Page 18 of The Wedding Season
“How did that make me competitive withyou?”
“Oh my God seriously? You don’t even consider me a competitor, do you? I’mthatinsignificant in yourmind.”
He leans forward. “No. Fuck—no that’snot…”
The waitress places a chopped Cobb salad on the table in front ofhim.
“Everything okay here, can I get you guys anythingelse?”
“We’re good, thanks,” hesays.
“Nothing for me, thankyou.”
“Gosh, Scott, why is it that every time you’re here a woman is yelling atyou?”
“Just lucky, Iguess.”
She walks off,smiling.
Was I yelling? I wasn’t yelling. I stare down at my notebook. “You know what, I don’t think this is going towork.”
“Erin. Listen to me. I don’t consider myself as a competitor of yours in the rom com genre because you’re way better at it than I am. I wrote a rom com script at Emerson because I was hoping you’d give me a lot of notes and that we could eventually work on something together. But you started ignoring me. So I wrote a young adult script and you started acting like I was the anti-Christ.”
“You can’t possibly have that low of an emotionalIQ.”
“You’d besurprised.”
Iguffaw.
“This isn’tBlack Swan. I’m not trying to steal the lead fromyou.”
“That’s exactly what you’d say if you were trying to steal the lead inSwanLake.”
“Well, if you start fantasizing about me going down on you while your mom bangs on your bedroom door, let meknow.”
“Oh shit I forgot aboutBlack Swan. Let’s write a psychological horror script about an artist of somekind!”
“Uh, how about nexttime.”
“There won’t be a nexttime.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” He starts shoveling salad into his mouth. He swallows before launching into the kind of rant that used to make me want to set him on fire back at Emerson. “I think this is the perfect thing for us to write. This is about a woman facing her fears. She’s in love with this guy—it’s the best sex of her life—I’m spitballing here—she didn’t believe in romantic love before she met him because her dad left her and her mom. He used to beat her mom. She internalized the mother’s fear of her dad and therefore all men and love and marriage. But. This guy is a recovering alcoholic. She met him a year into his sobriety. She’s never seen him drunk before, but she’s heard stories. Our love has changed him, she tells her mom. We’ll be okay as long as we have eachother.”
“Uhhuh.”
“He has to go to Cornwall for work,” he goes on. “She goes with him. She says goodbye to her mom and sister, heranchors.”
“Right.”
“And he startsdrinking.”
“At the neighborhood pub. She’s heard stories about the house they’re staying in being haunted. Which is scarier—the man she loves and married is an irresponsible angry violent man, or her husband has been possessed by a demon?”Fucking hell, you’re brilliant. My nipples are hard. I’m in over my head. Fuck you, Braddock. I can’t do this.“You really came up with this on the driveover?”
“Yeah, it’s rough, I know, but we’ll figure out the details,obviously.”
I need to contribute something here. This feels way too unbalanced. “What should we call it? How about Demons? Something simple likethat.”
“Notitle.”
