"Together Now" Excerpt 6

The heat woke Warren up. There is something to be said about the sticky Californian heat. His head rang in time with his alarm clock. Warren looked over bleary eyed at Anne on the other couch. She just rolled over and didn’t seem to notice the alarm.

Warren reached over and turned it off. He stretched out on the love seat and sat up.

‘Relying on the kindness of strangers is awesome.’ Warren thought.

The night before had been one of drinking debauchery at the expense of other peoples wallets. Today however was a day to get into gear. If he was going to write professionally he needed to start doing it immediately!

He threw on one of the three pairs of jeans he had brought with him and his black dress shirt. He felt more like a writer already. He then grabbed the card out of his wallet to set up a meeting with Borden. The phone rang twice before Borden answered.

“Hey Borden.” Warren greeted him warmly. “What do your plans look like for today?”

“Just got a meeting with a hack writer who wants to write screenplays, however he never writes anything interesting, it’s always some sort of adaptation about some emo/goth who can’t get laid. I guess it’s supposed to be artistic or something like that.” Borden replied.

“Well would you care to get together after that and see if you would want me as a client?” Warren asked very bluntly.

“Sure man! I’ve been wanting to hear the story of how you came to Cali. Canadians I’ve always found to have interesting stories. Is 2:30 work for you?” Borden asked.

“You bet. Where are we meeting?” Warren asked trying to contain his excitement.

“The bucks on east main. It’s my favorite location.” Borden stated.

“All right, Borden. Sounds good, I will meet you there.” Warren said finalizing the meeting.

“Excellent. Later Warren.” Borden said.

“Later.” Warren repeated hanging up.

Warren was excited by this turn of events, now all he had to do was figure out how to get to the Starbucks on east main and he would be all set!

***
Anne awoke to find she was home alone. It was 1:30 and she felt mildly hungover. She wondered where Warren had gotten to. She was feeling a little frisky and wanted to congratulate Warren in a very intimate manner.

‘Oh well. He’ll be back, then I can have my way with him.’ Anne thought deviously.

She got up and headed to the bathroom.

‘Maybe he’ll come home and take me in the shower.’ She thought as she started her shower.

Anne undressed and stepped into the shower. As she washed her hair she questioned why she was having these thoughts about Warren all of a sudden. She couldn’t quite place the reason. Thoughts like: ‘Maybe we’ve been friends for so long that this is the natural progression.’ And ‘If we ended up married?’ Kept crossing her mind.

Anne never thought this before and felt confused about why she started now. She wondered how Warren felt at this very moment.

***

Warren felt lost. He had made it to the Starbucks Borden had instructed him to be at, and he was sitting across from Warren, but Borden was actually a really hard person to follow in a business conversation.

“Okay so what my firm needs is someone that can write an original idea. It has to be along the same lines of a network show, but we need it in a feature format. That Goth kid has been let go from our firm, so now it’s up to you to step up Warren. You want a shot at being a writer, this is it, I like you, and even if this doesn’t work out I still want to talk to you, but just don’t fuck this up.” Borden spit out without so much as a breath.

‘Goddamn, Borden is an amazing speaker!’ Warren thought.

“So what are some of your ideas?” Borden asked finally Warren including him into the conversation.

“Well I have this one screenplay I wrote when I was working the kitchen circuit back home. It’ll need to be revised for what you want though.” Warren said.

“Great! I want a look at it tomorrow. As long as it’s a draft we can send editors in on it and have them do the re-writes. You won’t have to worry about a thing.” Borden stated.

“One thing you should know about it though, Borden is that...” Warren started.

“It doesn’t matter what it’s about as long as there is some sort of story.” Borden said cutting Warren off.

“That’s just it, it’s not like a traditional story. The antagonist is the restaurant and the anti-hero is a shift leader, and there are something like 8 different story lines going on at the same time...” Warren again tried to explain.

“Don’t worry, the editors will make it work. You still get the credit, and I make 10 percent. Trust me, as long as you produce something, it doesn’t matter if it’s any good.” Borden reassured Warren.

“All right. So... This is sort of an important question, how am I supposed to work for your firm without a Visa?” Warren asked nervously.

“Don’t worry about that, Warren. There are ways around it. Just because you are here writing, doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to live here. You can claim that you wrote it in Canada and you were just up here for a meeting. The only down fall of this is that you will have to go back to Canada to cash your cheque.” Borden explained.

“Well... That may be a little more difficult then that. See I sort of got jack. She took my wallet and then the cop I got pulled over by impounded my car.” Warren confessed.

“Don’t worry, Dreamscape will take care of all that for you. Just make sure to have that draft into me by tomorrow. You may also want to start writing something else. That short little three sentence story would be great. Write it, make it real and then drop that draft off.” Borden suggested.

“Done! So can I ask you for a huge favor?” Warren asked.

“Sure.” Borden replied almost immediately.

“Would you be able to give me a ride home?”

***