49. NOT A GHOST
EXT. ASPEN SIDEWALK, ISIS THEATRE, E. HOPKINS. NIGHTFALL.
The red brick of the Isis is reminiscent of the Jerome. The movie poster for Rim Shot strikes a discordant note—the clash of contemporary culture with the façade of the old building.
ADAM (V.O.)
Five years later, my father was back at the Isis.
In the poster, Paul Goode has his arm around a teenage girl in a basketball uniform. They could be father and daughter—more credibly, grandfather and granddaughter—but if they’re related, how did the girl get so tall? The top of Paul’s head is level with the girl’s broad shoulders.
ADAM (V.O.)
In the trailer, it’s clear that Paul Goode and the girl are coach and player. But the trailer is misleading—the girl is in a wheelchair! It looks like Paul Goode is coaching basketball to disabled girls.
The worn-out brunette in the poster—Paul Goode’s romantic interest—must be the basketball player’s mother. The mom is as tall as the teenager.
Burdened with too many shopping bags, GRACE stops to rest on the E. Hopkins sidewalk—she’s sizing up the Rim Shot poster.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was dark when we got to the Jerome on our first day in Aspen. Matthew was excited to explore the hotel, but Grace would go shopping anywhere—as late as the stores were open. She shopped; I gave Matthew a tour of the Jerome.
PULL BACK: Otto and Billy have paused on the E. Hopkins sidewalk, watching Grace struggle to pick up her shopping bags.
OTTO
Should we help this lady carry her stuff?
BILLY
If she’s goin’ to the Jerome, we’ll help her carry her stuff.
As Grace moves on from the Isis, the bodyguards follow her.
OTTO
This lady looks like Clara.
BILLY
She just looks worn out.
OTTO
Clara looked worn out.
BILLY
Clara looked dead.
OTTO
Jeez…
BILLY
Clara looked forty-five—with women, forty-five is worn out.
OTTO
This lady looks forty, doesn’t she?
BILLY
With women, forty is worn out.
OTTO
Jeez…
Grace drops a bag; trying to pick it up, she drops another one. Otto rushes ahead to help her; Billy reluctantly follows.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace recognized the bodyguards—from watching Paige what’s-her-name. I’m sure she talked their heads off, all the way to the Jerome.
Otto ends up carrying most of the shopping bags—Billy has only one or two. Grace is talking or asking questions nonstop, but we hear only Adam’s voice-over. Starting softly, we also hear the country music playing in the J-Bar.
INT. ANTLER BAR, HOTEL JEROME. NIGHT.
Adam is showing MATTHEW the stuffed heads of the animals: a mule deer, a buffalo, an elk, a Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. The country song is a little louder, but we don’t hear what Adam and Matthew are saying—only the song and Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace told the bodyguards they had the least boring job in the world. But what about all the crazy women? she would have asked them. Lots of crazy women—mostly young women, Grace would have guessed.
EXT. HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. NIGHT.
At the intersection of E. Main and Mill St., Grace and the bodyguards are waiting for the walk light. Otto is bashful, not saying anything but nodding his head to whatever Grace says. Billy is trying to be suave, but he’s telling Grace everything she wants to know.
ADAM (V.O.)
Mostly young women, definitely, the bodyguard who did all the talking told her.
Carrying nothing, Grace’s hands are free to search her purse for a couple of business cards, which she gives to Otto and Billy as the walk light signals the go-ahead. Otto is carrying so many bags that he doesn’t have a hand free; he accepts and holds Grace’s business card between his teeth.
ADAM (V.O.)
Knowing Grace, she told them she was a publisher—one who wanted to acquire Paul Goode’s memoir.
At the entrance to the Jerome, the bodyguards will not give Grace’s shopping bags to a COWBOY DOORMAN, who remains outside with nothing to do. The doorman doesn’t see the tall hippie girl wearing a ski sweater over a turtleneck; she is kicking a snowbank by the entrance, but she loses interest in it. She stalks the cowboy doorman, who doesn’t see her; she lifts her sweater and the turtleneck, showing him her bare breasts. He doesn’t react at all.
ADAM (V.O.)
I saw that tall hippie girl when we got to the hotel. She’s a ghost now. Not everybody sees her.
The hippie girl keeps prancing around the cowboy doorman, showing him her unappreciated breasts.
EXT. POOL AND HOT TUBS, HOTEL JEROME. NIGHT.
Adam and Matthew aren’t wearing outdoor clothes; they don’t linger long in the steam rising from the hot tubs and the heated pool. It’s cold outside. No one is swimming, but Lex Barker is looking anxious in the hot tubs. Adam closely watches Matthew, to be sure his son doesn’t see ghosts, but Matthew doesn’t notice this ghost; the boy is oblivious to the half-naked Tarzan, who is prone to expect the worst in the water.
ADAM (V.O.)
I kept my fingers crossed, hoping that Matthew didn’t see ghosts. So far, so good—that’s all I was thinking. But I remembered what Monika said: “Not every ghost is seen by everyone.” She said that was the only safe generalization about ghosts she knew.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. NIGHT.
Grace and the two bodyguards carrying her shopping bags don’t see the forlorn cowboy carrying his saddle or the other ghost riding with them. Clara Swift is dressed as she was the morning she met Adam in the breakfast room of the Jerome—the same skirt and sweater, the sweater she couldn’t decide about untucking or tucking in. Her ghost has decided to tuck in the sweater. Clara can’t look at Otto and Billy.
ADAM (V.O.)
“Aspen was never an easy town for cowboys,” Monika had told me. I was sorry to see Clara Swift riding the elevator with the cowboy. She was sorry to see me, too. Aspen was never an easy town for Clara. It seemed perverse that she would hang out with the misplaced cowboy, and she would always wear what she wore when she hooked up with me.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. NIGHT.
The long-dead companion of the 1887 Aspen volunteers is still seated, in a propped-up fashion, in an overstuffed chair by the fireplace—still bleeding from his long-ago wounds. The country song has changed, to a sadder one. Adam is showing Matthew the mule deer heads, mounted on either side of the big mirror over the fireplace. There’s no one else in the lobby; Matthew doesn’t see the still-bleeding Aspen volunteer.
ADAM (V.O.)
I was trying to keep Matthew awake until dinner time, but the poor kid was jet-lagged.
INT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME. LATER THAT NIGHT.
There’s an angry, reverberant beat to the country song in the uncrowded J-Bar. Those two miners—the ones who were blown to bits, setting black-powder charges in the 1880s—are still standing at the bar, the one with the sledge and his pal. THE SKIERS, a few hangers-on from the après-ski mob, are outnumbered by the ghosts. The guests at the Jerome must be dining elsewhere in town, or in one of the hotel’s fancier dining rooms.
ADAM (V.O.)
A quick dinner in the J-Bar seemed like a good idea our first night.
When Adam enters the J-Bar with Grace and Matthew, he recognizes the regulars among the ghosts; they know he can see them. The miner at the bar raises his sledge. The invisible Indian-fighters—those heavily armed Aspen volunteers sitting at a table next to some clueless skiers—give Grace a coarse once-over. At a corner table, the stoic Ute is unsmiling—still bitter about the 1887 uprising. Jerome B. Wheeler is keeping the Ute company; the good hotelkeeper gives Adam and his family a gracious nod.
ADAM (V.O.)
I should have known there’d be new ghosts to consider. I regret Monika got a look at my family.
ANOTHER ANGLE: Monika Behr and her fellow downhillers, Nan and Beth, have their own table—as usual, except they’re ghosts. In their late thirties when Adam met them, five years ago, they look younger, fitter, more jockish now—being dead becomes them.
ADAM (V.O.)
Those downhillers were knocking back the beer; becoming ghosts had enlivened them. Death rekindled their glory days, when they were in competition. I wondered where Monika’s wheelchair was. Were wheelchairs not allowed in the afterlife? I’ll never learn the rules for ghosts.
Monika has little interest in Adam; she gives him a cursory glance. She is more interested in Grace—most of all, in Matthew.
MATTHEW
Do they have hamburgers?
GRACE
Of course they have hamburgers.
MATTHEW
I want a hamburger!
ADAM (V.O.)
Knowing how Monika felt about children, it was unnerving to see how she looked at Matthew. A hamburger would wake up Matthew, who was fading fast.
INT. HALL, HOTEL JEROME. LATER THAT SAME NIGHT.
In the first-floor hall, near the elevator and the doors to the pool and hot tubs, is the ghost of a NAKED BOY, shivering with cold. The country song is now an elegy.
ADAM (V.O.)
The drowned ten-year-old was one of those ghosts Monika had called “just tourist attractions”—they were “the ones you hear about,” she’d said, but I hadn’t seen the naked boy before.
PULL BACK: Adam and Grace, with Matthew, are approaching the elevator, as the drowned ten-year-old wanders away down the hall. It’s clear that Grace and Matthew see the shivering boy; they just don’t realize he’s a ghost.
GRACE
It’s irresponsible to let a child that age go to the swimming pool alone—especially at night!
MATTHEW
Where is his bathing suit?
GRACE
We should call the front desk.
The elevator door opens; Adam and his family step inside.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Curled up in the corner of the elevator, using the cowboy’s saddle for a pillow, Clara Swift is in the arms of the cowboy. Matthew and Grace don’t see them. Clara ignores Adam and Grace, but she looks lovingly at Matthew.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was creepy how Monika had looked at Matthew. But Clara Swift had been a mother. I knew she must miss her son. There was nothing creepy about the way Clara looked at Matthew. It made me want to confess everything—not to Grace, but to my father.
The elevator door opens; Adam and his family step out.
INT. HALL, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
In the third-floor hall, one more of Monika’s “tourist attractions” is passing—the ghost of a SOBBING SILVER MINER. The miner’s dishevelment is more apparent to Grace than what links him to an earlier century; Matthew sees the miner, too. Like his mom, Matthew doesn’t know the miner is a ghost. The elegy CONTINUES OVER.
GRACE
(to Adam)
From what you’ve said about the Jerome—not to mention the way your mother went on about it—I expected a more upscale clientele.
Coming toward them in the hall is the ghost of a SOAKING-WET MAID. Grace and Matthew let the wet ghost pass, withholding comment. The elegy is coming to its mournful conclusion.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was the hotel maid who died of pneumonia after falling through the ice on a pond—she still showed up to turn down the beds.
GRACE
They send a soaking-wet maid for turndown service?
MATTHEW
Why is she wet?
ADAM
Maybe she turned on a shower by mistake.
GRACE
We should call the front desk.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. LATER THAT NIGHT.
Matthew is asleep in a rollaway—a single bed, but a big bed for a small boy. He’s holding a teddy bear.
PULL BACK: in a king-size bed, Grace and Adam are sleeping; their bed is alongside Matthew’s rollaway, which is on casters.
ADAM (V.O.)
Matthew wanted his rollaway in the bedroom, next to us—not in the living room of our suite, where I also left a light on for him.
The door to the living room is open, as is the door to the bathroom, where another light has been left on—providing the bedroom with enough light to make Matthew feel safe. Adam is sleeping on the side of the bed nearest Matthew’s rollaway. Separating the two beds is a narrow aisle of carpet, serving as a path to the bathroom or the living room.
ADAM (V.O.)
The jet lag affected us all.
CLOSE-UP: on Adam’s face, asleep. We hear a bouncing ball, a basketball being dribbled.
ADAM (V.O.)
The trailer for Rim Shot replayed itself in my sleep.
INT. BASKETBALL COURT, SMALL GYM. DAY.
There’s no music, no dialogue—no sound, except the basketball. A TEENAGE GIRL in a wheelchair is practicing her dribbling. Before she can take a shot at the basket, she dribbles the ball off the footrest of her wheelchair. The ball rolls off the court. The girl looks too discouraged to go get the ball. Then we hear—she also hears—a ball being dribbled.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace had read reviews of Rim Shot. The basketball player isn’t permanently disabled. She has a spinal injury from a car crash. She’ll miss the basketball season of her senior year in high school, but she’ll completely recover. You wouldn’t know this from the trailer.
The bleacher seats are empty, but the girl in the wheelchair isn’t alone in the gym; she sees Paul Goode coming toward her, dribbling a basketball. Paul is in his coaching outfit: basketball shoes, shorts, T-shirt, a whistle around his neck.
ADAM (V.O.)
The girl’s drunken father was driving the car—he was killed in the car crash.
The WORN-OUT BRUNETTE, the girl’s mom, enters the gym and takes a seat in the bleachers. Paul bounces the ball to the girl, a pass the girl handles better than we might have expected. The girl dribbles once or twice, taking a shot at the basket. The ball bounces off the glass; it doesn’t touch the rim. Paul retrieves the ball, noticing the widow as he dribbles back to the girl.
ADAM (V.O.)
The tall widow will fall in love with her daughter’s basketball coach—anyone will know this from the trailer, if not why the widow wants to be with a guy who barely comes up to her boobs.
Paul passes the ball to the girl—a hard pass, which the girl handles just fine. The girl takes her time—more dribbling, with more determination. The girl’s widowed mother can’t bear to watch; she hides her face in her hands.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace read more than the reviews; she also read the Hollywood gossip. Paul Goode and the young woman who played the teenage girl were now “an item,” Grace read. The young woman wasn’t a teenager, but she was only in her twenties—an age difference of more than forty years.
The teenage girl in the wheelchair puts up a shot; it swirls once or twice around the rim, then falls in. The little coach and the big girl in the wheelchair high-five each other. Even sitting down, the girl is almost as tall as Paul Goode.
ADAM (V.O.)
You wouldn’t know they were an item from the trailer, either.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. THAT SAME NIGHT.
CLOSE-UP: on Adam’s face, asleep.
ADAM (V.O.)
When I wasn’t seeing this trailer in my sleep, I was seeing that woman with the baby carriage in The Wrong Car in black and white.
EXT. GETAWAY CAR, MOVING. DAY.
At a city intersection, the driver stops for a WOMAN WITH A BABY CARRIAGE in the pedestrian crosswalk.
ADAM (V.O.)
My father was thirty when he played the getaway driver. The woman with the baby carriage was not much younger. In the years I thought she was a ghost—when she was haunting or stalking me—was it only in my imagination that she hadn’t aged?
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.
ADAM (V.O.)
At my book signings, she wasn’t with the baby carriage; she didn’t wait long enough to get to the front of the line. CLOSER ON: the little driver sits unharmed and relaxed at the steering wheel, as if waiting for the light to change.
ADAM (V.O.)
The woman had stalked Paul Goode—in real life, she’d spied on every woman who ever knew him.
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.
ADAM (V.O.)
When she showed up in the attic bedroom of my grandmother’s house, the crazy woman was spying on me. I should have known this woman wasn’t a ghost—she couldn’t be bothered to disappear. When I woke up with her sitting at the foot of my bed, she just walked away.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. THAT SAME NIGHT.
CLOSE-UP: on Adam’s face, asleep.
ADAM (V.O.)
The woman with the baby carriage wasn’t credible as a ghost.
PULL BACK: from the open door to the living room, the ghost of Monika Behr enters the bedroom with catlike stealth and purpose. She walks fine; for a big woman, she moves with athletic poise and quickness. She’s feeling the sheets—on the bed where Adam and Grace are asleep, and on the rollaway, where Matthew is sleeping. There’s more room for Monika with Matthew. She slips off her parka, her turtleneck, her sweatpants; Monika’s ghost is in her bra and panties when she gets in bed with Matthew.
ADAM (V.O.)
Do ghosts make their own rules? It should have occurred to me that Monika’s ghost wouldn’t be paralyzed; she didn’t need a wheelchair. Dead or alive, she had a thing about the bedsheets at the Jerome.
CLOSE-UP: on Matthew, hugging his bear to his chest; Monika lies facing him, her head on the same pillow. She tries to take his bear away from him; Monika is amused that, even when the boy is sleeping, he holds the bear tighter. Monika holds Matthew the way the boy is holding his bear, hugging him to her chest.
ADAM (V.O.)
How Monika had looked at Matthew gave me the shivers.
ANOTHER ANGLE: Monika, hugging Matthew, looks at Adam—wishing he would wake up and see her now. Adam goes on sleeping; he’s stuck in 1956, hearing Sam Cooke sing “You Send Me.”
ADAM (V.O.)
I was dreaming about that woman with the baby carriage. I knew I didn’t want to see her—not anymore.
“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.
ADAM (V.O.)
I was more afraid of the woman with the baby carriage now that I knew she was not a ghost.
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.
ADAM (V.O.)
And how would I recognize her now? The woman with the baby carriage would be in her late sixties.
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.
ADAM (V.O.)
If the woman with the baby carriage was stalking Paul Goode, would my father recognize her now?
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.
FADE TO BLACK. “You Send Me” suddenly starts playing again.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. THAT SAME NIGHT.
As the Sam Cooke song abruptly stops, Adam’s eyes pop open. He’s staring at Monika, who’s holding Matthew in her arms.
CLOSER ON: Adam sits bolt upright in bed.
A WIDER ANGLE: Adam sees that Monika has disappeared, leaving Matthew uncovered in bed—still sleeping, still hugging his bear. Adam gets into the rollaway, pulling the sheet and blanket over himself and his son. Adam lies staring at Matthew.
ADAM (V.O.)
I was trying to convince myself that I’d only imagined the woman with the baby carriage in my attic bedroom, and at the back of the line at my book signings—just as I hoped I’d only imagined Monika in bed with Matthew.
SUPER: BREAKFAST AT THE JEROME, 1996
INT. BREAKFAST ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. NEXT MORNING.
CLOSE-UP: at a table for two, Otto and Billy are talking; they’re keeping their voices down.
OTTO
Has he given her the plane ticket?
BILLY
He’s goin’ to give her the ticket—that’s why we packed her suitcase.
OTTO
I know—it’s under the table.
(he looks under the table)
Why do it at breakfast?
BILLY
It leaves the rest of the day free—for skiin’, or somethin’. And there’s lots of flights, if she misses the first one.
CLOSE-UP: at a different table for two, Paul Goode and the tall young woman who was the basketball player in Rim Shot are in a standoff; they’re not talking to each other when Paul hands her a plane ticket.
OTTO (O.C.)
This is a big girl—she won’t be easy to carry.
BILLY (O.C.)
You won’t be carryin’ her far, just through the lobby and outside—the van to the airport will be there.
TALL YOUNG WOMAN
A plane ticket?
PAUL GOODE
First class—back to L.A.
TALL YOUNG WOMAN
You can’t tell me where to go!
PAUL GOODE
Your suitcase is packed. Just go.
A WIDER ANGLE: Billy has her coat over his arm; her suitcase is in his other hand. Otto is hovering nearby.
TALL YOUNG WOMAN
Your bodyguards touched my clothes!
She throws the plane ticket on the table as she stands. Paul picks up the ticket. When he stands, Paul barely comes up to her boobs. Otto picks her up—a low bear hug, at her waist, slinging her over his shoulder. A big girl.
Paul Goode gives Otto the plane ticket; opening his mouth, Otto takes the ticket between his teeth. The choreography of the exchange is too smooth for it to be the first time.
TALL YOUNG WOMAN
(to Paul)
You bastard!
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Clara Swift won’t look at Adam, who doesn’t look at her; Clara can’t stop looking at Matthew. The cowboy carrying his saddle eyes Grace.
ADAM
(explaining, to Matthew)
You and your mom will go skiing in the afternoon. You and I will go to my book signing this morning.
MATTHEW
Not a book signing.
ADAM
It won’t take long—not many readers!
GRACE
(to Adam)
I’m going to that dead skier’s gym—I’m just curious.
MATTHEW
She’s dead? She has a gym?
GRACE
It’s not her gym anymore, Matthew.
ADAM
(to Grace)
It was a shrine to Monika Behr when she was alive—I can’t imagine what it’s like now. You won’t like it, Grace—there’s no aerobic equipment. It’s strictly a gym for weight training.
INT. BREAKFAST ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
As Otto is carrying the tall young woman away, with Billy following, Adam and his family arrive for breakfast.
TALL YOUNG WOMAN
(screaming)
Bastards! You’re all bastards!
Billy and Otto recognize Adam; they nod to him as they pass. The bodyguards recognize Grace, too; she waves to them, breezily introducing herself to Paul.
GRACE
I met your bodyguards.
(offers her hand)
Grace—Grace Barrett. I use my maiden name as a publisher.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
As Otto carries the tall young woman through the lobby, with Billy following, some LA-DI-DA GUESTS are having coffee there. Jerome B. Wheeler, pouring coffee for the still-bleeding Aspen volunteer, gives Otto and Billy a reproving look.
TALL YOUNG WOMAN
Pricks! You’re all pricks!
INT. BREAKFAST ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam and his family have joined Paul at a larger table. Grace has what she wants, an introduction to Paul Goode.
GRACE
(to Paul)
Was she your co-star in Rim Shot?
TALL YOUNG WOMAN (O.C.)
(distant screaming)
Pricks and bastards—all of you!
PAUL GOODE
She wasn’t having a good time here—L.A. is more her kind of town.
(he keeps looking at Adam)
You were on the Loge Peak chair.
ADAM
(offers his hand)
Adam—Adam Brewster. I didn’t want to remind you…
PAUL GOODE
(changes the subject)
Well… who’s this good-looking boy?
(to Matthew)
You must be five, maybe almost six?
ADAM
This is Matthew.
MATTHEW
I’m almost five!
PAUL GOODE
Good for you, Matthew.
(to Grace)
The boys told me about you. I don’t know if I’m a memoir writer—so far, I’ve only written screenplays.
Matthew finds the writing subject disheartening.
MATTHEW
I have to go to a book signing.
PAUL GOODE
How awful!
(to Adam)
You’re a writer?
ADAM
I write novels.
(a pause)
None of my screenplays has been made as a movie—not yet.
PAUL GOODE
There are more unmade movies than anyone knows.
GRACE
That’s a good first line, or a last one—for your memoir.
Paul changes the subject.
PAUL GOODE
(to Matthew)
When my son was your age, he loved the blueberry pancakes and the hot chocolate here.
CLOSER ON: Adam—he’s enjoying his father’s company.
ADAM (V.O.)
I decided I liked him, but it only made me want to tell him everything. How could I ever know him, as a father, if I kept anything from him?
EXT. ENTRANCE, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. CONTINUOUS.
A cowboy doorman holds the door open to the Jerome van, but the tall young woman isn’t ready to go. Otto has set her free, and Billy has helped her into her coat, but she won’t take the plane ticket from Otto, who holds it out to her.
The tall young woman slips on the snow and falls, trying to bat the ticket out of Otto’s hand. Otto puts the ticket back between his teeth; when he lifts the young woman to her feet, she hits him. Otto looks wounded to his core. He wipes the ticket on his sleeve before holding it out to her. This time, she dissolves in tears, but she takes the ticket.
Circling them is the ghost of the tall hippie girl; she’s wary of the angry young woman, who is taller than she is. The hippie girl shows her breasts to Billy and Otto, who don’t respond.
BILLY
(to Otto)
Did you see that guy who was ridin’ on the chairlift with Clara?
OTTO
He’s with the lady who looks like Clara!
BILLY
Yeah, the publishin’ lady.
OTTO
Why did that guy come back? If I was on a chairlift with someone who died, I wouldn’t go back.
BILLY
It’ll drive you crazy to think about the motives of other people.
OTTO
The motives of other people?
Otto looks pained, thinking this over.
The tall hippie girl is still showing her breasts and getting no response. As the Jerome van drives away, the angry young woman is giving the bodyguards the finger out her open window.
TALL YOUNG WOMAN
(screaming)
Pricks! Asswipes!
The tall hippie girl gives the finger to the bodyguards.
INT. THE LAST RUN GYM. THAT SAME MORNING.
The muscle-bound trainer we saw on the night shift in 1991 looks like he’s in charge. Also working as a trainer is the really ripped woman we saw doing bicep curls, the one who was wearing a tank top with a bikini bottom. She’s still in a tank top that shows off her upper arms, but she’s wearing sweatpants now.
VARIOUS LIFTERS are using the free weights and the weight machines, but Grace is riding a stationary bike, and a SKINNY GUY is running on a treadmill. Damaged Don PLAYS OVER.
DAMAGED DON (V.O.)
Your worst nightmare is knowin’ Louise. She’ll drink all your money and give your dog fleas! It’s bad news just knowin’ Louise.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace said they had bikes and treadmills in The Last Run now—Monika wouldn’t have approved. And Monika would have hated the music. There used to be only the grunts of the lifters and the clank of metal.
DAMAGED DON (V.O.)
(repeats)
It’s bad news just knowin’ Louise.
Grace on her bike and the guy on his treadmill are watching skiing highlights of Monika on the TV.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace said The Last Run had TVs. The TVs were soundless, and there were no remotes—you couldn’t change channels. The VHS cassette kept repeating itself—all Monika Behr highlights, over and over, including her crash at Cortina. Monika would have hated that.
Grace and the runner wince as they watch Monika’s slow-motion, career-ending fall.
INT. WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOM, GYM. SOON AFTER.
Grace thinks she’s alone in the locker room, where she has wrapped herself in a towel and is going to the sauna. She sees women’s workout clothes discarded on some benches, and two ski patrol jackets are hanging on a couple of open locker doors.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace said the women’s locker room was empty but a mess.
DAMAGED DON (V.O.)
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.
INT. WOMEN’S SAUNA, GYM. CONTINUOUS.
Grace thinks she’s alone in the sauna, but Monika and Beth and Nan are there—topless, with towels covering their laps. The three dead downhillers know who Grace is. Grace loosens her towel, letting it fall to her waist. Monika and Beth and Nan are amused; they point out their breasts are bigger.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace said the sauna gave her the willies. She said the dead skier somehow haunted the place.
INT. EXPLORE BOOKSELLERS, E. MAIN. SAME MORNING.
FICTION READERS are seated in a Victorian house—a bookstore of interconnected rooms. Although Adam is reading to his audience, there is NO SOUND except Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
Matthew loved it when anyone read aloud to him.
A WIDER ANGLE: Matthew has been browsing in the children’s section, where a FEMALE BOOKSELLER takes his hand and leads him to the back of the audience at his dad’s reading.
ADAM (V.O.)
But Matthew didn’t love my readings, or my book signings.
People in the audience stand and applaud; a line forms of the readers who want Adam to sign their books. At the end of the line is a STERN-LOOKING WOMAN WITH GRAY HAIR. We may or may not recognize her as the woman with the baby carriage in The Wrong Car, because she is wrinkled and gray. Matthew wouldn’t recognize her, anyway, and she’s not with a baby carriage.
ANOTHER ANGLE: on Adam, seated at a table, signing books. Given the labyrinth of rooms, Adam can’t see the end of the line.
ADAM (V.O.)
I love Explore Booksellers, but the end of the line was in another room—where the woman with the baby carriage would be, if she was there.
PULL BACK: Matthew, bored, has wandered away from the book signing. The female bookseller is keeping him company. They both see the gray-haired woman, who has left the book signing; the woman is leaving the bookstore without a book.
ADAM (V.O.)
I was thinking how I might find a way to be alone with my father.
The female bookseller draws imaginary circles around her ear with one index finger, indicating that the stern-looking woman with gray hair is cuckoo. Matthew imitates the cuckoo gesture.
EXT. POOL AND HOT TUBS, HOTEL JEROME. NIGHTFALL.
Adam is treading water in the pool, alongside Matthew in his Schwimmflügel—his German water wings. They’re talking to each other, but we hear only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
At bedtime, I was reading My Father’s Dragon to Matthew. It’s about a little boy who runs away from home. He’s a stowaway on a ship; he goes to an island of wild animals to rescue a baby dragon.
ANOTHER ANGLE: Tarzan is as wary as ever in the hot tubs, where he maintains a watchful distance from Grace and Paul Goode, who are talking to each other. Lex Barker is listening to them, but we hear only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace had struck up an animated conversation with my father—about skiing, she told me later—but she’d managed to tell him we were getting divorced, whatever that had to do with skiing. I don’t doubt she made it clear that she was the skier in the family—notwithstanding that my mom had been a ski instructor.
CLOSER ON: Adam and Matthew talking—we hear their conversation in the pool.
ADAM
All the chapters are short, and they have titles.
MATTHEW
Like “My Father Meets the Cat.”
ADAM
And Chapter Two—“My Father Runs…”
MATTHEW
“… Away.”
ADAM
And Chapter Three—“My Father Finds…”
MATTHEW
“… the Island.”
ADAM
And the author’s name is…
MATTHEW
I don’t know.
ADAM
Ruth Stiles Gannett. If you love a book, Matthew, you should remember the name of the person who wrote it.
MATTHEW
I can remember Ruth.
ADAM
Ruth is just fine.
CLOSER ON: Grace and Paul Goode in the hot tubs, where Tarzan is listening to their conversation.
GRACE
But you go back there, to Loge Peak—you ride that chair?
PAUL GOODE
That old two-seater is gone—it was a Riblet double, built in the sixties. You took four lifts to get to the top of Loge Peak.
GRACE
There’s a quad now, isn’t there?
PAUL GOODE
A high-speed Poma quad. You take only two lifts now, and the new chairlift follows a different line to the top.
BACK ON: Adam and Matthew in the pool.
ADAM
Do you like your Schwimmflügel?
MATTHEW
My what?
ADAM
Your water wings are German—they’re called Schwimmflügel.
MATTHEW
They’re water wings!
ADAM
Water wings are just fine.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. A LITTLE LATER.
Adam, Grace, and Matthew are wearing their hotel bathrobes and slippers—their hair is wet from the pool and hot tubs. The cowboy is used to them. Clara Swift avoids looking at Adam or Grace, but she is fixated on Matthew.
GRACE
(insistently, to Adam)
Paul said he skis at Loge Peak, but the new quad doesn’t pass over that gulch where Clara jumped out of the chairlift.
Adam sees that Clara Swift is upset to hear this; the cowboy is trying to comfort her.
MATTHEW
Who jumped out of a chairlift?
GRACE
Matthew—it was no one you knew, and it was a long time ago. No one jumps out of chairlifts anymore—you have to be crazy. I shouldn’t be talking about it.
ADAM
(looking at Clara)
No, you shouldn’t…
GRACE
I would love to ski there—with Paul, I mean—but I don’t want to be pushy. I can’t just invite myself to ski with him.
ADAM
I have to talk to him—there are things I should explain to him. I’ll say you’re an expert skier—I’ll say he should ski with you.
The cowboy gives Adam a what-the-fuck look. Now Clara Swift looks more closely at Grace. Adam tries to change the subject.
ADAM
(to Matthew)
Chapter Four—“My Father Finds…”
MATTHEW
I don’t know Chapter Four!
ADAM
“My Father Finds the River.”
CLARA SWIFT
(to Matthew)
That’s where the dragon is tied up.
Only Adam and the cowboy hear what Clara says.
THE COWBOY
(to Clara)
What dragon?
Clara is embarrassed that she spoke. Adam knows she must have read My Father’s Dragon to her son, when he was Matthew’s age.
GRACE
(to Adam)
What do you have to talk to Paul about? What things should you explain to him?
ADAM
I’ll tell you… later.
MATTHEW
(repeats, to himself)
“My Father Finds the…”
ADAM
“… River.”
MATTHEW
“… the River.”
Clara Swift is crying on the cowboy’s shoulder.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. MATTHEW’S BEDTIME.
CLOSE UP: on Grace’s face on the pillow, eyes open, listening to Adam read My Father’s Dragon to Matthew.
ADAM (O.C.)
“The jungle began just beyond a narrow strip of beach…”
Grace rolls over, showing us the back of her head.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace and I were trying to go to bed at Matthew’s bedtime. Paul Goode got up early for breakfast, because he was a serious skier.
ANOTHER ANGLE: on Adam in Matthew’s bed, reading to Matthew.
ADAM
Chapter Five—“My Father Meets Some Tigers.”
MATTHEW
How many tigers?
ADAM
I don’t know.
CLOSER ON: Grace, covering her head with her pillow.
ADAM (V.O.)
If Grace and I were going to take turns skiing with my father, we had to get up earlier. Matthew had no trouble getting up early. In my mind, I was already rehearsing my confession to my father.
DISSOLVE TO: Grace is asleep, the covers thrown back.
MATTHEW (O.C.)
(whispers)
Mommy is asleep.
ADAM (O.C.)
That’s why we’re whispering.
BACK ON: Adam reading to Matthew in Matthew’s bed.
ADAM
(whispers)
This is the last chapter tonight.
MATTHEW
(whispers)
I know…
ADAM
(whispers)
Chapter Six—“My Father Meets a…”
Adam points to an illustration in the book.
MATTHEW
(loudly)
“… a Rhinoceros.”
ADAM
(whispers)
Shh!
MATTHEW
(whispers)
“… a Rhinoceros.”
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. NEXT MORNING.
Adam, Grace, and Matthew are dressed for skiing—the cowboy and Clara Swift are dressed as usual. Clara glares at Grace.
MATTHEW
(to his mom)
You were asleep. You missed Chapter Six—“My Father Meets a…”
GRACE
(as Clara glares)
What did I miss?
MATTHEW
(to his mom)
You missed the rhinoceros!
GRACE
I’ll have to catch up.
ADAM (V.O.)
I saw the way Clara Swift was looking at Grace. Clara knew Grace was one of those women who would try to sleep with my father—not just ski with him. I’d been too busy preparing my confession to think about what Grace was preparing to do.
INT. BREAKFAST ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Paul Goode is being seated at a table set for four, but he’s with only one other person—the beautiful Chinese woman who was his co-star in Leaving Hong Kong. He is dressed to ski; she isn’t. They’re already seated at their table when Adam and his family arrive in the breakfast room and are seated at an adjacent table.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was hard to get to breakfast before my father. Grace was taken aback that he wasn’t alone.
GRACE
(whispers)
She’s not here to ski.
ADAM
(whispers)
The woman with the tattoo in…
GRACE
(whispers)
I know who she is!
Paul Goode waves to Adam’s family; Grace is agitated.
A WIDER ANGLE: Otto and Billy are seated together at a nearby table. Otto waves to Grace and her family, too.
The CHINESE MAN and his LITTLE GIRL enter the breakfast room, joining Paul and the Chinese woman at their table—the woman’s husband and daughter. They’re dressed for skiing.
GRACE
(embarrassed)
Two skiers in the family.
PAUL GOODE
(to Adam and Grace)
Otto can take the kids to see the animals in the Antler Bar. It’s a long wait for their pancakes.
Otto likes little kids; he holds the kids’ hands as they leave the breakfast room.
GRACE
(calls to Otto)
Thank you!
Grace points to Adam when she speaks to Paul; she is trying to sound casual, but casual doesn’t come naturally to Grace.
GRACE
He’s a blue-run skier—take it easy with him today. You can save the harder stuff for me, tomorrow.
PAUL GOODE
As you wish…
The way the Chinese woman regards Grace is not unlike the look Clara Swift gave Grace in the elevator.
ADAM (V.O.)
Here was another woman who knew my father; she was familiar with the kind of women who slept with him.
Grace and Adam are alone at their table, not speaking to each other; in their awkward silence, they look estranged.
ADAM (V.O.)
I knew I had to tell Grace everything—not because it felt virtuous to confess, but because it was the right thing to do.
SUPER: FIVE YEARS AGO
EXT. LOGE PEAK CHAIR, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. FLASHBACKS.
The lift line is a little busy: couples ride together; singles pair up. Clara, a distraught mom, gets her way. Toby is paired with Billy; just ahead of them, Clara is a single, about to merge with a short line of singles. Clara and Adam don’t recognize each other until they get on the same chair.
ADAM (V.O.)
Not every confession is the right thing to do—not if you’re just confessing to make yourself feel better.
Clara caroms off a tree, then a rock or two, as she slides down the gully. From Adam’s POV, as the stopped chair sways in the wind, Clara’s motionless body is marked by the bright colors of her ski clothing; the colors stand out against the snow and rocks at the bottom of the ravine.
CLOSE-UP: on Clara’s lifeless face. Strands of her hair, from under her ski hat, blow over her open eyes, staring at the sky. Gentle hands enter frame, tucking Clara’s hair under her hat; careful fingers close her eyelids.
WIDER: kneeling next to Clara is the ghost of a UTE WARRIOR. He stands, looking up at the chairs high above him.
ADAM (V.O.)
I was crazy to imagine I might help Toby, my half brother, by reaching out to him.
On Adam in the windblown chair, looking down at Clara and the ghost. The chairlift starts to move again.
ADAM (V.O.)
How would it help Toby Goode to know his half brother had slept with his mother?
EXT. ENTRANCE, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. AFTER BREAKFAST.
A cowboy doorman is putting Paul Goode’s and Adam’s skis and poles on the Jerome van. Paul is talking nonstop to Adam, but there is NO SOUND. We hear only Adam’s voice-over. The ghost of the hippie girl can’t stop showing her breasts to Paul—only to him—but he doesn’t see her.
ADAM (V.O.)
I had doubts about my confession to my father. How would it help him to know who I was or what had happened? Even the ghost of that hippie girl gave me doubts. When she was alive, she never showed her breasts to me—she just gave me the finger. Now she ignored me, but she showed her boobs to everyone else.
EXT. EXHIBITION LIFT, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. SAME MORNING.
Paul and Adam are on the four-seater chairlift from the base of Aspen Highlands with TWO OTHER SKIERS. Paul is still doing all the talking; we hear only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
I let my father talk on the Exhibition quad, a ten-minute ride. I was hoping there would be just the two of us on the new quad to Loge Peak.
ANOTHER ANGLE: on the chair passing over Prospector Gulch.
ADAM (V.O.)
If we were alone on the Loge Peak quad, I would have seven minutes to tell him everything.
EXT. LOGE PEAK QUAD, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. CONTINUOUS.
The lift line is sparse. There’s ONE COUPLE behind Adam and Paul. Adam pretends to have a problem with the binding of one ski, taking the ski off and putting it back on; Adam waves the couple ahead, so that he and Paul get on the next chair by themselves.
CLOSER ON: Adam and his father on the moving chairlift; Adam is the one doing the talking now.
ADAM
I should have told you five years ago, when I slept with your wife. That’s why Clara was so upset I was on the chairlift with her—she’d slept with me the day before. She hated it. She hated herself for doing it. She never wanted to see me again. She couldn’t stand to look at me. It was just an awful coincidence that we ended up on the same chair—we weren’t skiing together. But it was not a coincidence that Clara was upset. Do you see?
Paul Goode listens.
ADAM
I was alone for breakfast when Clara said point-blank she wanted to sleep with me, but she didn’t mean it. I don’t know why she did it—I’m guessing, because of you. She was repelled by what she did. I hated myself for doing it, too. She wasn’t herself when she did it. She wasn’t herself when she saw me again on the chairlift—she was upset, and not thinking clearly, before your son fell. Do you see? What happened wasn’t entirely your fault—it was my fault, too.
A view of the gulch the old two-seater passed over.
ADAM (V.O.)
We were at six minutes when I told him he was my father.
CLOSE ON: Paul’s disbelieving expression.
ADAM (O.C.)
I should have told you before. I should have told your wife you were my father. That might have stopped her, but I didn’t tell her. I haven’t even told my wife that you’re my father.
A WIDER ANGLE: the lift station at the top of Loge Peak. Paul and Adam unload and ski away from the chairlift.
ADAM (V.O.)
Broadway was a blue run. My father had listened to Grace about my limitations as a skier.
CLOSER ON: Paul and Adam stop at the top of Broadway. Adam removes his gloves, taking a photo from his parka pocket.
PAUL GOODE
Why should I believe you?
ADAM
I saved my mother’s photo until we were off the chairlift. I’m sure you’ll recognize her; maybe you’ll remember her ski hat and her sweater.
CLOSE-UP: the black-and-white photo of Adam’s mom, Ray Brewster, in Aspen, March 1941.
ADAM (O.C.)
My last name, Brewster, didn’t ring a bell with you.
PULL BACK: Paul Goode looks away from the photo. He sees Adam wring his hands.
ADAM
My mom was Ray Brewster. She died recently—ovarian cancer. She didn’t want anything from you—she got what she wanted. She wanted me, with no strings attached.
PAUL GOODE
She gave me her ski hat, and her sweater.
ADAM
I know.
PAUL GOODE
(angry)
How can you know? How do you know that?
ADAM
I can’t explain it.
PAUL GOODE
What do you want?
ADAM
Nothing. I just want you to know who I am, and what happened.
PAUL GOODE
(still angry)
Let me see you ski. You first.
Adam pushes off. Camera stays on Paul, watching his son ski.
On Adam, as he stops skiing. Adam watches Paul ski up to him.
PAUL GOODE
There must not be a skier gene. How could Ray Brewster’s kid ski as badly as you do?
ADAM
I tried hard not to learn.
PAUL GOODE
You succeeded, but you have your mother’s hands. Ray was always wringing her hands.
(pushing off)
I’d rather ski with your wife.
ADAM
(calls after him)
I wasn’t giving you the photo!
There’s no point in calling. Paul Goode is quickly gone.
ADAM
(quietly, to himself)
I was just showing you.
INT. THE LAST RUN GYM. MIDDAY.
In the middle of a ski day, the gym is almost empty; the sound of clanking metal rises above the country song that’s wailing. The two trainers are standing together—the muscle-bound man and the ripped woman in a tank top. They look disconcerted by what they’re seeing.
PULL BACK: a barbell, loaded with flat weights, is going up and down—all by itself—over a weight bench.
ANOTHER ANGLE: the lat machine looks like it’s on automatic—an unseen force is doing the pull downs, the weights miraculously rising and falling by themselves.
ADAM (V.O.)
The trainers at the Last Run must be used to it by now. They can’t see Monika or Beth or Nan, but they know when those three downhillers are working out.
CLOSE ON: Adam riding a stationary bike.
ADAM (V.O.)
I was done skiing with my dad at Loge Peak. Grace and Matthew were still skiing at Aspen Mountain when I got back to the Jerome from Aspen Highlands.
A WIDER ANGLE: what Adam sees from his stationary bike. Monika is doing bench presses; Beth is assisting her with the heavy barbell. Nan is the ghost going nuts on the lat machine.
ADAM (V.O.)
Those three downhillers were the same troublemakers they’d been when they were alive.
INT. EXPLORE BOOKSELLERS, E. MAIN. SOON AFTER.
Adam is looking at VARIOUS AUTHOR PHOTOS on his own novels in the bookstore. He chooses one book, returning the rest to the shelves.
ADAM (V.O.)
I wanted to give one of my novels to my father. Which one didn’t matter to me; I chose the novel with the author photo I liked best. I wondered what Paul Goode thought about a writer gene—if he believed there was one or not.
EXT. ASPEN SIDEWALK, ISIS THEATRE, E. HOPKINS. LATE AFTERNOON.
The poster for Rim Shot has new meaning, now that we know about Paul Goode’s relationship with the young woman who plays the teenage basketball player. Paul has his arm around the tall girl. We see the worn-out brunette who plays the girl’s mother.
ADAM (V.O.)
When Grace and Matthew came back from skiing, Grace went to the matinee performance of Rim Shot. I took Matthew to the swimming pool and hot tubs. Matthew loved the heated pool at the Jerome, but you can get cold in a heated pool—if you stay in the water too long.
INT. ISIS THEATRE, E. MAIN. THAT SAME AFTERNOON.
PAN: like the gym, the theater is almost empty.
STOP ON: Grace is sound asleep, the light from the screen flickering on her. Except for Adam’s voice-over, the sound of a basketball is the only sound—there’s no dialogue, no music.
A WIDER ANGLE: Nan and Beth enter the row of seats where Grace is sleeping, sitting on either side of her in a predatory way. Monika has slipped into the row behind Grace, leaning over her.
ADAM (V.O.)
From what Grace described to me, I could imagine Monika’s mischief.
Nan and Beth unbutton Grace’s blouse. Monika manages to remove Grace’s bra, exposing her breasts while she’s sleeping.
ONSCREEN: tear-jerking scene from the trailer, after Paul passes the ball to the girl in the wheelchair. The girl takes her time—more dribbling. The girl’s mother can’t bear to watch; she hides her face in her hands.
ADAM (V.O.)
You wouldn’t know from the trailer that you were watching the end of the movie, not that Grace saw the end that afternoon in the Isis.
The teenage girl in the wheelchair puts up a shot; it swirls once or twice around the rim, then falls in. The little coach and the big girl in the wheelchair high-five each other.
FADE TO BLACK. END CREDITS ROLL. MUSIC PLAYS OVER.
The house lights come up on Grace with her blouse unbuttoned and her breasts exposed. There are only A FEW MOVIEGOERS who notice, as Grace struggles to conceal her breasts and button up her blouse. Grace searches for her bra, but it’s gone.
EXT. ASPEN SIDEWALK, ISIS THEATRE, E. MAIN. LATE AFTERNOON.
The three downhillers are laughing. Monika is fooling around with Grace’s bra—it’s too small for Monika. They are bumping and shoving one another, the way jocks do.
EXT. POOL AND HOT TUBS, HOTEL JEROME. SAME LATE AFTERNOON.
Matthew and the little Chinese girl are in the pool, paddling around in their water wings; the kids are the same age. Adam and the Chinese actress and her husband are talking, while they keep an eye on the kids. NO SOUND—only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
I couldn’t get Matthew out of the pool, now that he had someone to play with. I was enjoying the Chen family. Grace didn’t tell me she and Matthew had skied a few runs on Aspen Mountain with Mr. Chen and his little girl.
A WIDER ANGLE: a distraught-looking Grace, in her hotel bathrobe and slippers, is disrobing by the hot tubs. Grace gives a wave to her husband and the Chens. Grace makes it apparent that she prefers the hot tubs to joining them in the pool.
ADAM (V.O.)
I could tell Grace was upset about something. The Chens sensed this, too. Mrs. Chen assured me that she and her husband would watch Matthew, if I wanted to join Grace.
CLOSER ON: the hot tubs, where Grace thinks she’s alone. Adam joins her. We don’t hear what Grace is saying, but it’s clear that Lex is listening. It’s also clear, from the way Grace’s hands are all over her breasts, that Grace is telling Adam about waking up in the movie theater with her bra gone and her boobs hanging out of her blouse. Tarzan can’t conceal his dismay.
ADAM (V.O.)
Her bra removed, her breasts exposed, while she slept through Rim Shot—the downhillers had done it. I told Grace this was the twisted work of “three dead skiers,” meaning Monika and her friends. I told Grace I had slept with Monika Behr—hence Monika had it in for me.
Now Grace and Lex Barker are dismayed.
ADAM (V.O.)
This is the way confessing works—once you start, you can’t stop. I told Grace I’d slept with Clara Swift, too—I said I’d told Paul Goode about it. I admitted to Grace that I should have told her and Paul before now.
Tarzan looks like he would rather wrestle a Nile crocodile than hear more confessing—Grace, too.
ADAM (V.O.)
As for telling Grace that Paul Goode was my father, I sensed I’d said enough in the hot tubs—enough for now, anyway.
PULL BACK: there is Mrs. Chen, holding Matthew’s hand. Matthew is shivering in his hotel robe and slippers.
ADAM (V.O.)
I was saved from more confessing by Mrs. Chen. Matthew needed a hot shower or to put on warm clothes. Matthew just wanted to watch his favorite movie—The Little Mermaid.
Adam and Grace get out of the hot tubs. Grace looks in shock. Tarzan, alone in the hot tubs, looks in shock, too.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Matthew is still cold; Adam is rubbing the boy’s back and shoulders. Grace is untouchable and inconsolable. Clara Swift is looking at all of them with new empathy; Clara knows what a family on the edge looks like. Matthew, still shivering, can’t remember the words to “Part of Your World”—one of Ariel’s songs in The Little Mermaid. Matthew hums the tune, not bothering with the words. Clara Swift hums along with him. She hums beautifully; Clara can carry a tune.
The cowboy and Adam are stunned by Clara’s humming. Matthew, not hearing Clara, just keeps humming the tune to “Part of Your World.” Grace is distraught; she looks crazed.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. SOON AFTER.
The door to the living room is open. We can hear The Little Mermaid from there. Grace is talking to Adam in a whisper. Adam is getting dressed. Grace paces around, still in her bathrobe and slippers from the hot tubs.
GRACE
You slept with Monika Behr and Clara Swift—a busy trip. I don’t suppose you would object if I slept with Paul Goode. I mean, how could you object?
ADAM
(quietly)
There’s something you should know.
GRACE
Something else?
ADAM
(more quietly)
Paul Goode is my father.
GRACE
(derisively, in disbelief)
Now you tell me!
ADAM
If you don’t believe me, ask him.
GRACE
I don’t believe you.
ADAM
(softly)
I know.
GRACE
You can take Matthew to the J-Bar—get him a hamburger. I’ll just do room service.
ADAM
Okay.
GRACE
Paul Goode isn’t old enough to be your father.
ADAM
(more softly)
I know.
INT. LIVING ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Matthew, warmly dressed, is on the couch watching The Little Mermaid. He is riveted to Ariel, who is singing her song. Adam enters from the bedroom.
MATTHEW
(points to his chest)
Ariel wears seashells for a…
ADAM
…a bra.
MATTHEW
(nods)
…a bra.
ADAM
Lots of seashells, under the sea.
(a beat)
How about a hamburger?
Adam pauses the video, holding up My Father’s Dragon.
ADAM
I can read to you in the restaurant, if it’s not too noisy.
MATTHEW
(nods)
Okay!
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Clara uses the cowboy’s saddle as a headrest; the cowboy lies with his head in her lap, face up, his Stetson on his stomach. Clara is humming “Part of Your World” to him when the elevator door opens—Adam and Matthew step inside. Matthew clearly has “Part of Your World” on his mind. He is already humming the tune. Clara hums in unison with him. Adam and the cowboy react as if the spontaneous duet is weird. Clara stops humming. Matthew just hums the tune.
INT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
The usual ghosts are in the J-Bar, with a few HOTEL GUESTS and SKIERS. Monika and Nan and Beth are at their usual table.
ANOTHER ANGLE: a WAITER is seating Adam and Matthew. Adam sees how close their table is to those three downhillers.
ADAM (V.O.)
Regarding the rules for ghosts: Jerome B. Wheeler is the guy in charge of the ghosts at the Jerome. Mr. Wheeler has his rules.
Monika is flaunting Grace’s bra. Monika and Nan and Beth pass the bra around, holding it up to their bigger boobs. There is NO SOUND—only Adam’s voice-over and a country song.
CLOSER ON: Monika’s rowdy table, as Jerome B. Wheeler is suddenly standing over the three women downhillers. He holds out his hand. You don’t have to read lips to know what he’s saying: Give me the bra. Beth hands it over. Jerome B. Wheeler is speaking to Monika, who keeps shaking her head.
ADAM (V.O.)
The Hotel Jerome is not a bad place to be a ghost—a good ghost is watching over things.
PULL BACK: the unsmiling Ute is standing there, backing up Wheeler; the Aspen volunteers have surrounded the table. Wheeler is pointing to the door to the street; he’s telling Monika and her friends to leave. Jerome B. Wheeler also points to Matthew—a gesture not lost on Adam. Wheeler makes it clear that children are out of bounds to ghosts. Monika is pissed off, but she does what she’s told—she and Nan and Beth leave.
ADAM (V.O.)
My mom had begged me to get her out of the Jerome if she ended up here as a ghost. My mother wasn’t here, but there must be worse places.
Jerome B. Wheeler considers what to do with Grace’s bra—he looks uncomfortable holding it. The Ute refuses to look at it. The Aspen volunteers want nothing to do with it.
ADAM (V.O.)
I appreciated Jerome B. Wheeler’s rules—children should be out of bounds to ghosts.
INT. LIVING ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. SAME NIGHT, SAME DINNER TIME.
Eating her room-service dinner, Grace is watching The Little Mermaid. She is unresponsive to Ariel’s dilemma. The sound is off and it’s the hundredth time.
INT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME. AFTER DINNER.
Only TWO SKIERS are riding the barstools at the bar. The volume is turned down low on a country song; we can barely hear it. What we hear more clearly is Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
After dinner, I was reading Chapter Seven of My Father’s Dragon to Matthew—“My Father Meets a Lion.”
A WIDER ANGLE: surrounding Adam and Matthew’s table are the ghosts, who’ve pulled up chairs to listen to the story. Jerome B. Wheeler and the Ute are listening, as are the two miners who were blown to bits setting black-powder charges; the miner with the sledge grips his hammer. The two miners don’t have a good feeling about meeting a lion.
ADAM (V.O.)
I didn’t think the ghosts would be interested in a children’s story, but maybe the ghosts didn’t know it was a story for children.
ANOTHER ANGLE: the Aspen volunteers have their doubts about the story; they look at one another in disbelief. You need weapons to deal with a lion, they’re thinking.
ADAM (V.O.)
I could tell the Aspen volunteers were getting restless with the story—My Father’s Dragon isn’t for heavily armed white men.
NO SOUND, as Adam keeps reading to Matthew.
CLOSE-UP: on Jerome B. Wheeler, holding Grace’s bra in his lap.
PULL BACK: Jerome passes the bra to the grim-faced Ute. Without looking at it, the Ute passes it to one of the miners—the one not holding the sledge. The miner stares at the bra, then nudges the miner gripping the sledge. The miner with the sledge is the closest to Adam. There’s an awkward exchange of the bra between the miners. The miner with the sledge passes the bra under the table to Adam.
CLOSE-UP: on Adam, still reading, glancing at the bra in his lap.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. SOON AFTER THE J-BAR READING.
Clara Swift is asleep, her head on the cowboy’s saddle; the cowboy sleeps with his head in Clara’s lap, his Stetson on his stomach. The ghost of Paulina Juárez, the Mexican maid who is Paul Goode’s mother, stands protectively over Clara. When the elevator door opens, admitting Adam and Matthew, Paulina holds an index finger to her lips, cautioning Adam to be quiet.
ADAM
(whispers to Matthew)
Only whispering on the elevator.
MATTHEW
(whispers)
Why?
ADAM
(whispers)
To practice being quiet—your mom might be asleep when we get back.
MATTHEW
(whispers)
Okay.
Paulina whispers to Adam. Matthew doesn’t see or hear her.
PAULINA
(one hand on her heart)
Lo siento. Tu madre.
(repeats, in English)
I’m sorry. Your mother.
Adam nods to her. Paulina is smiling at Matthew.
PAULINA
(whispers to Adam)
¿Tu hijo? Your son?
ADAM
(whispers back, nodding)
Matthew.
MATTHEW
(whispers to his dad)
What?
ADAM
(whispers)
Just remember to whisper.
MATTHEW
(whispers)
You just told me!
Paulina is beaming at her great-grandson.
ADAM (V.O.)
Who knows the rules for ghosts—why was my grandmother’s ghost a younger woman, in her early thirties? She’d been forty-eight when she died.
The elevator door opens. Adam and Matthew step out.
PAULINA
(whispers to Adam)
Tu abuela. Your grandmother.
ADAM
(whispers back, nodding)
Sí.
MATTHEW
(whispers to his dad)
See what?
The elevator door closes. Clara Swift and the cowboy go on sleeping. Paulina sees Grace’s bra on the floor of the elevator; she hides it in the apron of her uniform.
ADAM (V.O.)
When the lies of omission unravel, so does the story.
INT. LIVING ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam and Matthew enter their suite. The TV in the living room is on—a close-up of Ursula, the sea witch in The Little Mermaid, is paused on the screen. Ursula is grotesque and purple; the living room has a purple hue. Adam is wearing a flannel shirt; he is unbuttoning the shirt and feeling around inside it, searching for Grace’s bra. Matthew is disquieted by Ursula.
ADAM (V.O.)
The missing bra didn’t matter—the bra was just the beginning.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Grace is asleep in bed. There’s a light on in the bathroom; the door is open. Matthew and Adam undress for bed. Adam takes off his flannel shirt. He’s searching the sleeves—no bra.
MATTHEW
(whispers)
What are you looking for?
ADAM
(whispers)
Good boy—keep whispering.
MATTHEW
(whispers)
I know!
Matthew goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth.
INT. HALL, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam peers down the hall from the open door to his suite. No bra. He closes the door. The bra is looped over the doorknob on the exterior of the suite door. Paulina must have put it there.
INT. LIVING ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Ursula on the TV—her purpleness tints the living room. Adam gives Ursula a look as he passes through.
ADAM (V.O.)
Ursula, the sea witch, isn’t important, but she’s like the bra—these are the details you remember when the worst things happen.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam is tucking Matthew into his rollaway.
MATTHEW
(whispers, pointing to the living room)
Is Ursula still on, in there?
ADAM
(whispers)
Would you like me to shut her off?
MATTHEW
(whispers)
Shut her off.
ADAM
(whispers)
Okay.
INT. LIVING ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
In the purplish light, Adam regards Ursula; she stares balefully at him.
ADAM (V.O.)
Looking back, so many small and unimportant things look like signs.
Adam aims the remote at Ursula, turning the TV off.
FADE TO BLACK. FADE IN.
INT. HALL, HOTEL JEROME. NEXT MORNING.
Grace’s bra has spent the night on the doorknob of Adam’s suite. Passing the bra are a familiar threesome. Billy goes by first, followed by Paul Goode—Paul is the only one dressed to ski—with Otto coming last. They see the bra.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace wouldn’t wait for Matthew and me, to go down to breakfast. We were too slow getting our ski stuff on, and Grace was ready to go.
Grace, dressed to ski, comes out the door, sees her bra on the doorknob, clutches her breasts, grabs the bra.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam is helping Matthew put his ski pants on when Grace comes into the bedroom, holding out her bra.
GRACE
(to Adam)
Why is my bra on the outside doorknob of our suite?
ADAM
I have no idea.
Grace drops her bra on the bed; as she leaves, Adam is helping Matthew put his ski sweater on.
MATTHEW
Do seashell bras feel funny?
ADAM
I have no idea.
ANOTHER ANGLE: on top of a chest of drawers is the copy of his novel Adam bought to give his father; Adam’s author photo is looking up at him as he finishes getting his ski stuff on.
ADAM (V.O.)
I knew Grace and Paul Goode were going skiing. It was not a good morning to give one of my books to my father. I’d not inscribed my novel “To my father”—I’d just signed it. Maybe I would add “For Paul Goode.” Maybe just signing it was enough.
INT. LIVING ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Matthew, dressed to ski, points the remote at the TV, turning it on. PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON is on TV; he’s talking, but the TV volume is off. Adam looks at the TV.
MATTHEW
Ursula is gone.
ADAM
We like Bill Clinton.
EXT. ENTRANCE, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. CONTINUOUS.
A cowboy doorman is loading up the Jerome van with the Chen family’s ski equipment and luggage. The tall hippie ghost, forever unnoticed, is showing her breasts to Mr. Chen.
ADAM (V.O.)
The Chen family was leaving. Matthew and I would ski at Aspen Mountain, while Grace and my father were skiing at Loge Peak.
INT. BREAKFAST ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
As Adam and his family are being seated, Paul Goode—alone, at a table for two—gives them a wave. Grace waves back. Adam and his father exchange nods. Otto and Billy are sitting at their own table. Otto stands, waving to Matthew.
MATTHEW
(to his mom and dad)
Can I go see the animals with Otto?
GRACE
Yes, Matthew. Thank you, Otto.
MATTHEW
(as Otto takes his hand)
Thank you, Otto.
ADAM
(calls, to Matthew)
We’ll order your pancakes.
Adam gets an icy look from Grace.
PULL BACK: we see Adam and Grace from Paul Goode’s table, as Paul would see them. Grace is doing all the talking.
GRACE
I’ll tell you how the rest of this trip is going to go.
ANOTHER ANGLE: of Grace talking to Adam, from Billy’s POV. Billy is curious about Grace, but Billy has a wandering attention span.
GRACE
I’ll finish my business with Paul—after skiing, or later tonight, after Matthew has gone to bed.
INT. ANTLER BAR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Otto is imitating the expressions on the faces of the mounted animal heads, entertaining Matthew.
ADAM (V.O.)
“Your business,” I said. “Don’t interrupt me—Paul’s memoir is the main thing,” Grace said. “And don’t tell me you have no idea about my bra,” she said. I didn’t explain. Grace wouldn’t have believed what I could tell her about her bra among the ghosts.
INT. BREAKFAST ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Paul Goode sees the one-sided conversation Grace has with Adam. The dissolution of their marriage is apparent to him.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace told me she and Matthew were leaving Aspen the next day. She wanted to be alone with Matthew, to explain to him what was going to happen when she and I separated. “I won’t blame you—for Matthew’s sake,” Grace assured me.
ANOTHER ANGLE: Billy is pondering the mysteries of a magazine, paying no attention to Grace’s ongoing lecture to Adam.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace explained that I would stay in Aspen by myself, for another day and night. When I got back to Vermont, I would have my turn to be alone with Matthew, Grace said.
A WIDER ANGLE: Otto brings Matthew back to the table, where Grace stops talking to Adam.
ADAM (V.O.)
Making Matthew the priority, as Grace and I agreed he should be, made me accept Grace’s plans.
Adam’s POV of his father alone at his table. Paul Goode is smiling at Adam’s family, but Paul’s thoughts are unreadable.
ADAM (V.O.)
I didn’t care if Grace slept with my father—I just wanted her to know who he was, if she was going to sleep with him.
INT. SILVER QUEEN GONDOLA, ASPEN MOUNTAIN. THAT MORNING.
In the six-person gondola, with FOUR OTHER SKIERS, Adam and Matthew sit back-to-back. They turn their heads to talk.
MATTHEW
It’s like being in an egg.
ADAM
What is?
MATTHEW
This is!
ADAM
Being in a gondola?
MATTHEW
It’s like being in an egg!
The four other skiers are troubled by this thought.
EXT. SILVER QUEEN GONDOLA, ASPEN MOUNTAIN. CONTINUOUS.
From a blue run, Silver Dip, we see what would be a skier’s POV of the gondola eggs, passing overhead.
ADAM (O.C.)
You know what an egg becomes?
EXT. EXHIBITION LIFT, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. SAME MORNING.
Paul and Grace ride the four-seater chairlift from the base of Aspen Highlands with TWO OTHER SKIERS, a married couple.
GRACE
(ignoring the couple)
You’ve had an interesting life, growing up here, becoming an actor, and a screenwriter. You’re a war veteran, you’ve suffered a personal tragedy, but people are interested in your first experiences—the formative ones.
The married couple, riding with Paul and Grace, are interested—they’re eager to hear more.
PAUL GOODE
I don’t think I want to write about those first experiences—the formative ones.
GRACE
But most movie stars can’t write. You’re a writer.
PAUL GOODE
My first sexual experience was with your husband’s mother. I suppose it was formative.
Like the eager couple in the chairlift, Grace wasn’t expecting this—the two other skiers are riveted now. Notwithstanding his offhand manner, Paul knows exactly what he’s doing. As Grace says, he’s a writer. Whether you like his writing or not, Paul Goode knows how to tell a story.
EXT. COPPER BOWL, ASPEN MOUNTAIN. SAME MORNING.
Copper Bowl is a blue run. Adam and Matthew are passing under the Silver Queen Gondola—skiing cautiously, talking happily. We hear only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
When a marriage is falling apart, when there’s a child involved, and the separation lies ahead of you, that’s when you have to be better than you’ve ever been. That’s when the story isn’t about you.
EXT. LOGE PEAK QUAD, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. THAT MORNING.
In the lift line, Grace is trying to get away from the married couple who rode with her and Paul on the previous chairlift. Paul is talking to Grace in the lift line. The couple who rode with them are listening, but we hear only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
The best of adult intentions notwithstanding, couples who are breaking up behave badly.
Grace is wary of TWO DRINKERS—two young guys, sharing a pint of tequila, in the lift line ahead of her and Paul. Grace doesn’t want to get on the Loge Peak chair with the two drinkers or the married couple.
ADAM (V.O.)
I don’t blame Grace, and my father would blame himself for everything.
The two drinkers look behind them in the lift line as the chairlift approaches; one of the young guys beckons to Paul and Grace to join them on the chair. Paul doesn’t hesitate to move ahead in the lift line. Grace has no choice; she gets on the chair with Paul and the two drinkers.
CLOSER ON: the ascending chairlift. The drinkers are lighting cigarettes in the wind. Now we hear what Paul says.
PAUL GOODE
On this chair, your husband told me he slept with my wife.
Hearing this, one of the smokers burns his eye when the lit end of his cigarette is blown into his face. His buddy burns his fingers on his cigarette, cupping it in his hands.
PAUL GOODE
Clara was repelled by what she did—she hated it; she hated herself for doing it, your husband said. I believe him, but what happened wasn’t your husband’s fault.
The smoker who burned his fingers drops the lit cigarette in his lap, where it’s lost in the folds of his parka. The wind has picked up. The other smoker rubs his sore eye.
PAUL GOODE
It was my fault that Clara did it—she did it because of what I did.
Grace is distressed that the tequila drinkers are hanging on every word. Paul is as insouciant as the noir characters he plays in his films.
PAUL GOODE
Your husband meant well—I know he was trying to make me feel better. “It was my fault, too,” he told me.
(as Grace nods)
No, you don’t understand. What Clara did—sleep with your husband, jump off the chairlift—is all my fault.
As the chairlift climbs, the wind blows harder. As the drinkers pull up their face masks, plumes of smoke rise from the parka of the smoker who dropped a lit cigarette in his lap.
PAUL GOODE
(to the smoker)
Your parka is on fire.
The one on fire unzips his parka and takes it off, as the parka bursts into flames. We see his burning parka fall from the chair. It falls to the ski slope, alarming THE RIDERS in the following chairlift and SOME SKIERS on the piste under the lift.
PAUL GOODE (O.C.)
(to everyone)
Anything that’s burning likes the wind. Fire loves the wind.
Moments later: Paul points off to the right. Grace and the drinkers see the gulch the old chairlift passed over.
PAUL GOODE
(to Grace)
The old chairlift went over that gulch—Clara jumped off the lift, over there.
The drinker is shivering without his parka.
PAUL GOODE
(to Grace)
We were right about here when your husband told me I was his father.
GRACE
He should have told your wife he was your son! Clara wouldn’t have slept with him—not if she knew!
PAUL GOODE
Clara would have slept with someone else. She was going to sleep with someone—with anyone.
(a beat)
Your husband showed me the photo when we got off the lift.
One drinker whispers to the other drinker.
DRINKER
Who took a photo? Of what?
Grace is perturbed how the drinkers have inserted themselves into the conversation, but Paul doesn’t care.
PAUL GOODE
(to the drinkers)
It was a photo of her husband’s mother—at the age she was when she slept with me. She was eighteen, almost nineteen—I was fourteen, almost fifteen.
The lift station at the top of Loge Peak is approaching. Paul, Grace, and the drinkers prepare to unload.
EXT. THE WALL, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. CONTINUOUS.
The Wall is a black double-diamond run that crosses under the Loge Peak quad. TWO SKI PATROLLERS examine the smoldering ashes of the drinker’s parka.
ONE PATROLLER
What the fuck?
THE OTHER PATROLLER
A skier on fire on the chair?
EXT. A BLACK RUN, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. CONTINUOUS.
On a black diamond, or a double diamond, Grace and Paul are skiing hard, matching each other’s turns and cuts. When Paul stops sharply, Grace pulls up and stops beside him.
GRACE
Show me the photo.
Paul takes off his gloves, unzips a pocket in his parka, and shows Grace the photo of Adam’s mom. Paul and Grace are looking at the photo when the drinkers pull up beside them. The drinkers are better skiers than we might expect, but they’re not as good as Grace and Paul; the one without a parka is freezing. To Grace’s dismay, the drinkers stare at the photo.
PAUL GOODE
(to Grace)
I don’t think your husband meant to give me the photo—he just wanted me to see who his mom was. Please give the photo back to him.
CLOSE-UP: the black-and-white photo of Ray in Aspen in 1941.
PAUL GOODE (O.C.)
She gave me her ski hat, and her sweater.
PULL BACK: Grace is zipping the photo into her parka.
PAUL GOODE
Under the circumstances, I was smitten—I loved her sweater, even her hat. I wore them until they didn’t fit me. I never threw them away. During the war, my mom gave them to a girl who worked in the kitchen at the hotel.
GRACE
(she pushes off)
Okay, okay—I get it!
Paul gives her a head start before he goes after her. The drinker without the parka is shivering and shaking; he starts to moan. The drinkers push off—not trying to keep up, just to survive.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace said my father was reprising his role as the getaway driver in The Wrong Car—Paul Goode was imitating the cocksure confidence of the little driver.
In black and white, from The Wrong Car—in the getaway driver’s apartment. The door opens, 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.
EXT. STILL A BLACK RUN, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. CONTINUOUS.
Paul and Grace are skiing fast in a steep, narrow chute. They have to pull up and stop as they merge with a new trail.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace understood there would be no sex with Paul Goode—only skiing.
Paul is talking again. We hear only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
The drinkers were gone. Paul Goode had stopped acting. His son had slept with his wife, but my father wasn’t going to sleep with Grace. Point taken.
INT. SILVER QUEEN GONDOLA, ASPEN MOUNTAIN. THAT SAME DAY.
In the six-person gondola, Adam and Matthew sit back-to-back, bent over their knees.
ADAM (V.O.)
What good are you, as a father, if you can’t be a good example? Matthew said we were in an egg—we were going to hatch, or be born, when we got to the top.
The FOUR OTHER SKIERS on the gondola are disconcerted by Adam and Matthew in their pretending-to-be-born positions.
ADAM (V.O.)
Matthew was the one who mattered, my father told Grace.
EXT. LOGE PEAK QUAD, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. SAME DAY.
Grace and Paul have the four-seater to themselves. Paul is talking as the chairlift climbs; Grace is nodding as she listens to him. Adam’s voice-over is all we hear.
ADAM (V.O.)
Regarding the unraveling of my father’s marriage to Clara Swift, Paul Goode said he and Clara had paid insufficient attention to their son, Toby. Point taken.
EXT. PROSPECTOR GULCH, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. SAME DAY.
The two patrollers who found the drinker’s burnt parka have found the drinkers themselves, on a blue run under the Exhibition lift. The freezing drinker without a parka is huddled under a blanket on the patrollers’ toboggan; the other drinker is acting out the fire on the chairlift. We can’t hear what the drinker is telling the patrollers, but we know the story.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was not the kind of ski day Grace or I had expected.
EXT. LIFT STATION, SILVER QUEEN GONDOLA, TOP OF ASPEN MOUNTAIN. SAME DAY.
Adam and Matthew imitate the hatching or birthing process as they unload from the gondola. REPULSED SKIERS move away from them.
ADAM (V.O.)
It’s hard to pretend to be born without causing offense.
EXT. UPPER STEIN, LOWER STEIN, ASPEN HIGHLANDS. SAME DAY.
Paul and Grace, just skiing. When they pause, they’re talking back and forth like old friends. They’re skiing down two double diamonds, the Upper Stein to the Lower Stein. Adam’s voice-over is all we hear.
ADAM (V.O.)
My dad would not be writing a memoir, he told Grace. Our Matthew and Paul Goode’s son, Toby, would be spared from reading such a story, Grace told me.
EXT. POOL AND HOT TUBS, HOTEL JEROME. LATER THAT AFTERNOON.
Adam and Grace and Matthew are in the hot tubs, where Lex Barker is listening to their conversation.
ADAM
(to Matthew)
We have three chapters to go in My Father’s Dragon—we won’t finish.
GRACE
(to Matthew)
You and I will be back in Vermont tomorrow night, but your dad won’t be home till the night after.
MATTHEW
(to his dad)
What three chapters?
ADAM
The gorilla, the crocodiles, and the dragon.
Tarzan knows apes and crocodiles, but the dragon worries him.
ADAM
I can handle the gorilla tonight. Your mom can deal with the crocodiles on the plane.
GRACE
I can read you the dragon chapter at home, tomorrow night.
ADAM
And when I get home, we can start the story all over again.
MATTHEW
(startling Tarzan)
From the beginning!
INT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME. THAT EVENING.
Adam, Grace, and Matthew are eating dinner. There’s no acrimony between Adam and Grace; they’re talking to each other, and Matthew joins in, but we hear only Adam’s voice-over and a country song. Without Monika and her pals, the ghosts are unthreatening—the two miners at the bar, the Aspen volunteers at their usual table, Jerome B. Wheeler in conversation with the Ute. From the street, the tall hippie girl peers in a window.
ADAM (V.O.)
I knew it was the last time we would go anywhere together as a family, but that night felt as much like the beginning of something as like an ending.
INT. LIVING ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. THAT NIGHT.
Grace is alone in the living room, watching TV.
ONSCREEN: Paige what’s-her-name, on her movie gossip show—Paige is interviewing Juliette Leblanc again. It’s been only five years, but Juliette isn’t aging well. They’re in a hotel somewhere.
PAIGE
Paul Goode is gonna be seventy?
(Juliette shrugs)
He doesn’t look seventy.
(Juliette shrugs)
And Clara Swift—if she were still alive—would be fifty this year.
A YOUNG MAN wearing only a towel walks into the living room of the suite, from the bedroom.
JULIETTE
(to the young man)
I told you, I’m having an interview—I didn’t mean tomorrow.
The young man shrugs; he goes back to the bedroom.
PAIGE
(whispers)
And who is that gorgeous guy?
(Juliette shrugs)
Back to Paul Goode. Do you think it’s a wonder he hasn’t been killed by a woman he slept with?
JULIETTE
(not shrugging this off)
Or a woman he didn’t sleep with.
Paige, at a loss for words, hadn’t thought of this.
PAIGE
(to camera)
I’m with Juliette Leblanc—we’re at an undisclosed location!
BACK ON: Grace, turning off the TV. She can hear Adam reading aloud in the bedroom.
ADAM (O.C.)
“A beautiful lioness paraded past…”
Grace covers her ears with her hands—not her kind of story.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam is with Matthew on the rollaway, reading the gorilla chapter of My Father’s Dragon. Grace drifts through the bedroom on her way to the bathroom.
ADAM
“… she was much too occupied looking dignified to see anything but the tip of her own nose.”
INT. BATHROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
On Grace, looking at herself in the mirror.
ADAM (O.C.)
“It was the lion’s mother…”
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. A LITTLE LATER THAT NIGHT.
CLOSE-UP: on Matthew, asleep in his rollaway.
ANOTHER ANGLE: on Adam and Grace, asleep—not touching, on their respective sides of the bed.
ADAM (V.O.)
“… there was no dragon anywhere in sight.”
CLOSE-UP: on the night table, on Adam’s side of the bed—nearest the bathroom door and Matthew’s rollaway—is My Father’s Dragon with the cover illustration of the baby dragon on a cloud.
FADE TO BLACK. Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me” PLAYS OVER. FADE IN.
EXT. ASPEN SIDEWALK, S. MILL. EARLY NEXT MORNING.
It snowed overnight. The S. Mill sidewalk has been sporadically shoveled. The small wheels of the baby carriage find the snowy sidewalk slow going. We see the GLOVED HANDS pushing the baby carriage, but not the baby. It’s a cold morning.
We are in the POV of the woman with the baby carriage, but we don’t see her—only the SKIERS, coming toward us on the S. Mill sidewalk. We pass E. Cooper, moving toward E. Hyman, as Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me” CONTINUES OVER.
INT. BREAKFAST ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. THAT SAME MORNING.
Flanked by Otto and Billy, Paul Goode arrives for breakfast—early, as always. “You Send Me” PLAYS OVER.
INT. LIVING ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. SAME TIME, SAME MORNING.
Grace watches one of the cowboy porters load a luggage cart with her stuff and Matthew’s. Adam is writing in the copy of his novel for his father. Matthew watches him.
MATTHEW
What are you writing?
ADAM
It’s what I write when I sign one of my books to someone I don’t know well. I write, “With my appreciation.”
MATTHEW
Oh.
We still hear Sam Cooke singing “You Send Me,” more quietly here.
EXT. ASPEN SIDEWALK, S. MILL. CONTINUOUS.
The baby carriage is passing E. Hyman, on its way to E. Hopkins. TWO SKIERS come toward us, on their way to Aspen Mountain. Sam Cooke keeps singing “You Send Me.”
INT. BREAKFAST ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
“You Send Me” is the only sound. Adam, Grace, and Matthew are being seated. Grace and Paul wave to each other. Otto stands, leaving his and Billy’s table—again offering to show Matthew the stuffed animal heads in the Antler Bar—but Grace stops him, pointing to her watch. She explains to Otto that it’s travel day.
Adam gives Otto the copy of his novel he signed for his father. Otto brings the signed book to Paul Goode, who reads the “With my appreciation” inscription on the title page. There is a nod of recognition between father and son.
Matthew would rather be in the Antler Bar with Otto.
EXT. ASPEN SIDEWALK, S. MILL. CONTINUOUS.
The baby carriage has passed E. Hopkins and is waiting for the walk light on E. Main. We see the gloves come off the older woman’s hands, as she tucks them under the blankets in the carriage. Sam Cooke sings “You Send Me” like it’ll never end.
EXT. ENTRANCE, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. CONTINUOUS.
The ghost of the hippie girl is ignoring the cowboy doorman, but someone off camera gets her attention. It’s a relief that “You Send Me” is fading.
ANOTHER ANGLE: the cowboy doorman sees the woman with the baby carriage coming. The tall hippie approaches the carriage and peers inside; she seems puzzled by what she sees, as the woman wheels the carriage past her, going inside the Jerome.
She is the older, gray-haired woman Matthew saw at the bookstore. She has aged more noticeably than Paul Goode, since their time together in The Wrong Car. She is that same woman, but she’s almost Paul’s age. Unlike Paul, she looks seventy.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Jerome B. Wheeler sees the woman with the baby carriage cross the lobby. Wheeler regards her with regret and resignation. It’s as if he knows everything that’s going to happen, just as he seems to know everything that has happened.
Jerome B. Wheeler returns his attention to the still-bleeding Aspen volunteer—as the woman with the baby carriage passes through the lobby, and Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me” FADES OUT OVER.
INT. BREAKFAST ROOM. HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam and Grace see the gray-haired woman in profile—just her head and shoulders, as she walks by. From where they sit at their table, Adam and Grace don’t see the baby carriage.
ADAM (V.O.)
Usually, a ghost won’t kill you—more often, it’s not a ghost.
Matthew not only recognizes the gray-haired woman from the bookstore; from where he’s sitting at the table, Matthew sees the baby carriage, too.
MATTHEW
(to his dad)
She was at your book signing.
(he whispers)
She’s cuckoo.
Matthew draws imaginary circles around his ear with one index finger. With his other index finger, Matthew points to the older woman who walked by their table. Adam must be daydreaming.
ADAM
(whispers back)
Who’s cuckoo?
MATTHEW
(still pointing)
The woman with the baby carriage.
Adam stands up, seeing the woman with the baby carriage from behind. She is standing at Paul Goode’s table.
MATTHEW
She didn’t bring the baby to the bookstore.
A WIDER ANGLE: Billy and Otto are engrossed in a Playboy centerfold.
ANOTHER ANGLE: Paul Goode looks up from his breakfast at the woman with the baby carriage. It’s been forty years. Paul doesn’t recognize her—not until she speaks, reprising her dialogue from The Wrong Car.
WOMAN WITH THE CARRIAGE
It’s your turn with the baby, little fella.
She pulls the sawed-off shotgun out of the baby carriage, shooting Paul Goode point-blank.
CLOSE ON: the woman with the double-barreled twelve-gauge. She puts both barrels under her chin, shooting herself.
CLOSE ON: Grace covering Matthew’s eyes with her hands.
CLOSE ON: Otto and Billy, standing paralyzed at their table.
A WIDER ANGLE: on Adam, standing over his father’s body.
CLOSER ON: the blood-spattered author photo on Adam’s novel.
CLOSER ON: the body of the woman with the baby carriage; one of her arms blocks our view of her head, or her head is gone.
ADAM (V.O.)
Like something Paul Goode would write—more noir than noir.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. MOMENTS LATER.
Clara Swift is pounding her head against the elevator. The cowboy holds her, letting her pound her head against his chest. Marty Robbins, singing “Streets of Laredo,” PLAYS OVER.
ADAM (V.O.)
Noir is the new Western.
EXT. ENTRANCE, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. MOMENTS LATER.
Three of the usual cowboy doormen keep the entrance clear for the arriving police cars and an ambulance. COPS and EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECHNICIANS rush past the tall hippie girl, who is showing her breasts to no one now. “Streets of Laredo” CONTINUES OVER.
INT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
The Aspen volunteers and the Ute are looking out the windows of the empty J-Bar, together—as Marty Robbins keeps singing.
ADAM (V.O.)
For melodrama, noir has replaced cowboys and Indians.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
As the cops and EMTs rush through the lobby, where Jerome B. Wheeler and the still-bleeding Aspen volunteer are having coffee, “Streets of Laredo” PLAYS OVER.
ADAM (V.O.)
Cops and EMTs are the new Aspen volunteers. My father might have appreciated what Juliette Leblanc told Paige what’s-her-name: maybe a woman he slept with, or one he didn’t, was going to kill him.
INT. BREAKFAST ROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
NO SOUND but Marty Robbins. Grace is holding Matthew’s hand, while she talks to one policeman. Both Grace and the cop agree that the crime scene is no place for Matthew. The policeman escorts them out of the dining room.
ANOTHER ANGLE: a POLICE PHOTOGRAPHER finishes taking pictures of the two bodies, which the EMTs cover. The photographer takes pictures of Paul Goode’s breakfast table, before he allows Otto to pick up Adam’s novel. Billy is talking to another cop, while Otto takes a clean napkin from an unused table; he dips the napkin in Paul’s water glass, wringing the napkin out in the glass. Otto wipes the bloodstains off the author photo, before giving Adam back his book. Adam lingers, to talk to the cop who’s been talking to Billy. The cops are nodding. What happened is incontestable. Marty Robbins keeps singing.
ADAM (V.O.)
Like the Western, there is no mystery about what’s noir—what happens is what was always going to happen; it’s what always happens.
EXT. ENTRANCE, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. MOMENTS LATER.
The tall hippie girl watches the EMTs carry the bodies to the ambulance. The cowboy porter, with the cart holding Grace and Matthew’s stuff, has to wait for a police car or the ambulance to leave. For a moment, there’s no place for the Jerome van to park. Adam and Grace and Matthew wait. The hippie ghost sees Grace take the photo from her parka pocket and give it to Adam, who puts the photo in the copy of his novel. The tall hippie is interested in the novel. Adam is wary of the inquisitive ghost.
As the ambulance leaves, the Hotel Jerome van takes its place at the curb. Adam says goodbye to his family. Marty Robbins’s “Streets of Laredo” CONTINUES OVER.
Adam is shivering with cold—he’s not dressed to be outside, and the hippie’s curiosity about his novel is weird and annoying. Adam goes back inside the hotel, while Grace and Matthew wait for the Jerome van to be loaded. The tall hippie girl is upset that Adam has taken the book away.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. MOMENTS LATER.
The cowboy is still consoling Clara when Adam gets on the elevator. Clara is distraught to see him, but she’s curious about the book. Adam holds it up, showing her his author photo. He points to himself. Clara is unimpressed that he’s a writer—likewise the cowboy. “Streets of Laredo” FADES OUT OVER.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam drops his novel on the bed. The photo of his mom falls out. My Father’s Dragon is on the night table. He grabs it and runs out of the room.
INT. STAIRCASE, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam running down three flights of stairs—it’s faster than waiting for, and riding on, the elevator.
EXT. ENTRANCE, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. CONTINUOUS.
Adam runs out of the hotel. There are no cowboy doormen. Two police cars are parked at the curb, but there are no cops. The Jerome van is gone. Matthew will not be able to hear the last two chapters—not on the plane, and not at home in Vermont. The tall hippie ghost is the only one there. She is as interested in My Father’s Dragon as she was in Adam’s novel. Reluctantly, Adam shows it to her. The hippie girl smiles, pointing to herself.
ADAM
I don’t understand.
The tall hippie girl stomps off. Adam goes back in the hotel.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Clara is reading the first sentence of My Father’s Dragon to the cowboy. Adam watches and listens.
CLARA SWIFT
“One cold rainy day when my father was a little boy, he met an old alley cat on his street.”
Clara finds it hard to stop reading, but she forces herself to close the book—handing it back to Adam. The cowboy is hooked on the story; he is more forlorn than usual.
CLARA SWIFT
(to Adam)
I love this story—I read it to my son when he was a little boy.
Adam nods; he looks guilty about taking the book back.
ADAM (V.O.)
It hurt that Clara Swift and the cowboy were more interested in My Father’s Dragon than they were in my novel, but writers have to accept readers like this.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
When Adam enters the bedroom, his grandmother Paulina Juárez is sitting on the bed beside his untouched novel. Paulina is looking closely at the photo of Little Ray. Paulina holds the photo to her heart when she sees Adam. Paulina must know her son has been killed.
ADAM
Lo siento. I’m sorry.
(Paulina nods)
The photo is for you.
(she’s surprised)
Your son’s ski hat and sweater.
Paulina is smiling and nodding.
PAULINA
¡Sí! ¡Muchas gracias!
ADAM
De nada. You’re welcome.
Adam picks up his novel, showing her the author photo. Paulina is polite, but she’s not dying to read it. Adam puts his novel on the night table, under My Father’s Dragon.
EXT. POOL AND HOT TUBS, HOTEL JEROME. LATER THAT DAY.
At a distance, Adam and Lex Barker in the hot tubs.
ADAM (V.O.)
No one thinks of Tarzan as a big reader. But Lex Barker must have been a reader. Maybe not novels for children—Lex didn’t have a stellar reputation with children. Not knowing what to expect, I began at the beginning. My Father’s Dragon isn’t a long novel—a little over eighty pages, counting the illustrations.
CLOSER ON: Adam reads to Tarzan in the hot tubs.
ADAM
“My father and the cat became good friends but my father’s mother was very upset about the cat. She hated cats…”
Tarzan nods; he hates cats, too.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. LATER, SAME DAY.
Adam reads to the still-bleeding Aspen volunteer. Jerome B. Wheeler is listening in. We hear only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O)
I decided to begin at the beginning with all of them, but not everyone believes in dragons.
INT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME. LATER, THAT EVENING.
The Aspen volunteers, at their usual table, are not listening to Adam’s reading, but they observe—from a safe distance.
ADAM (V.O.)
Readers vary, when it comes to having the imagination to enjoy a story outside their own experiences.
A WIDER ANGLE: on Adam reading to the Ute and the two miners who were blown to bits underground; Jerome listens in.
ADAM
(reads)
“… a baby dragon fell from a low-flying cloud onto the bank of the river. He was too young to fly very well, and besides, he had bruised one wing quite badly, so he couldn’t get back to his cloud.”
EXT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. CONTINUOUS.
The ghost of the tall hippie girl is looking in the windows of the J-Bar from the E. Main sidewalk.
ADAM (V.O.)
Some readers and writers don’t look like readers or writers.
EXT. POOL AND HUT TUBS, HOTEL JEROME. A FLASHBACK.
NO SOUND. As Adam reads, Tarzan is nodding off. Lex Barker falls asleep—he falls face-first into the water. He wakes up coughing and snorting, waving his arms and beating his chest.
ADAM (V.O.)
Some can’t go the distance.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. A FLASHBACK.
NO SOUND. The still-bleeding Aspen volunteer looks dead, again—or he’s asleep. Jerome B. Wheeler puts an index finger to his lips. Adam understands; he stops reading.
INT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME. MUCH LATER, THAT NIGHT.
PAN the J-Bar. The Aspen volunteers sleep, their heads on their table. The bar is closed; no one’s at the bar.
CLOSER ON: Adam, still reading to the Ute, the two miners, and Jerome B. Wheeler. There is NO SOUND, only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
I thought the two miners might make me stop at the crocodile chapter—a bridge of crocodiles, across a river, is hard to believe—but the Ute and the miners made me read to the end. If Jerome B. Wheeler already knew what happened, he was too polite to say. Jerome had been around longer than My Father’s Dragon.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. LATER THAT SAME NIGHT.
The still-bleeding Aspen volunteer still looks dead or asleep, as Paulina Juárez comes through the lobby, holding hands with her son, Paulino; Paul Goode, as a ghost, is fourteen. He’s wearing the ski hat with the pom-pom and the sweater Little Ray gave him.
ADAM (V.O.)
I knew why Paulina was a younger ghost than she was when she died. Paul Goode was a kid again. At fourteen, Paulino was the age he was when he met my mom.
The actor who plays Toby Goode at fourteen is the same actor who plays Paulino at that age. Paulina Juárez is happy to see Adam, who’s glad to see his grandmother reunited with his father—at a time they once enjoyed together.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was evident that Paul Goode’s ghost didn’t know who I was. Maybe his mother would explain to him, one day, but I could see that my grandmother was in no hurry to talk to him about grown-up matters.
INT. HALL, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam stands in the first-floor hall, waiting for the elevator. He stands with the reunited mother and son, Paulina and Paulino Juárez; they wait for the elevator together.
ADAM (V.O.)
The rules for ghosts confound me. Why was the ghost of Clara Swift forty-five, the age she was when she jumped off the chairlift? It was out of order that Clara’s ghost was older than the ghosts of Paul Goode and his mother.
The elevator door opens. Before anyone can step inside, Clara steps out. She and Paulina Juárez are old friends, always glad to see each other. Clara and the fourteen-year-old Paulino are happy but shy about being “introduced.” Paul Goode’s ghost looks like he’s meeting Clara for the first time.
Paulino wanders off down the hall, in the direction of the Antler Bar, while Paulina and Clara follow after him, smiling to each other. They look like they were waiting for this.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
The cowboy is kicking his saddle when Adam gets on the elevator. Alone with his saddle again, the cowboy must know that Clara has made new friends, or she’s found an old one. The cowboy sees that Adam is carrying My Father’s Dragon.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was late, I was tired, but I’d been a writer long enough to sense when someone has the soul of a reader—like a poor cowboy, who’s not had much opportunity to read.
DISSOLVE TO: eighty pages later. Adam is reading to the cowboy. The two of them are lying down—propped up by the saddle. Adam’s voice-over is the only sound.
ADAM (V.O.)
The bridge of crocodiles wasn’t a barrier to the cowboy’s imagination. We would get through the final chapter, “My Father Finds the Dragon.” I felt badly for the cowboy. Clara had been his friend. Now Clara would be hanging out with Paul Goode and his mom. As Monika told me, “Aspen was never an easy town for cowboys.”
INT. HALL, HOTEL JEROME. MUCH LATER, SAME NIGHT.
In the third-floor hall, a tired-looking Adam is unlocking the door to the living room of his suite.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
CLOSE-UP: we see the clothes of the tall hippie girl—we are familiar with her sweater, which she is always lifting to show her breasts. Her clothes are strewn on Matthew’s rollaway bed, her boots next to the rollaway.
PULL BACK: the ghost of the tall hippie girl is under the covers, on Adam’s side of the bed. She is reading Adam’s novel, which she found on his night table, when Adam enters the bedroom.
ADAM (V.O.)
Even I knew better than to sleep with a ghost. And it was the wrong time for a moral dilemma.
A WIDER ANGLE: as Adam undresses, leaving on his boxer shorts. Before he goes in the bathroom, he puts My Father’s Dragon on the night table next to his side of the bed.
CLOSER ON: the hippie girl puts down Adam’s novel; she picks up My Father’s Dragon, thumbing through pages.
ADAM (V.O.)
Not every dilemma is a moral one.
INT. BATHROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
CLOSE ON: Adam in the mirror as he brushes his teeth.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was okay with me if she read all night. I just couldn’t read all of My Father’s Dragon aloud—not so soon, not again.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
The tall hippie girl has moved to the far side of the bed, where she reads My Father’s Dragon. Her reading light is on the night table on that side of the bed. Adam’s novel, with the author photo facing up, is on his night table when Adam comes out of the bathroom and gets into bed.
ADAM (V.O.)
Writers simply have to accept readers who prefer other writers.
CLOSER ON: the two of them in bed. Adam takes a look at her, but the hippie girl keeps reading. Adam turns on his side, away from her, closing his eyes.
FADE TO BLACK. FADE IN.
CLOSE ON: Adam’s sleeping face, as his eyes open.
PULL BACK: in the foreground is the empty side of Adam’s bed, where the copy of My Father’s Dragon lies on the dented pillow.
ANOTHER ANGLE: fully dressed, the ghost of the tall hippie girl is sitting on Matthew’s rollaway, reading Adam’s novel. Adam faces her. She looks up from the novel at him.
ADAM
It’s for you. Did you see where I signed it, on the title page? There’s also an inscription, just the usual “With my appreciation”—because I don’t know your name.
She finds the title page, seeing his signature and the inscription. She gives him a disbelieving smile, holding the book to her left breast. With a sense of humor, she lifts her sweater and turtleneck, giving him a look at her right boob—the hippie girl’s way of showing him her appreciation. Adam understands.
ADAM
You’re welcome.
DISSOLVE TO: Adam has dressed and packed; he surveys the bedroom, looking for anything he’s left behind. This time, he doesn’t overlook the copy of My Father’s Dragon.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was easy for Grace or me to get a new copy of My Father’s Dragon, to finish reading it to Matthew. I knew who might like to have her own copy at the Jerome.
INT. ANTLER BAR, HOTEL JEROME. MOMENTS LATER, THAT MORNING.
NO SOUND, except Ian and Sylvia singing “Four Strong Winds”—the Ian Tyson song. Paulina Juárez and Clara Swift are talking to each other and watching Paulino, who is having fun imitating the expressions on the faces of the mounted animal heads. We know who showed Otto how to do this.
ADAM (V.O.)
Paul Goode wanted Otto to show Matthew the animals in the Antler Bar before breakfast. As a kid, my dad must have loved the animal heads on the walls of the Jerome.
ANOTHER ANGLE: on Adam entering the Antler Bar. Paulino sees him—a quick wave, then back to the stuffed heads. Clara tightly holds the book Adam gives to her; Paulina wants to see it.
A WIDER ANGLE: Clara is showing Paulina the illustrations, just the first few pages, when Adam slips away. Paulina blows him a kiss as he leaves. Clara waves goodbye.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
The still-bleeding Aspen volunteer is curious about the new reader in the lobby. The tall hippie girl is on the couch; she doesn’t look up from Adam’s novel as Adam walks by. Jerome B. Wheeler gives Adam a salutation as Adam passes through the lobby. Adam pauses to bow, showing his respect for Wheeler.
Up the volume on Ian and Sylvia’s “Four Strong Winds,” as Otto and Billy come through the lobby, followed by two luggage carts and two cowboy porters.
INT. FRONT DESK, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam and the two bodyguards are checking out at the same time—cowboy porters coming and going, as Ian and Sylvia keep singing.
ADAM (V.O.)
The Hotel Jerome is real—it’s a great hotel. If you ever go to Aspen, you should stay at the Jerome, if you can afford it.
EXT. ENTRANCE, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. CONTINUOUS.
An army of cowboy doormen and porters is loading the Jerome van, as Otto and Billy and Adam wait together. The three of them are talking to one another, but we don’t hear what they’re saying—only “Four Strong Winds,” now fading, and Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
It seemed suitable that my father’s bodyguards and I would share a van to the airport. We had more in common than our flying away from Aspen and our experience at the Jerome.
INT. HOTEL JEROME VAN, THE FIRST ROW OF BACKSEATS. CONTINUOUS.
Billy gets in the sliding door first, slipping across the seat to the spot behind THE DRIVER. Adam gets in, expecting Otto will choose the second row of backseats for himself, but Otto crams himself into the same row of seats with Billy and Adam—squeezing Adam between the bodyguards.
In the front seat of the van, the driver adjusts his rearview mirror. We see Billy’s face first; tears stream down Billy’s cheeks. Then we see Otto’s big face—he is sobbing. Last, the mirror shows us Adam—he’s crying, too.
ADAM (V.O.)
We had all lost someone important to us—someone who, for different reasons, had always been separated from us, someone we understood only at a distance. Yet my father’s importance to us—as removed from us as Paul Goode was—would be irreplaceable.
A WIDER ANGLE: on their three faces as the van lurches ahead.
FADE OUT “Four Strong Winds” as the Jerome recedes from view.
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