The Last Chairlift

30. THE WOMAN WITH THE BABY CARRIAGE

There are certain scenes from films you wish you never saw: in your mind, you keep replaying these scenes—or I do. Like those songs that get into your head, the ones you hate but you can’t stop singing.

Like most screenwriters, I keep rewriting my movies that were never made. I won’t presume to speak for other screenwriters, but I also keep rewriting certain scenes I didn’t write in the first place—even scenes from films I wish I never saw.

Am I the only one who does this? What if you wanted to be a fiction writer? What if you wrote novels, but you wanted to write screenplays, too? What if you suspected that your father had written the screenplay for a film you hated, and what if your father was in that same movie?

There are certain scenes in The Wrong Car that are in my head, like those songs I can’t stop singing. In my head, I’m in black and white, in 1956—I would have been too young to drive.

INT. GETAWAY CAR, PARKED. DAY.

The car is parked, but the motor is running. The GETAWAY DRIVER is Paul Goode (thirty); his handsomeness is not evident in the duckbill cap, a newsboy cap. A GUN MOLL sticks her pretty head into the open passenger-seat window.

GUN MOLL

Hey, what about me?

The GANGSTER in the passenger seat looks her over.

THIS GANGSTER

You gotta sit on someone’s lap.

The THREE GANGSTERS in the backseat give her a look.

ONE OF THE THREE

(points to the driver)

Not his lap. He’s gotta drive.

The gun moll takes a long look at the little driver.

GUN MOLL

(walking away)

No, thanks.

ANOTHER GANGSTER

Who’s the broad?

EXT. GETAWAY CAR, MOVING. DAY.

At a city intersection, the driver stops for a WOMAN WITH A BABY CARRIAGE in the pedestrian crosswalk.

ONE OF THE GANGSTERS (V.O.)

Just some broad.

INT. GETAWAY CAR, STOPPED. DAY.

In a hail of gunfire, the gangster in the passenger seat and the three thugs in the backseat are shot.

EXT. GETAWAY CAR, STOPPED. DAY.

The woman with the baby carriage has paused in the crosswalk while the ongoing gunfire riddles the getaway car; all four tires are shot, the car appears to slump, and gas and oil (and maybe blood) leak into the street.

CLOSER ON: the little driver sits unharmed and relaxed at the steering wheel, as if waiting for the light to change.

PULL BACK: the woman pulls a sawed-off shotgun out of the baby carriage; she approaches the getaway car as Paul Goode gets out of the driver’s-side door. He tips his duckbill cap to the woman, leaving the car door open for her. She shoots the slumped-over bodies of the dead passengers, just to make sure. Paul Goode nods to camera as he exits frame, as if the camera were one of the marksmen who ambushed the getaway car. Loose bills float through the blown-out windows of the car. Camera stays on the woman, transferring the satchels of money to the baby carriage, where she also stows the shotgun.

I don’t remember the name of the actress who played the woman with the baby carriage. I never saw her in another film, but she haunted me—not exactly like a ghost. I used to see her in line at my book signings, but she never showed up at the front of the line. I never got to sign her book. At my book signings, the woman wasn’t with a baby carriage. She really got to me, but she hadn’t once bothered to introduce herself. I sensed her dislike of the getaway driver. Maybe she disliked Paul Goode as a person, not only as an actor and a screenwriter.

Before I found out whether Paul Goode was my father or not, I didn’t like him. I especially don’t like him, as an actor or as a screenwriter, in this scene in the bar. This happens later in The Wrong Car, when we first find out that the getaway driver and the gun moll are a couple. I hate this scene.

INT. CITY BAR. NIGHT.

The getaway driver (no duckbill cap) is having a beer; he is evaluating himself in the mirror behind the bar when the moll comes in, cozying up to him on an adjacent barstool. She’s wearing his newsboy cap, or one just like it.

GUN MOLL

How’d it go, cutie pie?

GETAWAY DRIVER

(deadpan)

You know how it went.

(a pause)

Please take off that cap.

The moll puts the duckbill cap on the empty barstool beside her. She snuggles closer to the little driver.

GUN MOLL

Better?

GETAWAY DRIVER

Such an improvement.

CLOSER ON: Paul Goode’s shy, childlike smile.

FREEZE TO A STILL. FADE TO BLACK.

The woman with the baby carriage, that haunting woman from The Wrong Car, didn’t show up only at my book signings, but showing up was all she did—just appearing seemed to be her thing. I know. I’ve learned I should be careful not to generalize about ghosts.

Some evenings, when I was visiting my grandmother, either Nana or Dottie would persuade me to spend the night. I would have a sleepover in my attic bedroom of the Front Street house.

“It’ll make your grandmother happy, if you stay over,” Dottie would tell me.

“Just for old times’ sake, dear,” Nana would say.

Well, it was one thing to have a sleepover and see my grandfather’s ghost. I’d learned that you couldn’t predict exactly how (or in what state of mind) the diaper man might appear. It was another thing, entirely, when the woman with the baby carriage just showed up. Was she a fictional character? If so, in certain ways, she was not in character. She never tried to shoot me; she didn’t do anything. She never showed up with the baby carriage, or with the shotgun—at least not in the Front Street house. If she was that woman from The Wrong Car, she didn’t act like her—or like a ghost.

Besides, what would the ghost of the actress who played that character want with me? Why would she show up in the Front Street house? Was it a kind of casting call? The woman with the baby carriage was always a walk-on. If she was auditioning, she didn’t appear to want a speaking part. She never spoke.

I would wake up with a feeling that someone was there—a feeling I was familiar with, in the attic bedroom of the Front Street house. The woman with the baby carriage, as I would always think of her—even without the carriage, and always without a baby—would be sitting at the foot of my bed. She was looking at me, but with no expectations. Maybe she just wanted me to know she could have shot me, if she wanted to, but she didn’t appear to want anything.

“Oh, it’s you,” I said, the second or third time I woke up and saw her sitting there. But I could not compete with her insouciance. The woman with the baby carriage was more indifferent to me than I could ever pretend to be to her. In this respect, she was consistently in character. You couldn’t match her at being noir. When I woke up and saw her, she couldn’t be bothered to disappear. The woman with the baby carriage just got up from the bed and walked away.

I wrote her into my screenplays; even as a walk-on, she seemed too important for a minor character. I was influenced by Jules et Jim, not the devastating love triangle but the third-person, voice-over narration. There was nothing New Wave about my first-person, voice-over character—as close to Jules et Jim as I dared.

I started to write a screenplay about taking my mom to see The Wrong Car, but I never finished it. I won’t say that nothing came of it, because I learned something about writing screenplays. You are basically describing a movie you’ve already seen, but you’re the only one who’s seen it. When you write about your life as a screenplay, it’s as if you’re watching someone else’s life; it’s not your life, and you’re not living it. You’re only seeing what the characters do, your character included. And screenplays are written in the present tense—as if nothing has already happened, as if everything is unfolding in the present. I’m only saying this is how it started—how I began to see my life as an unmade movie. The way it began was almost natural.

INT. NEW YORK CITY CINEMA, 1971. NIGHT.

Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me” PLAYS OVER. Nora and Em (both thirty-six), sitting next to Elliot Barlow (forty-two), are looking along their row of seats to see how Little Ray (forty-nine) is reacting—as is Adam (thirty), who is barely interested in the movie but eager to detect any reaction from his mother. Little Ray sits between him and Molly (fifty-one), who is also interested in Ray’s reaction to the film.

ADAM (V.O.)

Paul Goode didn’t come out with a new movie for seventeen years, but The Wrong Car was revived at a noir festival in New York in the early seventies. Nora and Em and I had always wanted my mom to see Paul Goode onscreen—to see if Little Ray thought I looked like the little actor, or if she thought Paul Goode looked like someone she’d met in Aspen in 1941. Naturally, Molly and the snowshoer thought we should leave well enough alone.

Ray stares blankly at the screen while everyone watches her.

“You Send Me” CONTINUES OVER.

ONSCREEN, CLOSE-UP: in black and white, a doorknob turns—first one way, then the other—but the door doesn’t open.

PULL BACK: beside the door is a hat rack with four or five duckbill caps, all the same, hanging from the hooks.

A WIDER ANGLE: the gun moll and the getaway driver are undressing on a bed, dropping their clothes on the bed or flinging them onto the floor of a small studio apartment. There’s a radio on the bedside table. In her bra and panties, kneeling on the bed, the moll manages to take off her bra and turn off the radio—no more Sam Cooke. The getaway driver is wearing only his boxer shorts, which the moll swiftly yanks down; for half a second, we see his little bare ass.

CLOSER ON: the door to the apartment, as the driver’s boxers are flung onto the floor. The door opens, and the woman with the baby carriage pushes the carriage ahead of her as she comes inside, the door key clenched in her teeth.

On the bed, the moll tries to cover herself, as does the little driver. The woman wheels the baby carriage up to the bed, staring down at them.

GETAWAY DRIVER

You coulda knocked, ya know.

WOMAN WITH THE CARRIAGE

You coulda put a note on the door—sayin’ you was busy, or somethin’. You gave me a key, ya know.

GUN MOLL

(to the driver)

You’re married? You have a baby?

WOMAN WITH THE CARRIAGE

(to the driver)

It’s your turn with the baby, little fella.

(as she leaves)

I’m drivin’ next time, ya know.

When the getaway driver gets out of bed, we very briefly see his bare ass again; the moll, still in her panties, is hurrying to put on her bra. The driver shoves the baby carriage out of his way. Camera follows the carriage; it collides with the closed apartment door, where we see the little driver’s hand enter frame and snatch his boxers off the floor. There’s loose money—scattered bills float around.

GETAWAY DRIVER (O.C.)

(to the moll)

I told ya, I’m not married.

A WIDER ANGLE: the getaway driver finds a pack of cigarettes by the radio; he lights one and sits on the bed. The gun moll goes to the baby carriage; she wants to be sure the baby is okay. When she reaches into the carriage, all she finds is the sawed-off shotgun, which she cradles in her arms the way she might hold a baby, smiling to the driver—a smile of eternal love and forgiveness. He’s not married; there’s no baby.

On the bed, the cocky little driver takes a drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke in the moll’s direction.

GETAWAY DRIVER

(smiling)

Be careful with that baby.

FADE TO BLACK. END CREDITS ROLL.

REVERSE ANGLE: on the audience, as “You Send Me” PLAYS OVER. The OTHER MOVIEGOERS—a crowd of New Yorkers—make Molly and Ray look out of place. Nora and Em and Adam—Mr. Barlow and Molly, too—are trying to read Ray’s reaction to the film.

ADAM (V.O.)

My mother was the kind of moviegoer who was always comparing the appearance of people she knew to movie stars. She thought I was going to grow up to look like Alan Ladd—I don’t. My mom thought Toni Sailer, the Austrian skier, looked like Farley Granger in Strangers on a Train—he doesn’t. But Paul Goode didn’t start out as a movie star. Paul Goode didn’t inspire much of a reaction from Little Ray, not at first.

NORA

(to Ray)

You don’t think Adam looks like Paul Goode?

(as Em gestures)

Maybe a little?

LITTLE RAY

Paul Goode looks like a guy who never grew up.

(hugs Adam)

My baby looks like me!

(as Em nods)

If this movie is supposed to be noir, I don’t like noir. What does noir mean, anyway?

EXT. NEW YORK CITY CINEMA, 1971. NIGHT.

Moving from Nora to Em, from Molly to Ray, and from Adam to the snowshoer, as they exit the theater.

MR. BARLOW

The Wrong Car is a dark comedy—it’s noir in the sense of camp. It’s campy.

Em is pantomiming camp and campy—both a heartbreaking drama and a slapstick comedy. PASSERSBY think Em is crazy.

NORA

(translates for Em)

Em says it’s funny and sad—it’s tragic and comic all at once.

Em now appears to be gesturing obscenely. She opens the palm of one hand as if she were holding an imaginary beer can; she makes the fist of her other hand wriggle upward, through her open palm.

NORA

Sweet Jesus, Em!

(translating)

She says camp is an inside joke.

Adam glances at Molly, who smiles—Molly imitates Em’s obscene gesture.

ADAM

(to his mom)

Is there anyone Paul Goode reminds you of?

LITTLE RAY

Sweetie, I don’t see a lot of men—not their naked butts, anyway.

(to Mr. Barlow)

Well, there’s your butt—you have a cute butt, Elliot, I must say.

Em and Molly are nodding and laughing. Elliot is shy.

NORA

(to Adam)

You’re not in a crowd that’s into naked male butts, kiddo.

(to Elliot, hugging him)

Sorry! I know you’re into them!

Everyone laughs, the snowshoer included. They have paused in front of the movie poster for The Wrong Car, which Nora suddenly sees. Nora pushes Adam against the larger-than-life poster, a black-and-white still from the movie—that moment when Paul Goode is smoking in bed, smiling at the gun moll.

NORA

Come on, Ray—look at Paul Goode’s smile. You don’t see a resemblance?

(to Adam)

Come on, kiddo—try to smile.

We can see Paul Goode’s shy, childlike smile alongside Adam’s half-hearted effort.

MOLLY

You can smile better than that, Kid.

Little Ray has her hands in the front pockets of her jeans; she jock-walks in circles, her shoulders hunched.

LITTLE RAY

(scowling)

Baloney!

This makes Adam truly smile; his smile and Paul Goode’s look alike. From her gestures, Em is still unsure of the resemblance. Molly and the snowshoer look uncertain, too.

Adam puts his arm around his mom. Ray is still scowling—in her hands-in-pockets, shoulders-hunched stance.

LITTLE RAY

(softly)

You look like me, sweetie.

ADAM

(kisses her)

I know I do.

NORA

(to Little Ray)

It doesn’t matter who Paul Goode looks like, or who he doesn’t look like. It’s been too long since he’s been in a movie—Paul Goode isn’t going anywhere.

It looks like Em is doing Hamlet, Act III, Scene I. “To be, or not to be”—that tortured proposition, pantomimed.

NORA

Em thinks Paul Goode is going to be a big star.

(Em has a fit)

Sorry—a little star.

On the ignored movie poster in black and white, Paul Goode is still smoking in bed and smiling.

ADAM (V.O.)

I would learn to listen to Em.

In 1973, when Mr. Barlow resigned from Phillips Exeter Academy and moved to New York City, he was forty-four. I was thirty-one, a published novelist—I was writing my second novel—but with Elliot Barlow’s resignation from the academy, it was high time for me to get out of town. The snowshoer said I’d prolonged my adolescence by sharing the faculty apartment in Amen Hall with him into my thirties. It’s unclear what I would have been prolonging if I’d moved in with Nana and Dottie. Those two old ladies would have welcomed me, and what a wonderful workplace for a writer it would have been—all those unused rooms I could have written in. But the prospect of my sleeping, full-time, in the attic bedroom of the Front Street house was forbidding. No one should sleep with ghosts every night, not even writers.

Yet my most convincing reason for leaving the town of Exeter was an actual (not a ghostly) encounter. One late night, I drove out to Roland’s to pick up a pizza for me and Mr. Barlow—thus sparing the snowshoer the possible temptation of going to Roland’s as a woman. It was late at night, even by Roland’s standards, but I’d called ahead and ordered the pizza. It was a quiet night; there were no drunken thugs lurking in the darkened parking lot, waiting to accost me as I carried the pizza to my car. There was only the woman with the baby carriage. The woman was walking toward me, out of the darkness—as if she and her baby were picking up a late-night pizza, too. I refused to be intimidated by her brazenness as a ghost. I should have known this woman wasn’t a ghost.

“So now you’re going public—you’ve got balls, I’ll give you that,” I said to her, but she wasn’t the woman from The Wrong Car—she was the wrong woman, an actual woman with an actual baby. Scant light from Roland’s reached the parking lot, but the woman I’d frightened pushed the baby carriage into what weak light there was. Her moonfaced baby was wide awake and staring up at me, with the noirish indifference some babies have, but the woman was clearly afraid. “Oh, I’m so sorry—I mistook you for someone else,” I said to her.

She was just a young mother—maybe a single mother, I considered, because she’d had no one to leave the baby with when she went out for the pizza. A responsible young mother, I decided, because she’d not left the baby in her car—not in the parking lot at Roland’s, not this late at night. And the poor woman had the misfortune to run into me. I looked like any writer and former wrestler at that time of night; I’d scared her as badly as any of the lowlifes who hung out at Roland’s might have. Not to mention what an awful thing I said to her: I’d told her she had balls for going public. What might such an awful thing have meant to a young mother with a baby, late at night?

“And then you told her you mistook her for someone else?” Mr. Barlow asked me, when we were eating our pizza—after I’d related the saga to him. “It’s a good thing we’re both leaving Exeter, finally,” the snowshoer said. “She wasn’t anyone we know, was she?”

In the harsh light of this embarrassing encounter with the young mother who was not the haunting woman with the baby carriage from The Wrong Car, I was relieved I’d taken a teaching job at one of those fly-by-night colleges created by an increasing resistance to the draft. The pushback to the draft was borne of the anti-war movement. New colleges were created, and they didn’t have the highest academic standards. Previously, if you wanted to take advantage of a student deferment from the draft, but you were no great shakes as a student, you could be hard put to find a college that would admit you. The Military Selective Service Act of 1967 expanded the ages of conscription from eighteen to thirty-five. It still granted student deferments, but your deferment ended upon your completion of a four-year degree—or your twenty-fourth birthday, whichever came first.

These colleges were fly-by-night financial opportunities for their enterprising founders, and for those of us who taught in them for a time; yet these institutions, of less-than-higher learning, were also borne of a moral condemnation of the Vietnam War and the draft. What I would discover about teaching in such a college is that there were moral dilemmas for a teacher, too. There were students who simply didn’t or couldn’t do the work; there were students who rarely came to class, and students who plagiarized. Plagiarism was punishable by dismissal, but if you expelled a male student from college, you could be sending him to Vietnam, posing a moral dilemma. And if you didn’t expel him, could you justify expelling a female student for cheating, just because she was safe from the war? The politics of the war made you consider the male and female students differently. Certainly that was a moral dilemma, too.

I was reminded of my mother’s wedding—that moment when the electrocuted body of the diaper man was covered by a sheet on the outdoor dinner table. With the body between us, the little Barlows were telling me that their feeling for noir was very American. America would always be a frontier country, they told me; noir was the tone that captured the frontier best, the little Barlows said. And I’d imagined that the diaper man himself, from his infancy to his electrocution, had been a noir frontiersman.

I took the job at the not-very-good college only because it was in southern Vermont, a little more than an hour’s drive to Manchester, where my mother and Molly lived. I could see more of my mom and Molly without living in the same town with them. But in 1973, when I would go visit them, my mom always asked me, “How’s it going at the draft-dodger college?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” I always answered.

“That’s what everyone calls it, sweetie,” my mother would say.

Yet when the snowshoer and I knew we would (and should) be leaving Exeter, I had to go somewhere, didn’t I? Of course I could have gone to New York City. With Nora and Em living there, and with Mr. Barlow moving there, I was tempted. But I would have needed much more of a full-time job to afford to live in New York City; I wouldn’t have had as much time to write as I did at the draft-dodger college.

I’d written a screenplay, an adaptation of my first novel, but the movie was never made. I was bitter about it, at first; yet, in the process, I’d learned how to write a screenplay. For the rest of my writing life, I knew I would be writing novels and screenplays—often, concurrently. As for New York City, I knew I would be spending a lot of time there—even if I was just a visitor. I could always stay with the snowshoer, or with Nora and Em, I was thinking.

Looking back, 1973 was a political time; it was the year of the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision about abortion. And for me, 1973 was the year I began to realize that every year was a political time. Where was I, when Nixon, in his first campaign for president, appealed to those socially conservative Americans he later called the “silent majority”—those Americans who disliked the hippie counterculture and the anti-war demonstrators? Or when Nixon was promising “peace with honor” in Vietnam—where was I then? Not paying attention, according to Nora, who later pointed out that I managed to miss the first four or five times Em declared she was going back to Canada.

But how was I supposed to know that Em was from Canada, in the first place? Em didn’t say where she was from. Em didn’t talk. Em’s declarations—namely, that she was returning to Canada—weren’t spoken. I just missed (or misunderstood) Nora’s translation of Em’s pantomime on the Canadian subject. I’d seen Em do her seagull imitations before, but I didn’t know what she meant. You had to watch her closely; Em’s seagull thing didn’t only mean she was considering going back to Canada.

I think 1973 was a watershed year for me as a writer as well: I was writing more than I had before. I was more of an introvert than ever, because I was consciously trying to live my life in such a way that I could write all the time. Yet, at the same time, 1973 was the year I began to notice more of the world—not to mention the behavior of other people in it. I still don’t know how (or why) this happened. Nora, naturally, had an opinion, and she didn’t hesitate to tell me.

“If you’re looking for a title to your story, it’s called ‘Getting Out of Exeter’—it took you long enough, kiddo,” my cousin told me.

BEGINNING A MONTAGE OF MOVIE POSTERS FROM 1973.

The poster for The Exorcist, the eerie light from the window shining on the ominous silhouette of Max von Sydow standing under the lamppost.

ADAM (V.O.)

Looking back, 1973 was a good year for noir. There was creepy noir.

The poster for The Sting, the lighthearted color illustration of the Paul Newman and Robert Redford characters—they’re just fooling around.

ADAM (V.O.)

There was caper noir.

The poster for High Plains Drifter, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood; his gun is drawn.

ADAM (V.O.)

There was gunfighter noir.

The poster for Bat Pussy, XXX, ADULTS ONLY! The illustration of Bat Pussy (a.k.a. Dora Dildo) sitting on an exercise ball, in short shorts and knee-high boots, is not at all as pornographic (or as parodic) as the film.

ADAM (V.O.)

There was porno noir.

END OF MONTAGE.

INT. GALLOWS LOUNGE, GREENWICH VILLAGE, 1973. NIGHT.

A hangman’s noose dangles above the bar, where a sign says: COME HANG YOURSELF. CUSTOMERS at the bar, and at tables facing the small stage, are mostly a Village crowd.

ADAM (V.O.)

The Gallows Lounge did stand-up noir; only dark comedy was welcome there. It was in an area of Seventh Avenue and Greenwich, where some jazz joints were. There was nothing iconic about the Gallows Lounge—it wasn’t the Village Vanguard—but the comedy club was a step up from the cabaret and burlesque shows where Nora and Em got their start onstage. In 1973, Mr. Barlow had just moved to New York. He’d been married to my mom for seventeen years, and he’d taught at Exeter for twenty. Don’t blame the snowshoer for trying to have some fun.

At a table close to the stage, Adam (thirty-two) sits next to PRUE (twenty-eight), a Bardot type—a sex kitten in a condom-tight dress. He smiles at her; she sticks her tongue out at him, not alluringly. Embarrassed for her, Adam looks away.

ADAM (V.O.)

In ‘73, I was dating one of the performers at the Gallows Lounge—Prue, the Tongue Kisser, her act was called. She’d started out in strip clubs, where a comedy act of that name had been badly misunderstood.

PULL BACK: at the same table, Elliot Barlow (forty-four) sits next to a VERY PRETTY, MUCH YOUNGER BOYFRIEND (twenty-four). Mr. Barlow doesn’t respond to his boyfriend’s amorous gropings.

ADAM (V.O.)

The snowshoer was going out with the youngest performer at the Gallows Lounge. His act was called Eric’s All-Gay Band, but Eric was all alone onstage—he was the entire band. Eric sang beautifully. They were popular songs, but Eric sang them in a gay way. The songs were very sad, but the Gallows Lounge was a comedy club, and Eric’s act wasn’t funny. Only the homophobes laughed—the assholes who made Eric cry.

In T-shirts, Nora and Em (both thirty-eight) come onstage—hands in the pockets of their jeans, shoulders hunched forward, a jock-walk imitation of Little Ray. APPLAUSE.

ADAM (V.O.)

To be fair to Prue, the name of Em and Nora’s act had been badly misunderstood in strip clubs, too. They called it Two Dykes, One Who Talks. Nora and Em were really late bloomers when they found their first audience at the Gallows Lounge on Seventh Avenue and Greenwich—where Two Dykes, One Who Talks took off.

NORA

(to audience)

If you don’t know me, I’m Nora. This is Em—my ladylove, the love of my life. We’re a couple, but Em doesn’t talk. She won’t say a word.

(Em shakes her head)

Em is a pantomimist.

(Em nods)

Em acts out; I translate.

(to Em)

As for acting out, Em, where were you last night? You got home so late, I was asleep. You hit your head on my knee, getting into bed.

Em looks contrite and fearful.

NORA

Did you go out with Simone? She sucked the sleeve of your blouse at that French place on Spring Street.

Em contorts herself, both shaking and nodding her head while appearing to beat and strangle herself.

NORA

(deadpan)

I see. You didn’t go to the dinner party with Simone—the slut just happened to be there.

(pause)

Did she suck the sleeve of your blouse again? You were wearing short sleeves, Em—don’t lie!

Em violently shakes her head; she makes an X mark with her index fingers.

NORA

What did Simone do?

Em does a very weird thing with one of her pinky fingers; she instantly looks ashamed.

NORA

The slut hooked pinky fingers with you under the table?

Em pokes Nora’s upper arm with her index and middle finger in a V shape.

NORA

(deadpan)

You stabbed her arm with your salad fork. Did you draw blood?

Em nods vigorously.

NORA

Don’t lie!

(Em looks contrite)

What did you talk about?

(Em looks hurt)

Sorry, not you. What did the other people at the table talk about?

(Em freezes)

Not a literary conversation, I imagine—given that slut Simone.

(Em shakes her head)

So Simone fondled your pinky while people talked about what?

Em lifts her upper lip, exposing her gums; her index fingers point straight down, like fangs. She flaps her elbows, like wings; Em swoops, headfirst, at Nora’s crotch. Nora has to fend her off.

NORA

Bat Pussy, the porn film!

(Em hides her eyes)

Not our kind of porn?

(Em shakes her head)

You mean, hetero porn?

(Em equivocates)

What’s worse than hetero porn?

Em flops one arm, lifts her T-shirt, shows her navel.

NORA

(deadpan)

A parody. The guy can’t get it up. The man and the woman are old and unattractive. They’re both drunk. They’re amateurs. It’s gross.

(Em keeps nodding)

Just tell me the terrible premise of Bat Pussy, please.

Em jerks and twitches, as if her vagina were suffering repeated electric shocks.

NORA

Okay, I get it! But why does Bat Pussy’s twat twitch?

More unseemly sexual gyrations from Em.

NORA

Her twat twitches to alert her when and where a porn movie is being filmed?

(Em nods)

Does Bat Pussy want to stop the porn film or join in?

(Em equivocates)

Both… Is this a parody, or simply the worst porn film ever made?

(Em equivocates)

Both…

(to audience)

A typical New York dinner party. Everyone is talking about a movie they haven’t seen, or a book they haven’t read, but—whatever it is—everyone knows they are superior to it. Is there anyone here who’s actually seen Bat Pussy?

(no hands)

But how many of you have heard about Bat Pussy?

(nine or ten hands)

I heard there’s no penetration in Bat Pussy.

(one or two hands)

A porn film with no penetration?

(erupts, to Em)

But you were playing pinkies under the table with that slut Simone!

(Em is ashamed)

You should have poked her eyes out with your fucking salad fork!

Em violently demonstrates stabbing an imaginary Simone; one hand holds her own breast while Em stabs with her other hand.

NORA

(to audience)

Em says she should have stabbed Simone in her nipples.

(deadpan, to Em)

So you noticed her nipples.

Em looks contrite again. She pouts; she extends her bent pinky finger to Nora, as if it hurts, as if in sacrifice. Nora kisses Em’s injured pinky. Em jumps into Nora’s arms, wrapping her legs around Nora’s torso. In this embrace, Nora carries her offstage—Em wiggling her pinky to the STANDING OVATION from the audience.

Adam stands and applauds, too, but he watches Prue, who is furtively retreating backstage. Poor Prue is not a picture of confidence. Poor Mr. Barlow is trying to applaud Nora and Em’s performance, but Eric pulls the snowshoer into his lap as Mr. Barlow tries to stand. Elliot fights him off.

As the applause dies down, the sound FADES AWAY. The only sound is Adam’s voice-over.

ADAM (V.O.)

I felt for Prue; she hated following Nora and Em. Two Dykes, One Who Talks was a hard act to follow, though the show’s success was a surprise to me. I’d grown up with Nora and Em’s love for each other, and their nonstop fooling around. What they did onstage was their usual business to me. And the snowshoer had his hands full just trying to contain the public inappropriateness of his boyfriend. Eric was a most enthusiastic boyfriend. Like his act, Eric was an all-gay band all by himself. Nora and Em and I loved Eric, but—most of all—we wanted Mr. Barlow to be happy.

The audience takes Prue’s fragile appearance onstage as a signal to bolt for the bar and the washrooms. NO SOUND.

ADAM (V.O.)

Only the first-timers at the Gallows didn’t take a break or a pee when Prue came onstage. Stand-up noir was not Prue’s friend. She was a small-town girl; in high school, Prue believed she had invented kissing with her tongue. Prue hadn’t heard of French kissing; she didn’t know the French had thought of it first, or that other kids in her high school were already doing it and knew what it was called.

We can’t hear Prue’s monologue onstage; she’s showing us her tongue, rarely appealingly, more often grotesquely.

ADAM (V.O.)

When Prue French-kissed you, she gagged you; she bit her boyfriends’ tongues, she made them bleed.

FACES in the audience: people talking to one another, not listening to Prue; the few who are listening look appalled.

ADAM (V.O.)

Prue, the Tongue Kisser was an all-noir act—all darkness, no comedy.

A SOBBING WOMAN, A GRIMACING MAN; they shut their eyes, they cover their ears with their hands.

ADAM (V.O.)

Prue was in college before she saw her first film with subtitles.

INT. MOVIE THEATER, A COLLEGE-TOWN AUDIENCE, 1964. DAY.

Prue (nineteen) watches the screen, open-mouthed, in shock. HER BOYFRIEND whispers in her ear; she closes her mouth, puts her fingers to her lips. We hear off-camera kissing sounds.

ADAM (V.O.)

She saw French kissing done right. Her date said he hoped he could French-kiss her—the first time she heard what it was called. Prue knew she could never go home, where everyone knew her as “the tongue kisser”; Prue hadn’t realized they were not being complimentary.

INT. BACKSTAGE, GALLOWS LOUNGE, 1973. NIGHT.

In a dressing room, Nora and Em console Prue on another performance of unrelenting misery. Prue is changing out of her tight dress, into jeans and a T-shirt, but she still has the Bardot, sex-kitten look. The guitar, from the stage, has a country sound. Adam looks on sympathetically.

ADAM (V.O.)

Nora and Em and I were very fond of Prue, but stand-up noir was not for her. It was time for Prue to stop talking about her history as a tongue kisser. It didn’t help that we always left the Gallows Lounge when Damaged Don was onstage, singing “It Never Gets Better with Gwen,” or an equally awful song. Prue and Damaged Don were the one-note acts at the Gallows. Don sang every song he wrote in the same tuneless drone. Country noir is the worst country there is. Nora and Em and I loved Don, but his songwriting and singing sucked. How he got a major music label and radio airtime is a wonder.

INT. GALLOWS LOUNGE, GREENWICH VILLAGE, 1973. NIGHT.

Damaged Don is performing onstage as Nora, Em, Prue, and Adam make their way to the exit. The snowshoer, forever fighting off Eric’s ardor, is loyally staying for Eric’s act—hence for Damaged Don’s, which comes first.

DAMAGED DON

(sings)

You don’t want to wake up with Maureen. She smells like a farm and her sheets ain’t too clean! It’s bad news to wake up with Maureen.

(repeats with audience)

It’s bad news to wake up with Maureen.

ONSTAGE, CLOSE-UP: on Don starting a new stanza.

DAMAGED DON

(sings)

Don’t dream about diddlin’ Babette. She’s a case of the clap you won’t ever forget! It’s bad news to diddle Babette.

(repeats with audience)

It’s bad news to diddle Babette.

EXT. SEVENTH AVE. S., WEST VILLAGE, 1973. NIGHT.

Adam with Prue, Nora with Em, walk arm in arm together. Only Em isn’t singing along with Don (O.C.)—Em won’t sing.

DAMAGED DON (O.C.)

(with Adam, Prue, Nora)

Your worst nightmare is knowin’ Louise. She’ll drink all your money and give your dog fleas! It’s bad news just knowin’ Louise.

(repeats with audience)

It’s bad news just knowin’ Louise.

INT. GALLOWS LOUNGE, GREENWICH VILLAGE, 1973. NIGHT.

Damaged Don has the Gallows enthralled. Mr. Barlow won’t let his young boyfriend kiss him in public.

DAMAGED DON

(more morosely)

Don’t think it gets better with Gwen. She’ll run over the kids and fuck your best friend! It’s bad news the day you meet Gwen.

(repeats with audience)

It’s bad news the day you meet Gwen.

EXT. CHRISTOPHER ST., WEST VILLAGE, 1973. NIGHT.

Nora and Em and Adam and Prue have turned off Seventh Ave. onto Christopher St., where the traffic is coming toward them.

They’re past one watering hole, Kettle of Fish, and close to the Stonewall Inn, when a bus comes to a stop near the Waverly Place Station. Nora and Adam and Prue are singing the last verse with Don (O.C.), but Em breaks away from the group to take a closer look at the stopped bus.

DAMAGED DON (O.C.)

Just try livin’ alone—you’ll be happy, my friend, ’cause it never gets better with Gwen. No, it never gets better with Gwen.

(repeats with audience)

No, it never gets better with Gwen.

ANOTHER ANGLE: Em looks at her singing friends; she’s pointing at the king-size movie poster on the side of the bus. Em is in an agitated pantomime mode, pointing to the poster, and to herself, making the fingers of her other hand “talk” like someone yapping away. As Nora and Adam and Prue approach the bus, Nora is translating for Em.

NORA

Em says, “I told you so.”

CLOSE ON: the movie poster for The Kindergarten Man, starring Paul Goode. It’s a creepy poster. A little boy, an apparent kindergartner, is standing at a child-high urinal. The boy looks anxiously over his shoulder at Paul Goode, who is lying on the floor of the washroom—under cover of the toilet stalls. Paul Goode is holding a handgun against his chest, a silencer on the barrel. The index finger of his other hand is held to his lips, cautioning the kindergartner not to speak or give him away. The gunman and the little boy are both dressed like kindergartners—shorts, sneakers, T-shirts with goofy cartoon characters.

ADAM (V.O.)

We thought we knew what noir was; we thought we understood how dark comedy worked. Not Prue—she didn’t have a clue. She’d never seen The Wrong Car. But Nora and Em and I knew that Paul Goode hadn’t gone away. The little noir man was back, and he looked more noir than ever.

PULL BACK: a longer shot of the four friends, standing on Christopher St. near Waverly Place Station, as the bus with the movie poster for The Kindergarten Man pulls away.

NORA

Shit.

ADAM (V.O.)

I wanted to tell the snowshoer—Paul Goode wasn’t washed up—but Mr. Barlow was busy with Eric’s All-Gay Band.