Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk

Author:Chuck Palahniuk
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780224087155
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-06-14T07:00:00+00:00

ACT I, SCENE FOURTEEN

Cut to me, running, a trench coat worn over my maid’s uniform flapping open in front to reveal the black dress and white apron within. In a tracking shot, I hurry along a path in the park, somewhere between the dairy and the carousel, my open mouth gasping. In the reverse angle, we see that I’m rushing toward the rough boulders and outcroppings of the Kinderberg rocks. Matching my eye line, we see that I’m focused on a pavilion built of brick, in the shape of a stop sign, perched high atop the rocks.

Intercut this with a close-up shot of the telephone which sits on the foyer table of Miss Kathie’s town house. The telephone rings.

Cut to me running along, my hair fluttering out behind my bare head. My knees tossing the apron of my uniform into the air.

Cut to the telephone, ringing and ringing.

Cut to me veering around joggers. I’m dodging mothers pushing baby carriages and people walking dogs. I jump dog leashes like so many hurdles. In front of me, the brick pavilion atop Kinderberg looms larger, and we can hear the nightmarish calliope music of the nearby carousel.

Cut to the foyer telephone as it continues to ring.

As I arrive at the brick pavilion, we see an assortment of people, almost all of them elderly men seated in pairs at small tables, each pair of men hunched over the white and black pieces of a chess game. Some tables sit within the pavilion. Some tables outside, under the overhang of its roof. This, the chess pavilion built by Bernard Baruch.

Cut back to the close-up of the foyer telephone, its ringing cut off as fingers enter the shot and lift the receiver. We follow the receiver to a face, my face. To make it easier, picture Thelma Ritter’s face answering the telephone. In this intercut flashback we watch me say, “Kenton residence.”

Still watching me, my reaction as I answer the telephone, we hear the voice of my Miss Kathie say, “Please come quick.” Over the telephone, she says, “Hurry, he’s going to kill me!”

In the park, I weave between the tables shared by chess players. On the table between most pairs sits a clock displaying two faces. As each player moves a piece, he slaps a button atop the clock, making the second hand on one clock face stop clicking and making the other second hand begin. At one table, an old-man version of Lex Barker tells another old Peter Ustinov, “Check.” He slaps the two-faced clock.

Seated at the edge of the crowd, my Miss Kathie sits alone at a table, the top inlaid with the white and black squares of a chessboard. Instead of pawns, knights and rooks, the table holds only a thick ream of white paper. Both her hands clutch the stack of paper, as thick as the script for a Cecil B. DeMille epic. The lenses of dark sunglasses hide her violet eyes. A silk Hermès scarf, tied under her chin, hides her movie-star profile.

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