Some days more than others. You didn"t know, and Polly didn"t remember.
HANK (gently) Remember what, doll?
KATIE.
Polly got married on the five-year anniversary of Bill"s death.
HANK (hugs her) Come on to bed, why don"t you?
KATIE.
In a little while.
HANK.
Okay. Maybe I"ll still be awake.
KATIE.
Got a few ideas, do you?
HANK.
I might.
KATIE.
That"s nice.
He kisses her, then leaves, closing the door behind him. KATIE sits in BILL"S old chair. Close by, on the coffee table, is a remote control for the TV and an extension phone. KATIE looks at the blank TV, and THE CAMERA MOVES IN on her face. One tear rims one eye, sparkling like a sapphire.
KATIE.
I do still miss you, big guy. Lots and lots. Every day. And you know what? It hurts.
The tear falls. She picks up the TV remote and pushes the ONb.u.t.ton.
INT. TV, KATIE"S POV.
An ad for Ginsu Knives comes to an end and is replaced by a STAR LOGO.
ANNOUNCER (voice) Now back to Channel 63"s Thursday night Star Time Movie . . . Ghost Kiss.
The logo DISSOLVES INTO a guy who looks like he died in a car crash about two weeks ago and has since been subjected to a lot of hot weather. He comes staggering out of the same old crypt.
INT. KATIE.
Terribly startled - almost horrified. She hits the OFF b.u.t.ton on the remote control. The TV blinks off.
KATIE"S face begins to work. She struggles against the impending emotional storm, but the coincidence of the movie is just one thing too many on what must have already been one of the most emotionally trying days of her life. The dam breaks and she begins to sob . . . terrible heartbroken sobs. She reaches out for the little table by the chair, meaning to put the remote control on it, and knocks the phone onto the floor.
SOUND: THE HUM OF AN OPEN LINE.
Her tear-stained face grows suddenly still as she looks at the telephone. Something begins to fill it . . . an idea? an intuition? Hard to tell. And maybe it doesn"t matter.
INT. THE TELEPHONE, KATIE"S POV.
THE CAMERA MOVES IN TO ECU . . . MOVES IN until the dots in the off-the-hook receiver look like chasms.
SOUND OF OPEN-LINE BUZZ UP TO LOUD.
WE GO INTO THE BLACK . . . and hear BILL (voice) Who are you calling? Who do you want to call? Who would you call, if it wasn"t too late?
INT. KATIE.
There is now a strange hypnotized look on her face. She reaches down, scoops the telephone up, and punches in numbers, seemingly at random.
SOUND: RINGING PHONE.
KATIE continues to look hypnotized. The look holds until the phone is answered . . . and she hears herself on the other end of the line.
KATIE (voice; filter) h.e.l.lo, Weiderman residence.
KATIE - our present-day KATIE with the streaks of gray in her hair - goes on sobbing, yet an expression of desperate hope is trying to be born on her face. On some level she understands that the depth of her grief has allowed a kind of telephonic time-travel. She"s trying to talk, to force the words out.
KATIE (sobbing) Take . . . please take . . . t-t- KATIE, IN THE PHONE NOOK, REPRISE.
It"s five years ago. BILL is standing beside her, looking concerned. JEFF is wandering off to look for a blank tape in the other room.
KATIE.
Polly? What"s wrong?
INT. KATIE, IN THE STUDY.
KATIE (sobbing) Please - quick- SOUND: CLICK OF A BROKEN CONNECTION.
KATIE (screaming) Take him to the hospital! If you want him to live, take him to the hospital! He"s going to have a heart attack! He - SOUND: HUM OF AN OPEN LINE.
Slowly, very slowly, KATIE hangs up the telephone. Then, after a moment, she picks it up again. She speaks aloud with no self-consciousness whatever. Probably doesn"t even know she"s doing it.
KATIE.
I dialed the old number. I dialed - SLAM CUT TO:.
INT. BILL, IN THE PHONE NOOK WITH KATIE BESIDE HIM.
He"s just taken the phone from KATIE and is speaking to the operator.
OPERATOR (filter, GIGGLES) I promise not to give it out.
BILL.
It"s 555- SLAM CUT TO:.
INT. KATIE, IN BILL"S OLD CHAIR, CU.
KATIE (finishes) -4408.
INT. THE PHONE, CU.
INT. KATIE"S trembling finger carefully picks out the number, and we hear the corresponding tones: 555-4408.
INT. KATIE, IN BILL"S OLD CHAIR, CU.
She closes her eyes as the PHONE BEGINS TO RING. Her face is filled with an agonizing mixture of hope and fear. If only she can have one more chance to pa.s.s the vital message on, it says . . . just one more chance.
KATIE (low) Please . . . please . . .
RECORDED VOICE (filter) You have reached a non-working number. Please hang up and dial again. If you need a.s.sistance - KATIE hangs up again. Tears stream down her cheeks. THE CAMERA PANS AWAY AND DOWN to the telephone.
INT. THE PHONE NOOK, WITH KATIE AND BILL, REPRISE.
BILL.
So it was a prank. Or someone who was crying so hard she dialed a wrong number . . . "through a shimmering film of tears," as we veteran hacks like to say.
KATIE.
It was not a prank and it was not a wrong number! It was someone in my family!
INT. KATIE (PRESENT DAY) IN BILL"S STUDY.
KATIE.
Yes. Someone in my family. Someone very close. (Pause) Me.
She suddenly throws the phone across the room. Then she begins to SOB AGAIN and puts her hands over her face. THE CAMERA HOLDS on her for a moment, then DOLLIES ACROSS TO INT. THE PHONE.
It lies on the carpet, looking both bland and somehow ominous. CAMERA MOVES IN TO ECU - the holes in the receiver once more look like huge dark chasms. We HOLD, then FADE TO BLACK.
The Ten O"Clock People.
1.
Pearson tried to scream but shock robbed his voice and he was able to produce only a low, choked whuffling - the sound of a man moaning in his sleep. He drew in breath to try it again, but before he could get started, a hand seized his left arm just above the elbow in a strong pincers grip and squeezed.
"It"d be a mistake," the voice that went with the hand said. It was pitched only half a step above a whisper, and it spoke directly into Pearson"s left ear. "A bad one. Believe me, it would."
Pearson looked around. The thing which had occasioned his desire - no, his need - to scream had disappeared inside the bank now, amazingly unchallenged, and Pearson found he could look around. A good-looking young black man in a cream-colored suit had grabbed him. Pearson didn"t know him, but he recognized him; he sight-recognized most of the odd little sub-tribe he"d come to think of as the Ten O"clock People . . . as, he supposed, they recognized him.
The good-looking young black man was watching him warily.
"Did you see it?" Pearson asked. The words came out in a high-pitched, nagging whine that was totally unlike his usual confident speaking voice.
The good-looking young black man had let go of Pearson"s arm when he became reasonably convinced that Pearson wasn"t going to shock the plaza in front of The First Mercantile Bank of Boston with a volley of wild screams; Pearson immediately reached out and gripped the young black man"s wrist. It was as if he were not yet capable of living without the comfort of the other man"s touch. The good-looking young black man made no effort to pull away, only glanced down at Pearson"s hand for a moment before looking back up into Pearson"s face.
"I mean, did you see it? Horrible! Even if it was makeup . . . or some kind of mask someone put on for a joke . . . "
But it hadn"t been make-up and it hadn"t been a mask. The thing in the dark-gray Andre Cyr suit and five-hundred-dollar shoes had pa.s.sed very close to Pearson, almost close enough to touch (G.o.d forbid, his mind interjected with a helpless cringe of revulsion), and he knew it hadn"t been make-up or a mask. Because the flesh on the huge protuberance Pearson supposed was its head had been in motion, different parts moving in different directions, like the bands of exotic gases surrounding some planetary giant.
"Friend," the good-looking young black man in the cream-colored suit began, "you need - "
"What was it?" Pearson broke in. "I never saw anything like that in my life! It was like something you"d see in a, I don"t know, a sideshow . . . or . . . or . . . "
His voice was no longer coming from its usual place inside his head. It seemed to be drifting down from someplace above him, instead - as if he"d fallen into a snare or a crack in the earth and that high-pitched, nagging voice belonged to somebody else, somebody who was speaking down to him.
"Listen, my friend - "
There was something else, too. When Pearson had stepped out through the revolving doors just a few minutes ago with an unlit Marlboro between his fingers, the day had been overcast - threatening rain, in fact. Now everything was not just bright but overbright. The red skirt on the pretty blonde standing beside the building fifty feet or so farther down (she was smoking a cigarette and reading a paperback) screamed into the day like a firebell; the yellow of a pa.s.sing delivery boy"s shirt stung like the barb of a wasp. People"s faces stood out like the faces in his daughter Jenny"s beloved Pop-Up books.
And his lips . . . he couldn"t feel his lips. They had gone numb, the way they sometimes did after a big shot of novocaine.
Pearson turned to the good-looking young man in the cream-colored suit and said, "This is ridiculous, but I think I"m going to faint."
"No, you"re not," the young man said, and he spoke with such a.s.surance that Pearson believed him, at least temporarily. The hand gripped his arm above the elbow again, but much more gently this time. "Come on over here - you need to sit down."
There were circular marble islands about three feet high scattered around the broad plaza in front of the bank, each containing its own variety of late summer/early fall flowers. There were Ten O"clock People sitting on the rims of most of these upscale flower tubs, some reading, some chatting, some looking out at the pa.s.sing rivers of foot-traffic on the sidewalks of Commercial Street, but all of them also doing the thing that made them Ten O"Clock People, the thing Pearson had come downstairs and outside to do himself. The marble island closest to Pearson and his new acquaintance contained asters, their purple miraculously brilliant to Pearson in his heightened state of awareness. Its circular rim was vacant, probably because it was going on for ten past the hour now, and people had begun to drift back inside.
"Sit down," the young black man in the cream-colored suit invited, and although Pearson tried his best, what he ended up doing felt more like falling than sitting. At one moment he was standing beside the reddish-brown marble island, and then somebody pulled the pins in his knees and he landed on his a.s.s. Hard.
"Bend over now," the young man said, sitting down beside him. His face had remained pleasant throughout the entire encounter, but there was nothing pleasant about his eyes; they combed rapidly back and forth across the plaza.
"Why?"
"To get the blood back into your head," the young black man said. "But don"t make it look like that. Make it look like you"re just smelling the flowers."
"Look like to who?"
"Just do it, okay?" The smallest tinge of impatience had crept into the young man"s voice.
Pearson leaned his head over and took a deep breath. The flowers didn"t smell as good as they looked, he discovered - they had a weedy, faintly dog-p.i.s.sy smell. Still, he thought his head might be clearing just a tiny bit.