Sharkey's Place, Glenn Dreams of Mars

Sharkey's Place: Glenn Dreams of Mars
S1 E3
By Rick Regan
INT. SHARKEY’S PLACE - EARLY LUNCH
It is mid October and the rain from the morning has cleared
and the day has brightened up. The place is getting busy with
take out orders, walk ins and regulars for lunch.
Glenn is in the corner, working on a laptop, having soup and
drinking coffee.
Myra is in the kitchen and Sandra is helping customers.
Kirini is directing the show and running the register.
SANDRA
(to customers)
Looking better and better out there.
KIRINI
A little sunshine and the place fills up.
SANDRA
I like it busy, keeps me moving. It’s no fun with no
customers and no tips. I’ll take this any day.
KIRINI
Keeps the register ringing too.
Aiden and Caiden come in. They are fry cooks from the Inky
Squid down the road, in town.
SANDRA
Morning guys. Got you a table right here.
CAIDEN
Thanks, Sandy.
AIDEN
Finally dried out.
CAIDEN
Little bit of sun.
AIDEN
I’ll take it.
CAIDEN
What’s good today?
SANDRA
What’s good? The soup. You gotta have it.
AIDEN
What is it?
SANDRA
Potato soup.
CAIDEN
Potato soup?
AIDEN
I don’t know. She make any chowder?
SANDRA
Oh, No, You have to try the soup. Trust me on this.
AIDEN
Just thinking that there’s not much to potato soup.
CAIDEN
It’s just a mashed potato in broth. I don’t know.
AIDEN
Is there another option?
CAIDEN
Like meatballs?
SANDRA
Yes, but not today. Today is potato. Tomorrow is
meatballs.
CAIDEN
Maybe we should wait for the meatballs tomorrow.
AIDEN
I love her meatballs.
SANDRA
Boys! This is Myra’s soup. You’re telling me that you
wouldn’t eat anything that she put in front of you?
You know she’s the best.
CAIDEN
She’s the best..
AIDEN
The beast!
CAIDEN
Alright, I’m stah-vin.
AIDEN
I’m the Hungah Monstah!
CAIDEN
Bring the soup!
AIDEN
And a Harpoon Light!
CAIDEN
Hot coffee for me.
SANDRA
Coming right up!
She goes to get the order.
SANDRA
(to Kirini)
Kiri, a Harpoon Light and a coffee for the boys.
KIRINI
Coming up.
She gets the drinks ready and puts them on the table.
KIRINI
You boys busy last night at The Squid? Lotta rain.
Kept things quiet here.
CAIDEN
We did OK.
AIDEN
The rowing team from the college stopped in.
CAIDEN
The coach called ahead.
AIDEN
We were slammed.
CAIDEN
But they were pretty much it.
KIRINI
Did they win the regionals?
CAIDEN
I guess so.
AIDEN
They ate like gorillas.
CAIDEN
Stuffed themselves.
AIDEN
Don’t get me wrong...
CAIDEN
That’s what we’re there for
AIDEN
But them fellas packed it in.
CAIDEN
Shoulda seen it.
AIDEN
It was lucky really.
CAIDEN
That we didn’t have more customers.
AIDEN
They filled the place up when the bus pulled in.
CAIDEN
I’m glad he called.
AIDEN
Cause we were ready for ‘em!
Sandra comes with the soup. Each bowl has one perfectly
cooked white potato, in perfect spheres, surrounded by a dark
broth. There is a sprinkle of saffron dusting the top of the
potato.
CAIDEN
What’s this?
AIDEN
Potato soup? It’s just one potato.
CAIDEN
That’s not soup.
SANDRA
Trust me. Hey, trust Myra!
Caiden and Aiden each take a spoon of the broth.
CAIDEN
Awwww!
AIDEN
Come on!
The slam down their spoons.
CAIDEN
That’s not fair.
AIDEN
It’s too good!
CAIDEN
What is this? It’s like the best steak of my life!
AIDEN
And the perfect potato!
CAIDEN
Myra! Myra!
AIDEN
Hey, Myra! Come out here.
Myra pokes her head out of the galley kitchen, sees Caiden
and Aiden. She smiles and comes to the table.
SANDRA
Didn’t I tell ya?
KIRINI
Trust Myra with the soup.
MYRA
So? What do you think?
CAIDEN
Myra, why do you do this to me?
AIDEN
You show me what a lousy cook I am.
CAIDEN
I taste this and I realize..;
AIDEN
I got no skill.
CAIDEN
No taste.
AIDEN
No ability.
CAIDEN
This is amazing.
AIDEN
Tell me the secret.
CAIDEN
How’d you make this?
MYRA
Well instead of chopping up the potato into mush, I
thought, you know, these are seasonal, right out of
the ground. I wanted to really hold onto the, you
know, potato-ness.
CAIDEN
Of course!
AIDEN
That’s it!
CAIDEN
Honor the season.
AIDEN
Taste the place. That’s it.
CAIDEN
But this broth? It’s so...
AIDEN
Meaty.
CAIDEN
How’d you do it?
MYRA
It’s a French method of roasting beef bones, then
simmering them. It’s in Julia Child’s first book.
CAIDEN
I think we have that one.
MYRA
But there are a lot of bones.
CAIDEN
How many?
AIDEN
Like a dozen?
MYRA
Two hundred.
AIDEN
Two hundred bones?!
CAIDEN
That’s crazy! Where’d you get that many bones?
MYRA
Sam the Butcher. He saves them for me.
CAIDEN
Yeah, we know Sam.
AIDEN
Good guy, Sam.
MYRA
Sure. But the soup, it’s good, right?
CAIDEN
Amazing.
AIDEN
You’re the best.
CAIDEN
The beast!
The both dig into the soup, savoring the rich perfection.
KIRINI
Myra, you’re the best.
SANDRA
OK. Let’s keep it moving.
They all go back to their stations and keep working.
More customers come in, others go out.
Myra goes back to the kitchen and is carefully scooping
meatballs, measuring the weight and size of each one.
She has tray after tray of perfectly shaped meatballs, some
going into the oven, some just out.
INT. SHARKEY’S PLACE - LATE EVENING
Glenn is sitting at the bar now. The place is really a tavern
now, with people drinking and talking.
SANDRA
Glenn, you alright there?
GLENN
Could do with some ice.
SANDRA
Be careful you don’t chip a tooth.
GLENN
I guess it’s a nervous habit.
SANDRA
You grow up as a nervous kid? You get bullied in
school?
GLENN
They didn’t call it bullying then. You got ‘picked
on’. And, yeah.
SANDRA
You get in a lot of fights then?
GLENN
No, I never got in any fights.
SANDRA
That’s why the picked on you. They know you would
just take it, and never dish it out.
GLENN
I wish I knew that then.
SANDRA
Nobody told you? What about your old man? He didn’t
teach you to look out for yourself?
GLENN
He died when I was pretty young. I remember him, but
I don’t think I really knew him.
SANDRA
How old were you, like six or seven?
GLENN
Twenty two. I was out of college and in California on
assignment.
SANDRA
You were twenty two and you still didn’t know your
dad?
GLENN
He worked a lot.
SANDRA
Come on. There’s more to it than that.
GLENN
He was, I think, disappointed in me. He wanted me to
go into the Navy, be a Marine. But I never wanted to
do that.
SANDRA
He saw you as the little soft boy, huh? That’s a
tough break.
GLENN
He was career military, in the Navy. I learned a lot
about ships though.
SANDRA
You were trying to impress him?
GLENN
Get his approval. But he never did.
SANDRA
See, I was going to make a crack about how that’s why
everybody still treats you like a doormat, but I’m
not going to now. I just feel bad for you, in a
pathetic way.
GLENN
Gee, thanks...
SANDRA
No trouble at all.
Sandra goes off to serve other customers
Gordon the Lobsterman comes in.
GORDON
Friends.
KIRINI
Hey, Gordon. Good to see you. First one’s on me.
GLENN
Hiya, Gordo.
GORDON
Kiri, you got any cold beer?
KIRINI
Got a Harpoon on ice waiting for you.
She uncaps the bottle and puts it in front of him.
Glenn comes over and sits next to Gordon.
GLENN
Gordo, you on the water today? A right mess this
morning.
GORDON
But it cleared. Got a good haul. The boys just got
finished unloading. Good day in the water.
KIRINI
That’s good to hear, Gordo.
GLENN
Way to go.
GORDON
Nice to have a day when it all works, you know?
KIRINI
Yep. Some days it all comes together. Say, you want
some soup? Myra made some beautiful potato soup.
GORDON
That would be great, thanks.
KIRINI
Coming right up.
Kirini goes into the kitchen for some soup.
GLENN
You know, I had a funny thought this morning.
GORDON
In the rain? Hard to do much thinking in the rain.
GLENN
You ever wonder about space travel? Like going to the
moon or going to Mars?
GORDON
Like in the movies? Naw! The world of the sea is
strange enough for me. And as dangerous too.
GLENN
Well, you know how they are planning to send people
to Mars, like the moon landing back in the Sixties?
GORDON
Yeah, damned fool project. Rich boys with stupid
toys.
GLENN
So I was thinking about your lobsters this morning,
in the rain.
GORDON
Ya don’t say.
GLENN
I was thinking that those lobsters are specifically
evolved to live and thrive in that particular,
specific environment. Cold water, rocky shoreline.
They eat what is available and adapt to the seasonal
changes.
GORDON
I’m going to need some more beer for this story.
GLENN
And I thought, you know, humans are like that. We are
specifically and particularly adapted to life on
Earth. So what’s going to happen when we get to Mars?
GORDON
Evolve, you mean, as a species?
GLENN
Right.
GORDON
Not enough time. They will run out of air and water,
or have some catastrophe and they will all die.
GLENN
Woah!
GORDON
With lobsters, you could have an event, like a squall
maybe, that wipes out a bunch of ‘em. But not all of
‘em. And them that are left keep going. We couldn’t
do that on Mars. They’ll just die up there. That’s
it.
KIRINI
(brings soup)
This will warm you up.
GORDON
You warm me up, just seeing you.
Gordon begins eating the soup.
KIRINI
Good, huh?
GORDON
Mmm! This is amazing! Can I get another beer? Glenn
is talking my ear off about going to Mars.
KIRINI
You two, going to Mars?
GLENN
No, people in general. You know, with the rockets and
stuff.
Kirini pulls up another beer.
KIRINI
If they had water up there, maybe they should send
lobsters. Ha!
GLENN
Lobsters? Hmmm. You know, maybe we should move
further down the food chain. Like shrimp.
GORDON
Go all the way back, to algae.
KIRINI
Algae? Why algae?
GORDON
You see, an algae or primitive slime, can survive in
all kinds of conditions, even on the surface of Mars.
And it is the first step in the evolutionary chain.
GLENN
So, send a Rover, and have it squirt slime?
GORDON
The engineering would be tricky, it’s true. But
squirt some slime on Mars, wait a billion years and
you’ll have whatever creatures will evolve and
survive. The miracle of life on Earth is not humans,
it is the multicell organism.
GLENN
Wait a minute, you want to seed the galaxy with
slime?
GORDON
It won’t be any good sending humans. They’re going to
die. Send slime and see what happens. If there is no
life after a billion years, well, it didn’t work out.
KIRINI
But don’t we need to colonize other planets when the
Earth becomes too hot?
GORDON
The Earth doesn’t care about humans. Just like it
doesn’t care about the lobsters who get scrubbed away
in a nor’easter. But the world keeps turning.
GLENN
Maybe Mars had people, or whatever, Martians, like
two billion years ago and they sent slime to Earth.
We would be sending it back.
KIRINI
You guys are both crackers.
Kirini wanders away.
GLENN
But what does it all mean, Gordo?
GORDON
Life? I don’t know. What’s the meaning of a lobster?
To get put in a steamer.
GLENN
I hope that’s not how I go.
GORDON
Nah, you’re too big for a steamer, but I could see
you getting involved with a serial killer who chops
you into pieces. Could steam the pieces, I suppose.
GLENN
Jesus! What?! A serial killer?
GORDON
I’m just thinking of the mechanics of it.
GLENN
I ask you about the meaning of life and you tell me
I’m going to get murdered? How about, we’re here to
make the world a better place?
GORDON
If that gets you through the night.
GLENN
I mean, we’re the only animals, probably the only
ones, who understand death, who understand time and
ideas and science. Shouldn’t it add up to something.
GORDON
Not for the lobsters.
GLENN
But they’re just bugs.
GORDON
Tasty bugs.
GLENN
Agreed. But why do you go out on your boat everyday?
Just to catch lobsters?
GORDON
You mean, do I find value in my work? That’s what you
are asking yourself, not me. Sort it out.
GLENN
You know, I write these columns for the paper, Global
Shipping, but I feel like I just send them into the
void. Like there is nobody on the other side. Then
that Dutch woman came in.
GORDON
Yulia.
GLENN
Yeah, Julia. And she said she reads the columns and
even knew my specialty. I never had anybody that said
they actually read the Global Shipping News. Now when
I sit down to write the report, I can’t get her out
of my head.
GORDON
Me neither.
GLENN
And I get all blocked because I’m worried that I’m
going to screw it up and she’ll read it and think,
that guy is a big dope.
GORDON
Ah, she had a loving heart. She liked you.
GLENN
But you even more.
GORDON
Well, of course. I’m a captain.
Sandra approaches.
SANDRA
You two still mooning over that Euro-trash chick?
GORDON
Don’t say that. She is a good captain.
SANDRA
Sure she is. But did you ever think that maybe there
was something odd, or even suspicious, about her
dropping by this place, way out here? Didn’t that
strike you as even a little bit weird?
GLENN
Ugh, No, Why should it be weird?
SANDRA
Maybe she just wanted to scope out this little
section of the coast.
GLENN
Uh-huh.
SANDRA
And find some sap who she could latch onto and get
her feet on the ground here.
GLENN
But she had a whole life in Amsterdam.
SANDRA
Sure she did. Sure. Geez, you guys are such dopes.
You don’t know anything about women.
Sandra moves away.
GLENN
She’s right about that.
GORDON
Too true.
Myra comes over with a beer in-hand for herself. She sits
between Gordon and Glenn.
GORDON
Myra, your Glenn here is wrestling with his
meaninglessness. What do you think?
GLENN
Wait! That’s not fair.
MYRA
I think the both of you are bums for sitting here,
night after night. You should be home in bed. Get a
good night’s sleep. Then get up early and get to
work.
GORDON
The lobsters don’t care what time it is.
MYRA
OK. So Glenn, what’s your excuse?
GLENN
Myra, I know I’m not a good dad. I know I wasn’t a
good husband. I’m sorry. But what do you want from
me? You want me to leave, is that it?
MYRA
Could you?
GLENN
What?
MYRA
Could you, if you wanted to?
GLENN
I don’t know.
MYRA
Could you find a job that made some real money, in a
city that had more than one tavern? Then maybe you
could get caught up on the alimony and child support.
I’m just saying.
GLENN
What are you saying?
MYRA
I’m saying you are a grown man but you are stuck in
your own head like an adolescent. And you cripple
yourself with gin in the hopes that it makes you
interesting.
GLENN
It used to work.
MYRA
But look at you. You think you can do another ten
years of this act? I don’t think you’ve got another
ten months in you.
GORDON
Myra, lay off. He’s in a down place. We all get there
sometimes.
MYRA
Gordo, really? A down place? He’s like a lame horse
that should have been put down, years ago, for mercy
sake.
GLENN
For chrissake, Myra. You want me gone, or you want me
dead?
MYRA
Does it matter? Either way the real you has been gone
a long time.
Myra puts her empty beer bottle on the counter. She walks to
the door, puts on her jacket and goes, without saying
goodbye.
GORDON
Jeez, what got into her?
GLENN
I don’t know, but what do you think? Should I skip
town, go back up to Bangor?
GORDON
You could go to Portland, send your shipping reports
from there.
GLENN
You really think I should go?
GORDON
No, I don’t. You know why? Because I’d miss ya. None
of these chuckleheads around here even read books,
let alone write ‘em.
GLENN
Hmmm.
GORDON
But, I do think she’s got a point. You’ve been here,
maybe too long. Not making any progress. Not making
any new ideas. Maybe a change up, a mix up with more
people, would get you going again.
GLENN
I suppose I could get an apartment. I could keep my
place here. It doesn’t cost much. Come back on the
weekends.
GORDON
Maybe find another rag to write for.
GLENN
I wish it was that easy. It’s hard to get a writing
gig.
GORDON
So drive a bus. Stack groceries. Take tickets at a
theater. Just do something. It’s people you miss.
GLENN
Thanks Gordo. I’ll drive down to town tomorrow. I
should call it a night.
GORDON
Good luck to ya, Glenn.
GLENN
You too.
Glenn gets up and leaves.
Kirini comes over and sits next to Gordon.
KIRINI
What was that all about?
GORDON
Ah, Myra got into him about paying the alimony.
KIRINI
Is she stretched for cash? She didn’t say anything to
me.
GORDON
I don’t know.
KIRINI
Maybe the meatballs didn’t come out right.
GORDON
Maybe that’s it. But she was at him so hard I was
afraid he was going to grab my flare gun.
KIRINI
And do what, shoot Myra?
GORDON
No, he loves her. He’d never shoot her. But she had
him so down, I had to say something.
KIRINI
You’re a good friend to him. And he doesn’t have many
of those.
GORDON
It’s part of the code of being a Lobsterman.
KIRINI
Code?
GORDON
It takes a long time to learn and you only hear it in
bits and scraps from the other captains. You have to
respect the water. You have to respect the sky. You
have to respect the fish. And you have to respect
your crew.
KIRINI
And Glenn?
GORDON
He’s part of my crew. Not on the boat but deep down,
he’s a decent man. I respect that.
KIRINI
You’re a decent man, Gordon.
GORDON
In my way, I suppose.
KIRINI
Gordon, kiss me.
GORDON
Kiri, I can’t.
KIRINI
Can’t or won’t?
GORDON
Both. I respect you too much. You deserve better.
KIRINI
How about you respect me a little less and kiss me a
little more?
GORDON
Well, if it is a desperate situation, I’ll do what I
have to do.
Gordon stands up and Kirini presses herself into him. He puts
his arms around her and they kiss for a long time. Then, she
pushes back and looks up at him.
KIRINI
Thanks for that. After today, I needed that.
GORDON
You are a beautiful woman, Kiri. But that’s going to
have to hold you for a while.
KIRINI
Harpoon?
GORDON
A cold one?
KIRINI
Coldest in town.
GORDON
That’s not saying much.
KIRINI
Ha!
She goes behind the bar, puts a beer on the counter and walks
back into the office.
GORDON
(sips beer)
Good luck, Glenn.
Gordon sips the beer. After a while Kirini comes out, waves
that it’s closing time. He finishes the beer and tosses it in
a trash can.
The go out the door together and she locks the door.
END