U: soap notes 1- 5: 1 The Launderama

soap notes

1/CYRA LOONE &; LIAM COFFEE
wait for something (to happen ?)
at the Launderama

2/EVA SKITZ
finds herselves
at the all-nite Caf-O-Mat

3/ACNE FOOTLE
meets 3 aliens
at the local Scrimpsave

4/JEREMIAH SOAK
suffers in silence
at the Victory V pub

(includes cameo appearances by LABIA TRUFFLE, GAMELY
LUDE, COSMO GLEAN, FENELLA FRUMP, ELLEN DOWD,
BILLY SPLEEN, GINA CAGHOUL, FLUXIA SLURRIE, PATSY
SLEW, LACTATIA GLANDE, BRIDIE WHITE and GAMINE LADD,
plus DR. OKONKWO TSETSE, FRANK FRUMP, KEN DOWD,
DIGBY STIPPLE and FR. FLEX TOURNIQUET)

4a/"Vox ex machina" - a Telephonic Interlude
starring GUY FAUX

5/HO PING
sees stars
at the Good Earth takeaway

5a/Ensuing cliffhanger

______________________________________

It's a fabulous day, wrung from Fate's filthy smalls and spun from the
arse of a spider. It's a day when domestic strife comes thick and vast,
fast and spurious, gushing like bathwater from the overflow.
So switch off the tv and pull out the bath-plug: we don't need soap.
Not when there are strange hails and mundane magics in the air; not
when there are Nothings just as colourless and workaday and wonderful
happening

RIGHT NOW!

down the high street?

Our first stop is the Launderama: a name which promises a tumbling
vista of washing experiences, the rough and dizzy spin of unfolding
plotlines, of turbulent waters and warm, damp entanglements?

1/INT. LAUNDERAMA - DAY
It's a late late late and overcast afternoon. Fabric softener spats
the window in pale blue dribbles and CYRA slips into the little
Launderama soaked and gloaming from the sweet-smelling shower
outside.
LIAM drowses opposite his socks. His head rests on the door of a
machine as smooth and content as a coffee percolator.
A tranquil scene.
Languid, weary, intimate.
A dim strip-light hums cream and the street outside looks darker than
it actually is.

This could be how they first meet. But it isn't. They met on St
Swithin's Day, inside a dark marble bank lobby during a downpour. Over
a year ago now. They spent eight months as flatmates which ended in a
whole cutting-room floor full of flawed bed scenes, and they've never
been the same since. One pregnancy scare and a questioned sexuality
later and they're still buzzing round each other. Implied somewhere in
the sparkly, celluloid space between them is a tense two-shot where
CYRA says,

CYRA: You know, we're made for each other really,

before picking up her suitcase and leaving forever for her home in
County Clare.
So they have "A History," with all the smug significance and Memory
Lane parking violations which that suggests. But don't worry, we'll let
you in on all their in-jokes.

Even now, even in his sleep, LIAM is dreaming in little
self-referential vignettes about their shared past. Out of the two,
he's the one who hogs the nostalgia and steals the covers.
In his dream (FX: soft focus) it is 6am and they are lying side by
side in a single bed in deepest, dullest Dulwich. The traffic outside
is as lazy as their unslept selves, all grey and crushed in clever ways
around a complete standstill. They lie rankling. The air is fresh with
irritable and unmeant spite. They're ratty with each other from
over-tiredness and for ending up like this yet again. Their voices look
like damaged clothes or shocking weather.

Some dream.

Back in the humdrum and stickyblue world of reality, with his head
still slumbering against the washer, LIAM is starting to snore. CYRA
sets down her suitcase and sits next to him quietly and carefully. She
doesn't want to wake him. She'd rather see him jump out of his skin at
the next spin-cycle.
Which he does.
She holds her tongue until he has recovered, and then, as a wry and
unecessary footnote, just says*

For a while neither speaks. He blinks dopily about him in the daylight
while she patiently reads the Desiderata blu-tacked to the wall next to
the machines' operating instructions:

"?You are a child of the universe; no less than the
trees and the stars you have a right to be here. And
whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe
is unfolding as it should?"

She feels a warm, complacent smile spread through her stomach at this
thought, burbling through her tubes with the tea and tartrazine. She
likes that kind of thing. CYRA LOONE is a mellow blend of only the
finest fatalisms; a lilting fruit crush of easy faith and unoriginal
sin; as trusting as the day is dull.

CYRA: Something spectacular is about to happen,

she says finally.
LIAM blinks her way like a tortoise.

LIAM: How do you know ?

CYRA: Same way I know you've been dreaming about
me again. I can smell the sulphur. My ears are
burning.

It is viscerally tangled up in her biology, but she has to make a show
of something vaguely scientific for LIAM's sake. So she takes a long,
blank look at her watch, as if she knows the exact timing of the
event.

CYRA: Acid drop ?,

she says,
offering a wrinkly paper bag.

LIAM: Thanks,

he says,
taking one. And they both sit sucking in silence.
Watching the washer.
Waiting.

_____________
*CYRA: Boo.