by Tom Hanks
(she is transfixed)
My lord…
She immediately starts primping her hair.
MS. MERCURY (CONT’D)
Oh my. My my my…
BEA
He loves to cook.
MS. MERCURY
(licking her hair into place)
Are. You. Shitting. Me?
The great Tommy Boyer approaches. He carries an engine part.
TOMMY BOYER
Evening, Bea. Folks.
BEA
You eat, Tommy?
TOMMY BOYER
I did, thanks. You call for an old GM fuel pump, Phil?
PHIL
Yep. For this little lady right here.
Everyone can see that Ms. Mercury is smitten with Tommy.
TOMMY BOYER
Hi.
MS. MERCURY
(giddy)
Howdy-oo-doody-doo!
TOMMY BOYER
Car problems, huh?
MS. MERCURY
Yes indeedy. Terrible that pesky little car problems with of mine.
TOMMY BOYER
That it over there? The Buick.
MS. MERCURY
Is it a Buick? Yes. Our sad, bad broken Buick…
TOMMY BOYER
Let’s see if we can’t get ’er running.
MS. MERCURY
Okeydokey. I’ll come pop the hood…
(whispers to Bea)
I keep talking like a six-year-old. Help me.
BEA
Tommy divorced three years ago. Has a little girl. Gave up smoking last summer. Reads a lot.
MS. MERCURY
Got it. Thanks.
Off she goes with Tommy Boyer.
PHIL
Once again, the Motel Olympus works its magic spell.
BEA
(rising)
I’m going to clean up. You men waste time like you always do when women start cleaning up.
PHIL
Okay.
(then to F.X.R.)
Care to patrol the perimeter?
CUT TO:
EXT. MOTEL OLYMPUS—EDGE OF PROPERTY—NIGHT
Out on the perimeter of the motel property, Phil and F.X.R. walk.
PHIL
(pointing)
I was hoping to do something with those ten acres over there, but nothing ever came of it. I once almost put in a snake hut.
F.X.R.
A snake hut?
PHIL
Yeah. We’d have signs out on Eighty-eight—“Visit the Snake Hut: 140 miles.” “Snake Hut: 62 miles. Air-Conditioned!” But then Bea pointed out that I knew very little about raising snakes. So, we just made do with the motel.
F.X.R.
It’s a lovely motel. An hospitable little place. I love the name.
PHIL
Can’t stay here 24/7 without going nuts. One day a week, each of us gets a solo trip to Chesterton to go to the bank, do some shopping. Use the wi-fi at Theo’s Coffee Hutch. Connect to the outside world a couple of hours a week.
F.X.R.
(wistful)
That’s the way to do it.
(recovers his“folksy” personality)
If I ever get one of those laptop computer pads, I’ll try that.
Phil eyes F.X.R. as they walk.
PHIL
What middle name starts with X? Other than Xavier?
(then)
Francis Xavier Rustan.
F.X.R. stops. Knows he’s been busted.
Bea fingered you, when you signed the register. F.X.R. You ever heard the phrase ‘nom-dee-plume’?
F.X.R.
(no longer “folksy”)
I’m sorry I was dishonest with you.
PHIL
You weren’t. Other than being a rich and famous man in a poor man’s car.
(then)
You on some incognito vacation lark?
F.X.R.
Well, no.
PHIL
You going to sue us over the name, like Olympus is a trademark you own?
F.X.R.
I don’t operate that way.
PHIL
You’re one of the few.
F.X.R.
I’m looking for land and sunshine.
PHIL
Lotta both around here. The land will cost you. The sun is free.
(then, pointing)
We own from over there to over there. We ain’t going to be around much longer, according to both the doctors and common sense. We would like to close out our days someplace as nice as what we’ve had here.
F.X.R.
So, should I make you an offer?
PHIL
(stopping him with a hand)
You talk business with Bea. She’s my boss.
(then)
I’m going to head back for a cup of Ovaltine.
F.X.R. watches the old man go.
CUT TO:
EXT. MOTEL OLYMPUS, PARKING LOT—NIGHT
The hood is up on the Buick. Ms. Mercury is holding the light for Tommy Boyer, passing him tools.
MS. MERCURY
So, the metric tools are different from standard tools?
TOMMY BOYER
Them’s the facts.
(then)
Okay. Try to start ’er up.
She hops behind the wheel.
MS. MERCURY
Okay! Startin’ me up!
She turns the key. The Buick roars into life!
MS. MERCURY (CONT’D)
Hot damn! You must have read a lot of books on car fixing!
F.X.R. walks up.
Boss! Tommy Boyer and me are going to take the car out…for a test drive.
TOMMY BOYER
We are?
MS. MERCURY
Gotta see how it handles a long stretch of Eighty-eight! We’ll be gone for a while. So don’t wait up. Not that you would. Wait up. For me to come back. From test driving the car…
(finally, to Tommy)
Wanna take shotgun?
Tommy gets in the car and buckles his seat belt. Ms. Mercury hits the RADIO on and then gears into REVERSE. She and Tommy peel out into the night.
MUSIC: “We’ve Only Just Begun” by the Carpenters
INT. MOTEL OFFICE—NIGHT
TYPING is heard. F.X.R. enters to find Bea at a desk pecking on a typewriter. An Olympia.
F.X.R.
It true you have Ovaltine?
BEA
The hot plate.
F.X.R. finds a pan of milk, a cup, a jar, and makes himself a hot malty beverage.
BEA (CONT’D)
I’m gouging you a little on the facilities, knowing you’ll tear everything down anyway.
You planning on getting all the land around here?
F.X.R.
If I can.
BEA
Then we’ll be your first purchase. Kind of an honor for us.
He looks at the photograph of Bea and Phil, the original source for the dead sign out front.
F.X.R.
How old were you when this was taken?
She sees him looking at that photo.
BEA
I was nineteen. Phil was twenty-three. Our honeymoon. In Greece. An island so warm, so quiet we didn’t want to leave. Had to, of course. He went into the Air Force. I finished school. Came driving up old Eighty-eight and saw a place to sink all our savings into. Worked out pretty well.
She pulls the paper from the machine and hands it to him.
Your lawyers will put their fingerprints all over this, but it’s the basics—take it or leave it.
He doesn’t even look at it.
F.X.R.
Ever go back to Greece? On vacation?
BEA
We’re moteliers. Every day is a vacation.
CUT TO:
EXT. MOTEL OLYMPUS, PHRYGIA—PARKING LOT—LATER
F.X.R. folds a typed piece of paper, tucks it into his breast pocket as he walks back to his room. Behind him, the lights go off in the off
ice, and the dim spotlight goes out on the old sign.
He pauses in the quiet night…
FADE OUT.
MUSIC: “Mi Reina y Mi Tesoro”
SUBTITLES: “Now I know
That I truly love her…”
FADE IN
EXT. MOTEL OLYMPUS, PHRYGIA—EARLY EVENING
The sun is well down as the light of day fades to blue.
SUBTITLES: “I will work hard
To conquer her heart…”
A PARTY is going on. LIGHTS strung across the parking lot bring a magic to the growing night.
Jesus Hildalgo is there with his BAND playing to COUPLES dancing. As he sings about his queen and loving her with all his heart, his extended family is there, with KIDS splashing in the newly filled swimming pool.
Tommy Boyer is there with his little DAUGHTER and her PALS playing JUMP ROPE with a very different looking Ms. Mercury, who now sports jeans and a halter top.
WORKMEN swarm around trucks, storing away tools, finally quitting work for the day.
Nicholas, the room service waiter, puts the finishing touches on a superb dinner that looks like something served on the lido deck of the Love Boat.
LOCALS from as far away as Chesterton have come around for the big party, having brought their own lawn chairs.
F.X.R. is dressed in a fine, yet casual suit. He is talking over plans on a blueprint with a HALF DOZEN ARCHITECTS.
In two chairs, dual places of honor, sit Phil and Bea, who both have To Tell the Truth–style blindfolds over their eyes.
BEA
Oh, I’ve missed that man and his ’cordine!
PHIL
From the way things sound, we’re gonna see a circus when we take these things off.
As Bea sways to the Mexican melody, a Foreman, COLLINS, comes over and whispers something to F.X.R., who then smartly dismisses the architects.
F.X.R.
Ms. Mercury! We’re ready.
MS. MERCURY
(turning that jump rope)
Who is Ms. Mercury?
F.X.R.
Oh. Sorry. Old habit.
(tries again)
Diane! We’re ready!
MS. MERCURY
Okay, F.X.! Be right there!
(to Tommy’s daughter)
Come on, Lizzie. Let’s go see the show!
Jesus concludes his music with a flourish. There is applause for the band.
F.X.R. goes to Phil and Bea.
F.X.R.
You guys peek? Tell the truth.
PHIL
No!
BEA
You aren’t lining up a firing squad, are you?
F.X.R.
Diane, is it dark enough?
MS. MERCURY
I say yes.
F.X.R.
Okay. Collins!
Collins is at the main power switch.
COLLINS
Shutting down!
Collins shuts OFF all the lights in the motel lot. The place is dark now.
F.X.R.
Okay. You may remove your blindfolds.
They do. All is dark.
PHIL
Hell, I can’t see a thing.
BEA
Where am I supposed to look?
PHIL
Where’s the bloody circus?
F.X.R.
(a shout)
Let there be light!
Collins throws another switch. The parking lot, and all the people in it, are suddenly bathed in…shades of red, blue, and golden neon light.
Ms. Mercury’s face sees something so very beautiful. Tommy Boyer is with her, holding his daughter.
TOMMY BOYER
Wow…
The guests, every one of them glowing, look up in awe into the sky.
MS. MERCURY
Oh, lord! What a heavenly light!
CLOSE ON: Phil and Bea, the lights playing across their faces like a magic show in the heavens, are silent…
THE SIGN
Big Phil and Big Bea, illuminated in colors brilliant and bold, greet the world like twin giants in the nighttime sky. “Stay with us!” they say, arms raised, bright, hospitable, young.
The sign is beautiful. Truly beautiful.
Bea reaches out and takes her husband’s hand. They look into each other’s eyes.
BEA
It’s like we’ll live here forever…
F.X.R. hears this. He looks up at the sign. The colors play on his face, too.
CUT TO:
EXT. MOTEL OLYMPUS—THE WHOLE PLACE—SAME
The sign dominates the vision of the Motel Olympus.
And then…
The landscape slowly TRANSFORMS into that of a…
BUSTLING CROSSROADS.
The empty desert becomes filled with neatly ordered buildings, each an architectural gem.
The OLYMPUS SOLAR ENERGY COLLECTION FIELD has been built, stretching far into the distance.
Phrygia has grown into a lovely small city…
Around that landmark of a sign…
Around Bea and Phil, who will, for generations, bid all who pass by to Stay with us.
FADE TO BLACK.
Go See Costas
Ibrahim had been true to his word. For the price of one bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label, he had provided Assan with two, most certainly stolen but that didn’t matter to either of them. In those days, American liquor was more valuable than gold, even more valuable than American cigarettes.
With both bottles clanking in his knapsack, Assan, dressed in his nearly new blue pin-striped suit, searched the many tavernas of the port city of Piraeus, looking for the chief of the Berengaria. It was known that the chief savored the taste and effects of Johnnie Walker Red Label. It was also known that the Berengaria was taking cargo to America.
Assan found the chief at the Taverna Antholis, trying to enjoy his morning coffee. “I don’t need another fireman,” he told Assan.
“But I know ships. I speak many languages. I am good with my hands. And I never brag.” Assan smiled at his little joke. The chief did not. “Ask anyone on the Despotiko.”
The chief waved to the waiter boy for another coffee.
“You are not Greek,” he said to Assan.
“Bulgarian,” Assan told him.
“What is this accent of yours?” During the war, the chief had done a lot of business with Bulgarians, but this one talked in an odd cadence.
“I’m from the mountains.”
“A Pomak?”
“Is that a bad thing?”
The chief shook his head. “No. Pomaks are quiet and tough. The war was hard on the Pomaks.”
“The war was hard on everyone,” Assan said.
The boy brought the chief his other coffee. “How long have you been on the Despotiko?” the chief asked.
“Six months, now.”
“You want me to hire you so you can jump ship in America.” The chief was no idiot.
“I want you to hire me because you have the oil fuel. A fireman checks the bubble in the tube is all. He doesn’t shovel the coal. Too long with a shovel and it becomes all a man knows.”
The chief lit a cigarette without offering one to Assan. “I don’t need another fireman.”
Assan reached into the knapsack between his feet, pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label in each fist, and set them on the table beside the chief’s morning coffee. “Here. I am tired of carrying these around.”
—
Three days out, some of the crew began giving the chief troubles. The Cypriot steward had a bad leg and didn’t clean up after meals fast enough. The seaman Sorianos was a liar, saying he had checked the scuppers when he had not checked the scuppers. Iasson Kalimeris’s wife had left him—again—so his hot head was even faster to flare. Every conversation with him turned into an argument, even over dominoes. Assan, though, caused no worries. He was never idle with a smoke in his lips, but was always wiping down valves or taking a wire brush to the rust. He
played cards and dominoes quietly. And perhaps best of all he stayed away from the eyes of the captain. The captain noticed everything, the chief knew. But he did not notice Assan.
Past Gibraltar the ship met the heavy seas of the Atlantic. At sea, the chief rose early every morning, to wander the Berengaria, looking for possible headaches. This day, as usual, he climbed up to the bridge for the coffee that was always there, then worked his way down. He found all was well until he came to the fuel station and heard Bulgarian being spoken.
Assan was on his knees, rubbing the legs of a man leaning on the bulkhead, a man black with oily grime, his damp clothes sticking to his skin.
“I can walk now, let me stretch,” said the filthy man, taking wobbly steps back and forth on the steel deck. He, too, spoke Bulgarian. “Ah. Feels good.” The man drank deep from a bottle of water, then wolfed down a thick slice of bread from a wrapped bandanna.
“We are in the ocean now,” Assan said.
“I could feel it. The ship, rocking.” The man finished the bread and drank more water. “How much longer?’
“Ten days, maybe.”
“I hope it’s less.”
“You better go back in,” said Assan. “Here, your can.”
Assan handed him an empty tin that once held biscuits, taking from the filthy man a can that was once for coffee but was now, the chief could smell, filled with sewage. Assan covered the tin with the bandanna and then handed over a corked bottle of water, and the filthy man crawled back into a hole, a narrow gap in the decking from where a plate had been lifted. With some struggle the filthy man squeezed through and was gone. Assan used a bar to lift and slide the steel plate back into place, like a puzzle piece.
—
The chief did not report what he saw to the captain. Instead he went back to his cabin and looked at the Johnnie Walker Red Label, two bottles, one for Assan, the other for his friend hiding in the half meter of space between the steel decking. On ships heading to America stowaways were not uncommon, and life was easier if eyes saw nothing and questions were not asked. Of course, sometimes a full coffin was off-loaded as a result.
Ah, the world was a mess. But it seemed a little less messy after a drink from the first open bottle. If someone else discovered the filthy man crawling around in the black space between decks, there would be hell to pay, plus all the paperwork for the captain. It was up to Assan. If the captain never found out, well, he would never find out.
—
Two storms at sea slowed down the Berengaria, then the ship had to wait two days at anchor until a harbor pilot finally came out in the little boat, climbed up the pilot ladder, and made his way to the bridge to guide the ship into the port. It was night by the time she was tied up at the dock, one ship of so many. The chief saw Assan at the rail, looking at the skyline of a city in the distance.
