ScriptFrenzy 2011: "Dead and Breakfast", pages 43-47

(back to pp 38-42)

[scrippet]EXT. PICCADILLY — DAY

Joy and Gunter have finished lunch. They EXIT the cafe, walking down Piccadilly toward the Circus.

GUNTER
No, we don’t have to eat or drink. But it does make us feel more… alive? So most of us do.

JOY
It’s just — I don’t get it. Why are you here, when other dead people aren’t?

GUNTER
I don’t know. Any more than George does, or Sarah.

They pause near the Circus. Gunter looks across the street at what is now a Burger King.

GUNTER
August 15, 1940: that was my last mission, mine and four others’. Right there, it ended. They all went on. At least I have never seen them again, and were they still here, I surely would have. We cannot go far from where we die. It is too painful.

JOY
But look, isn’t there supposed to be a tunnel of light or something?

GUNTER
(slight, sad humor)
Ah yes, the light.
(beat)
It is very easy to be a bomber pilot, you know? Not the flying, I mean. The bombing. Everything is so far down, so far away. You drop the bombs, you go home… it’s nothing personal.

They cross the street. Gunter finds it painful to be here: after that first look, he does not look at the Burger King again. They walk to the statue of Eros, and around it, slowly.

GUNTER
I dropped them again and again. Nothing personal. Then that last day, a Hurricane fighter shot us down. We crashed just there —
(indicates the spot)
I got out of the plane, I thought, and tried to find my crew. All I could see was the fires, so terrible: everything burning all around me, the people screaming… That was personal, when I was in the midst of it. That was my doing.
(beat)
There was a light. I saw it. But the fires were so much brighter. I got lost among them. When they died down, and I wasn’t lost any more, that light was gone. I have not seen it since.

JOY
How awful!

GUNTER
Oh, it wasn’t so bad. I was confused, the way a lot of us are who don’t go on. I thought I was downed in an enemy city, so I hid in bombed-out buildings, starved a little — Then one night came more bombs. They fell right on top of me, and didn’t kill me. Then I knew.

They cross the street, away from Eros and down toward Regent Street. For once, the splendid buildings and the bustle of London do nothing for Joy.

JOY
And all this time you’ve been here…

GUNTER
While the world just keeps going. You move among the living, and for them, life goes on. But you can change nothing, do nothing really new. Everything is the same… always.
(shrugs)
It’s not so bad. Lots of live people go through their days the same way, changing nothing, doing nothing new… They never even notice.

JOY
Are there a lot of you? I mean, more than just here?

GUNTER
Many. Some have a thing they want to do: they wait till they can do it, and then go. Some love this place too much to leave, and won’t go on. Great ones, some of them.

JOY
When do you see them? Where?

GUNTER
We have places where we meet sometimes. The society of our own kind is a comfort.
(shrugs)
We keep up with the news. Who is here, who has moved on.

JOY
(a little sad)
I guess you must really want to.

GUNTER
Oh, sometimes. But I also think of the war… and I say to myself, “So many things I destroyed, ‘only following orders.'” I would like to make it up. To say, “I am sorry.” But I can never think of something. Or anyone to say it to.
(sad but putting an amiable face on it)
Maybe someday. For the time being, best to leave things the way they are.

They turn the corner at the bottom of Regent Street, pausing there a moment to look down toward Trafalgar Square.

JOY
It’s really so sad, though. George, and Doris… they can’t even touch.

GUNTER
One must learn to be intimate in other ways.

A look between them. Joy glances away, embarrassed. They start walking again toward the Square.

JOY
You say you can only touch dead things, like your clothes. But you go through walls. Why don’t you just go through your clothes, too?

GUNTER
We can choose what to touch, with some practice. To keep something, so that it moves through things with you, takes time to learn. And each new object, you must get used to, first. It takes an hour or so.
(grins)
This is why we need betting shops for our upkeep. I know some who have suggested taking money from cash machines. But one has to stand with one’s arm in the machine for an hour. People notice. And anyway, I would not like to steal.

JOY
(laughs: rueful)
It sounds like hard work. I always thought being a ghost would be easy. You just jump out and say “boo” to people.

GUNTER
Not if you want them to have lunch  with you afterwards.

A smile between them. Then Joy looks shocked.

JOY
God, look at the time. I have to go meet Harry.

GUNTER
Perhaps I will see you later, then.

JOY
I guess so —

GUNTER
(off her flustered look)
Joy. What are you going to tell him?

JOY
I don’t know.

She hurries away through Trafalgar Square, plainly troubled:  no Mary Tyler Moore stuff this time. Gunter watches her go.

INT. HOTEL NEAR COMPUTER SHOW — LATE AFTERNOON

A cross between a seminar and a cocktail party. At the first part, the seminar, it’s being “explained” to the WIVES, as a PowerPoint presentation, what their husbands are doing. Almost all of the Wives are rapt in the presentation. Joy, however, is terminally bored, and looks horrified to find herself the odd woman out. Anyway, she’s still distracted by what’s on her mind at the moment. Harry notices this and looks distressed by her obvious disinterest.

At the cocktail party, most of the SALESGUYS congregate, chatting: the women, off by themselves, do the same. Joy listens to their chat for as long as she can, but her mind is elsewhere. She’s relieved when Harry comes to get her.

HARRY
Dinner?

JOY
Please. I didn’t know the Stepford Wives had an English branch.

[/scrippet]

 
(to be continued…)