Strange Days Page #5

She struggles. Bites his beefy hand. He swears and lets

go. Then makes one last grab. Gets his fingers into her

long mane of hair. Yanks on her. She comes half out the

window, screaming.

Then... RIP! The hair pulls off her head.

Spreg drops away, behind the speeding train, holding a

red wig. He looks at it stupidly, then raises his pistol

and fires at Iris.

She jerks back through the window and drops to the floor.

A couple of shots hit the metal outside. We see Iris has

short hair, platinum white. In it are a few of the many

pins which held the wig securely in place. She gasps for

air, sobbing and hugging her knees, trembling all over.

SPREG STANDS on the platform, watching the train

disappear, as Engelman runs up. Spreg looks at the wig in

his hand, disgusted. He turns it and looks inside, at the

cap.

CLOSE ON THE CAP inside the wig: there is an intricate

network of sensors in a grid over the entire underside of

the wig. The sensors are connected by wires, in a pattern

like the veins of a leaf, bundling to a small, flat metal

box, the size of a cigarette case. It is a SQUID NET.

Iris was wired. Spreg just stares at the SQUID NET, eyes

going crazy wide.

ENGELMAN:

Oh sh*t.

CUT TO:

EXT./ INT. LENNY'S APARTMENT - NIGHT

IT'S 4 AM. Lenny trudges through a heavy security gate

into the center court of his ratty building. The pool

furniture is in the pool. Gang graffiti marks the walls.

Bars on all the windows. One of the doors looks like

somebody opened it with an ax. The pool lights give the

place an eerie, dead glow. Can out slick Lenny really

live in this dump?

Through a barred window we see Lenny approaching as we

hear the OUTGOING MESSAGE on his answering machine in the

F.G.

BEEP. And...

IRIS (V.O.)

Lenny, goddamn it, you got to be

there, you got to help me, come on,

pick up, pick up...

Through the window we see Lenny fishing in his pocket for

his keys.

CUT TO:

EXT. ALL NIGHT GAS STATION - NIGHT

Iris at a pay phone in the cold of an all-night gas

station.

IRIS:

... you got to be there for me...

COME ON! Sh*t, I'll call later.

CUT TO:

INT. LENNY'S APARTMENT

As Lenny unlocks the door, all he hears is Iris' "I'll

call later." He picks up the phone as the connection

breaks.

CUT TO:

EXT. ALL NIGHT GAS STATION - NIGHT

Iris continues to grip the phone even after she has hung

up. She looks desolate, without hope.

CUT TO:

INT. LENNY'S APARTMENT

LENNY doesn't stop to play back Iris' message, or any of

the twenty others on his machine. He just deadbolts the

door and locks a steel bar across the door frame, then

carries his Haliburton...

... toward the bedroom. And we see the truth of his

reality. Lenny's crib is a sh*t-box. It is a small one-

bedroom, barely furnished. A couple of chairs. Swap-meet

couch. Cardboard boxes full of tech gear stacked in the

corners, unidentified electronics components piled on a

table, cables strung everywhere. God knows what this

stuff is. There is aluminum foil taped to all the

windows. Fast food cartons, empty Coke cans, pizza boxes

everywhere. The bachelor apartment from hell. High-tech

low-life.

He goes into the bedroom. Mattress on the floor. Same

infernal interior decoration, but this room is dominated

by racks of tapes... Squid tapes.

Lenny pours himself a vodka from a bedside bottle, takes

off his clothes and hangs them over a chair. He sits on

the bed in his underwear, looking lonely and depressed.

This is the private Lenny: No plans. No dreams. Nothing

to look forward to but another day of the hustle.

He puts a set of playback trodes carefully on his head,

fishes around in a shoe box among a bunch of tapes,

squinting at the hand-written labels: they all say

"FAITH." Only the dates are different.

He selects one and inserts it in the deck, makes some

minute adjustments. Sips his vodka. Leans back. Closes

his eyes. And hits PLAY.

PLAY BACK SEQUENCE/ POV:

We are moving along the Venice boardwalk, following a

YOUNG WOMAN on Rollerblades. By our motion, it is obvious

that we are on Rollerblades too, and not doing so well.

The woman is laughing, turning circles around us, cracking

up at our discomfort.

We hear Lenny's voice complaining a mile a minute, and we

realize the POV is his. The girl takes our hands, skating

backward, towing us along the boardwalk. It is a sunny

afternoon, and it is the usual boardwalk freak show all

around us.

The woman is FAITH JUSTIN, a singer. Lenny is desperately

in love with her. It's not hard to see why. She is

beautiful, in an alive, dynamic way. Her hair is a wild

dark mane, and her eyes are spectacular... intense. She

moves with a lithe, sinuous grace. We are staring at her

eyes instead of concentrating on skating.

Whammo! The POV spins and we are sitting, looking up at

Faith as she circles, laughing. She skates over to help

us up.

CUT TO LENNY, on his bed, smiling. He punches Fast

Forward.

BACK TO POV. A kinetic blur of digital hash, then...

We are following Faith, now holding her skates, up the

steps to a beach apartment. Inside it is funky and

comfortable.

Music from a disk player she left on. Bob Marley singing

"Three Little Birds". Faith, covered with a sheen of

sweat, sways to the music as she goes into a bedroom. We

follow her.

She comes out of the small bathroom with a towel, starts

to dry off. Sunlight comes in the window lighting up

Faith like she is in a spotlight. We move up behind her

and take the towel away, and now we see Lenny standing

behind Faith in the mirror over the dresser.

He puts his arms around her and they sway together to the

music. He runs his fingers in lazy circles over her

sweaty belly. Then leans down and licks the sweat off her

shoulder, all the while watching her in the mirror. A

voyeur recording his voyeurism through his own eyes, so he

can replay and relive the moment.

Their eyes meet in the mirror.

They both watch as Lenny slides his hand up under her

halter and caresses her nipples. She moans softly,

responding. She turns to him, and our POV shifts directly

to her. She is right in front of us, in TIGHT CLOSE UP.

The intimacy is power.

FAITH:

(laughs)

Hey, you going to watch or you going

to do?

LENNY:

Watch and see.

We lean toward her, until her eyes fill frame as they

close in a kiss. We (Lenny) keeps ours open. Our hands

pull her halter over her head. Then she pulls up on

Lenny's T-shirt, laughing. We see it go over our eyes,

blocking the view for a moment.

Then Faith kisses Lenny's bare chest. We are looking down

at her, looking down across our body, Lenny's body, as

Faith kisses lower, kneeling in front of us, unbuckling

our belt and we--

CUT TO LENNY in the here and now. Lost in playback memory

bliss. He inhales sharply behind a wave of electronically

recorded pleasure.

BACK TO POV. Lenny pulls Faith up to his face, kissing

her, then pushing her gently to the bed, where we lie down

together in a pool of sunlight slashing across the tangled

sheets. She looks up, right at us...

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