Page 16 of The Wedding Season
“I’m here. We’llsee.”
The cool raven-haired inked-up waitress comes over. She seems to be very familiar with him. “Hey Scott, long time nosee.”
“Hey—you weren’t at the Hotel Café lastweek.”
“I couldn’t make it, I had to work. How wasshe?”
“Amazing as always. Sam says her next album’s going to be more like the firstone.”
“I can’t even wait to hear it. What can I getyou?”
“Just a Diet Coke and a chopped Cobb salad.” He doesn’t even look at themenu.
The waitress looks at me. “You want anything else,sweetie?”
I am too busy wondering who this amazing “she” is that he went to see at The Hotel Café to think about food. “No I already ate, thanks.” I still haven’t gotten a handle on this lunch meeting thing, where people eat while talking about work. I’m fine with eating while I work, but eating while I talk about work with another human being? No thank you. That’s what coffee’s for.And also—who the fuck is this “she”person?
He looks at me, like he’s reading my mind, and says, “Last week I went with Sam to see this singer he works with. You’d love her, her name’s Kate Lucca. Her husband’s a buddy ofmine.”
Oh. I feel my body relax. “I’ve heard of her actually, I do likeher.”
“You should come to Hotel Café with us sometime. ‘Us’ meaning Sam and Maya, since they seem to be inseparable all of asudden.”
“Yeah, she seems to be spending quite a bit of time withhim.”
“He’s head over heels in love withher.”
“Oh? Good.” I don’t like that he has more information about it than I do. I don’t want to talk about this personal connection. I don’t want to open the door to a conversation about our make-out rampage, although from the way he’s acting and looking at me, it’s almost as if it didn’t even happen. Did I imagine the whole thing? “So let’s talkhorror.”
“Yes, let’s. I love this idea. I’ve always thought that horror and thriller movies are better date movies than romance. Gets the adrenalin going. It makes sense that they should be made to appeal to men andwomen.”
I have always thought this as well, but I’m not going to say so. I don’t want him to think I’m just going to agree with everything he says just because he’s written more horror scripts than me. I let the awkward long pause in conversation settle, like I probably will, when I’mfifty.
“Well. You have obviously come prepared. Let’s hear yourideas.”
“No, you go first.”Not falling for thatone.
“Okay.” He doesn’t even look at his notebook. He inhales, leans back in his chair and says: “Young happy American couple in a whirlwind relationship elopes, on their honeymoon they go to rural UK, let’s say Cornwall, because I have relatives there and it’s gorgeous and remote and windswept and creepy at night, they stay at an idyllic cottage that they got an amazing deal on, and guess what it’s haunted and the wife gets possessed by a demon. She has a history of alcohol and drug abuse, and they thought it was behind them, but the stress of being married all of a sudden gets to her and the husband can’t tell at first if she’s acting weird because she’s on something or if the local stories about the haunting istrue.”
Shit.
“I mean, I have other ideas, but that’s myfavorite.”
Shit! He knocked it out of the park the first time he stepped up to the plate. I can’t let him winthis.
“Thoughts? Hello? We can discuss it after you pitch yourideas.”
My three ideas sound like the premises ofScooby Dooepisodes. Do I pitch them, knowing that they suck, or do I get in front of this and accept that he’s got the better story to workwith?
I am tapping the tabletop with my pen. “Yeah,” I say. “I likeit.”
“Do you? Because I just thought of it when I was driving on the 10 just now, but it seems like there’s a lot we could workwith.”
I could kill you.“There is a lot to work with. But…I think it’s the husband who should be the one who’s a recovering addict and who gets possessed. The wife should be the protagonist and the one inperil.”
“I just think any studio would want the wife to get possessed, but we can have other strong female characters, like the wife’s hot sister who comes to visit, and a coolnun.”
“Yeah. Yes, there should be other strong female characters of course, but I still think the wife needs to be the protagonist. The audience needs to be scared for the protagonist, am I right? I’m not going to worry as much about the husband getting hurt by a demon-possessedwoman.”
