1.4 Pirates (part one)
Fade from black to goldfish. A pair of goldfish, turning around each other, swimming in tight circles in a small tank. While maybe they symbolize Dale’s attraction to Cassie, or Cassie’s attraction to Dale, or something, mostly they look fishy. Pull back from the fish tank to reveal its location on a mantel in an unlit living room.
Evening in the Lauro household and it seems everyone’s made an early night of it, or maybe they’re at someone’s garden party. Unseen and undetected, Cassie creeps like a vaudeville villain through her darkened home. She passes a cold mantel, and a note from her mother (“Warning: Mantel has sharp edges and might cut you. –Love Mom”), and a lamp made from an old fire extinguisher likewise bearing a note (“Warning: Light bulb gets very hot and might burn you. –Love Mom”). Once past the television set (“Warning: Television advertisements may instill a sense of inferiority that appears curable only through consumer goods. You’re wonderful and lovable just the way you are! –Love Mom”), she’s out the door and in the clear. In her hand: a small bag, just the size to hold a towel or two.
The Ball State University swimming pool is everything Dale promised. It’s empty and unguarded (aside from the locked gate, easily thwarted by Cassie’s key), Olympic-sized and lit from recessed lamps. No one seems to be around, although it’s nine and Dale specified nine o’clock as the time that “nobody would be around.”
Cassie’s in no mood to wait, though. She approaches the diving tower, looks at it for a moment, then starts climbing. Up past the two-meter board, past the four-meter board, all the way to the highest, the eight-meter board. Slowly she steps out onto the board. Her toes curl around its edge as she looks down at the water.
(She doesn’t notice, despite her privileged vantage point, that the Owlbear has hidden behind an outbuilding at the other end of the pool, and is watching her through binoculars. Nor does she see — though she could if she but turned her head — a slightly tardy Dale jogging through the parking lot towards her and the pool.)
She takes a few deep breaths, working up the nerve, and then leaps off the board, curling her body into a cannonball as she falls
**SPLASH!**
And suddenly Cassie is hit by a memory, distant and 8mm filmed and to the tune of “Sloop John B” by the Beach Boys.
Li’l Cassie, maybe five years old, plays in the surf with her parents. This memory plainly enhances and supplants the flashback at the beginning of episode 1.1; Alice and Jack are the right ages, and Cassie is the right age, and instead of mermaids there’s hippies — a few dozen sunbrowned, laughing natives of this tropical paradise somewhere in the Lesser Antilles. The waves pick Cassie up and toss her, and so do her parents. From their garb and demeanor and truly impressive tans, it’s clear these people aren’t tourists. They’ve taken seed and root here.
A smiling man emerges from a shack, holding an infant Oliver Lauro, and calls something in Spanish-French creole to Alice and Jack. He speaks with a familiar voice.
“A grown man shouldn’t be afraid of changing a diaper,” Alice shouts back to him. Nevertheless she and her husband lead Cassie in from the water and up to the beach, where the man — Enzo — turns baby Oliver over to his parents.
Cassie runs to Enzo and hugs his legs, which gets seawater all over them. “Uncle Enzo guess what?” she demands.
“You have learned to fly?” Enzo guesses.
“Better,” Cassie squeals. “I’m going to take swimming lessons and learn to swim!”
“But you already know how to swim,” Enzo says reasonably.
Cassie scoffs. “But this is going to be in a class! With a teacher! And other kids!”
The flashback ends with an unexpected abruptness. Cassie is squatting on the bottom of the deep end of the pool, remembering. Then she realizes she needs to breathe, and kicks off, scissoring up and emerging into the cool night air with a splash and a poorly-executed but recognizable Esther Williams flourish.
Almost simultaneous with this are two more splashes: the Owlbear and Dale both erroneously assumed Cassie was drowning and dove to her rescue. She looks about in confusion and spots Dale first.
“Cassie!”
“Dale?”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be? Are you okay?”
He’s better after he’s kicked off his shoes. “I thought you were drowning,” he says lamely.
“Well. I’m not,” Cassie says. She doesn’t seem irritated by his premature rescue.
“Gurble!” The Owlbear is not doing nearly as well. The owlbear costume seems to be hampering his attempts to keep his head above water. Cassie and Dale notice him simultaneously.
“Bear!” Dale says, helpfully.
“Why did you bring a bear?” Cassie asks him.
“That’s not my bear. Wait, it looks like an owl…”
“Gurble!”
Since the Owlbear is pretty much drowning, Cassie and Dale table their discussion. They swim over to the flailing man in the suit and manage to get him up out of the pool. In the struggle the owlbear head falls off the Owlbear’s body, and as he flops onto his back and pants for breath…
“Enzo?” Cassie stares at him.
OPENING CREDITS