YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’VE SEEN A GHOST - Todd & Vicki
This takes place right after Todd has returned from Ireland, he goes home to find his wife rolling around the floor with the poet and somehow he winds up in the cemetery where Vicki is. This is RH/Todd’s first speaking scene since his return and what a scene they wrote for him! His anger intensity, rage, sarcasm, and emotional break-down is at it’s peak, and what form he was in. He was back in full force, and the viewers were thrilled! She is talking to Joe Riley, kneeling, laying a white rose on his grave. Little does she know she is about to see a ghost.
VICKI: (calling out) Hello? Look if you’re trying to scare me you’re doing an awfully good job of it. Whoever you are, please let me see you.
TODD: (camera pans to entrance of graveyard, pause a second then in he walks) Todd!? (her hand to her mouth) Todd!! (he just stares at her)
Scene break
TODD: (crosses in a few step, his sarcasm is at an all time high) What’s a matter, sis? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What did you expect in a place like this?
VICKI: (whispers) Todd! (she stands, her mouth agape) Todd!! My god, everyone thinks you’re dead.
TODD: Yeah well, everyone was wrong, as usual. (crosses right up to her) Look you want to touch me, huh, just to make sure, come on.
VICKI: The police in Ireland, the authorities...
TODD: Oh yeah, the reports must have been very impressive. Todd Manning shot down in cold blood, stuffed into a trunk of a car, (mimes the action of the car going off) the car pushed off a cliff into the wild rocky surf off Inishcrag. (he steps into her) How could anybody possibly survive?
VICKI: How?
TODD: (deadpan) What can I say Vicki, somebody down there likes me.
VICKI: You have no idea how upset everybody was....was when....when we thought all hope of finding you was gone...
TODD: (cutting her off) Oh yeah, yeah, I bet my dear friends and family really knocked themselves out trying.
VICKI: Yes, they did. Blair went to Ireland, (the mention of her name he looks away) she went to Inishcrag. She begged and bullied the police into searching for you long after hope was gone.
TODD: (nodding bitterly) That’s my wife, loyal to the end! (cross behind her wiping his mouth nervously)
VICKI: What happened to you??!! How in god’s name did you survive? What are you doing here in the cemetery, why aren’t you at home with your wife?
TODD: (extremely angry, yelling) I told you she is my wife until the end and after that it is every man for himself and every women for herself......(cuts himself off, raises his hand up in the air in futileness, bitterly) You know what Vicki, you know what, why don’t you just forget you saw me, some people are better off dead.
VICKI: No, no, no wait. (she goes to grab his to stop him, he flinches) You can’t just walk away.
TODD: (flippant) Vicki, I gotta go! (gestures with thumb behind him) You know I heard they were casting a remake of the Night of the Living Dead.
VICKI: (angry) Don’t you ever change?! Todd! You're still covering up all your feelings with sneering and sarcasm. You don’t have to do that with me! Just stay there! Tell me what happened to you. (he stares at her and swallows)
Scene break
TODD: (trying to be light, crosses behind her) Which one of your personalities is here? You know I got kinda cozy with a couple of ‘em.
VICKI: They’re all me now. All knitted together.
TODD: No kidding? Who won?
VICKI: I did. (gives him a ‘so there’ look) Tell me what happened to you.
TODD: (looks down at grave) Once upon a time I got shot in the back. (picks up the white rose and holds it gently) I was...I was walking away from that weird old inn in Ireland and I felt it hit me and then nothing. Going for that last ride in the car, going over the cliff, (Vicki reacts as if sick to her stomach) falling down into the crashing sea and washing up onto the shore, was all a total mystery to me. (looks up at her)
VICKI: How did you survive? How could anyone survive that?
TODD: (smells rose, with a smile) Clean living. An old fisherman found me, I was half drowned, he said, and what wasn’t broken was bleeding and so they....he picked me up and put me in the back of his pony cart and he took me to his cottage on the other side of the island. Eamon was his name, oh, and his wife, (with disgust) Lily. Oh, Lily took one look at me and told him to throw me back into the sea.
VICKI: (shocked) What? Why would a woman do that?
TODD: The woman? (softening) She was a good woman, she was. She was just terrified of the men who had shot me, the men of twenty-one. But Eamon talked her into letting me stay, Christian charity, he talked a lot about that, they still believe all that garbage. And so they hid me from the cops, and from the men of twenty-one and everybody else and nursed me back to life.
VICKI: And thank god for it. Todd why didn’t you get in touch with Blair or someone!
TODD: For the first couple of months I didn’t even know who I was. And then when I did start to get back my strength and my memory...... (he crosses to the other side of her, his emotion starts building, his gestures and facial expressions get bigger) Eamon kept talking to me about how lucky I was, because I had been on death’s door and I had been born again and I must have been half out of my head because I started to believe him! And I know that there is no reservation for me at that big restaurant in the sky, (looks up to the heavens) but I thought maybe because of everything I had been through, (calms down a bit) maybe that had....had paid for some of the harm that I had done and that taking a bullet for her ‘friend’ Thornhart had even paid my bill to Marty.
