Page 6 of Swan Song

There has to be another way to finesse this. There is another way, Coco realizes, one that nicely dovetails with her burning desire to leave the Virgin Islands for the summer.

She sets down the order of conch fritters, and Bull Richardson growls. He’s more Mad Max than Crocodile Dundee, Coco thinks. She can easily picture him cruising across the outback in a Ford Falcon seeking vengeance and justice.

“I heard you mention Nantucket,” Coco says. “I’m heading there myself this summer.”

Bull dips a conch fritter into the roasted red pepper aioli and seems to take an interest in Coco for the first time. Bull holds her gaze (Coco has been told her entire life that her eyes are something special; the irises are icy blue with a dark blue ring around them). She expects his attention will drift down to her chest, but happily, Bull isn’t as coarse as her typical bar customer.

Leslee, meanwhile, has taken the moment to squeeze Harlan’s grapefruit-size biceps. She turns to Coco. “That’s quite a coincidence. Do you know people on Nantucket?”

“Yes,” Coco lies. Then she scrambles. Who? Who? “I grew up in Rosebush, Arkansas, and our town librarian, Susan Geraghty, introduced me to Nantucket.” Technically, Coco thinks, this is true.

“Rosebush, Arkansas?” Leslee says.

“Yes, ma’am,” Coco says. Coco’s screenplay is titled Rosebush. Her opening shot is of the town sign, which announces a population of 423, then the camera pans to Rosebush’s seen-better-days Main Street, which boasts two businesses: Grumpy Garth’s Diner and the Pansy and Petunia Vintage Market, where you can buy anything from a donkey saddle to Aunt Sally’s amethyst brooch missing all but one of the amethysts.

The screenplay follows a high-school girl named (for the time being) Coco, who wants to get the hell out of Rosebush. Most people in Rosebush care about nothing but college football and NASCAR, but Coco is obsessed with grander things: film, literature, art, music—culture.

The screenplay starts during Coco’s senior year, when she attends a program for exceptional students in Little Rock. She takes a screenwriting seminar with a professor from NYU who tells her she has a “good ear for dialogue” and a “keen sense of story arc.” These two compliments set Coco on her path; she returns to Rosebush energized, inspired, aroused. She wants to hitchhike to LA but before she goes, she needs at least a little money. She steals from the register at Grumpy Garth’s and then the safe, but she’s caught by Garth himself, which is awkward and horrible because Garth is a wonderful man (Coco imagines Morgan Freeman playing this part). September arrives and there’s no money even for community college in nearby Searcy, so Coco moves up to Missouri and gets a job bartending near the Lake of the Ozarks.

A montage of Coco at her new job follows: She pulls draft beers and pours shots of bourbon; she counts her tips, then looks across the dull mirror of the lake in which the Hollywood sign appears as a mirage. She’s gotten away—but not far enough.

Coco is named employee of the year and wins a weeklong cruise to the Virgin Islands. There’s a scene where Coco leans against the railing of a cruise ship marveling at the green peaks of the islands, the clear turquoise of the water. She has reached a land of palm trees and steel-drum music, hibiscus and white sandy bays. She wanders through Cruz Bay and sees a Help Wanted sign at a bar not unlike the Banana Deck, and the viewer realizes she’s going to stay.

The script ends there, but in real life, Coco wants a more meaningful dream to come true. She wants to enter the world of producers and first ADs, of craft services and second units. She will do whatever it takes to see Rosebush on the big screen. Only then will she have fulfilled her purpose.

When Coco turns her attention back to the Richardsons, she notices Leslee’s hand resting on the WAPA dude’s thigh. Coco’s eyes flick over to Bull. Is he seeing this?

“Anyway,” Coco says. “I’m really looking forward to this summer on Nantucket.” And suddenly she is. She will leave behind three o’clock happy hours and wild donkeys in the road for… what do they have on Nantucket? Lighthouses, clam chowder, cocktail parties on the croquet lawn?

Bull takes a long swig of his rum punch. “Do you already have a job nailed down?” he asks. “Because we’re going to need a household assistant. A… girl Friday.” He turns to Leslee, who lazily lifts her hand from the WAPA dude’s leg. “Right? We talked about finding someone.”

Leslee says, “We talked about hiring someone who’s familiar with the island since we’ll be brand-new there. We don’t know a soul.”

Coco says, “I’m deciding between two offers for the exact position you’re talking about. Personal concierge.”

“Yes!” Bull says. “Personal concierge! Well, don’t take those other offers. Come work for us instead. We’ll pay thirty-five an hour and provide housing.”

Wait, Coco thinks. Is it going to be this easy?

“Thirty-five an hour!” Harlan says. “Hell, I’ll go to Nantucket.”

“Bull,” Leslee says. Here it comes, Coco thinks, the velvet hammer. “We haven’t even bought a place yet.”

“But we’re close. You liked the one with the party room.”

“Party room!” Harlan says, hoisting his Bud.

Bull shoves the final conch fritter into his piehole. He has sun-scorched cheeks and a nose that looks like it’s been broken half a dozen times, so you couldn’t call him handsome, but his confidence and his accent are appealing.

“The party room is an orgy waiting to happen,” Leslee says like this is a good thing. “But isn’t that the house with issues? The erosion problem? Climate change…”

“By the time we need to worry about climate change,” Bull says, “we’ll be long dead.” He smiles at Coco. “We don’t have kids. Who cares if the house falls into the sea fifty years from now?” He slides his business card across the bar and Coco picks it up. BULFINCH RICHARDSON, it says. SWEETWATER DISTRIBUTION AND PRODUCTIONS. There’s a cell number and two email addresses, one for the distribution, one for the productions. “Send me your information tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll let you know when we close on the house, and we can reconnect on Nantucket. How does that sound?”

“Maybe we should ask her name first,” Leslee says fake sweetly. “Before you invite her to live with us.”

Bull says, “She already told us—it’s Sherry.”

“That was the song,” Leslee says.

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