INSIDE THAD'S TRAILER -- MORNING
A computer monitor. Porn site, click.. porn site, click..
Into Google is typed: must lose him.
And like magic, from some underground movie biz site, a post: K-SAX MUST WIN HIM, accompanied by a photo of Katherine Saxon.
Jittery hands move down to the keyboard, and hold there, hovering above it..
Empty vials and beer cans are scattered about the desk.
REVEAL: a man in white briefs is hunched to the monitor.
Words in a blur on the screen:
Saxon novel project
This tighty-whitey wearer is THAD HUNNEWELL.
A naked woman, five feet tall, enters. MARETTA SMITH.
Thad doesn't look up at her as she checks the vials out.
ON MONITOR: Author Gwen Lowe
THAD gets up, and walks out of the room. Maretta takes his seat.
DOWN the NARROW HALL of the trailer, Lee comes to the meager kitchen.
Harsh light shines through the windows as he opens the fridge...
Grabs a Heineken bottle, and shuts the door REVEALING a pizza-boy car topper magnetized to the fridge; it reads in red: PIZZA STAR.
CRACKS the bottle open with a can opener. He finds a pair of khaki shorts on the floor, and puts them on.
On the counter he finds a polo shirt, and puts that on too. As the shirt comes down the Pizza Star logo on the chest is revealed.
OUTSIDE THAD'S TRAILER
The double-wide is in a pine tree surrounded trailer park. A garage connects to the side of it.
Thad Hunnewell walks out into the sunlight. One hand on his beer, the other hand the pizza car topper.
He walks down the steps, and out to the garage, swigging his Heineken.
Out on the street a TEN YEAR OLD BOY is resting on his BMX, watching Thad...
Thad lifts the garage door.
REVEAL: a midnight monster; what one in the know would refer to as a cocker -- the '68 GTX, same as in the book.
Thad raises his bottle to the kid.
MOMENTS LATER
The car topper slaps down on the roof.
Thad climbs into the cockpit.
He finds the key. He ignites the engine.
The GTX blasts out of the garage, and stops in the driveway.
Thad Hunnewell's face is drawn and acne'd from a weekend of abuse.
He gasses the engine.
The Kid on the bike revs his handlebars.
The GTX explodes, shuttle-like from the driveway; hits the road, and spins violently ninety degrees until it is righted on the road, and without braking, the car lifts off -- smoking the trailer park.
The Kid races his BMX into the low-hanging cloud Thad's car made.
BACK INSIDE LEE'S TRAILER
Maretta has dressed in Thad's clothes. She sits in Thad's chair. She picks up a large sketchbook, and opens it.
Sketches and sketches of her. Of her dancing.
She chucks the pad on the floor, and starts packing things up in a duffel bag.
HEAVEN
Heaven is cloudy. Down. Down through the clouds to the most beautiful spot on God's favorite planet: THE COAST OF MAINE.
Black ocean. Black-green trees nudging into the green rock that nudges black sea.
And a grey road. And racing up that road, a black car.
ON THE ROOF: the car-topper is near to ripping loose of its magnetization -- that's speed.
THERE. In the distance. The pretty little harbor, Rockland, unfolds on the horizon as the car flies by the old road on the right that leads out to the nooks of Owls Head, and the ocean.
SUDDENLY the GTX brakes, skitters, gets fishy as it does not like to stop.
Finally it sits.
An old PICKUP comes down the road, slowing once it spots the roadblock.
Truck horn HONKS --
IN THE CAR
HONK -
Thad looks in the rear view.
HONK --
He cranks the car into motion --
ON THE ROAD
The car spins around one hundred and eighty degrees, and blasts off back the way it had come.
COMES TO the Owls Head turnoff, and cuts LEFT --
The car flies up into the wooded realm of Owls Head. The environment grows old and wild; the trees close in on the road, the homes and developments disappear.
The car climbs a hill at speed. It crests the hill where is REVEALED: the Atlantic Ocean all around the peninsula it traverses.
And a great LIGHTHOUSE on the tip.
MOMENTS LATER
The GTX hits a dirt path, skids around, and kicks the dirt into a cloud.
CLIMBS a HIKING TRAIL up to the lighthouse.
The car is smacking tree branches, running on and off the trail where it can fit.
It hops the cusp, and ends the climb on the hill of rock where the lighthouse is, fifty feet above the water. And he shuts it down.
Quiet. The car is one hundred yards from the edge.
INSIDE THE GTX
He's up here now. It'd be tough to climb back down.
Thad shifts the car into neutral. The front tires roll forward an inch, and a little more.
Lee lies down on the seat.
OUTSIDE
The car moves. But slowly.
Rolls down the rock.
Picks up some speed, and rolls by the lighthouse, and down the hill.
INSIDE
Thad is arms folded over his chest, eyes closed.
OUTSIDE
The car is coming to the finish line.
We float ahead of the hood, and to the edge; we float out over the black waters below.
INSIDE
Something collides with the car, and Thad is thrown to the floor.
He's scared to climb up and look.
REVEAL
The GTX went off course. It steered itself away from the edge, and rolled into a lone tree twenty feet from where the land ends.
Thad climbs out of the car.
He checks out the damage to the car.
He goes to the passenger side door, opens it, reaches to the glove box, and from it pulls a last final poison vial of drugs.
He takes running steps toward the edge, and......
Nah. He can't do it. Not yet.
He pockets the vial.
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