Well at least the last scene, which I guess can always be a wonderful place to start. It ends in death of course, just like all things: two strangers set at a cafe, one man, one woman at St. Michel, two stupid tourists maybe. They see a black cat. Our guy sees the black cat, he's at the curb with his love. The black cat draws him across the street, into the path of a bus.
The same crossing where his love saved an old woman from the path of a bus a year before.
The cat is let out by the landlord. The door is not locked because the cat broke something as a patron comes in with her bottle of Chambord from the store downstairs. The patron is never satisfied. She dies a slow death of poison in a bare room trying to get to her treasure of jewels with her black cat looking on. It's the last thing she sees.
The last thing our guy sees is his love. He's finished the unfinished script with the other girl, he's fulfilled the passion with his love, he's complete.
The patron has amassed all these jewels for sale, but hasn't sold them, she's even priced them and imagined the holiday with the money. She loves money. She breathes it in when she sells something.
*******
OPEN on a BLACK CAT from a flat looking down from a terrace window, looking down at a coffee shop where GUY and GIRL work.
CUT to GUY and GIRL working on a script. It's ambiguous, not related at all, but the GUY suggests that a character kill himself in the final scene. And the cat looks on.
GIRL: "What are you doing tonight?"
GUY: "I'm gonna see about a girl."
LOVE, she's going to see love not for dinner, but for a drink. There's a back and forth of wild eccentric friends, one, well, you'll know.
GUY: "I love the fat pigeons here, the elegant ones.
CUT to an old French lady, PATRON, alone in an auction house, for a live auction, an estate sale. The auctioneer is a little confused, or maybe pissed off. PATRON buys what she pleases on the cheap and thanks the auctioneer.
<<OR>>
PATRON and a senile old woman are to lunch at an old lavish country home. PATRON has a notebook and she's interviewing the old lady. PATRON checks her watch, they're talking about Weimaraners for a periodical. And then the senile old lady's head lolls back. PATRON, much quicker than she looks, gets up, shuffles quickly into the house. Two Weimaraners come up and she gives them treats and goes through the house emptying jewelry boxes. There's no one else in the house.
[SENILE had kept calling to her husband for tea. They talked of her children. They visited every other weak and called regularly.]
PATRON doesn't take all the pieces, just the ones she wants, which is most of them, maybe half. She goes to the kitchen and procures a tea-bag with a gloved hand from her attache and puts it in a tea-tin with an evil smile and an air of devilish pride.
CUT to CU of SENILE. She comes to in a drowsy fluster and looks around. Across the table PATRON is scribbling feverishly in her notebook with her eyes down. Without looking up she says something to the effect of: "That just about covers it. I'll mail you a copy of the article okay?" SENILE walks PATRON to the door. PATRON thanks her and her husband for the tea. She shuts the door, calls out to her husband who isn't there obviously. There're pictures of him in the hallway.
SENILE: "She was nice."
CUT to PATRON at a train station in Marseille, on the platform. We see the train is going to Paris. With a rush the train is off.
CUT to bus rushing by to reveal GUY on curb. He checks his watch, and crossed the street, turns a corner to a corner cafe, and a young blonde with daring eyes takes notice as he walks towards her. They talk about, you know, each other, if she's working at the coffee shop tomorrow.
LOVE: "Why? Will you come by?"
GUY: "Maybe to flirt with you some more."
She's English. They talk about spritzers and the difference between Aperol and Campari, if there even is one. The bartender's a dick. After a spritzer, they go somewhere else for dinner, maybe talk about belief systems and politics, right and wrong.
GIRL: "Have you ever stolen anything?"
*******
More than anything, questions ask people. The more people a question asks, the more interesting they are. And remember everyone farts.
*******
CUT to PATRON in a familiar-looking apartment, that of the cat. She's reading a newspaper, the obituaries, and she farts.
*******
They put menus behind the crosswalks in Paris.
"How about here, how about here and here. Here. Here."
- The Avid Father Photographer
