A Role For Jennifer Aniston

This story arose following a wonderful evening on the streets of Wuhan with the delectable Melody Wang, a princess in the rain.

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I watch as she jots feverishly in the corner, her shoulders arched high as her whole upper body presses down on the notebook, as though she is armouring whatever it is she is writing. She sometimes beats the pencil against the table, often gnaws at it, occasionally shrieks at it. I’m surprised it remains in one piece.

The barman tells me she’s a screenwriter, that she’s writing a movie for Jennifer Aniston. I see her counting the change in her pocket from time to time and this leads me to believe Jennifer’s participation in the project may be clouded by budgetary pickles.

The barman tells me that he once sneaked a look at her notebook, and was surprised to see that what she was writing was not ostensibly the screenplay for a Jennifer Aniston movie. In fact, it appeared to him to be a condensed and rewritten account of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.

At 10.30pm, I’m playing some dice with the barman in the hope of a free drink when Jennifer Aniston walks in unexpectedly. The screenwriter stands up suddenly, hugging the notebook tight to her chest. I can’t hear the exchange between them as there is a lot of noise in the bar from a pony-tailed Navajo Indian headbanging at the jukebox to a Tammy Wynette song, but I can see Jennifer is not happy about something, and the screenwriter is rather anxious, probably about the same something, I’m given to postulate.

Suddenly the screenwriter yells a bad word at Jennifer. At least I think it’s a bad word. I can’t hear because of a crescendo in Tammy Wynette. Something in the way the screenwriter forms her mouth advises it’s a bad word. She throws her notebook at Jennifer Aniston and storms out of the bar.

After the screenwriter has made her explosive exit, I watch as Jennifer leafs through the notebook, reading the script of her new movie. Something about the role seems to catch her interest, so she sits down and reads in more detail.

The barman and I finish our game of dice and watch as the ghost of Hegel materialises to show Jennifer Absolute Knowledge. He takes her by the hand, and guides her through the history of Western thought, stopping off for a cup of Jamaica Blue along the way. All those troubling pictures of Brangelina wilt and fade in Jennifer’s recollection as all consciousness becomes slowly but uniformly levelled.

She leaves the bar smiling, confident and optimistic.

Personally, I really hope Jennifer gets the Oscar for this one.