Wednesday, December 10, 2025

John and Jan after Kate and Cedric

follows from...


INT. TBD - DAY

JAN: What's the closest you've been to Laramie besides Jackson?

JOHN: Cheyenne for an E-P-A vee Wyoming coal depo my second year at Buford Sawyer. A week in January.

JAN: Tropical?

JOHN: Ten below every morning made colder by face-slapping wind.

JAN: Where did you stay?

JOHN: The Plains Hotel. I think they've added Historic to the name. Since nineteen-eleven, or something like that. Guests include Hemingway, Robert Kennedy and a couple other I can't remember. Cattle barons and oil tycoons. Closest you've been besides Jackson.

JAN: Fort Collins for a sorority sister's wedding the summer between junior and senior year. When's the last time you were in a mobile home?

JOHN: Sixty-something years ago. My grandmother's best friend lived in a park.

JAN: Betty or Mabel?

JOHN: Betty. You?

JAN: Not in but on the doorsteps of however were many in the Concord Mobile Estates park trick or treating when I was seven or eight.

JOHN: Do you remember your costume?

JAN: I was Dorothy.

JOHN: From Kansas.

JAN: Where in Kansas?

JOHN: Liberal laid claim after the fact  

JAN: Very good.

JOHN: Tell me about your red slippers.

JAN: Woolworth's at Plaza Mall. Three times I had to click my heels three timers to get candy. 

JOHN: Where was the mobile home park nearest you? 

JAN: I don't know. We drove to Palm Springs and walked a park called the Sahara.

JOHN: We being?

JAN: All of us. Halloween was a Friday that year. We made a weekend of it.

JOHN: What was David if anything?

JAN: A pirate.

JOHN: Aaargh.

JAN: He said tat a few times per dad's suggestion. Black beard and plastic sword.

Pause. 

JOHN: You know what's funny.

JAN: That Tom's arrival has brought up things we didn't know about each other?

John stares at her.

JOHN: Jan, how do you do that? 

JAN: Wavelength? Yes, it's funny that his arrival has done that.

Jan shiuts down computer, gets up, takes John's hand, leads him into hall out of view.