Free A Farewell to Legs by JEFFREY COHEN Page A

(I
had to make the characters “less ethnic” to appeal to Hollywood),
had already gotten himself up a tree by agreeing to investigate a
crime. And various people had thrown rocks at him, mostly by
threatening his life and cutting off his source of income. I’d even
thrown in a chase scene to make producers happy. Now, in Act 3, it
was time to get Andy out of the tree.
    He’d started to climb down off his branch when my
phone rang. As usual, the end of the screenplay was the easiest
part for me to write, because I’d already gotten up a head of steam
writing the first two acts, and because I’d been thinking about the
ending all along. Of course, in this case, it was easier than ever,
since I had reality to use as a template, so I was typing fast
enough to elicit smoke from the keys. But I took a breath between
sentences to reach for the phone.
    The guttural voice on the other end spoke quickly,
but clearly enough for me to understand. “Back off, man,” it said.
Then it hung up.
    Stunned, it took me a minute. Then, I scrolled all
the way up to the beginning of my second act, when Andy first runs
into trouble from outside. And I changed the mysterious phone
caller’s dialogue from “stop your investigation,” to “back off,
man.”

Chapter

Thirteen
    A bby looked at me wearily.
“A threatening phone call, Aaron? We’re not starting that again, are we?”
    “Beats me. I haven’t done anything the other
reporters writing about Legs didn’t try. In fact, I’m sure I
haven’t done as much as most of them.” I flipped over the chicken
filet I was frying in the pan. “I wonder if Dan Rather is also
getting terse, anonymous phone calls.”
    “I heard on NPR that Gibson’s funeral is going to be
covered live on CNN tomorrow,” Abby said, taking out an earring. In
a minute, she’d go upstairs to change out of her work clothes and
into exercise clothes. “The President is showing up.”
    “Which begs the question of whether Stephanie will
be naked or not.”
    She stopped. “Huh?”
    “Don’t worry about it,” I told my wife. “Don’t worry
about anything.”
    “That’s hard to do,” she said, walking out of the
kitchen, “when the phone calls are starting again.”
    “All he said was ‘back off, man,’” I had to raise my
voice to reach her. “It might have been Bart Simpson.”
    That cut through Ethan’s perpetual haze. “Bart
Simpson called?” he asked excitedly.
    Abigail was not as talkative during dinner, even
when Ethan made an awkward stab at dinner conversation and Leah
actually used a fork on her mashed potatoes. Abby was seriously
unnerved by threatening phone calls we received during the Madlyn
Beckwirth story, and was now clearly dealing with the possibility
that they’d be starting up again. Maybe the ten grand was-n’t
enough of an incentive to write about Legs.
    After the kids beat a hasty retreat to the
television, I started to load the dishes into our dishwasher, an
ancient model which, I believe, simply made a lot of noise and
spritzed a little water on the dishes. They often had to be washed
by hand after they came out. Abby was clearing the table and
leaving the dishes in the sink for me to transfer when dishwasher
space opened up.
    Our kitchen isn’t huge, so we often had to get out
of each other’s way. And while I never mind bumping into my wife, I
did notice we weren’t talking as much as we usually do.
    “Do you want me to quit the Snapdragon story,
because I will if you do,” I said.
    “No,” she answered in a heartbeat.
    “You sure?”
    “No,” she admitted, wiping her hands on a dish
towel. “But we need the money, and there’s no evidence there’s any
danger from one phone call. It could even have been a wrong
number.”
    “Maybe it was a telemarketer for a security service,
doing the set-up call.” Abby smiled. As always, that was reward
enough for me.
    “Where are you going to go with the story?” she
asked, moving into professional-Abby mode.