PAUL GOODE
(changes the subject)
Well… who’s this good-looking boy?
(to Matthew)
You must be five, maybe almost six?
ADAM
This is Matthew.
MATTHEW
I’m almost five!
PAUL GOODE
Good for you, Matthew.
(to Grace)
The boys told me about you. I don’t know if I’m a memoir writer—so far, I’ve only written screenplays.
Matthew finds the writing subject disheartening.
MATTHEW
I have to go to a book signing.
PAUL GOODE
How awful!
(to Adam)
You’re a writer?
ADAM
I write novels.
(a pause)
None of my screenplays has been made as a movie—not yet.
PAUL GOODE
There are more unmade movies than anyone knows.
GRACE
That’s a good first line, or a last one—for your memoir.
Paul changes the subject.
PAUL GOODE
(to Matthew)
When my son was your age, he loved the blueberry pancakes and the hot chocolate here.
CLOSER ON: Adam—he’s enjoying his father’s company.
ADAM (V.O.)
I decided I liked him, but it only made me want to tell him everything. How could I ever know him, as a father, if I kept anything from him?
EXT. ENTRANCE, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. CONTINUOUS.
A cowboy doorman holds the door open to the Jerome van, but the tall young woman isn’t ready to go. Otto has set her free, and Billy has helped her into her coat, but she won’t take the plane ticket from Otto, who holds it out to her.
The tall young woman slips on the snow and falls, trying to bat the ticket out of Otto’s hand. Otto puts the ticket back between his teeth; when he lifts the young woman to her feet, she hits him. Otto looks wounded to his core. He wipes the ticket on his sleeve before holding it out to her. This time, she dissolves in tears, but she takes the ticket.
Circling them is the ghost of the tall hippie girl; she’s wary of the angry young woman, who is taller than she is. The hippie girl shows her breasts to Billy and Otto, who don’t respond.
BILLY
(to Otto)
Did you see that guy who was ridin’ on the chairlift with Clara?
OTTO
He’s with the lady who looks like Clara!
BILLY
Yeah, the publishin’ lady.
OTTO
Why did that guy come back? If I was on a chairlift with someone who died, I wouldn’t go back.
BILLY
It’ll drive you crazy to think about the motives of other people.
OTTO
The motives of other people?
Otto looks pained, thinking this over.
The tall hippie girl is still showing her breasts and getting no response. As the Jerome van drives away, the angry young woman is giving the bodyguards the finger out her open window.
TALL YOUNG WOMAN
(screaming)
Pricks! Asswipes!
The tall hippie girl gives the finger to the bodyguards.
INT. THE LAST RUN GYM. THAT SAME MORNING.
The muscle-bound trainer we saw on the night shift in 1991 looks like he’s in charge. Also working as a trainer is the really ripped woman we saw doing bicep curls, the one who was wearing a tank top with a bikini bottom. She’s still in a tank top that shows off her upper arms, but she’s wearing sweatpants now.
VARIOUS LIFTERS are using the free weights and the weight machines, but Grace is riding a stationary bike, and a SKINNY GUY is running on a treadmill. Damaged Don PLAYS OVER.
DAMAGED DON (V.O.)
Your worst nightmare is knowin’ Louise. She’ll drink all your money and give your dog fleas! It’s bad news just knowin’ Louise.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace said they had bikes and treadmills in The Last Run now—Monika wouldn’t have approved. And Monika would have hated the music. There used to be only the grunts of the lifters and the clank of metal.
DAMAGED DON (V.O.)
(repeats)
It’s bad news just knowin’ Louise.
Grace on her bike and the guy on his treadmill are watching skiing highlights of Monika on the TV.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace said The Last Run had TVs. The TVs were soundless, and there were no remotes—you couldn’t change channels. The VHS cassette kept repeating itself—all Monika Behr highlights, over and over, including her crash at Cortina. Monika would have hated that.
Grace and the runner wince as they watch Monika’s slow-motion, career-ending fall.
INT. WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOM, GYM. SOON AFTER.
Grace thinks she’s alone in the locker room, where she has wrapped herself in a towel and is going to the sauna. She sees women’s workout clothes discarded on some benches, and two ski patrol jackets are hanging on a couple of open locker doors.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace said the women’s locker room was empty but a mess.
DAMAGED DON (V.O.)
Don’t think it gets better with Gwen. She’ll run over the kids and fuck your best friend! It’s bad news the day you meet Gwen.
INT. WOMEN’S SAUNA, GYM. CONTINUOUS.
Grace thinks she’s alone in the sauna, but Monika and Beth and Nan are there—topless, with towels covering their laps. The three dead downhillers know who Grace is. Grace loosens her towel, letting it fall to her waist. Monika and Beth and Nan are amused; they point out their breasts are bigger.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace said the sauna gave her the willies. She said the dead skier somehow haunted the place.
INT. EXPLORE BOOKSELLERS, E. MAIN. SAME MORNING.
FICTION READERS are seated in a Victorian house—a bookstore of interconnected rooms. Although Adam is reading to his audience, there is NO SOUND except Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
Matthew loved it when anyone read aloud to him.
A WIDER ANGLE: Matthew has been browsing in the children’s section, where a FEMALE BOOKSELLER takes his hand and leads him to the back of the audience at his dad’s reading.
ADAM (V.O.)
But Matthew didn’t love my readings, or my book signings.
People in the audience stand and applaud; a line forms of the readers who want Adam to sign their books. At the end of the line is a STERN-LOOKING WOMAN WITH GRAY HAIR. We may or may not recognize her as the woman with the baby carriage in The Wrong Car, because she is wrinkled and gray. Matthew wouldn’t recognize her, anyway, and she’s not with a baby carriage.
ANOTHER ANGLE: on Adam, seated at a table, signing books. Given the labyrinth of rooms, Adam can’t see the end of the line.
ADAM (V.O.)
I love Explore Booksellers, but the end of the line was in another room—where the woman with the baby carriage would be, if she was there.
PULL BACK: Matthew, bored, has wandered away from the book signing. The female bookseller is keeping him company. They both see the gray-haired woman, who has left the book signing; the woman is leaving the bookstore without a book.
ADAM (V.O.)
I was thinking how I might find a way to be alone with my father.
The female bookseller draws imaginary circles around her ear with one index finger, indicating that the stern-looking woman with gray hair is cuckoo. Matthew imitates the cuckoo gesture.
EXT. POOL AND HOT TUBS, HOTEL JEROME. NIGHTFALL.
Adam is treading water in the pool, alongside Matthew in his Schwimmflügel—his German water wings. They’re talking to each other, but we hear only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
At bedtime, I was reading My Father’s Dragon to Matthew. It’s about a little boy who runs away from home. He’s a stowaway on a ship; he goes to an island of wild animals to rescue a baby dragon.
ANOTHER ANGLE: Tarzan is as wary as ever in the hot tubs, where he maintains a watchful distance from Grace and Paul Goode, who are talking to each other. Lex Barker is listening to them, but we hear only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
Grace had struck up an animated conversation with my father—about skiing, she told me later—but she’d managed to tell him we were getting divorced, whatever that had to do with skiing. I don’t doubt she made it clear that she was the skier in the family—notwithstanding that my mom had been a ski instructor.