Still Valley At 20,000 Feet - Mike Burns (good ebook reader .TXT) 📗

time. Kinda like H.G. Well’s “New Accelerator.”

JULIA(giggling, not unkindly)
I should have known better than to argue with the prophet of endless change. Touche!

Just before turning off bedstand light, Bob changes topic slightly.

BOB
And speaking of change, I wish they’d change the paint on these walls. This bilious green color is enough to turn your stomach. Needs something in a nice bright yellow, or something like that. Thank God we’ll be out of here by nine.

JULIA(dutifully)
Yes, Bob.

Julia intones this listlessly, already turned over on her side, with covers pulled up.


LIGHTS OUT.

(FADE OUT)
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
(FADE IN)

INT. HOTEL ROOM WITH LIGHT STREAMING IN WINDOW
MORNING

Bob opens his eyes at the sound of the alarm clock.

FOCUS ON BOB We see the first thing to greet his eyes.

CUT TO

FOCUS ON YELLOW-PAINTED WALL

BOB
Julia, the wall color’s changed. Kind of attractive-looking, actually. Not that bilious green muck. How’d that happen?

JULIA (yawning)
Beats me, Bob. How DID it happen?

BOB(never without an answer)
Must be from the power of my positive thinking--which is always receptive to CHANGE!

FADE OUT, briefly.

FADE IN.

The two are dressed in suit and dress, both with overcoats, walking out the door. Taking one last look at the walls of the room, Bob waxes poetic.

BOB
I tell you, Julia, this is a good omen. A harbinger of how smashingly successful the rest of this day will go. Baltex is gonna sell a million of these babies, thanks to yours truly. Today, the hotel room walls, tomorrow suburban America and beyond! America‘s lawns will never know what hit ‘em!

Outside the closing door, Bob glances up, notices an odd-looking flag atop the flagpole, which stands on a concrete circle in the middle of a grassy area just across the drive from the block of hotel rooms. It hangs slackly in the breezeless day, so he can’t see it distinctly.

Dismissing the thought, he takes his wife’s arm and leads her up the drive, to the curb over by the thoroughfare running in front of the hotel.

BOB
I see the shuttle to the airport coming, honey. Let’s hurry.

They reach curb, and shuttle bus pulls up in front of them.

(FADE OUT)


(CONTINUED)
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
(FADE IN)

INT. TICKET COUNTER, DFW AIRPORT.

The sign lists Bob and Julia’s flight, Flight 665, from DFW to Richmond, as on time, leaving 12:30 PM. Shooting his mouth off, Bob launches into contemporary youthful slang, and describes himself grandiosely.

BOB: I’m going to be the greatest salesman on earth--one who will change the earth--one lawn at a time. I‘m simply THE BOMB!

Airport security doesn’t take utterances of the “B” word lightly, and he’s hustled off into a separate room (to the tune of a snatch of playful, even flippant, music) for a patdown, stripdown search--but not before his wife gives him a supremely dirty look over her shoulder as she’s taken off to a separate room for her own search.

(FADE OUT)

(FADE IN)

INT. SMALL CARPETED, WHITE-PAINTED ROOM

Bob has been searched. The security officer who has searched him speaks now.

SECURITY OFFICER
Well, I don’t see any problem here, Mr. Wilson, except with your choice of words. Just watch the language from now on, okay?

BOB(dutifully)
Yessir. Careless of me. Won’t happen again.

SECURITY OFFICER
See that it doesn’t. Now, wait a sec while I call FAA headquarters in Richmond.

Bob is nonplussed, thinking it was headquartered in Washington.

BOB (softly aloud) Richmond?

He quickly dismisses the thought as irrelevant.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN.

INT. IN WAITING AREA BY BOARDING GATE

Bob and Julia, looking somewhat worse for wear, have finally gotten luggage checked in, and collected boarding passes.

BOB
Sorry again. I can’t believe I was that stupid.

JULIA
Tell me again, Bob. It didn’t sink in the first fifty times.

(CONTINUED)
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
BOB
Those people just aren’t receptive enough to change. Don’t they realize that plane hijackings and 9/11-type scenarios are passe now?

JULIA(horrified)
Bob, shut up! Do you want them down on us again!

BOB (annoyed)
Okay, okay. Take it easy.

A PA announcement signals they can board now.

CAMERA FOLLOWS behind them, down corridor, into the plane’s entrance--where a clipboard-toting attendant takes their boarding passes. They pass by a young man in suit and tie, writing something in a pocket notebook, who also has a laptop computer on his lap, sitting in a passenger seat near plane entrance.

Bob and Julia pass on and reach their seats, where Bob opens overhead luggage bin and stashes both overcoats.

Just as they have seated themselves, a ripple of applause from the front of the plane signals the arrival of a celebrity in their midst, on the heels of which follows a strange, icy silence. The man in question is making his way back, and Bob recognizes him, and speaks his recognition out loud.