Read Midnight Snack and Other Fairy Tales Online
Authors: Diane Duane
Midnight Snack and Other Fairy Tales (24 page)
They went out through the sliding doors, Mrs. Eldridge first, Rob following a short distance behind. And as they walked out into the parking lot, Rob saw someone standing out by a car, watching the door, and something sang down Rob’s nerves—recognition, certainty. The guy was in the sloppy baggy pants a lot of kids were favoring at the moment, a huge T-shirt, the inevitable baseball cap on backwards: a tall kid, maybe seventeen, eighteen years old, hatchet-faced, with a thin little excuse for a mustache just growing, his hair blond, longish, shoved back under the hat. He watched Mrs. Eldridge the way a cat watches a mouse: the way a murderer watches a prospective victim.
“You shouldn’t turn, ma’am,” Rob said, as they walked toward the edge of the parking lot, where it met the sidewalk of Mrs. Eldridge’s street. “Not obviously, anyway; it’ll disturb the flow. Seen this guy before? A tall kid, blond hair, baggies, kind of a hooked nose?”
Deliberately Mrs. Eldridge stopped and put down the plastic bag, as if the handle was cutting into her hand; then picked it up once more and started walking. “He lives in the apartment house to the right of me,” Mrs. Eldridge said, having turned her head just enough to catch a glimpse of the casual shape following her. “He has a motorbike. Always revving it up and down the alley in the back: the noise of it would deafen you. Another one with the late parties and the loud music.”
“You ever complain about him?”
She shrugged. “Lots of times, but not recently. Not that that would matter, I guess. But is that what we’re coming to, Sergeant? That someone complains about noise, and you kill them?”
“Not what we’re coming to,” Rob said softly. “Where we’ve been, for a long time now. People…” He shook his head.
They walked quietly down the street, in the gathering dusk, under the palm trees. Rob walked backwards behind Mrs. Eldridge, watching the tall skinny shape following them, all casual innocence. Rob saw that one side of the baggy pants was hanging unnaturally low, and the kid had his hand in that pocket, and was watching Mrs. Eldridge with care.
She merely kept walking.
“Do I have to go through it again?” she said then.
For any other similar case Rob had worked with lately, that would have been the first question. For this woman, it was the last. Rob wished he had had a chance to know her. “Of course not,” he said.
Mrs. Eldridge turned into her front walk, went up onto the porch, put the shopping bag down and fumbled in her little purse for her keys. She got them out, started going through the keys for the right one in the darkness of the porch, under the light fixture with the dead bulb. After a moment she found the key, opened the door—
Rob stepped in the door behind her, and snapped the heartline between them. The air went glassy again. Somewhere out in the land of probability, a few feet away but nonetheless nearly invisible to Rob and Mrs. Eldridge, a teenager drugged half out of his mind and desperate for money for more came up behind the nasty old lady who could afford to live in a whole house by herself, smashed her skull in from behind with a lug wrench, kicked her the rest of the way in through the door, closed it, and set about ransacking the place.
The gossamer form of the murderer headed for the back bedroom; a form even dimmer and harder to see lay on the hall rug, twitched a couple of times, and went still. “So that was it,” Mrs. Eldridge said softly.
“That was it,” Rob said.
“And now what?” Mrs. Eldridge said.
“Now…”
Rob stopped himself. He knew better than to try to give the woman directions: souls knew their own way. All the same, he was suddenly going to be sorry to see her go. He couldn’t get rid of the sense that there was something incomplete about this interview, though everything had gone as well as could have been expected.
“Now one of us goes on,” Rob said.
Mrs. Eldridge looked at him kindly, almost with pity. “Not just one,” she said.
Rob stared at her.
“But this is always the bad part, isn’t it,” Mrs. Eldridge said. “Where truth meets denial.”
Her voice didn’t sound the way it had before; and suddenly she didn’t look much like a little old lady, either.
“You were always the brave one,” said the tall and radiant figure standing there. “Always charging in. Always sure you were in the right. Well, you charged in one time too many, six months ago. It wasn’t that I knew for sure it was going to happen: but I’d had my suspicions for a long time. Why do you think I’ve been waiting here for you all this while?”
She waved around her, at the house with the seedy lawn and the down-at-heel guttering and the peeling stucco. “You had solving her murder her on your mind, that whole time. You came up that walk so sure you knew where all the guns were. But you never saw the one across the street, the one that surprised everybody. The paramedics were on another call: they got here exactly three minutes too late. But you were so intent on doing your job, and keeping the guys behind you from getting hurt, that you barely noticed your own murder one. You’ve been coming up this walk for a long time, again and again and again; remaking your image of the day, though for a long time your soul was too shattered by the trauma to be able to finish the walk. This is the first time you made it to the door.” She smiled. “But I knew you’d manage it eventually. Giving up was never your style.”
He stared at her, and the world whirled.
“You’re a good cop,” she said. “You always did your job, no matter how unfair it seemed, no matter how you seemed to get passed over when the promotions came around. None of that matters any more. There are other places that can use you now.”
“You’re my guardian angel,” he said. The words came out hoarsely: there was something about the look of her, standing there with the sword, that made him want to cry… and not because he was sad.
“Not just yours,” she said.
“Where is she?” Rob said, because it was all he could think of to say.
“She’s gone now, a long time,” the woman said. “Your boss was furious: he put Mike Gonzalez on the case right after they buried you. Not that any power on Earth could have stopped Mike from taking the case anyhow. He duplicated the results you produced just now. Mrs. Eldridge identified her killer. A month or so later they caught up with him in New Mexico.”
Rob let out a long breath of satisfaction, though without question it was bittersweet. “Where is he now?” Rob said.
She gave him a grim look. “Potter’s Field in Albuquerque,” she said. “He tried to shoot one of the arresting officers. He missed.” She let out a breath. “And after that, you know how it goes. The operations of Justice have a way of reverberating through things. Mrs. Eldridge, her murder solved, took herself off somewhere else. After that the only one who had to be brought home, secondary to the case, was you.”
“You waited for me,” he said softly, awed.
“I wait for everyone,” She said. “Come on, Rob. I can always use a steady worker at my end of things, and we’ve got a lot of work to do yet….”
From the sofa, She picked up the newly polished brassware, which Rob was now wryly amused not to have recognized immediately as a set of scales. From under the newspapers which had been protecting the sofa from the brass polish, She slipped out a sword, two-edged and bright. Then, together, She and Rob DiFalco went off into the day, into the realms of uncertainty again, where Justice and those who serve Her are needed the most.
The screenplay that follows contains a story that I’m very fond of. And since this, like some of the other works in this anthology, is a ghost story, I’m adding it to round this volume out.
As often happens with me, the title itself, derived from an accident of speech, was what started the story rolling. “Bed and breakfast” came out accidentally one morning as “Dead and breakfast”, and led instantly into a very odd train of thought. If there were a dead-and-breakfast, what would it be like? And why would it be there in the first place?
Once my brain starts running along lines like this, it won’t stop until it thoroughly explores the answer. The result, this screenplay, took about two years to write (my nonpaid screen work tens to run slowly) and produced what filmwriters call a “spec script”. This is a sample of your work, not so much expected to sell on its own recognizance (though that would be nice) but to confirm that you understand the script basics—structure, page format, how dialogue runs—and just generally to showcase your style and what you can do.
Dead and Breakfast also appeared online in 2011 as part of that year’s ScriptFrenzy online screenwriting month, so I add here the graphic (complete with the inevitable author-generated fantasy casting) which accompanied it there.
…Please note that screen format is the dickens to transfer to ebook format, and can display badly even when everything else in an ebook looks okay. (And the results can be peculiar. For example, the formatting upsets my iPad display in BlueFire Reader, but iBooks has no problem with it. Go figure.) If you have trouble reading the following in e-format, there are a couple of things you should try:
(1)
Reduce the size of your reader’s lettering. (This seems to work about 70% of the time.)
(2)
Alternately, please either download this PDF file at our storage site at Box.com, or click on it to open it directly:
https://www.box.com/s/vcb7fjfmsyys644docw7
Thanks!
DEAD AND BREAKFAST
FADE IN:
INT. ERICKSON COMPUTERS, LONDON, NIGHT—ESTABLISHING
A WHOLE FLOOR of a high-rise office building, HQ of a big high-tech company. Evening CITY LIGHTS show through floor-to-ceiling windows. The complex of private and open offices is occupied by late-working white-collar EMPLOYEES of both sexes. It’s after end-of-business. Staff are leaving.
CAMERA MOVES THROUGH the outer office as ND EMPLOYEES say their good-nights, EXIT. Beyond desks and filing systems is a big office built against the outer windows—a glossy, tech-rich private corporate control center. Its walls are made of OPAQUE black glass. A door in the glass SLIDES open; a SECRETARY comes out.
SECRETARY
Good night, Mr. Erickson.
She EXITS. After a moment, behind her, the black glass walls FADE TO TRANSPARENCY. A MAN, ROBERT ERICKSON, handsome, fresh-faced and young-looking, sits inside. His feet are up on the desk, his hands behind his head: he talks animatedly on a headpiece phone, watching the departing Secretary. After a moment, he waves at the windows: they DARKEN TO BLACK again.
Off to one side is the floor’s master computer area, GLASSED IN to control temperature and sound. All around it, office lights TURN OFF, the main room DARKENS. Only the computer area remains lit as CAMERA PUSHES IN on it. A last OFFICE WORKER moves around it, turning things off. Terminals GO DARK: telltales BLINK OUT on the big blocks of supercomputers and server farms. The Office Worker moves to the biggest server stack, TOUCHES a switch on its side. It GOES DARK. The man EXITS: the room lights DIM behind him.
CAMERA PUSHES IN on the computers: still, dark… until suddenly one SMALL LIGHT SOURCE is visible. Red letters GLOW on an LED display on one computer. They form a word; then another. The letters display slowly, as if with an effort.
HELP. ME. HELP ME. A beat, and then: PLEASE. PLEASE HELP ME. The words SCROLL horizontally across the tiny display. PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP ME. HELP ME OH GOD PLEASE HELP ME HELP HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…..
— until nothing remains but the constantly repeating EEEEEEE, a silent electronic scream….
EXT. SKY OVER ENGLAND—DAWN
Heading for a gorgeous airline sunrise. A JET PLANE drops eastward toward the cloud cover—big white puffy clouds, with heaven knows what underneath them. PILOT CHATTER TO AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL can be heard, the usual drawly filtered voices discussing wind speed, runways, radio frequencies, etc.
The plane drops into the clouds.
STEWARD’S VOICE (V.O.)
(filtered)
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now making our final approach to London’s Heathrow Airport. As the Captain has turned on the seat belt sign…
INT. 747—EARLY MORNING
The red-eye, and everybody looks it. Blankets are being shoved under seats, headphones handed back, the usual mayhem of the end of a transatlantic flight. FADE IN ANNOUNCEMENT INSIDE PLANE as it makes its preparations for landing.
STEWARD’S VOICE (O.S.)
…we ask that you make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in the upright and locked position…
JOY (O.S.)
Oh, Harry, we’re here! We’re here!
HARRY (O.S.)
You mentioned. Several times.
Off to one side, a man and a woman sit on either side of an empty seat. The woman, JOY COLLINS, is thirtyish, enthusiastic, pretty, like a young girl when she’s excited—which she is now. In the aisle seat, her husband HARRY, late thirties, middle-executive type, is bored with all this and weary with jetlag.
JOY
You’re just jaded.
HARRY
My body thinks it’s three in the morning. I wish I felt as
good
as “jaded”.
Joy has her face pressed against the window like a kid longing to get into a candy store.
JOY
Look at all the beautiful little old houses!
(delight)
That one’s got cows around it!
HARRY
It’s called “a farm.”
JOY
So close to the city!
HARRY
We’re not that close.
JOY
I don’t care! Harry, it’s merrie England! Haunted castles, and thatched houses, and quaint little pubs, and royalty!
Harry looks at her with tired but amused affection.
JOY (CONT’D)
Look, there’s a river! Is that the Thames?
(rhymes it with “names”)
Give me the camera!
HARRY
“Temz.” Joy, it won’t come out. They never do.
Ignoring him, she begins happily snapping pictures.
JOY
It would if he’d stop turning. He’s doing it again.
Visible out the window is the glitter of the outskirts of London as seen from above in the early morning, including WINDSOR CASTLE.
JOY (CONT’D)
Harry, look at that!
(perplexed)
Why did they build their castle so close to the airport? The noise must be terrible.
HARRY
Yeah, Henry the Eighth’s wives used to complain about it all the time. That’s why he went through so many.
Joy gives him a look…amused, but with a slight edge.
INT. HEATHROW IMMIGRATION FACILITY—EARLY MORNING
Hundreds of people waiting in line. Prominent in b.g., a transparency-holder on the wall has an ad for ERICKSON COMPUTERS—REAL POWER, REAL AFFORDABLE, with the Erickson logo, a jazzy “brushstroke” five-point-star-in-circle (NB: the star is upside down). The ad’s background features Robert Erickson, leaning there casually in jacket and jeans, young, earnest and wholesome-looking, like some kind of dream geek.
Harry and Joy are in line, inching forward toward the desks with the immigration officers. Harry checks his watch, tired and bored. Joy has her nose buried in a guidebook already.
JOY
I don’t know what to see first. The Crown Jewels… the National Portrait Gallery… Buckingham Palace!
HARRY
You’ve got plenty of time.
JOY
We’ve
got plenty of time. You promised you’d get a couple days off from the sales seminars.
HARRY
Hon, don’t push it. If it wasn’t for the company discount, you’d be sitting home complaining that we never go anywhere together. Don’t sit around waiting for me.
JOY
I won’t…
But her face makes it plain that she wants him with her, no matter what she says.
At the head of the line. they pause, then are waved forward by the LINE-MINDER to one of the immigration desks, where an IMMIGRATION OFFICER waits: a handsome black lady with a pronounced Jamaican accent.
IMMIGRATION OFFICER
Good morning. Can I have your passports, Please?
Harry hands his over to the Officer. Joy hurriedly gives Harry the guidebook and starts searching through the many VELCRO’d pockets of her “traveller’s skirt”.
JOY
Oh, I’m sorry—just a minute —
HARRY
(amused: to the officer)
Six secret pockets in that skirt and she can’t find any of them.
Much RIPPING VELCRO as Joy keeps going through the pockets. Finally she finds the right one, comes up with her passport and hands it over, abashed.
IMMIGRATION OFFICER
That’s all right—Mr. and Mrs. Collins. What is the purpose of your trip, please?
HARRY / JOY
Business. / Pleasure.
Amusement as they step on each other’s line. The Officer smiles at them.
HARRY
I’m with Erickson Computing. I’m in for the national computer show. My wife’s along for a holiday.
IMMIGRATION OFFICER
(smiles at Joy)
Your first time, I see. How long will you be staying in the United Kingdom?
JOY / HARRY
Not long enough. / Two weeks.
The Immigration lady stamps their passports, hands them back.
IMMIGRATION OFFICER
That’s fine. Enjoy your stay.
JOY
Thank you!
They head past the desks, toward the escalators to the baggage claim area.
JOY (O.S.) (CONT’D)
(sotto)
Was that an English accent?
The officer OVERHEARS, amused, and turns to her next customer as Joy and Harry EXIT.
INT. HEATHROW MAIN CONCOURSE—MORNING
Joy and Harry have collected their luggage. Joy waits while Harry goes through their carry-on luggage and comes up with two slick-looking SMARTPHONES. He hands Joy one.
HARRY
Here’s yours for while we’re here. We drop them off at the show when it’s over.
JOY
They ought to let you keep them.
HARRY
You kidding? Mrs. Erickson’s little Bobby didn’t get to be the tenth richest man on the planet by giving his employees freebies. Discounts, maybe…
Joy turns hers over in her hands, looks at it.
JOY
It’s really nice.
HARRY
Best on the market.
JOY
The eternal salesman.
HARRY
No, it’s true! Best performance for the least money. Drives the competitors nuts. They wish they could figure out how we do it.
JOY
How
do
you do it?
HARRY
Don’t ask me. That’s hardware. I’m sales. But anyway, it’s all set up so you can text me or tweet me if I have to cancel dinner or something…
JOY
(resigned)
You mean “when.”
HARRY
Look, hon, you knew this would be a working holiday. You said, I understand, I’ll probably have to be on my own a lot, I’ll cope…
He’s not cruel about this, just needs her to understand. Joy tries to put a good face on it as they head toward a door signed “TAXICABS”, through which the cab rank is visible.
JOY
And I will. I just wish we could have a real vacation together, a
normal
trip, like normal people….
HARRY
Joy, you know how work’s been.
JOY
And now I’m going to have to spend my days running around in a strange country all by myself…
HARRY
Come on, Joy, it’s not as if we don’t all speak the same language.
They pass a newsagent kiosk sporting a “Sun” broadside advertising today’s edition. It says, “GAZZA HAZZA BOG ROMP!” Joy gives it a look.
JOY
I’ll take your word for it.
EXT. ORMONDE HOTEL—DAY
One of many near-identical three-story houses in the “small hotel zone” near Victoria Station: all the hotels painted white, all with two steps up to the door, all with the same twin-pillared portico in front. The cab lets Harry and Joy off in front of one that sports a small lighted sign saying ORMONDE HOTEL. While Harry pays the cabbie, Joy eyes the place. Whatever she was expecting, this isn’t it.
JOY
(gallant)
Looks nice. The travel agent said it was a good deal?
HARRY
She said it was the
only
deal. There are five other conventions in town.
(encouraging)
Come on, hon, it won’t be bad. We won’t be in a lot in the daytime.
JOY
(slight wistfulness)
And what about nighttimes?
HARRY
Come on…
INT. ORMONDE HOTEL LOBBY—DAY
If “lobby” is the word for so tiny a reception area. Like all the rest of the hotel, it’s stuck in the 70’s in decoration and design: everything a little tired and shabby, though clean enough. The reception desk has a small room behind it, with business equipment and some furniture, a cross between an office and a sitting room. Down a short hallway is a two-person elevator, and another door leading to a tiny lounge, not visible from this angle. Near the reception desk, in a faded vinyl chair, a BLOND MAN in his early twenties, GUNTER MEYRING, sits reading a newspaper.
Harry leans over the desk, RINGS the bell there.
HARRY
Hello? Hello?
DORIS (O.S.)
Oh! Oh my goodness!
From the little room comes DORIS LEWISHAM, a plump lady in her mid-50’s with an expression of eternal surprise —and the surprises haven’t always been good: there’s sadness in that face, too. She comes out to take care of Harry with a manner that suggests she’s pleased to see business walking in her door, any business at all.
DORIS (CONT’D)
Oh, good morning! Can I help you?
HARRY
Uh, we have a reservation… Mr. and Mrs. Collins?
DORIS
Oh, yes, certainly, I think I remember, yes, here it is, Mr. and Mrs. Collins, that’s a double, isn’t it? Oh, my, you’re ever so early, I’m not sure the room’s ready yet.
HARRY
Could you possibly check? We’re just off the red-eye, and I’d like to get a few hours’ sleep if I could.
Doris bustles out from behind the desk and hurries down the hall to the lift, into which she VANISHES. A little terrier dog, BRUNO, comes out from behind the desk to check out the guests, their luggage, etc.
DORIS
I’ll be right back, sir, wait just a moment, I’m sure we can have everything ready for you shortly…
Harry leans on the desk and looks around. Joy makes a fuss over Bruno and looks around doubtfully at the tacky furnishings: the plastic-covered furniture, the dingy “Monarch of the Glen” print, etc. She turns and finds herself looking at the man in the chair.
JOY
Good morning!
GUNTER
Gute morgen, gnädige Frau.
JOY
Oh, another tourist! How nice! Have you been waiting here long?
GUNTER
(passable German-accented English)
A little while, madame.
JOY
Oh, not too long, I hope.
She turns to Harry, who’s looking also around dubiously.
HARRY
Last time I was here, they put me in the Savoy. This is a little… different.
Doris comes hurrying back, SQUEEZES behind the desk. As she talks she produces the sign-in book and a ROOM KEY (the TAG on the key is SMALL: this will be a plot point later).
DORIS
Yes, Mr. Collins, it’s just fine, can you sign here please? Here’s your key, you’re in room eighteen, that’s the third floor, third room down on your right as you come out of the lift, it’s all set for you, you have a nice rest now, breakfast is from seven to nine-thirty if you sleep late, I’m Mrs. Lewisham, if you need anything at all just call…
HARRY
Thank you.
He takes the key, loads himself with bags and heads down the hall. Joy takes the key off him, pauses by the desk as GEORGE LEWISHAM, Doris’s husband, in his mid-50’s and balding, comes out to look over Doris’s shoulder.