“Your screenplay sucks, Mrs. Frey, but I know a way you can make it up to me. And afterward, you can stay late and rewrite the end of your book and my movie.”
I asked my filmmaker husband, "What are you doing Monday?”
“We’ll be having a meeting, going over your screenplay. I need to read it again this weekend. How does it end?” Gerry asked, pulling my laptop toward him and scrolling for the script.
“You've read it. Twice,” I reminded him.
“But I know you, Mare; you’ll change the ending when you get a better idea,” he said casually, scrolling.
I cleared my throat and asked curtly, “Did I need a better idea for the ending?”
“Yeah, you do,” he said, looking up at me. “And an ending to some of these characters as well. We’re all pretty old for the turn of the century. I mean seventy now is like 100 years old back then.”
“You got that right,” I said sarcastically, and he looked up at me. “These are real people, Gerry.”
“Then make their stories more interesting because you’re holding back,” he said, going back to whatever he was doing. Yes, he said that. I just stared at him, and he was not looking at me. He picked up the remote tablet and turned on the TV, then stood and walked over to the bed. He set the laptop down on the bench at the foot of the bed. I heard his fly unzip and I looked up at him. Next thing I know he's naked and I'm getting an involuntary rush of feelings. But I was fighting it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked and he just smiled at me. I stood up and started to leave.
“Come here,” he said, with a big cheesy grin on his face. He’s got a nerve, telling me my script sucks, and then he wants me to hop in the sack with him. This just screams inappropriate workplace behavior. I turned and headed for my bathroom. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back to face him.
“I said, ‘Come here’ and I meant it,” he said so seriously.
The unmitigated gall! “Just who do you think you are speaking to?” I snapped.
“I’m speaking to my screenwriter and we are in the middle of a script meeting,” he said, as he pulled me against him.
“You are not the boss of me in my own bedroom,” I informed him. At that, he pulled my shirt over my head and shucked my leggings down to the floor. I put up a struggle, and he just picked me up and threw me on the bed in only my underwear. He stripped me bare before I could get a thought straight in my head as I pushed his hands away. Or tried to. I began to push him away with my feet; he pulled me toward him by my legs and he climbed on top of me.
I really couldn’t move now; Gerry is heavy and muscular, and I was sandwiched between his big hairy thighs and the bed. I was trapped and unhappy about that fact. At that point, I looked in the direction he was looking; the laptop was casting our images up on the big screen TV over the fireplace. We were naked and ready for action and he was going to watch it while he did it, apparently.
“Gerry, look at me,” I said, getting his eye contact and snapping my fingers. He seemed surprised that I would snap my fingers at him. “I don’t like this,” I said curtly. I was a little panicked, breathing hard, and he could see it in my face. He climbed off me.
“Mare, I’m so sorry,” he said, as I scooted to the edge of the bed and went into my bathroom. He joined me in my shower as I sat and he put his arm around me.
“Oh, babe, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just multitasking, and I should only concentrate on you when I’m thinking about you that way. Please forgive me?” He sounded so sincere and I know he was, as I sighed deeply. I realized then that I had been holding my breath. I nodded and leaned into him, hugging him back.
I spoke up, “I’ve done it, too, talked the dirty talk while we talk about work. It’s just that you were hurting my feelings, telling me to rewrite the whole ending, and not really caring if I wanted to go to bed with you at the moment. My characters are not interesting?" I asked, sitting back and looking at him and he shook his head, probably sorry he said anything. "I’m pissed about the rewrite, Gerry, but in my heart I know you’re right.” Gerry inhaled deeply and appeared to be thinking it over.
He began speaking in a more measured tone, "You have a tendency to hang on to things you need to let go of. You don’t want your characters to die even though you know they did die, and you know how they die. The ones you do kill off, you rush through it. You are sentimental but you aren’t sentimental about dragging out their death, you don’t write it that way. We might need to drag it out a little for the camera,” he said.
“Okay, I'll give you that," I said, sighing. But there was a point yet to win and I was going for it.
"But Gerry, you can’t tell me my writing sucks and then expect me to be happy about going to bed with you. As if you aren’t paying attention when I say no. It just…seemed like sexual harassment during my annual review,” I laughed, and Gerry’s big laugh echoed around the tile of my shower.
I mockingly said, “Your screenplay sucks, Mrs. Frey, but I know a way you can make it up to me. And afterward, you can stay late and rewrite the end of your book and my movie.”
Gerry hugged me and said, “I’d never make you stay late. You can wait until tomorrow, after you do me,” he laughed and then nodded. “You do have a point. Do you forgive me?”
I nodded, hugging his neck. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You were going to videotape us having sex?”
“Just for fun, not for work,” he said.
Copyright Mare Loch 2024 Boomer Love: The Marriage of a Broken Family © All rights reserved.
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