Page 17 of Nora Goes Off Script

Leo adds the spray nozzle to his bag with the cheese, and we say good-bye. “Enjoy your stay,” Mr. Mapleton says. “I’ll have my eye on you.”

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“What happens now?”I don’t even know how many times he’s asked me this today. Last time the answer was: I put the kids to bed. Before that it was: We watchWheel of Fortune. Preceded by: We have dinner. Between school and dinner was two hours of Fagin training. I’m not entirely sure if Arthur did his homework.

I pour a glass of wine and head toward the sunroom.

“Can I come?” I also don’t know how many times he’s asked that today.

I grab a second glass.

My sunroom is only big enough for a small couch, an armchair, and a coffee table. There are two ferns at all times, one dying and one getting started, on a regular rotation of grief and replacement. It looks out over the lawn to the tea house, where I can see Leo has left the door open to welcome him back.

Leo sits on the couch, so I take the armchair. He’s in a button-down shirt and shorts. He looks like he should be in the Hamptons or Malibu, any place but on my sagging beige couch. “Will you write tomorrow?” he asks.

“I think so; I need to start something new.” I take a sip of my wine.

“Let’s hope it’s not a musical.” He smiles an ironic smile. I’ve seen this smile before.

“African Rose,” I say.

“Stop it,” he says. “So, what’s the inspiration for the next script?”

“It’s not inspiration, it’s more like math.”

He sips his wine and leans back into the sofa cushions. “Explain.”

“I write movies for The Romance Channel.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Those two-hour movies that are mostly commercials?”

“Well, I’ve written a lot of them. That’s what I do.”

“Hilarious.” He pours us each a little more wine, killing the bottle. “So why is it math?”

“Maybe not math. Did you ever play Mad Libs as a kid? Where you have to fill in the nouns, adjectives, and verbs, and then there’s a story?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I do.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Give me a gender, a location, and a career.”

“Okay... female, Chicago, real estate developer.”

“Okay, easy. Stephanie, a young urban real estate developer, takes a trip to rural Illinois to look into buying a dairy farm and turning it into a corporate retreat center. The young handsome owner of the farm doesn’t want to sell, and they butt heads. But as she spends more time on the farm, she seeshow important it is to the community and they fall in love. In fact, she’s helping him organize the annual Founders’ Day festival later next week. They kiss. The night before Founders’ Day, she gets a call that she needs to shut down the farm immediately or lose her job. She leaves for Chicago. He is heartbroken.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. But wait, now it’s Founders’ Day, and you can pretty much insert any community event here—Christmas tree lighting, soup kitchen opening, children’s recital—and he’s plugging along, and who comes back? Stephanie!”

“Yes!”

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