It’s a bright, cold morning. Invigorating. The breath comes out in a cloud. I like looking at that cloud. Makes me feel invincible, not sure why. Time for a nice cup of expensive coffee with lots of sugar. Look, a franchise, and there are several people sitting alone at tables, even a lone woman. Surely, she’d enjoy having my attention. I’m a great guy. I’ll go sit with her.
“Hi. Mind if I share your table?”
Smiling, I wait for a response, while she glances at an empty chair and says:
“What if there is nothing here for you, or me, or anyone, beyond living and breathing in this one moment here and now? Think of that. Think of the heart suddenly stopping, the brain ceasing to generate any idea whatsoever, no movement, no choices. Black empty nothing. A dreamless sleep from which you will never awaken. Ever.
I’m betting that unless you’ve been one of the near death types hallucinating lights or departed friends waiting with open arms, you can’t do it. Even if you’re a horror movie fan, you can’t come up with a scene where everything just stops, kaput. In horror movies, the dead are reduced to shredded meat smearing red all over the set. You don’t get the dead’s point of view. They’re done. Over. Finis. No recognition of relief from the pain and fear that brought them to that end.
If on the other hand, who’ve seen the black void, you can’t forget that, either. Which is correct? The light? The Abyss? A hallucination is, without a doubt, the more comforting image. There is no proof, no repeatable experiment either way against which to judge what happens when we die.”
I stare at her for a moment, puzzled into silence. She then adds: “I have a concealed carry permit, as well.”
“Why would you tell me all that?” I’m perplexed.
“Maybe for the same reason you waltzed over and intruded into my space, ruining my quiet morning ritual.”
Taken aback and a little insulted I counter: “There are 4 chairs at this table and three are empty.”
She parries: “And there are three tables with only one man at each. Why didn’t you go sit with one of your own kind?”
“I wouldn’t want them to get the wrong idea… hey.” Defensive.
She laughs. “Really? The wrong idea. And what the fuck did you imagine I’d think?”
Appalled by her coarse rebuff, I stiffen with my coffee and catch myself muttering a “fuck you, too,” and turning away, it dawns on me… what was I thinking? Is this the white male privileged patriarchy reacting? Is there any suave way to redeem this awkward situation?
No, there is not. It isn’t a movie. It’s a coffee shop in real time.
Just walk outside, watch the clouds of breath steam forth and sit in the car. Maybe I am lucky to be alive in this moment. What if she really had a gun? Maybe she was some psycho killer. Maybe I’ll read about it in the papers, “Barista Bar on Broadway blown up by a feminazi.” Feminazi. Is that what I think of this woman who didn’t want MY company?
Nope. This is all wrong and this is never going to happen. No gun, no blowing up anyplace. No encounter with sexism or questioning white male privilege.
Hell, I never even left the house this morning. Too damn cold. I’m happy just type out a scene and file it in the computer.
My wife is in the kitchen pouring coffee for herself. She asks if I’d like a cup? I ask her if she remembers when we first met.
“Of course. We worked at the print shop together. We were both young and horny and now, 45 years later, here we still are.” She leaves without pouring a cup of coffee for me.
The cat claws the back of my chair and I tell her to stop and shoo her away. She’s shredded the back of this chair; not that I’d sell it. Shit. The train of thought has left the station and now I have to get up and get my own damned cup of coffee.
I yell at my wife in the next room: “You wanna go get some breakfast?”
She yells back: “No. One: Pandemic. Two: Not hungry.”
How can she not be hungry? I’m hungry.
The cat snags my pant leg and mews. She’d like breakfast. At least there’s the cat and I can make her happy. As I rinse the blue ceramic oval bowl for her chicken delight, I ponder that after 45 years, are we happy or just habituated to each other’s reactions? Not you, cat- my wife.
The cat looks at me as if to say: “what is taking you so long?” and hops up on the counter to sniff at what is clearly no longer a delight, chicken or otherwise.
Animals can catch COVID, my wandering mind notes. Why doesn’t the cat wear a mask? I serve the dish. The cat eats a little then proceeds to wash her face. Wash her face. Nope, just paw swipes of cat spit.
I take my coffee back to the computer and google how much hand- guns cost.
Then, back on track, I imagine the whole scene again from the woman’s point of view. Protective of my ego, same coffee shop, I imagine she is an intelligent modern woman who has had it up to here with misogyny. She just likes a quiet cup of coffee and her own thoughts some mornings and then goes about her day. It is a small treat she gives to herself. She likes this coffee house because it is quiet and generally uncrowded. But this morning, this guy, who’s too the fuck happy to be out and about on his own, sticks his nose into her solitude. He might as well have grabbed her breast and leered into her face: “How about a blow job there, honey”. Like it wasn’t a suggestion. She is enraged. Read the room, dude!
After the encounter, he leaves. But you know what? She follows him. She’s sneaky and he doesn’t see her. She finds out where he lives, where he works, and she targets him. He will be the bullseye, sacrificial lamb, and metaphor for how she isn’t going to take “it” anymore. And then the entire script flows out. Title: Vacuum the trunk- and other forensic thwarting tips.
A story about a hapless dude who gets lured into an empty house and drugged, then wakes up with a bomb strapped to his chest and the police surrounding the place believing he is some crazy suicide bomber.
Sure, he eventually is shown to be innocent, not a terrorist, although his life is ruined. He’s lost his job, his friends, the girl who could have been a sweet little wife. The stalker woman has vanished. The police have looked, nada, and now they have more pressing cases in their faces.
The hapless dude must move to another city, change his name and start over, embittered but also relieved he can regroup.
OK, I’ll tell you more of the plot. The hapless dude meets a group of amateur sleuths with time on their hands and the bunch of them all decide to investigate his case and actually find that stalker woman.
But, instead of vindication, she outsmarts the whole lot of them in an suspenseful scene where the amateur sleuths and the hapless dude are again lured and drugged inside the stalker woman’s own house! They all wake up, mostly unharmed but scared, who wouldn’t be? The woman is gone, but there’s a note left behind. She writes to the hapless dude whose life she ruined:
“Sorry, dude. Here’s the deed to my house. It’s all I have to offer as amends. You’ll never find me a second time.”
The police again are skeptical; they seek but do not find. All the amateur sleuths get distracted by alien sightings in the desert and leave the hapless dude to his new found real estate.
Hapless dude eventually gets over his anger -again- and moves in, or maybe he just sells the place. Either way, now he has money to travel and guess what? He travels to the very place where the stalker woman has been hiding out.
There the story ends leaving the audience to wonder what happened next or annoyed and not caring for the fate of either character.
That’s how it is. Stories either grab you and get produced or they don’t.
Writing, like other forms of art, need to be made for their own sake’s first...
Said the naïve but good-hearted writer tapping out this story.
Apparently, The End.
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