Caroline, Part the First (a "The Hub" tie-in) 2nd draft

Caroline Adams was born in Duluth Minnesota early in the morning on March 3, 1991.

Her mother, Marrianne, was in labor for 14 hours and was very much relieved to have the whole ordeal over. Her father, Arthur, would often be away on business (as was the case on this cold Sunday morning).

Arthur was a very important public figure (in his own mind) and had better places to be than a hospital waiting room --he was actually in a Burbank Ramada Inn watching the new John Candy movie before his noon "performance" the next day-- he would not lose sleep over missing his daughter's first breath. Besides, he had an extremely no…. importantly busy day… yes very important. Arthur was tired of the way people seemed to stop caring, not about anything in particular just that people stopped caring. He decided when he was in college to bring awareness to this fact. He liked to think of himself as a modern hippy (he even used it as an excuse to “experiment” with new drugs and maybe once or twice to –dabble—in what he liked to thing of as “extra marital activities” with some of the more interesting females that may come his way after a particularly excrutiating lecture.

Oddly in his lectures “Dr” Adams never mentioned his family

The fist time Arthur Adams saw his daughter she was well on her way to finishing up her premiere eight months of existence. Coldly he picked up Caroline. He held her in his hands, arms outstretched (as if it had some kind of disease that could be contracted only if the subject was within a foot of you) and gazed at her.

"Why did we decide to keep it?" he asked

"Honey! Don't say that about our daughter!" Marrianne found the words harder to say than she initially expected.

"All it does is eat and poop! It's gonna cost me a fortune and I don't want it!" The hatred in eyes spoke louder than his voice (which was booming rather impressively on it's own).

Marrianne Adams took her baby back. She wanted to be upset. She wanted to be infuriated at her husband for the things he had said. She wasn't though. She looked at her baby and found herself wondering the same thing: How on Earth did they get stuck with this burden.Now with this bundle in her hands her whole life had changed, she'd have to quit her job at the restaurant, and would probably never get to take that acting class either. Caroline was an inconvineince, and Marrianne decided to make it her job to remind Caroline of her place every day. Marrianne was starting to get sick of her husband's antics too, but she knew that within a few days he'd be gone again. Heading off for who-knows-how-long.


She found her mind wandering. Arthur had met Marrianne in college around 1987 they were both idealistic and ready for love, or the kind of love that two people in college ought to be ready for in their minds. The bar they met in was dank and smelled vaguely of urine, she was stressed out over her midterms and was contemplating dropping the whole college thing. It proved to be too much stress for her.

Marrianne was not an unattractive young woman, she had been about 5’6 with auburn hair that went down the middle of her back, she wasn’t in peak physical condition but she wasn’t overweight either. She sat at the bar drowning her sorrows in a drink that was very bright in color. She never knew if it was because she was pretty or a little drunk or if the drink simply illuminated the area of the bar she was in but she attracted the attention of a slightly older man who wore his slacks and white shirt with black tie poorly. His hair was slightly thinning but he wasn’t terribly unattractive, she took another drink to be sure. She had chuckled to herself thinking that this man might actually look better in old overalls with a piece of straw hanging out of his mouth and halfway expected him to use “y’all” in his first sentence.

They had gone home together that night. He was her first and she was his…. Well certainly not his first but they had something special, she didn’t know what it was but she knew it had to be there somewhere, something special.

Marrianne snapped back from her daydream, or memory, or whatever you wanted to call it, and looked at her husband. The hair piece looked natural enough and after a couple of trips to the dentist his overbite would be almost imperceptible. He looked back at her.

“What! What do you want woman! Can’t you see I’m on the phone!” he said to his wife. She could hear the phone ringing on the other end.

“Joe? Hey! It’s Arty man!... I know!... Good to talk to you too, hey listen I’m doing my whole ‘Compassion ’92 tour’ and I thought that... You did! Awww no way ya’ll were gonna be callin me! No no! I will be on a plane in a couple hours… no just me. Oh yeah? Well call them up and I’ll call YOU when I land!”

He looked at his wife, the smile erased from his face “I’m leaving for a few days”

The baby started crying.

“and shut that thing up!” he cursed as he slammed his door shut. Within an hour he was gone, and the baby was asleep.

Marrianne picked up the phone and dialed. "Hello Donald?"

an untitled, early draft and a "The Hub" tie-in

There's the way it's supposed to be and there is the way that it always worked out for him. The hero in pop culture would meet the girl of his dreams at the beginning of the story. They wouldn’t see the attraction but the audience or the reader would. It’s always so apparent, there’s the fluttering of her hair, the twinkle in her eyes a rush of wind as she steps into the perfect lighting and says SOMETHING PROFOUND AND GIMMICKY. Through the course of the story the two find a mutual attraction aside from the obvious physical and lo, through struggle our two star crossed lovers invariably end up together at the end, if they both survive.

KEVIN wasn’t so lucky, the first time he saw Rachel there were no fireworks, no orchestra in the background. There were no slow motion camera movements to augment her flawlessness. In fact Kevin very nearly knocked her on her butt as he ran to clock into work on time. They’d been friends ever since which sounded like a good idea at first. Then Kevin made a remarkable
discovery.

He couldn’t get her out of his head. He would go to work and all he could think of was her, he’d go to school and think of her, when he went to bed of course she was all he could think of but he knew when he awoke, she’d be there in his mind waiting as she always was. In fact, the only time she wasn’t on his mind was when they were in the same room. It was infuriating.

She’d made it clear weeks before that she had no desire to get involved in a romantic relationship and in his mind he was totally cool with it, or he had convinced himself that he was. He understood her frame of mind, as her last venture into the world of dating was overwhelming at best.

In his mind he understood it, it’s too bad his heart said otherwise. Was it his heart? Or was his mind playing games with him? In his mind he understood it, the logic was flawless, she was dedicated to a man (let’s be honest he was a boy) for the last few years of her young life, in which her trust was betrayed and her privacy violated. She had been ridiculed and demeaned, though never hit and she had used that as the cornerstone of prolonging the longest relationship she’d known. He understood all that and still, he wanted to have her as his own.

He felt petty, dirty. Knowing that what he felt was not wrong, or inappropriate just – unfortunate. He didn’t know who to talk to about it either, he’d always gone to her to talk, and his friends just didn’t quite get it, they were good guys but everything always boiled down to sex with them and that’s just not how he saw things. It wasn’t about sex it was…. Well it was something else