Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 151085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
* * *
DESSI
You still writing that travel column for The Chicago Defender?
* * *
CAL
Yes, I am, and the people back home love hearing about what we up to here traveling all over Europe.
* * *
DESSI
Galivanting is what Mama would call it. Galivanting all over Europe. It was reading The Defender that made Daddy want to move to New York. That and our cousins having to buy their own farm three times. Not to mention the lynching.
* * *
CAL
They got war brewing here in Europe. We got war at home right there in the South, and who’s fighting for us? In my last column I wrote that the only discrimination I’ve experienced here has been from Americans.
* * *
DESSI
Like them Texas boys we saw on the train from Florence. Tried to make us get up like we got their seats. Hmmmph.
* * *
CAL
Difference is here, they couldn’t make us get up. I’ll never go back South. I was born in North Carolina, but we moved to Chicago when I was a pup. I’m a city boy, Bama. Ain’t that what Tilda calls you?
* * *
DESSI
Yeah. She crazy.
* * *
CAL
You still haven’t heard from her?
* * *
DESSI
Nah, and I’m a little worried ’cause it’s been a long time since her last letter. When we were traveling from city to city, it was hard to get mail, but she knows we’re here at the hotel for a while. I’ve written to her, but she . . . I don’t know.
* * *
CAL
You two are so close. The best of friends.
* * *
DESSI (LOOKING A LITTLE UNCOMFORTABLE)
We are, yeah.
* * *
CAL
Dessi, it’s okay, ya know?
* * *
DESSI
What’s okay?
* * *
CAL
That you love Tilda.
* * *
DESSI (STARES AT HIM)
Yeah?
* * *
CAL
Yeah.
* * *
DESSI (LOOKS AT HER WATCH AND RUBS HER ARMS)
Well, we been out here long enough. My black is burning.
* * *
CAL (LAUGHING AND PACKING THE FOOD AND MUSIC)
I heard that. Let’s go find the band so we can rehearse.
* * *
INTERIOR – HOTEL DU CAP – DAY
* * *
Dessi and Cal enter the hotel still carrying their beach bag and dressed in swimwear. Concierge at the front desk flags them down.
* * *
CONCIERGE
Miss Blue, you have mail.
* * *
DESSI (SMILES BRIGHTLY AND TEARS THE LETTER OPEN)
Cal, you done talked her up. It’s from Tilda.
* * *
CAL
Oh, good. She alright? What’s she say?
* * *
Dessi’s smile falls and she grips the edge of the hotel front desk for support. A newspaper clipping floats from the letter and lands on the floor. Camera zooms close to show Tilda and a nightclub owner pictured in a wedding announcement. Scribbled at the bottom of the picture are the words “I had to. Forgive me.”
* * *
CAL
Oh, Dessi.
* * *
Dessi swipes at a few tears, shoving the letter and the newspaper clipping into her beach bag.
* * *
DESSI
It’s alright. I’m alright. Dessi Blue always gon’ be alright.
* * *
CAL
You want to rest for a bit? I can tell the boys we’ll do the same songs. No need to rehearse and give you some time to—
* * *
DESSI
No. I don’t need no time.
* * *
Dessi digs through the pile of music in the basket until she finds the song she’s looking for.
* * *
DESSI (SHOVES THE SONG AT HIM)
We doing this one.
* * *
CLOSE ON SHEET MUSIC: Song is “Walk Away”
* * *
INTERIOR – HOTEL DU CAP DINING ROOM – NIGHT
* * *
Dessi wears an evening gown and stands in a spotlight on the small stage in a roomful of patrons eating and listening. The band plays behind her—piano, saxophone, drums, and Cal on trumpet. With tears in her eyes, she sings “Walk Away.”
49
Neevah
“I need you to go grab that C up top, Neevah.”
I swear. If Monk tells me to go “grab” one more damn note. We’ve been rehearsing for hours, and he more than lives up to his reputation as a perfectionist.
“Okay,” I say, shifting beside him on the piano bench in the hotel ballroom. Galaxy Studios bought a block of rooms for the cast and crew’s accommodations, and has also blocked off portions of the hotel for rehearsals and shooting.
“Walk Away,” the tune Monk wrote for the French Riviera scene, will be on repeat in my head long after we’re done. The opening strains float from the piano as we start the song again. It’s lush and heartbreaking and haunting. A song about a love betrayed, a lover abandoned. I close my eyes, blocking out the empty ballroom and Monk on the piano and every other distraction. I fall into the heartbreak of the lyrics—crack my heart open to let Dessi’s pain over losing Tilda flood in.
When I first started this movie, Dessi was some distant figure trapped in the pages of the past. She was history, but now I feel her present with me every day. I thought she was here to serve me, a means to the end of my big break. Now, I realize I’m here to serve her—to make sure a voice this rich and true, swallowed by the years and by injustice, is finally heard.