INTERCUT: TELEPHONE CONVERSATION

BEATRICE is feeling hate/love for her boyfriend right now because she can see this conversation will be one of the last few before the relationship ends. ELEAZAR probably sees it crumbling on a subconscious level.

Silence sets in like dead air from a pop music radio station.

These two lovebirds split up around the time the relationship started to crumble. They are revisited in a composite consisting of their life's daily routine twenty years later, along with daydreams and flashbacks while a gentle melody of a song plays continually in the background.

SFX: BACKGROUND MUSIC AT LOW VOLUME OF The light before we land

Seated in front of a drafting table is Eleazar filling a sheet of paper with calligraphy.

Eleazar leans back to look at his work while massaging his wrist. He stares into space.

MONTAGE

Eleazar lies on his back in a cold, dank bed as he reflects on his life and his memory of Beatrice. They are together, hand in hand, at a look out point where they can gaze at the stars, but one moment it is clear that it is Eleazar who is with her, and the next moment it is her new boyfriend, a tall burly man with razor stubble evenly distributed on his face.

At a theater watching a PG13 comedy about teenage anxiety, it become obvious to Bea that there will be some frontal nudity a female character in the movie: Porky's; so she covers Eleazar's eyes to obstruct his view. When her hand is removed, it is no longer Eleazar sitting next to Bea, but her new boyfriend.

FLASHBACK

In a miniature golf course, Eleazar makes a hole-in-one shot out of sheer luck. In fact, he doesn't know he made the ball in until Bea tells him, the only scene where no new guy appears, Eleazar is in disbelief. He accuses Bea of nudging the ball in (out of pity).

END FLASHBACK

In every ensuing situation, the scene starts out with Eleazar and ends with the new guy. At a hamburger stand, Bea notices Eleazar's french fries covered in ketchup as he struggles to pick at them with his fingers without touching the ketchup. When his french fries are half eaten and need more ketchup, before Eleazar begins to squeeze the bottle (ketchup packets), Bea catches his hand and forces him to squeeze a blob of ketchup to the side where she demonstrates the dipping technique (to the new guy).

As the relationship progresses, more intimacy takes place. One moment it's Eleazar kissing and necking in the back seat of a car, the next moment it's the new guy. The subtle difference is that Eleazar does not look anything like he did twenty years ago, and the new guy resembles Eleazar more now than Eleazar resembles himself when he was an adolescent.

In the sex scene, Eleazar never reaches climax. First, they're in his bedroom, then they're in her bedroom, but both times his love making is crudely denied. In both cases, the new boyfriend is seen in ecstasy.

Eleazar's POW begins to blur and Bea's image fades as she is envisioned in a church getting married.

Only the back of Bea's head is seen while she boards a plane with her new husband on their honeymoon.

In a lonesome existence, sitting behind his drafting table, Eleazar looks down at the page to see what he's done. He is perplexed as if he cannot read what he just penned in calligraphy. As Eleazar pauses from writing, he seems in a never ending trance-like state, in denial over what could've been. He blindly makes his way to the other room and picks up his guitar.

SHOW INSET: Peter, Peter pumpkin eater, had a wife but couldn't keep her

END MONTAGE

On the other end of the spectrum, we find Beatrice busy in the kitchen preparing meals for her kids. After the kids, ages ranging from 11 to 14, leave for school, Bea prepares herself for work. She dresses smartly for an office environment.

Bea exits the house and climbs into her car. As she pulls out of the driveway, she turns on the radio.

SFX: VOLUME OF SONG INCREASES WITH AUDIBLE LYRICS

Stuck in traffic at a snail's pace, Bea's mind begins to drift to these lyrics In truth there is no better place to be…

FLASHBACK - TWENTY YEARS AGO

MONTAGE

Bea is peering from a vantage point hidden from plain site. She sees Eleazar with another girl. Her heart breaks.

Flopped atop her bed, Beatrice buries her face in her pillow as she convulses in fits of muffled tears.

Bea recuperates from her anguish and is huddled next to her bed with a telephone held up to her ear. She does all she can to mask her grief. She can do all but manage to compose herself long enough to speak in short, concise sentences.

BACK TO PRESENT

SFX: CAR HORN GRADUALLY FADING

A buzzing sound from Eleazar's guitar amplifier gradually transforms the honking car. It also masks the volume of background music back down a notch. He finishes his break by taking a final sip from his coffee cup and shutting off the amp. He seems snappier and awake as he returns to the work station only to see that he spent the better part of the morning in a haze playfully inking parables to childhood lore. Taking the sheet of calligraphy in fist, he crumples it up in anger as his eyes dart from left to right in search for a place to hurl it. Unsatisfied at the gesture of madness, he reaches for another sheet. However, the seemingly rough samples of a magazine ad contain uncertain value beyond that of the fancy flourishes of calligraphy he finished destroying. He is slowly coming back to reality and dreading the task at hand -- his job. He sighs deeply as he looks out the window, then he replaces the ugly rendering of a concept ad back where he can easily refer to it at a glance. He proceeds to start work by affixing a fresh, clean sheet of paper on the table.

He leans over to his radio and turns the knob. We hear the volume of "The light before we land" again fluctuate as it nears it's end.

FADE OUT