NoMoPo

When an agent asked him what genre it was, he said nomopo. Equal accent on each syllable.

Enough's enough.

Will write for food, will write for free, will pay to write.

It's free. If you don't want to read it, don't.

Do you reckon I owe you?

Large Pyle, WORKINGMAN'S BLUES NO. 2

Jack Saunders
Garage Band Books
Box 10501
Panama City, FL 32404

Copyright © 2009 by Jack L. Saunders, Jr.

1. Interior. Pyle and Brenda's living room. PYLE and BRENDA are watching a making-of featurette on No Country for Old Men. TOMMY LEE JONES is speaking. He is in his sheriff's uniform.

The book reads like a treatment for a screenplay.

2. Interior. Pyle and Brenda's living room. The TV is off. PYLE and BRENDA are just talking.

What's work look like?

I think I have another week's work, wrapping things up. Then I'm at the house.

Maybe you can get some writing done. Do you have anything planned?

I might write a book called PITCH BLACK.

I might write one called SWAMP HOYDEN.

I might write a screenplay of HOUSEHUSBAND.

What's HOUSEHUSBAND?

So far, it's a memoir and a novelette. A treatment for a screenplay.

Laughs.

3. Interior. Pyle's bedroom. PYLE gets up, leaves the room. He is naked. He doesn't have a piss-hard. We hear him take a leak in the bathroom. A steady, pounding stream. No hesitation. No stopping and starting. No dribbling. He does not flush the toilet. He comes back into the room and puts on a pair of blue jeans. He slips his feet into a pair of Birkies. He turns on an overhead light. A 150W bulb hanging from a ceiling fan. The ceiling fan is on low. He boots up his computer. His computer faces a wall. His bed, a twin bed, is parallel to the wall. The sheets and pillow are soaked with sweat. Old-man sweat. Between the bed and the computer table is a leather office chair, on rollers. An expensive chair. Everything else is ratty and secondhand. His computer is a state-of-the-art machine two iterations ago. That is, dated, but functional. He sits at the computer with no shirt on and watches it boot up. He's running Windows 98.

4. Interior. Pyle's bedroom. PYLE sits at his computer, typing. He sometimes pauses, to think. But mostly he types fast, with two fingers. Blessed is the man who's found his work, Carlyle said. He also said that all men have done, thought, and been is lying in the pages of a book. He also said a man who wants to work, and can't find work, is the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits.

5. Interior. Bathroom. PYLE, out of the shower, combing his wet hair. With a comb. He doesn't blow-dry it. He was once a stronger, fitter man. He's old. He's gained weight and lost muscle tone. Not middle-aged. Old. Some miles on him. Some road-time.

6. Interior. Pyle's bedroom. PYLE dresses. He has on blue jeans and a red Cerveza Imperíal T-shirt. He puts on white cotton socks and red horsehide brogans. With paint on them. He puts packets of pamphlets in his backpack. He selects an ID badge on a lanyard from a collection of them on the wall and puts it around his neck. Think of Mickey Rourke dressing in The Pope of Greenwich Village. Maybe play Frank Sinatra. He puts on a gimme cap from B & B Feed & Seed, Wewahitchka, Florida. Takes it off and puts it in the backpack with his pamphlets. He puts in five copies of Bukowski Never Did This. He takes them out of a box full of trade paperback copies of the book.

7. Interior. Living room. PYLE enters. BRENDA is sitting in her recliner, watching a garden show on television.

Break a leg.

Thanks.

I'm staying for the wrap-up panel, so I may be late.

Have a good time. You look nice.

I was nervous, but I'm okay now.

You'll do fine.

You're always nervous.

You always do fine.

I rise to the occasion.

Should the occasion present itself.

Carlyle said the saddest sight fortune's inequality exhibits is a man who wants to work who can't find work.

Don't complain.

Nobody wants to hear it.

Thank you.

Slaps himself in the face.

I needed that.

Be happy in your work.

I am happy in my work.

Let the chickens out, will you.