In the Land of Good Living by Kent Russell

Author:Kent Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

INT. CLUTTERED HOME OFFICE—LATE AFTERNOON

Kent sits uneasily on a sunflower-print couch next to JULIAN, the plump, horseshoe-bald, Platonic ideal of a BUFFALO SNOWBIRD. Shelved around them are books and cassette tapes pertaining to the 150 precepts of Spiritualist natural law. Silhouetted in the sunshine along the window ledge behind them are plaster statues of religious figures as well as vases full of peacock feathers. Julian holds his hands together above his lap, but his fingers are not quite steepled. He is rubbing his middle digits together, smiling at the camera.

GLENN (O.S.)

So, Julian, if you could introduce yourself.

JULIAN

Well, let’s see. I was a real estate broker up in New York. Had a hundred agents, three offices. I was a New York mortgage banker. Had a hundred fifty employees and clients like Kodak. But I was very out of balance in life. I worked twenty-five years, seven days a week. I basically ruined two marriages, focusing on all my empires. Heh, you could say I was like a mini Donald Trump.

JULIAN (CONT’D)

Are you guys familiar with what an “aha moment” is? When answers come to us, but not in our conscious minds? Well, a year to the day from my last divorce, all four of my corporations went into insolvency. There was nothing I could do about it. It was like sand going through my fingers. It was a multimillion-dollar bankruptcy.

GLENN (O.S.)

Maybe not so mini, eh?

JULIAN

I was a member of seventeen community organizations back home. I left those behind, too, to come here. Arrived in 1997. Became a Reiki master. Do you know Reiki? Went from being a multimillionaire to here. Do you know any other spiritual counselors with an MBA?

KENT

I mean—money can’t buy you unity with the Great Spirit, right?

JULIAN

(wistfully)

When I was younger, I’d get a burr under my saddle—and peew! I was out of here. Now, I meditate. Meditation is listening to the Spirit. Prayer is asking. I ask, and I ask. And I don’t see that door! So maybe this is where I’m supposed to be, in the end? This is where the Universe wants me to end my life on this plane?

Glenn, Noah, and Kent exchange glances while Julian continues to smile at the lens.

KENT

Stability! You know? If the Universe is everywhere, then you don’t need to seek Him—It?—elsewhere. Right? Wouldn’t that be the logic? It isn’t the Spirit who’s absent from us but we who are absent from…It.

JULIAN

Let me tell you something. You like this house? I own it. This and the one next door. You know the woman who gave you guys your reading earlier? She’s my wife. Well, not technically my wife. She’s been divorced twice before, too. We know the runaround. She wanted me to get my real estate license four years ago. OK! I said. Twenty percent of what I do—it’s real estate.

NOAH (O.S.)

A fine house. What abou—

JULIAN (CONT’D)

One of John D. Rockefeller’s accountants built a house here. I can sell it to you, should you guys ever want a house.

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