Another snippet from "Spring Cleaning"

Just listening to the recorded conversations I had with my Instructor gives me a headache. Everything about him was big and loud. He had big hands with a tumor the size of a grape growing on one digit. He was articulate and you could tell he came from one of those families where both parents were educated and they associated with others of similar backgrounds. He graduated from Princeton and worked for a brief time on Wall Street. He moved to Los Angeles and started writing specs. He eventually sold a script enabling him to kick down a door and land him a job as a story editor for a short-lived sitcom. For fourteen years he wrote and sold scripts that never made it to production. Discouraged with the whole Hollywood scene, he packed up and moved back East. He got an idea for a story while sitting in the Barber’s chair listening to some guys reminisce about the year their high school’s football team captured the state title. What made the story even more dramatic was that the coach was African-American. The icing on the cake was that the coach won with an integrated football team, a feat unheard of in the late 60’s and early 70’s.

His script landed on the desk of one of the top producers in Hollywood who happened to love sports themed movies. Even with his backing the script appeared as though it wasn’t going anywhere. Hollywood studio heads only green light one inspirational story a year. They eventually got the movie into production and it became a hit, grossing over 100 million dollars at the box office. The message was its appeal. The script was compelling bringing even the President at the time to tears.

I look over my notes and try to make sense of his writing. He can’t understand his own cryptic markings yet he expects me to decipher them. I work until my words cross up and none of what I typed made sense.

My phone rings. It’s Jeremiah.

I answer by the third ring. “Hey you.” My computer clock reads 8:30 p.m.

“I was thinking about earlier today. I told my co-workers that I had a date with an angel.” Even over the phone I can sense he’s smiling.

“I was thinking about you too. I loaded the pictures on my computer. They look very nice.”

“I wish you were here right now.”

I wished I were there too, but not tonight.

“If I were there tell me what you would do?”

“You sure you want to go there with me?”

The ice has melted and the water is steaming.

“Let’s go there.”

“If you were here I’d take off your shoes and massage your feet.”

“Go on.”

“I’d massaged those beautiful calves of yours in a slow circular motion and work my way up to your thighs.”

“Then.”