Four Rooms Page #23

Well, admittedly, that was the best part of the night. It was

pretty f***in' cool, actually. But it was still an unnerving

way to start off the night.

MARGARET:

Sounds to me like a pretty great way to start off the night.

TED:

Okay, let's just skip over the witches.

MARGARET:

--Skipping over the witches.

TED:

So, later, in another room, some crazy sucking maniac

sticks a gun in my face and forces me to play out some

psychosexual drama with his wife.

MARGARET:

He made you have psycho sex with his wife?

TED:

No, he didn't make me f*** his wife, he thought I'd f***ed

his wife! He held me at gunpoint with a loaded gun!

MARGARET:

What kinda gun?

TED:

I don't know, I'm not a gun guy. It was big.

MARGARET:

Like Dirty Harry's gun.

TED:

Yeah, something like that.

MARGARET:

Did it have a real long barrel or a short barrel?

TED:

What difference does it make?

MARGARET:

Well, for one thing it's the difference between a .44

Magnum and a Magnum .357.

TED:

Who cares if it was a .44 or a .392, it was a f***in' loaded

gun, pointed at my f***in' head!

Margaret takes this in.

MARGARET:

You wanna skip over this part, too?

TED:

I want you to get Betty on the phone!

MARGARET:

Hold on.

(yelling to the room)

Anybody live here named . . .

(to Ted)

What's her name again?

TED:

Betty.

MARGARET:

Betty!

The sleepy room stirs. Betty wakes up from the floor.

BETTY:

Yeah, whatcha screamin' about?

MARGARET:

You're Betty?

BETTY:

Yeah, I'm Betty, it's my f***in' place, who the f*** are you?

MARGARET:

I'm Margaret

(hands her the phone)

And this is Ted.

Betty takes the phone.

BETTY:

Ted, what's the problem?

TED:

What's the problem? I don't got a problem, I got f***in'

problems! Wanna hear?

BETTY:

(yawning, wiping sleep from her eyes)

Sure.

TED:

Well, most recently, there's room 716. There's a scary Mexican

gangster dude pokin' his finger in my chest. There's his hooligan

kids snapping their fingers at me. There's the putrid rotting corpse

of a dead whore stuffed in the springs of a bed. There're rooms

blazing afire . . . . There's a needle from God knows where stuck

in my leg, infecting me with God knows what, and finally, there's

me walking out the f***in' door right now! Buenas noches.

A RINGING SOUND happens that we haven't heard before. Ted's head turns

toward it.

It's the guest board. And the top light, the penthouse, is ringing. It

rings where all the others buzzed.

Betty can hear it distinctly on her side of the line. The sound fully wakes

her up. They start talking Howard Hawks style again.

BETTY:

(suddenly alert)

Is that the penthouse?

TED:

Yeah.

BETTY:

That's the Chester Rush party, they want something.

TED:

Yeah, well, tough tity. They're just gonna have to wait,

'cause I'm out the door.

BETTY:

(panicking)

Now, Ted, wait a minute. I know you're freaked, I know

you're stressed. You've had a real bad night--

TED:

Yes, Betty, I've had-a-real-bad-night--

BETTY:

--You say there's a dead body in a room?

TED:

Yes, I did.

BETTY:

No problem, this is a hotel, we've had dead bodies before,

it's just the price of doing business. You said the hotel was

on fire. Is it still on fire?

TED:

No, it's out.

BETTY:

Good, sprinkler system worked like a charm. Now, you

wanna leave, you've had enough. Perfectly understandable.

I'll take care of everything else. The only thing I ask is that

you take care of Chester Rush. Then you can leave.

TED:

Now, look--

BETTY:

Ted, he's a very important guest of this hotel. In fact, he is

the most important guest at the hotel. The Mon Signor used

to be a haven for movie stars. Through the thirties and forties,

and the first half of the fifties, more movie stars--if you break

it down on a night-by-night basis--stayed at the Mon Signor

than any other hotel in Hollywood. Now, we had some hard

time in the eighties, even though we were the official hotel

of Cannon Pictures, but we're coming back strong in the

nineties. And a movie star clientele is important to that

comeback. If we can keep stars of his magnitude happy,

we're on our way. So, Ted, just take care of him, then

you can leave.

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