Friend’s Best Man

POV shot from the backseat.  JIM FRIEND is in the driver’s seat.  A WOMAN is riding shotgun.  We see JIM’s right hand shove a cassette in the deck, then slap the steering wheel, an anticipatory gesture…

TAPE:  –gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no
good going on, and she agreed, without opening her eyes. (Pause.) I asked her to look at me and after a few moments–(pause)–after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the
glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low.) Let me in. (Pause.) We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they went down, sighing,
before the stem! (Pause.) I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her.
We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently,
up and down, and from side to side.

WOMAN:  Seventeen copies sold…

JIM hits rewind and there is the familiar screech of backwards audio.

TAPE:  –unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with
the light of the understanding and the fire–

JIM:  It’s art, Woman.  They give people the Pulitzer for this kind of thing.  The fucking Booker prize.  All kinds of honors accrete…

WOMAN:  If you don’t find the back formation offensive.

JIM:  "Accretian…" 

WOMAN:  …and you don’t spell very well either.

JIM:  How would you know that, Woman.  It’s a damned SCRIPT for god’s sake.  How can you tell whether I spell it "accretian," "accretion," or even "a Grecian?"

WOMAN:  Yes… well, you’ve certainly URNED the right…

JIM:  Don’t be doing that now.  Going all truth and beauty on me.

JIM rewinds the tape again amidst much screechery…

TAPE:  –my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving.
But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side
to side.

The WOMAN hits the stop button and turns on the radio.

WOMAN:  Enough crap…

RADIO:  It was suggested that for an artist of his stature, he had a relatively
small body of work - but only if one measures size by number of words.
Distilling his art to its essence, he produced scores of eloquent plays
and stories, many of those in his later years not strictly defined as
full length.

JIM:  I’m told size doesn’t matter.

WOMAN:  One understands why you may have heard that…