Sometimes I write things

“I AM CALLING THE POLICE!” Alice has her megaphone out and has chosen it as her vessel of choice for communicating with Jack. “THEY ARE ON THEIR WAY!”

“She hardly ever calls the police,” Oliver says to no one in particular.

Through the window, Cassie can see Jack disappear around the back of the house and return dragging the kiddie pool. He sets it on the front porch and sits down in it.

“I AM CALLING THE POLICE!” Alice calls out again with the megaphone. “LEAVE NOW!”

But Jack clearly isn’t going anywhere — he’s cross-legged in the kiddie pool, staring calmly at the closed front door. Finally Alice shakes her head and, quaking with rage, opens the door and hauls Jack in.

Cassie has pushed past Alvin and Andrew and Oliver and come down the stairs. Once Jack is within arm’s reach, she slaps him across the face and bursts into tears. Alice shoots Jack a look-what-you’ve-done expression.

Jack takes this in stride. “…I…” He looks at Cassie, Alice, Oliver, and Alvin and Andrew. “…Ollie? Is that you?”

Oliver blinks at him.

“…I’m sort of your father,” Jack says.

“What’s happening?” asks Ferdinand, who’s still on the cell phone, but Alvin shushes him. He and Andrew start to retreat into the depths of upstairs, leave the Lauros to their family business, but Oliver grabs Andrew’s sleeve.

“…You look great… you all look great,” Jack says. “…Virginia, you haven’t changed a bit… Cassie, you’re all grown up… Ollie, I can hardly believe it…”

“Get out,” Alice tells him. Cassie sniffles.

“…I wanted to see you all for a long time,” Jack continues blithely. “You’re good, though! You’re good… I had trouble tracking you down. You were hard to find…”

“I said get out,” Alice tells him again.

“Mom,” Cassie says, almost brokenly, “who’s Virginia Silver?”

Alice blanches and stammers.

“That’s your mother’s name, Cassie,” Jack says.

“No. My name is Alice Lauro.”

“No, it’s not… You’re Virginia Silver.”

“No.”

“Am I Cassie Silver? Is that my name?” Blow hard on Cassie and she’d fall over.

There’s a pause.

“You don’t have a birth certificate,” Alice says, finally. “That would have made it too easy to track you.”

“That’s going to be a problem later in life,” Alvin mutters. Oliver grips Andrew’s hand tightly.

“I don’t understand,” Cassie says.

“…Your mother and I were pirates. VHS, mostly, some Betamax, software, now DVDs…”

CUT TO everyone in the living room. Cassie, Jack, Alice, and Oliver are seated. Alvin and Andrew are hovering in the background. Ferdinand asks again what’s happening, if it’s real or in the game, and Alvin shushes him again.

“Before you were born, Cassie…”

“Your father and I did a very stupid thing.”

CUT TO 1972, University of Wisconsin campus. Young Alice and Young Jack, last seen in episode 1.2 Orcs, are sneaking through a darkened building. Shot-for-shot reification of Cassie leaving the Lauro house at the top of the episode. They’re fumbling with a hand-drawn map.

ALICE (v.o.): At that time this country was fighting a way. A terrible, unjust, horrible war. We thought we were saving lives.

YOUNG JACK: Is this it?

YOUNG ALICE: I think this is the place.

YOUNG JACK points to a sign (marker on looseleaf paper taped to a door), reading “UW WARGAMING CLUB.” The door is ajar and some light is leaking out.

JACK (v.o.): We were just playing a game, acting out roles. “Let’s be revolutionaries…”

YOUNG ALICE and YOUNG JACK open up their duffel bags and begin to tinker with suspicious-looking plastic jugs and wires.

ALICE (v.o.): We thought they were doing some kind of military research.

CUT TO scene from 1.2 Orcs: Explosion, followed by YOUNG JACK and YOUNG ALICE emerging from the smoky building, fire alarms blaring.

BACK to the Lauro living room. “A young man died,” Alice says. “A graduate student in mathematics. He wasn’t doing any kind of research.”

Andrew’s eyes grow wide, and he quietly backs away from the living room and upstairs.

“We went underground,” Alice continues.

“The Bahamas, St. Kitts, San Estephe, the Keys… moving around so they wouldn’t find us…”

“And then you were born, Cassie, and at first it was, it was like a story.”

“But…”

“You started to get a little older and we realized that you, you and Oliver, you deserved a normal life. And we tried to give that to you, we came back to the US and lived under assumed names…”

“The pressure got to be too much,” Jack says. “I was… they were looking for me… I had to leave, to keep you safe…”

“You’re still a pirate?”

“I’ve got three hundred copies of the third Harry Potter movie on DVD in my trunk. They’re in Portugese… so…”

Jack’s gaze drifts over towards Alvin, who answered the telephone before and who would be age-appropriate for…?

Alvin is here for Dungeon Majesty, he quickly explains. It’s a game about…

Ah. That’s how he found them, was through the game. Jack pulls from his pocket a wrinkled “Dungeon Majesty” flier as seen in episode 1.1 Owlbear. On the back is written in black magic marker:

John Silver, the Treasure that you Seek is located Here. –KESTREL.

CUT briefly to Andrew rooting through old Dungeon Majesty books in Oliver’s room and closet.

“Who is Kestrel?” Alice asks. Jack shrugs.

“I don’t know a Kestrel,” Alvin says. No one pays him any attention except Ferdinand, who says “What?”

Alvin holds the phone up to his ear. “Ferdinand, do you know a Kestrel?”

Ferdinand says “Uh… I met Sting once…”

“It doesn’t matter,” says Jack. “I’m here.”

“What do you want, Jack?” Alice asks him.

Jack’s wants are simple. He wants them back. He’s missed them terribly, for years and years. He wants to be a family.

“You’re still a wanted man,” Alice reminds him.

Indeed yes… The RIAA and the MPAA, they play hardball. But he’s kept moving, kept on the water. All the action is out on the Pacific Rim now — Indonesia, New Guinea, New Zealand… Virginia would love it. He’s based in Thailand. Virginia would adore Thailand.

“No.”

“Our home is the sea, Virginia!”

“Stop calling me that! My name is Alice Lauro.”

“No, no, you were pretending to be Alice Lauro.”

“I’m a single mother in Muncie, Indiana, and I teach classes at the community college.”

“No, you were pretending to be a single mother…” Jack trails off. Alice’s face is tight.

“Cassie, what do you want?” Alvin asks. This whole time, Cassie’s been sitting across from her parents, staring numbly at them.

“I want… I want to take a walk,” Cassie says, and stands up. She walks to the front door; no one moves or says anything.

“And I’m not wearing reflective gear!”

Cassie’s slam of the door becomes the slam of some kind of coffee-making machinery being shut down for the night. It’s evening in the Magic Beans, and Millie is closing. Alvin sits on a stool at the bar, watching her.

“So,” Alvin says. “Have you given any more thought to law school?” he asks in a manner that conveys his acute embarrassment at sounding so much like a blandly genial older relative.

Millie is in the process of filling out applications. She’s a little intimidated by the all the questions, though — does she have what it takes?

Sure she does. Alvin admits he had an ulterior motive for hanging around so late. “See, I had this whole conversation mapped out in my head. Then I thought maybe I should have it with Cassie, instead.”

CUT away to Alvin pitching the role of campaign manager to Cassie. Alvin stresses the demands of the work, his high regard for her, his interest in spending time with her, his genuine belief that she is the right person for the job, and his faith in her abilities. Then he asks Cassie if he thinks Millie will go for it, and she gives two thumbs up.

PULL BACK to reveal that this was all inside a thought balloon of Alvin’s. “So anyway,” he says to Millie, “you want to be my campaign manager? I’m going to need a damn good one.”

Millie is taken aback some but she recovers quickly. She stops what she’s doing and moves to the bar, across from him. Extended shot of his profile on the left and hers on the right, as she peppers him rapidly with questions, and he gives a quick response to each.

“What’s your position on welfare?”
“How do you expect to be effective as an independent?”
“Will you caucus exclusively with the Democrats?”
“Do you support the governor’s AFTI program?”
“What about the outsourcing of Indiana jobs?”
“Are you attracted to me?”
“What’s your position on Homeland Security?”
“How do you balance environment and development?”
“What are your views on abortion?”
“Why haven’t you ever asked me out?”
“Is gun control protected by the Fifth Amendment?”
And many, many more, ending with
“Do you think it’s a good idea for a campaign manager to be dating her candidate?”
Alvin readily answers both the policy questions and the more personal ones Millie peppers him with. He’s a moderate liberal with nuanced but firmly-held views and he’s very attracted to Millie but hasn’t approached her in a conventional manner mostly because he’s easily intimidated by women. When she asks him the last question, he swallows before answering.
“No.”
There’s a pause while Millie decides how to respond to this, which becomes a long pause and then a painful, excruciatingly lengthy pause.
“Well, then, I think you have a choice to make.”
Alvin nods, and chooses his words carefully. “Breaking the Republican control over the state is more important to me than the next six months of my love life.”

Millie smiles; she accepts. Fade to black.

TITLE CARD: 27 February, 2001

In New York City it’s raining. Cold rain sheets down off the towers and a makes a river of WTC Plaza. Though the sun set an indeterminate hours ago and won’t be showing its face again for quite a while, Manhattan is hardly darkened. At Union Square in the Village, the sidewalk is as crowded at midnight as at noon. As far as the camera can see it’s a sea of black umbrellas. Water sluices past peeling Gore 2000 and Blame Lieberman and Buck Fush and Chad Hung For Our Sins stickers and placards.

Through a window into a party. Maybe it’s a wake for the Clinton years; everyone is wearing black. Or maybe they’re all in black on account of they’re artists and minor celebrities, actors and playwrights and cab drivers and musicians and screenwriters and secretaries and waiters and writers. After a few establishing shots, focus in on two young men slightly apart from nearest knot of revelers. One is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, the other a black turtleneck and a beret.

Otho and Ferdinand are drinking martinis. Otho has mastered the trick of wearing a beret without looking foolish. “Baby,” he tells Ferdinand, “there’s someone here who you really ought to meet.”

“What now, Otho?” Ferdinand asks. He’s scanning the party, and as near as he can tell he really is the only person there not wearing black. Combined with the drab gray and beige décor of the apartment, it’s quite homey.

“Saw ‘Coney Island Castaways,’” Otho continues. “He loved it. Loved the water and the gulls –”

“Yeah, the gulls were nice,” Ferdinand says. “It would have been better in color, though.”

“Baby, baby, you do good work.” Otho takes another swig from his martini. “He’s looking to make a new video and he had a falling out with Earle –”

“Earle?”

“Earle’s an asshole. So Earle’s out, and baby, the field is open. Budget and exposure. MTV, VH-1, MTV-2 and up.”

“I don’t know if a music video is really the kind of thing I want to do,” Ferdinand says. Otho can tell this is going to turn into a ten-minute monologue on artistic vision, so he nips it in the bud.

“Well, meet him and talk it over. C’mon, baby.”

Otho leads Ferdinand around a corner, and suddenly he’s face to face with Sting.

“Hi,” Ferdinand says to Sting.

“Hullo,” Sting says, and extends his hand for Ferdinand to shake.

“I’m sorry but no! You can’t separate the work from the man, put in little dividers! Orson Wells was a horrible misogynist, and that by itself, it makes it impossible to ignore those themes in his work, it carries through strongly in every one of his films from Touch of Evil all the way back to his radio stuff, I mean really, Hitler was a painter, need I say more? Do people look at Hitler’s paintings now and try to respect them as…”

At the far side of the party, opposite Ferdinand, a slim brunette in a pastel sundress, hair slightly askew, talking to someone unimportant. Ferdinand can see her over Sting’s shoulder.

“Uh-huh,” says Ferdinand, and puts his empty martini glass in Sting’s extended hand. He nods, distantly, as a nonplussed Sting takes the glass, then walks past the rock star, eyes on the woman in the badly ironed green dress. Behind him, Otho starts telling Sting what a joker Ferdinand is.

“Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing what you were saying about Orson Wells. Surely you’ll admit that it’s necessary to view a piece of art within its own context and judge it by the standards of its day? Until the 1970s movies featured women in at best prefeminist, frankly sexist roles; what may have seemed a progressive statement at the time, like, oh, Have Another Drink, is necessarily going to come across as reactionary this far in the future.”

She opens her mouth to respond, and we SMASH CUT to the two of them making out in the coatroom.

“Wait, stop,” Datur gasps. (Of course she’s Datur. Who else could she be?) “We can’t do this. It’s absurd.” He has one arm around her, and she makes no attempt to shrug it off.

Ferdinand blinks. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t — we just met, I mean, I’m here with someone, so…”

Over Datur’s shoulder, out of the coatroom, past Sting (Otho is still placating him, and he’s still holding Ferdinand’s drink), by the buffet: a wide slab of a man eyeing the dessert tray with the look of someone who’s had four cookies already and is considering a fifth. If he’s noticed Datur’s absence he shows no sign of it.

“Yes,” Ferdinand agrees. “You’re here with me.”

“No…”

“I think so,” Ferdinand tells her. “Don’t you? I’m getting confused now.” He smiles at her.

“I, we, we don’t, I just met you, I’m here with someone.” Her eyes are enormous.

“With me. I think that makes the most sense.”

“I hate this party,” Datur says softly, and leans a little further into him. “I hate all these people.”

“Then let’s get out of here,” Ferdinand says. He releases her and picks up a random umbrella; they all look the same anyway.

Datur looks stricken. “We can’t! What’ll people say?”

Ferdinand grins. “Oh, they’ll just be all ‘What? Huh? Sting!’ and Sting will provide leadership and guidance. Let’s go get some coffee.” He’s pulling on his coat.

Although she’s still protesting, Datur is also putting on her coat. “I don’t drink coffee.”

“Then let’s go get some tea. My name’s Ferdinand, what’s yours?”

RAPID DISSOLVE to Ferdinand, still lying in his deck chair in sunglasses despite a) the drizzle and b) the sun having set sometime previous. He sits up suddenly, and notices for the first time the fact that he and his clothes are sopping wet.

“Dammit.”

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