ADAM
I don’t understand.
The tall hippie girl stomps off. Adam goes back in the hotel.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Clara is reading the first sentence of My Father’s Dragon to the cowboy. Adam watches and listens.
CLARA SWIFT
“One cold rainy day when my father was a little boy, he met an old alley cat on his street.”
Clara finds it hard to stop reading, but she forces herself to close the book—handing it back to Adam. The cowboy is hooked on the story; he is more forlorn than usual.
CLARA SWIFT
(to Adam)
I love this story—I read it to my son when he was a little boy.
Adam nods; he looks guilty about taking the book back.
ADAM (V.O.)
It hurt that Clara Swift and the cowboy were more interested in My Father’s Dragon than they were in my novel, but writers have to accept readers like this.
INT. BEDROOM, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
When Adam enters the bedroom, his grandmother Paulina Juárez is sitting on the bed beside his untouched novel. Paulina is looking closely at the photo of Little Ray. Paulina holds the photo to her heart when she sees Adam. Paulina must know her son has been killed.
ADAM
Lo siento. I’m sorry.
(Paulina nods)
The photo is for you.
(she’s surprised)
Your son’s ski hat and sweater.
Paulina is smiling and nodding.
PAULINA
¡Sí! ¡Muchas gracias!
ADAM
De nada. You’re welcome.
Adam picks up his novel, showing her the author photo. Paulina is polite, but she’s not dying to read it. Adam puts his novel on the night table, under My Father’s Dragon.
EXT. POOL AND HOT TUBS, HOTEL JEROME. LATER THAT DAY.
At a distance, Adam and Lex Barker in the hot tubs.
ADAM (V.O.)
No one thinks of Tarzan as a big reader. But Lex Barker must have been a reader. Maybe not novels for children—Lex didn’t have a stellar reputation with children. Not knowing what to expect, I began at the beginning. My Father’s Dragon isn’t a long novel—a little over eighty pages, counting the illustrations.
CLOSER ON: Adam reads to Tarzan in the hot tubs.
ADAM
“My father and the cat became good friends but my father’s mother was very upset about the cat. She hated cats…”
Tarzan nods; he hates cats, too.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. LATER, SAME DAY.
Adam reads to the still-bleeding Aspen volunteer. Jerome B. Wheeler is listening in. We hear only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O)
I decided to begin at the beginning with all of them, but not everyone believes in dragons.
INT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME. LATER, THAT EVENING.
The Aspen volunteers, at their usual table, are not listening to Adam’s reading, but they observe—from a safe distance.
ADAM (V.O.)
Readers vary, when it comes to having the imagination to enjoy a story outside their own experiences.
A WIDER ANGLE: on Adam reading to the Ute and the two miners who were blown to bits underground; Jerome listens in.
ADAM
(reads)
“… a baby dragon fell from a low-flying cloud onto the bank of the river. He was too young to fly very well, and besides, he had bruised one wing quite badly, so he couldn’t get back to his cloud.”
EXT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME, E. MAIN. CONTINUOUS.
The ghost of the tall hippie girl is looking in the windows of the J-Bar from the E. Main sidewalk.
ADAM (V.O.)
Some readers and writers don’t look like readers or writers.
EXT. POOL AND HUT TUBS, HOTEL JEROME. A FLASHBACK.
NO SOUND. As Adam reads, Tarzan is nodding off. Lex Barker falls asleep—he falls face-first into the water. He wakes up coughing and snorting, waving his arms and beating his chest.
ADAM (V.O.)
Some can’t go the distance.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. A FLASHBACK.
NO SOUND. The still-bleeding Aspen volunteer looks dead, again—or he’s asleep. Jerome B. Wheeler puts an index finger to his lips. Adam understands; he stops reading.
INT. J-BAR, HOTEL JEROME. MUCH LATER, THAT NIGHT.
PAN the J-Bar. The Aspen volunteers sleep, their heads on their table. The bar is closed; no one’s at the bar.
CLOSER ON: Adam, still reading to the Ute, the two miners, and Jerome B. Wheeler. There is NO SOUND, only Adam’s voice-over.
ADAM (V.O.)
I thought the two miners might make me stop at the crocodile chapter—a bridge of crocodiles, across a river, is hard to believe—but the Ute and the miners made me read to the end. If Jerome B. Wheeler already knew what happened, he was too polite to say. Jerome had been around longer than My Father’s Dragon.
INT. LOBBY, HOTEL JEROME. LATER THAT SAME NIGHT.
The still-bleeding Aspen volunteer still looks dead or asleep, as Paulina Juárez comes through the lobby, holding hands with her son, Paulino; Paul Goode, as a ghost, is fourteen. He’s wearing the ski hat with the pom-pom and the sweater Little Ray gave him.
ADAM (V.O.)
I knew why Paulina was a younger ghost than she was when she died. Paul Goode was a kid again. At fourteen, Paulino was the age he was when he met my mom.
The actor who plays Toby Goode at fourteen is the same actor who plays Paulino at that age. Paulina Juárez is happy to see Adam, who’s glad to see his grandmother reunited with his father—at a time they once enjoyed together.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was evident that Paul Goode’s ghost didn’t know who I was. Maybe his mother would explain to him, one day, but I could see that my grandmother was in no hurry to talk to him about grown-up matters.
INT. HALL, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
Adam stands in the first-floor hall, waiting for the elevator. He stands with the reunited mother and son, Paulina and Paulino Juárez; they wait for the elevator together.
ADAM (V.O.)
The rules for ghosts confound me. Why was the ghost of Clara Swift forty-five, the age she was when she jumped off the chairlift? It was out of order that Clara’s ghost was older than the ghosts of Paul Goode and his mother.
The elevator door opens. Before anyone can step inside, Clara steps out. She and Paulina Juárez are old friends, always glad to see each other. Clara and the fourteen-year-old Paulino are happy but shy about being “introduced.” Paul Goode’s ghost looks like he’s meeting Clara for the first time.
Paulino wanders off down the hall, in the direction of the Antler Bar, while Paulina and Clara follow after him, smiling to each other. They look like they were waiting for this.
INT. ELEVATOR, HOTEL JEROME. CONTINUOUS.
The cowboy is kicking his saddle when Adam gets on the elevator. Alone with his saddle again, the cowboy must know that Clara has made new friends, or she’s found an old one. The cowboy sees that Adam is carrying My Father’s Dragon.
ADAM (V.O.)
It was late, I was tired, but I’d been a writer long enough to sense when someone has the soul of a reader—like a poor cowboy, who’s not had much opportunity to read.
DISSOLVE TO: eighty pages later. Adam is reading to the cowboy. The two of them are lying down—propped up by the saddle. Adam’s voice-over is the only sound.
ADAM (V.O.)
The bridge of crocodiles wasn’t a barrier to the cowboy’s imagination. We would get through the final chapter, “My Father Finds the Dragon.” I felt badly for the cowboy. Clara had been his friend. Now Clara would be hanging out with Paul Goode and his mom. As Monika told me, “Aspen was never an easy town for cowboys.”