Another serial... Slippage... [try it!]

[JulieH]

ANNOUNCER: Episode 6, Over the Edge.

RECAP: Phyllis Martin came to Water Lily Square on business with the dead - the business of writing stories about tragedy and death and all that goes with it. She came to rent the apartment of Marla Dobbs, a woman who committed suicide while in the grip of a very strange delusion.

MUSIC

SOUND : RITZY RESTAURANT

SOUND: WINE POURS

PHYLLIS: Cheers.

SOUND: BOTTLE SET DOWN, GLASS PICKED UP

LEWIS: Thanks for waiting.

PHYLLIS: Talking while eating is overrated. Dad always said food is there to be enjoyed as well as digested.

LEWIS: [chuckles, then turns serious] Especially with a topic like this.

PHYLLIS: True. I don't think anyone can overhear

LEWIS: [teasing] Are you worried about spies?

PHYLLIS: I'm more worried about putting someone off their croquettes au poulon.

LEWIS: Is that how it's pronounced?

PHYLLIS: [whispered] I have no idea.

LEWIS: Well, I hate to seem easy or anything, but after such a good meal, I suppose it's time for me to put out.

PHYLLIS: [tsks teasingly]

LEWIS: I'm going to sound like a complete cliché, but Marla Dobbs was my last case before qualifying for my pension, a severe case of short-timers - as they say.

MUSIC

AMB: TUNNELS, ECHOES

TRENT : [breathing deeply, still trying to clear his head] Jeez that was weird.

RENAULT: What?

TRENT: Buzzing... everything went red and swirly. Must be some sort of power lines through here. Subsonics.

RENAULT: [really concerned] But it's gone now?

TRENT: Yeah. Let's get moving before someone turns it on again.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS FOR A MOMENT

RENAULT: I've moved most everyone out of the lion's potential path.

TRENT: Great. I heard her over this way... I think--

RENAULT: Sound can be deceptive down here.

TRENT: Oh.

RENAULT: What do you do when you find her?

TRENT: I've got a muzzle and a mild tranquilizer. I really don't want to have to take her out of here unconscious - she weighs a freaking ton. If I can trank her and get the harness on, she'll come quietly enough.

RENAULT: Raised in captivity?

TRENT: Bottle-fed. They keep shifting poor old Lulabelle from show to show so the animal rights activists can't try and steal her - if they "return her to the wild" like they keep threatening, she... well she just wouldn't make it.

RENAULT: Without herds of free range poodles?

TRENT: [laughs]

SOUND: LION ROAR

RENAULT: This way.

MUSIC

SOUND: FEET APPROACH, SLIGHT ECHO

FRIEDA: Here - this one is my favorite.

SAM: [shya] Favorite? [mary voice, very quiet] Shame! [normal, self deprecating laugh] Sorry. I really don't mean to sound so ... I dunno. Sorry. Please continue.

FRIEDA: You're not the first, though it is not a bad thing that we are a bit out of the way for people to come merely to scoff.

SAM: So it's only the protestors who make the effort?

FRIEDA: [weary] Yes. But mostly only very recently.

SAM: Mostly?

FRIEDA: When we opened, there was an article in the paper, and everyone turned out to picket the notorious Suicide Museum. But papa ignored them and they went away.

SAM: Some people protest just for the publicity.

FRIEDA: Some. There have always been the letters as well, and the blogs.

SAM: Those wacky blogs. So, show me your favorite. I only scoff because - well, I guess because it makes me... uncomfortable, and I don't... I just don't understand. Isn't it human nature to joke about things that make us nervous?

FRIEDA: [smiling] You are surprisingly perceptive ...for a deliveryman.

SAM: Ooh. Scoff received. Straight to the heart. Let's move on.

FRIEDA: [laughs, then composes herself with a deep breath] Right around the corner here.

SOUND: A COUPLE STEPS, THEN THEY STOP.

SAM: Hold up. Is it - gruesome? I mean, should I prepare myself?

FRIEDA: No, not particularly. Just... pathetic.

SOUND: STEPS

FRIEDA: See what you can deduce, without reading the note.

MUSIC

MARLA: It was almost twenty years, this time, before I died. A plague swept across the face of the earth and took a lot of people with it. Including me. The funny thing was, the whole time I had this feeling like "this isn't real anyway", and just kind of assumed that I would wake up again, after being dead - and I'll tell you, after bleeding out most of your orifices with your skin on fire, death is a real relief.

MUSIC

SOUND: HOSPITAL NOISES

DOCTOR: Miss Winters?

ABIGAIL: [mumbled, but clear] No autographs. Please.

MUSIC

PHYLLIS: I hope you don't mind if I stop you on occasion so I can take notes - I have a recorder, but had to dump it into the computer. Plus, the transcription software doesn't do real well with just anyone's voice. I'll whittle it down and dictate it in later.

LEWIS: Voice recognition? What's the world coming to? [joking sententious] Why, in my day, we had to type everything into the computer by hand...

PHYLLIS: [chuckles] At least you said "computer" - if you started talking about your old smith-corona, I woulda had to call you on it. You're not that old.

LEWIS: We cops age differently. [joking] It's like dog years. [weary] It wears you down.

PHYLLIS: [beat] What do you do with your copious free time, now?

LEWIS: I thought I'd be out there fishing and cruising the world and... stuff, but instead I just watch a lot of cop shows and try to get my twenty minutes in on the bowflex three times a week. [beat] And mooch dinner off every writer who wants to hear about some melancholy chapter of crime history.

PHYLLIS: Nice segue.

LEWIS: Especially pretty writers.

PHYLLIS: Smooth, too.

LEWIS: I'm just making up for the fact that the Marla Dobbs suicide - well, it really wasn't that interesting, aside from the purely medical, and I feel like I got you to feed me under false pretenses.

PHYLLIS: Not interesting? Meaning...?

LEWIS: No indication of foul play, no mystery, no cryptic suicide note-- Just a plain "goodbye, life sucks," kind of thing.

PHYLLIS: And a very strange on-line journal.

LEWIS: That damned journal.

PHYLLIS: Do you take the stance it was deliberate fiction, or delusional ranting?

LEWIS: I don't know - it's hard to tell fact from fiction at the best of times, particularly without a live author to explain. The shrinks were even undecided. Most just refused comment. You can never really know what's inside someone else's head.

PHYLLIS: The episodes she outlined were very rich in detail.

LEWIS: So are the ones in your books.

PHYLLIS: Touché.

MUSIC

MARLA: The yellow girl was omnipresent during those dark months, both before and during my death. She was the poster child for the quarantine movement, and her face was on the news, billboards, and even on candy wrappers: "AREN'T THEY WORTH IT?" with her huge, haunted stare. Of course, when I call her YELLOW, I don't mean she's crayola-colored or jaundiced - she has bright yellow hair and always wears a yellow dress which is sort of Alice in Wonderland-y. Always.

MUSIC