TABLE READINGS
"Writing for Alex"
Part I
Written by
Heather Rose Dominic
Phil stepped up to the diner’s payphone, tossed a quarter in and dialed.
“I’m here,” said Phil.
“For your date?” Al asked from his chair at the garage where he worked seven to four, five days a week.
“Yeah, I wanted to make sure I got our table.”
“You’re at the diner?”
“Why not, she lives up the block, she knows the place.”
“You got a beautiful chorus dancer to go out with you, on her one day off, and you’re meeting her at the diner?
“We’re just having coffee.”
“Well, you should have made it breakfast because we have to be at the marina by five to help rig the boat, that’s half the test and you can’t be late this time.”
“I’m not gonna be late, it’s just a cup of coffee, Al.”
“With a beautiful chorus girl! You’re not going to remember your own name after five minutes. Listen, you guys open in a week, you’ll always see her backstage and you and Nate can bring her onto his next show but this is the last day after five weeks at sea and you can’t be late.”
“We were in the harbor,” Phil corrected Al simply.
“The harbor turns into the sea! Get to the dock by five. Good bye!” yelled Al.
Phil looked at the phone receiver before hanging up.
Al stood up and handed Artie, the night man at the garage, his sailing certification book. Artie sat down while Al leaned against the desk, put his sailing gloves on, and practiced tying a difficult knot with two pieces of rope.
“All right, hit me with a question from any of the clipped pages,” Al asked.
“You got it,” said Artie who peppered Al with a series of questions from the tattered soft cover book.
“All right, one more,” said Al.
“Okay, let’s see…how do you determine who has the right of way? Artie asked. “Whoever has the loudest horn, right?” he continued, laughing.
“That’s it, I got this,” said Al and tossed Artie the completed knot, who caught it with one hand.
“All this for one script?” Artie asked as he put down the book and turned on the portable TV that sat in the corner of the desk.
“Yeah, what the hell do Phil and I know about sailing? We needed to know what Alex would be saying and how he’d feel”
“So, Alex is gonna stop driving a cab and start driving a boat? asked Artie. “Louie’s gonna have a field day with that one,” he continued.
Al put on his coat, shoved his sailing gloves into one of the pockets and grabbed his text book off the desk as he tried to explain his and Phil’s spec for the series, Taxi.
“He had always wanted to learn to sail but he had only ever learned to swim, that’s all…you’ll have to watch the show, well, we have to sell the script first… all right, I gotta go.”
Al waved to Artie who had already become engrossed in a television show and waved back without looking up.
The tops of the oak trees were swaying from the wind that was blowing east on seventy-eighth and Al shivered once before turning up the collar of his coat.
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat!” shouted Artie from the sidewalk at the bottom of the ramp.
“Thanks!” Al yelled back with a laugh and continued walking towards Amsterdam Avenue.
Phil and Audrey left the diner and headed up Amsterdam Avenue as Al turned down Amsterdam on the other side of the street.
“It’s a little chilly but do you want to walk for a bit? It’s our one day in the sun.”
“Absolutely,” Phil said, thoroughly smitten and completely forgetting about meeting Al downtown.
“We could go to the Planetarium. Do you want to do that?” asked Audrey.
“Absolutely,” Phil said again, rolling his eyes at how tongue-tied he continued to be.
“Another theater, we can’t stay out of them!” joked Audrey.
Phil laughed and couldn’t believe this knock out could also deliver a joke.
Al arrived early at the dock and found the skipper and the other two class members already prepping the twenty-foot boat for the late afternoon’s windy weather. Al was put in charge of the pre-launch check list and began by telling one of the students to check the expiration date of the flares and the other to add fuel to the boat’s tank for when they motored out of the marina and onto the Hudson River.
“Should be around twenty to twenty-five knots today, it’ll be a nice sail and a good challenge for your last day,” said the captain.
Phil and Audrey were leaning back in the Planetarium’s tall velvet like chairs gazing up at the revolving galaxies that filled the domed theater. Phil opened a box of candy and handed it to Audrey.
“Why do you have Sno-Caps,” she whispered as she poured some into her hand.
“I always carry Sno-Caps,” Phil whispered back, then realized how incredibly uncool that was.
“Smart,” said Audrey, who meant it and poured out a second handful.
Phil looked over at Audrey who glowed under the dome’s blanket of stars and up at the infinite observable universe and marveled at the incomprehensible beauty of this moment.
While Al was checking the lines, the boat began to rise and tilt as the water in the marina swelled from a large cargo ship that had passed by. He grabbed the mast and waited for the boat to stabilize before continuing to pull a couple of ropes out of their cleats.
“We’re going to have to shove off in a minute, I’m sorry,” said the skipper from the bow of the boat.
“I know,” Al said as he stood with his hands on his hips, looking in the direction of where a cab should have been pulling up.
As the narrator began to explain the science of how mariners determined their position at sea by measuring the distance between the stars and the visible horizon, Phil jumped up, then sat down, and then jumped back up again.
“I have to leave, I’m so sorry, but I have to leave!” Phil whispered.
“What’s wrong?” whispered Audrey.
“I’m supposed to be somewhere. I’ll explain tomorrow. How will you get home?”
“I live a block away.”
“Right, I’m sorry, see you at rehearsal” Phil said as he climbed over her without a shred of grace.
“See you at rehearsal,” said Audrey, laughing quietly.
Phil turned back.
“I named that star for you,” Phil whispered, pointing up to a specific spot in the sky. “The brightest one near that constellation,” he continued before turning to leave.
Audrey looked up at her star, smiling, as the narrator continued to expound upon the glories of celestial navigation.
To Be Continued...