Scene 9.08 - Sweet Home, Oblivion
ANIMATION STYLE 1
EST: Int. Oblivion - A Turkish Bathhouse.
MS: VERNE LOOKING AT VIOLET, TOKING FROM CIGAR WHILE SOAKING IN A LARGE BUBBLE BATH, SMILING
VERNE
Violet...
VIOLET
What?
VERNE
You didn't answer me.
VIOLET
About what?
VERNE
Before I called you Violet, what was your name?
VIOLET
Azalea.
VERNE
No, when you did magic.
VIOLET
What? When I performed magic tricks? You mean what was my stage name?
MS: Trio in golden, heated pool; a triptic, clover-shaped tub surrounded by a marble mosaic floor leading to marble columns and thin, silken draperies of wondrous colors
VERNE
(Sipping Saurian Brandy while smoking a Cuban Havana:) Yeah. Every magician's got one, right? The Amazing Stupendo, The Wonderous Hypnos, Mr. Moronic -- what was yours?
VIOLET
(Flirtatious:) I think you're thinking of clowns, isn't that your department?
VERNE
Yeah, but... only when it pays. Come on, every one of you pageant chicks-
VIOLET
(To JYNX:) I love it; 'pageant chicks' -- can you believe this guy?
JYNX
(Engrossed. Reading an open newspaper poolside. It's titled, Nuevo Times And features headlines like "Change: Good For The Soul" and "Weather Community Updates" and "Next Best Thing To Happen Presently" with ads for Timepieces and Garden Sundials; Weather Detectors United; A Place In Its Time Trust; and The Hope Springs Eternal Foundation.) If disbelief was all it took to shut him up-
VERNE
Nomseeryes, gals on parade in my day had to have more than just an upskirt photo to win a pageant-
VIOLET
That's what I'm trying to tell-
VERNE
They had to sing, or dance or swing a baton, or tap-dance -- and you did magic, right? Y'all been doing that forever, even back in Jynxie's time. Ain't that right, Jynxie?
JYNX
(Hating the incomprehensibility/blurriness/unlegibility of the stock quotes, turns to the old, slightly-thicker-than -a-Bible-thick, hard-bound book resting nearby, titled Old Reparations Of Forgotten Ancient Artifacts By Will Passage.) Don't drag me back into this...
VIOLET
That's what I'm trying to tell you! I was a magician before I was a beauty queen, that's probably why I always won the talent competitions -- I practiced... alot... like 24-7. Got magic on the brain. Hell, even this palace reflects my act. Look around!
JYNX
I love it. It's perfect, Vi.
VIOLET
He gets to call me Vi. You either call me Azalea or Violet until you can remember I ain't that Leah girl, ai't?
JYNX
I was sleepwalking, I swear...
VIOLET
Uh-uh-ump! No excuses... I told you both, nobody's getting nothin' here, and you know the number-one rule here -- Jule?
VERNE
No peeing in the pool.
VIOLET
No, the other one.
VERNE
Nobody does nothing to nobody unless it's mutual and you'll tell us when it's mutual.
VIOLET
Right!
JYNX
It was just a kiss on the cheek...
VIOLET
Nya-Nyap! Zip it! You attempted a hug-grope and ass-grab in one awkward move and it served you right that I nearly cut it off cuz it would grow back anyway and maybe a little pain would have reminded you to keep your hands where I can see them and-
VERNE
Was this part of your act?
VIOLET
Huh?
VERNE
Your magic act -- did you try to hypnotize the pageant judges into voting for you or what?
VIOLET
What are you talking about? No! My magic was all legit. I got paid as a professional stage magician long before I ever even got in a beauty contest. I wasn't no child actress, I started getting paid gigs at twelve and learned real fast that you'll get interrupted by idiots regardless of who you are, where you are or what you are doing -- or how young you are. Whether it was a kid's birthday party or a Bar Mitzvah, you'd think you were in some seedy dive getting heckled by lame, unimaginative, perverted sickos-
VERNE
(How it's said; no sarcasm, as in, 'tell me more' or something:) Tell us how you really feel about it-
VIOLET
I dated this college photography-slash-accounting major when I was in high school and she dropped her photography classes so she could manage my money, so I let her move in with me and we were even talking about marriage -- but oh, but she so cheated on me and I caught her red-handed, or should I say red-faced cuz the other chick - ew, so gross! And I found out this- Lady -- was like taking more than her share of my take the whole time so we so split and after I threw her big fat, yogurt-slurping butt to the curb, I starved myslef and worked the strip for measley rent in a studio dive until this one guy who used to book malls for make-up demonstrations saw my magic act and then became my agent and got me to go to all these crazy beauty pageants that made me a load of grip. I mean, when I was a high-school freshman, I'd do four shows on school nights with my most practiced tricks just to be heckled by lame-ass tourists with the foulest body odor in a beer-and-puke-and-cherry-air-freshner-smelling lounge with yawning octogenarian cadavers and drunken sailors thinking that I was somehow going to take my clothes off if only they threw enough money at me, like I was some kind of stripper -- and I was lucky, lucky if I pulled in four G's a month after taxes. And that was steady work. I was one of the lucky ones. Anyone who is paid to entertain in Vegas is considered great; even if a piss-poor paycheck never reflects that.
JYNX
Ain't that the truth!
VIOLET
Hmph! Like you know, "Professor!" My first pageant, The Miss Nordyke-Swann Pageant, I was 2nd Runner Up and Nordyke Incorporated awarded me twelve G's on the spot. Twelve G'S!!! Hello, bank account and stock portfolio! And I was only seventeen, then. I won Miss Nevada at eighteen and was the first runner-up for Miss America -- no one ever remembers the runner-up, but I still broke-off with some serious dough all the same. My agent was the best! You wanna talk about the cash from my endorsements? I was Ms. June on more than my fair share of calendars, too! I never posed nude, tho. (Beat.) Not that it matters now, huh?
(The men regard her nude body while she immodestly continues.)
VIOLET
I may be purple and all scarred up like the Ghost Of Floria Gray, but I still got the body I had at sixteen. I got good genes.
JYNX
(Being crude:) That's not all-
VIOLET
Shut up.
VERNE
I got your Oscar Wilde reference. (VIOLET raises an eyebrow and smiles.) What was your magic act, Vi?
VIOLET
Imagine being in a palace in ancient Bagdad.
VERNE
(Looks about.) That ain't hard to do.
VIOLET
Well my stage was alot like this, marble columns and all. Lots of sheets hanging and all-
JYNX
Valances-
VIOLET
What?
JYNX
It's called a valance-
VIOLET
No it ain't. (Beat.) Shut up! (Half-beat.) Go back to reading; I'm telling this.
VERNE
(Noticing she's sitting up to talk to him, half submerged, leaning on the outcropping between them, breasts exposed like two gargantuan canteloupes caged by two willowy, muave Aspen trunks- no, no, not modest in the least.) Go on, I'm paying attention.
VIOLET
Well, I was costumed to appear as a female genie, in veils and all.
VERNE
(Now VERNE'S being crude:) I can see why some people might expect you to take off those veils-
VIOLET
(Quick:) Yeahyeahdanceofthesevenveilsandallthat -- heard it all before. But what was cool about it, (Takes a breath and tokes) it gave me a chance to look sexy-but-not-like-a-slut in the talent competitions, plus it suggested to judges I might be an intelligent affirmative-action Arab or something without being a man-hating Feminazi who thinks pageants are exploitative.
(She fully exhales the rest of the smoke from her lungs.)
VERNE
Are you an Arab?
VIOLET
Oh hell no, but I'm so affirmative action; go Diversity University! MY genes are pure -- true nobles -- from the time Rome sacked the Gauls, or vice-versa, I can't remember which.
JYNX
It was the Visigoths. They sacked Rome.
VIOLET
Whatever. Visigoths, yeah, I think it was one of them guys, or a Byzantine, I dunno. Anyway, I had some advantages; looking like a pale vampire, tight, ringlet black hair, black eyes, long eyelashes, dimples-
VERNE
(Dare he?) Nice body-
VIOLET
(Is she blushing?) That too, but that was also my disadvantage. I'm five-foot two and a half! I had to get waivers and was nearly-disqualified once over a two-and-a-half-inch discrepancy -- a short girl's gotta fight with lawyers to get in pageants against Amazons.
VERNE
So what was your act? If you didn't take your clothes off, what did you do?
VIOLET
I told stories.
VERNE
Stories?
VIOLET
Yeah, I used veils to make things disappear, reappear, all that stuff, but smoke and mirrors only go so far -- I kept them captivated with my stories.
VERNE
Stories, huh?
VIOLET
Yeah.
VERNE
Like what?
VIOLET
You want me to tell you a story?
(JYNX turns, interested.)
VERNE
Is it a love story?
VIOLET
Sure. There's love in all my stories, somewhere.
JYNX
What's the genre?
VIOLET
I dunno, probably war, I know a lot of those -- always topical -- Lessee- yeah. Hey! You'd like this story, Jynx, it took place in your time, more or less, back when everyone was racist and sexist and smoked ditch weed all the time. Car-driving cavemen.
JYNX
Oh yeah?
VIOLET
Yeah.
VERNE
I guess we're all ears.
VIOLET
Okay, think way, way back to like the Late Second or Early Third Millenium. Like when people had to actually fight on a battlefield when they wanted to take over a country. (Tokes.) So once upon a time there was this little girl named Bunny who was having a birthday party with lots of Tequila, and she invited her friends Bambi, Bobbie, Bonnie-
VERNE
Wait, wait- what was your name?
VIOLET
What? I'm not in this story.
VERNE
No, no... What was your stage name? You still haven't told me-
VIOLET
(Smiles.) Oh, that! I was billed a few times as "The Treasure of Tuscany" but eventually I called myself Sherazade; after a gal in Persia who was kept from being beheaded by an evil, womanizing King by constantly whipping-up stories that made the King think with his big head instead of his little one.
VERNE
Oh. Sherazade, huh? Does her story have a happy ending?
VIOLET
It most certainly does. Now can I tell you this story and go on?
VERNE
Does it have magic in it? You do tricks, too?
VIOLET
A little. Do you want me to summon a rooster?
JYNX
You gonna fry it?
VIOLET
You both are incorrigible.
JYNX
We're listening.
VERNE
You haven't lost my attention -- Let's see, Bimbo, Breezy, Bonzo and Bumblebutt were all going to get plastered-
VIOLET
No, no. It goes, Bunny was having a birthday party -- and that's where I lift a veil and produce a rabbit-
VERNE
You can make one here-
ZOOM OUT
VIOLET
No, no, this place would be a zoo, and I'd have to make them implode through the story -- Just use your imagination... so Bunny was having seventeenth birthday on the Fourth Of July so she calls up her friend-
LS: TRIO
VERNE
She was born on Independence Day?
VIOLET
Yeah, she was, but that's irrelevant symbolism. Now shut up and let me tell this-
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