Smiley,' it makes no sense at all, then you get to the veeeeeery end of book two and-"
"You find out Big Smiley and Marcus are brothers." Jon said almost wistfully. "Man, book two was great."
Al raked a hand through his hair (just the stuff on his head), and groaned again. "Dammit! You're right, we can't cut him. Butch him up then?"
Jon slumped in his seat. "We'd be shitting in Haggerty's face. Besides, without the implied man-crush, why is Marcus always so willing to hurl himself at danger to help out Hank?"
"We could make them brothers?" Al mumbled, obviously dubious.
"Thanks, Al. I just threw up in my mouth a little. And no. No forever."
"You gotta work with me Jon!"
"I think we can get away with a little subtext! If we're careful. Like . . . we keep Marcus kinda femmy and soft spoken, but we really prop up his--"
"Huge, bad-guy-busting balls?"
Jon smiled. "It's like you're in my head. Exactly. So we have to include the gunrunner plot. That's the storyline where you realize Marcus isn't just around to prop up Detective Hank's ego. Ugh!" He drummed a frustrated fist against his forehead. "The conversation they have right before Marcus goes undercover. Marcus has that great--" he stopped drumming and snapped his fingers. "I got it. They're in the closed down auto shop, their usual meet up, Marcus has no new snitch-type info, but Hank sorta casually mentions he's trying to pick a cop who can handle"--Jon patterned his voice the way Detective Hank always sounded in his head-- "Goin' shady with the tommy set.'" He meant to quit with the voice, but a wisp of it stuck around. "Marcus doesn't say anything, just nods and starts walkin' away, Detective Hank knows what he's is gonna do, so he steps in front of him--"
Al pipes up, using the same Noir Wannabe voice, suddenly longing to be fourteen again and reading Detective Hank and the Black Widow for the first time, "You can't do it Marcus. You're a stand up guy, but you don't got the mettle. I need someone fearless."
Jon lets his voice go lighter, airy. (he first moved to Hollywood as an actor, so inhabiting the Marcus persona is no problem). "'You assume fear is a weakness. Fear only cripples weak men, Hank. It turns strong men into fighters, and I've been a fighter for a long, long time. You'd be stupid to stop me.' I love that line by the way."
"It's brilliant," Al agrees. "He could be implying he's strong in general, or he had to get strong for bein' a fag in the forties. Perfect innuendo."
"And either way, badass. Movie-wise, we win!" Jon watched Al's face twitch, and clench, and hesitate. "Come on, Al!"
"Okay!" Al threw up his hands in surrender. "You're right. We can sell it."
"Thank you."
"Are we done here?"
Once again, Jon leaned back and bit the corner of his lower lip.
Al groaned. "Aw, Christ."
Jon shook his head. "No, this is awesome. Trust me." He pressed his hands together prayerfully, took a deep breath, and revealed the awesome. "No one knows who Martin J. Haggerty actually was, right? The publishing house just slapped a photo of one of their office monkeys on the back cove."
Al scoffed. "What fan doesn't know that? It's perfect. He's his own greatest mystery. Some of the rumors are wild. A Kennedy, one of their cousins, prison inmate, Salinger with a pseudonym. He musta got such a kick out of it."
Jon grinned. "What if he was a she?"
Al frowned. "Huh?"
"We do a story within a story. Open on a woman in dark room, in silhouette, typing on a 40s style typewriter. We cut to the paper. She's typing the opening line of the first Detective Hank book, and the shot dissolves or fades into the actual movie."
"I love it!" Al shouted.
Jon held up a finger. "I'm not done. Every once in a while we cut back to her typing. Or a close up shot of her hand picking up a glass of water, or whiskey, whatever, but all we ever tip is the writer's a woman. That's it. Hair either all down or all pulled back, nothing special. Maybe wearing pjs. The very last shot of the movie, we cut back and forth between the Black Widow escaping the squad car, and our 'Haggerty' walking out of her writing room. And it's the same actress playing both! But as the writer, she's all boring and normal. Cut to Detective Hank walking away from the pier, no idea the Widow's gotten away again. Meanwhile housewife-Haggerty walks into a brightly lit kitchen where her equally normal, boring husband is pouring tea--"
"And the husband is Detective Hank?!" Al shouted, leaping off the couch again.
"Yes! Exactly! We end on a shot of the primary story, of course, The Widow and Hank walking in opposite directions away from the pier, but the penultimate shot is the author drinking tea with her husband."
Both men left the meeting thrilled, eager to begin work. Al was able to wrangle a lot of creative control without sucking a single dick. He brought Jon on board, as promised, to help keep the script doctor from going off the rails. Jon ended up doing so much work on the script he got a screen credit. Co-writer. Jon used the extra money to buy a new couch for his office, and a better file cabinet.
Eight months later they sat in a theater, packed to capacity, and watched their baby come to life in all its glossy, saturated glory. What they didn't know was that, on the other side of the country, an old man stood in line among the throng, eager to see the first Detective Hank movie. Some in the crowd were longtime fans of the books, others were teenagers lured in by advertising. The old man listened to the excited chatter all around him. At a hundred years old (and closing in fast on a hundred and one) he just hoped he lived through the whole movie.
He bought a small popcorn and soda, found a seat, and waited. When the picture finally began, the first shot was of a woman at her typewriter, her features hidden in shadow. The shot focused in on the paper while loud metal fingers typed out the opening line of the book, a line he first wrote over forty years ago on the margins of a dollar bill.
Huh, he thought, they made me a woman. He took a sip of his soda. Now I'm curious. An hour and forty five minutes later he walked out of the theater grinning from ear to ear. What a twist!
His nephew Charlie met him in the parking lot to take him home. "How was it?"
"Genius!" he said as he buckled the safety belt. "I couldn't have written it better myself."
Charlie smiled and slowly merged with the other cars snaking their way out of the lot. "Oh I'm sure you could, old man." He stopped to let a beat up Ford squeeze in. "If you took up writing."
"Yeah," he replied with a happy sigh. "I'm sure." He fell asleep, snored, and dreamt of the Black Widow all the way home. It struck him as a tad narcissistic, but what the hell.
*********************************
Books and Series by R. Smith
Pop Culture Sucks, Manifesto Of A Vampire
Everything Sucks Series
Knights Of Albion
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Everything Sucks #4, The Twist Page 2
