so desire and fear, a classical education. Yet such advantage counts for little in the crass world outside the university gates.
(another drink)
Would that a truck had hit me in the Carfax before they pedestrianized it. I’d have died young and poor and happy.

HARRY
(in the mood to be rude)
Instead of old and rich and cranky. But not so cranky that you’ll pass on drinking their booze.

CARLYLE
(taken with him)
Why, Harry, there’s a bite under your bark. What a welcome change from these buttery-mouthed, whey-faced youths.

Carlyle GESTURES at a passing BARPERSON for more drinks for the two of them.

HARRY
The scuttlebutt says you’re not entirely happy with Erickson.

CARLYLE
Heresy! Heresy most foul. Here we are all one happy worker-friendly family, awash in employee stock options and corporate handouts to keep the pixel-stained technopeasants content.
(beat)
For myself, I saw which way the wind was blowing, and I took the option package that was offered me and got out of the line of fire.

HARRY
And onto the billionaires’ list.

CARLYLE
(contemptuous)
The land of the many zeroes. Money I may have, but not what matters: respect. There’s nothing more pitiful than a discarded mentor, as even these contemptible graduates of bargain basement MBA programs and gaming arcades can see.

He finishes one of his drinks, picks up another.

HARRY
Why did you get out?

CARLYLE
You ask almost as if you’re genuinely interested.

HARRY
I am interested.

CARLYLE
Ingratitude. An awful thing, especially when it thinks itself invulnerable.

HARRY
Ingratitude… It doesn’t seem like much.

CARLYLE
Oh, there’s more. I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would frizzle thee up like the fretful porpentine.

HARRY
Okay. So unfold and let’s frizzle.

Carlyle spends a long thoughtful moment staring at Harry.

CARLYLE
Not here, for pity’s sake. Come on.

They EXIT.
[/scrippet]

(to pages 57-64)

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2 comments

ScriptFrenzy 2011: “Dead and Breakfast”, pages 57-64 | Out of Ambit April 14, 2011 - 9:57 am

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ScriptFrenzy 2011: "Dead and Breakfast", pages 57-64 - Eating Paper April 23, 2013 - 11:22 am

[…] (back to pages 48-56) […]

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