Scene 5.04 - She’s Mine
EST: INT. Hermitage
(The two enter the hermitage. The men bow, the doors close, BUD removes his coat. MARY takes off her coat. The men gasp.)
CUT TO: INT. INNER SANCTUM, later
(The men are seated around a table. Wooden shutters bar light from a wide window to the East-Northeast. BUD leans in to the men who are casually seated. MARY is not in the room. Everything that follows is dubbed in English, like MARY was in the previous scene. It's occassionally bad with the timing, like in those campy martial-art movies where someone speaks for an eternity, but the line is a mere three seconds in English, or vise versa, or contrasts between the facial expressions and the vocal manner of what is delivered.)
PAN RIGHT TO BUD
TRUCK LEFT
ZOOM OUT
BUD
She’s mine.
HUNG
What do you mean she’s yours?
BUD
I found her.
DING
That doesn’t make her yours.
BUD
She’s wearing my clothes. She’s wearing my boots. She’s mine.
LONG
I’ll give her my boots.
BUD
This isn’t negotiable.
CHIN
Strange, your Russian has improved greatly.
BUD
What- what are you talking about?
DING
Funny, I was about to tell him that his German was getting better. Yours, too.
BUD
You’re all speaking English to me.
HUNG
No. No you're not. It's perfect Swahili.
LONG
This is crazy. Are you all saying that you’re not speaking Dutch?
BUD
English. Your vocabulary is more refined, and you’ve lost your accent.
LONG
You’re crazy. I’m speaking Dutch. I know what language I’m speaking.
HUNG
(Stands.) Don’t call me crazy, you’re all playing a joke on me!
BUD
Hold it! Hold it! I thought it was funny that she spoke English -- Hey! It’s the girl. It’s the girl! She says her language is the language of all or something like that...
DING
So how does that explain this? So is this like the Tower Of Babel never happened or something? There’s no scientific explanation for this-
BUD
That’s what I’m trying to tell you guys. There isn’t an explanation for any of it. She’s really strange, I mean like, spooky. Plus, she freaking smokes like a chimney. Anyone wanna bum me a rollee? I'm out.
DUC
Here. So you're saying all this weirdness started when she showed up?
BUD
(Sparks it. It isn’t the usual brand -- doesn’t cure the nic-fit, but BUD ain’t looking a gift blunt in the mouth... He smiles. Hits it again. Passes it.) Dude, it’s been this way since I found her.
CHIN
(Skeptical:) That’s right, you 'found' her. Care to shed some light on that? We’re hundreds of miles from anybody. That’s why we came here. We’re as far from everybody else as a person can get short of outer space. How do you just find a woman out here?
BUD
She just showed up. I tell you, the chick is freaky.
(All groan.)
BUD (Cont’d)
No, really! In the old hot tub at Peak Pass. I thought I was hallucinating or going nuts, but there she was!
DING
I don’t buy it.
(Neither do the others.)
BUD
I’m just telling you what she told me, she said she’s from some convent on the other side of the mountain range. She said that the temple with the hot spring was built by her people.
CHIN
No way.
(More pejorativeless ad libs like Bull! Huh-uh, etc.)
BUD
Maybe she’s got head trauma, I don’t know! Half the things she says make only a little sense and the rest of what she says doesn’t make any sense at all. I think she might have belonged to a cult or something.
(Groans.)
LONG
So she’s a native, then. Give her directions to the airport...
HUNG
Can’t be. There’s nothing on the other side of those mountains, Bud. Just a necropolis.
DING
A what?
CHIN
A city of dead people.
BUD
She says there’s a convent there or something. Like five-hundred women there. And get this: No men.
(Outbursts of complete disbelief and debate concerning how deep it's getting.)
BUD (Cont’d)
Hey, it’s what she told me.
HUNG
What other kinds of fertilizer has she fed you?
BUD
She says she’s looking for some dragon-lady. Hear me out -- I say we go back with her to her convent and see for ourselves. If she’s telling the truth, we’ll have a fandango. Like high-school prom all over again.
DUC
If she’s lying-
BUD
A few days’ travel out of our way. Nothing more. We’ll even be on the right side of the range to visit the marketplace, probably just another-day’s travel from there. If the dead city is still dead, we’ll take her to the market, set her free among the natives with some scrip and get a few souvenirs from Mr. Mee-rip-yoo-off and chalk it up as a vacation.
DING
All of us? You mean just leave this place abandoned?
BUD
Why not? Who’s gonna stop by while we’re gone? Last I checked, there wasn’t a Welcome Wagon for a thousand miles in any direction. Plus, there’s nothing here to steal!
DUC
Yeah, why would someone go all these miles out of the way for a few kegs of rice wine, a weight bench, a box of filthy, paper-back novels and some used sporting equipment?
CHIN
What about the hydroponic lab in the greenhouse? And the satellite-dish-
HUNG
Fat good that would do anybody. Duc can track a hundred thousand stars with that thing, but a guy can’t even bring in a movie or a ballgame-
BUD
Okay, we’ll lock up the solar panels and secure the scientific stuff, what other objections do you guys have to taking a camcorder and getting a few co-eds to take their tops off? Come on, doesn't some ol' fashioned, back-to-school smut sound appetizing?
HUNG
It still doesn’t explain why you brought her here. This is our sanctuary. Did you forget our vows of celibacy?
BUD
Dude, we made those vows on-line, like, two years ago already. Come on, guys, you know the only reason we made those vows was because nobody wanted anybody to get any funny ideas while we’re up here all alone together. Right?
(All mumble agreement.)
DUC
Bud, I don’t think twenty miles across the biggest mountain range in the territory just to prove some girl is crazy is worth it. You guys go ahead if ya want. I'll stay behind where it’s warm.
LONG
Oh, so if there are women, we’re just supposed to bring one back to you, right? We’re not talking about pizza, Duc...
(The discussion heats to a boiling point. Over the shouting, fingers are pointed; threats are made.)
BUD
Gentlemen! I’m so glad we're past the language-barrier so we can all bicker and argue more! Our guest is in repose in the other room. I suggest we don’t awaken her until we’ve got this figured-out. Now are we all agreed that the reason we came here wasn't necessarily to abandon women, but just to get away from them for a while? (All agree. Melodramatic, music, building:) If any of us knew that when we chose to leave womanhood behind with the rest of the troubled world, would we have so easily left if we knew how precious and irreplaceable a woman is? (Mumbles of agreement.) I have meditated on this, as you have, my brethren, and although we, as men, may have found Utopia in this wasteland of sleet and snow, did we not truly abandon our souls when we abandoned half of our reason for revelry and all of our purpose? (Silence. BUD opens window, revealing steep mountain range, fresh air rushes in.) If we could have talked six women into coming along with us all those years ago, even if it meant being with the very ones who had betrayed us and lied to us and stole from us and gave us reason for our fraternity, if any of them would have given us a second chance, wouldn’t we have tried?
(The men drop their heads introspectively, BUD puts an arm around DING as he gestures out to the mountain range.)
BUD (Cont'd)
Now, the shot of making it over those peaks and living to tell about it are a million to one. As an engineer, my professional opinion is that if we go stomping around up there, the chances of starting an avalanche that we can't stop are more likely than not. Then, if we get past that little danger and get to this so-called mythical palace our new-found friend claims to be from, the chance of finding a living human -- moreover -- a human female, (Looks to DUC.) why, it wouldn’t take an astronomer to tell you those odds. You all know how remote those chances are. Another man with a lick o’ sense, would laugh at us, and would say it was completely insane to try to cross those rugged, sky-scratching, snow-blinding mountains simply for the remote and unlikely possibility of some female companionship, why, he would think it was a suicidal leap into a pile of pyrite! (HUNG nods.) Yet, my brothers, if there is even a fraction of a percentage of a (Puts hand on CHIN’S shoulder.) decimal-point’s chance of seeing a glimmer of hope on that horizon, a chance of seeing (Looks LONG in the eye.) one more example of our better half, one look at her in all of her uniquely-natural beauty, one more chance to bless our eyes before we lie down for The Big Sleep, why, I tell you, we’d be insane NOT to try!
(BUD picks up a couple of heavy, dusty books and uses them to drive-home his point.)
BUD (Cont'd)
Shall we be sages of the ages molding up a dusty library with poems about what might-have-been? Should we be remnants of testosterone who struggle with what nature commands us to do, or shall we be truly be the men we are? Will we make some worth of this mortal frame? Shall we rage against the stars that wish to quickly-extinguish our fleeting flicker of life, shall we sit idly by as opportunity wades though our shallows and abandons us as we have abandoned the very counterpart that gives definition to our gender? No! We must go! All of us must go! All for one, one for all and by all that makes us men. We are born to be destined to seek out the other part of us, a part that we have yet to equal through replication or imitation. (Pause. Turns, steps toward window.) If I can’t get all of you to come with me, I’ll go alone.
(Protests.)
DUC
Okay! Okay! But if there ain’t any women there, somebody’s gonna buy me a prime Yak cutlet at the marketplace.
CHIN
We’ll go to Rama McDhamalama and get the thickest, juiciest Yak steak they got if this all turns out to be cock-and-bull, okay?
LONG
If there aren’t any women there, I’m going on a really long walk-about, alone. Man, when that girl took off her coat-
(Grunts and general agreement.)
BUD
Okay, we’ll head out at dawn. If she’s leading us on a twenty-mile goose chase, she becomes the problem of the nearest village and we go back to Thursday poker night and Sunday football. (His stomach growls.) We should wake our guest soon, she’s probably pretty hungry by now.
HUNG
I’ll fire up the grill.
DISSOLVE TO: