Maggie decided to switch her screenplay to a short story.

This was the conversation she didn’t have with Henry:

Maggie was dressed in running outfit:  black shorts, blue tank-top, running shoes.  Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.  Henry was sitting in his reading chair reading the new Elmore Leonard crime novel.  Motorcycles could be heard in the distance as Maggie walked through the front door.

“Where have you been?”

“I went to see Broken Flowers.”

“What did you think?”

“The movie was so realistic that it made me depressed about my life.”

“Which character did you identify with?”

“Probably the teenage stripper’s.  She’s closest to my age.”

“Not Julie Delpy’s?  I remember when you were her size.”

“That was only 3 months ago.”

“Which character did you like the best?”

“I liked Bill Murray’s character, and I also hated him.”

“As a writer, would you say the script was well-written?”

“The dialogue was so natural that I wonder if there was even a script.”

“I’m sure there was a script.”

“Henry?”

“Yes?”

“What’s wrong with us—why are we so disparate, why can’t we talk about anything real?”

“We’re having a spiritual crisis.  Our crisis is a microcosm of the spiritual crisis of society at large.”

A bunny hopped/hoped beyond the picture window.

“Henry are you having an affair with Maria K.?”

Henry sighed.  As he sighed he realized something sinister about what the car can do in the garage with the windows up.  He hurried to push the thought away as Maggie watched the bunny and thought it recognized her through the window.  Did the bunny look her right in the eye?

“About the movie,” Henry tried to direct Maggie’s train of thought, “How did it leave you—what feeling did it leave you with?”

Maggie thought.  “I feel empty.  Contemplative.  I want a drink.  I want to talk.  I want the wheel of fortune to spin my way.  Something wants to burst out of me—I want to cry.”

“Is that all?”

“I want to console myself.”

Henry picked up a dish of pineapple and offered it to Maggie.  They sat still together.  A moth flew past the part of her shoe where her big toe should have been.  Roses stood on the table.

“What business was Bill Murray in?”

“Computers.”

“Why did he get punched in the nose?”

“He asked one of his ex-girlfriends if she’d had his child.  She flipped out, and her boyfriend hit Bill.”

Henry assessed Maggie.  “Maybe you should have some tea and try not to think so much.  How about that?”

A moon peeked through trees.  The sky became the color of a lake at night.  Crickets chirped through the open windows of the house.  Zinnia’s stood in 4 foot stalks near the paved driveway.  Maggie knew that if she could sit straight and still for 5 minutes, everything might be OK.  Her place on life’s wheel.  Her current circumstances.  She tried to remember that her place is equal to the place of a rich man when it comes to spiritual terms.  She tried to remember the woman doctor from Naropa—how she said she would not quit her day job to write.