Page 45 of Love's a Script
“No, I was talking to myself,” he said easily.
The good mood the text had induced carried Ruben to the end of his workday, and an hour after he got home, that good mood reached an apex when Mary called.
“I wanted to thank you again for lunch,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s no problem,” he replied, abandoning the dishes he was washing. “It’s my duty to evangelize about good vegetarian food.”
A pause followed that might’ve precipitated the end of their call, but Ruben quickly asked, “What are you watching?” He was picking up the faint drone of the television in the background.
“Oh, some action movie on cable,” she said.
“What channel?” he asked, moving into his living room.
“It’s not very good.”
“Then why watch it?”
“Because I like it.”
He laughed. “Okay, then, what channel?”
She finally told him, and he turned his TV to Jungle Run IV, a B-movie from the late 80s. The main actor was no one famous, simply a nondescript brown-haired white guy with heaping muscles.
“Have you watched installments one through three?” Ruben asked, baffled by the way the camera swung and turned, absolutely refusing to follow the action unfolding in the multi-person fight. He’d seen more of the mahogany trees in the background than anything else.
“I have,” Mary said.
“For real?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I ask sincerely, what exactly are you enjoying here?”
“It’s over-the-top but fun in a low-budget way. Also, I like the hero.”
“The grunting meathead does it for you, huh?”
“No, not in that way. Not my type, but I enjoy what he represents. At his core, he’s a rebel who defies authority and the laws of physics.”
She was so sincere in her defense that Ruben almost accepted the point of view, but the camera deigned the audience to witness the hero getting stabbed in the stomach. It took him down for only three counts before he rose and continued to fight as if it were but a paper cut he’d received.
“I can feel you thinking,” Mary said. “You’re supposed to experience the mayhem, not question or judge it.”
So Ruben tried ridding himself of all thoughts, sinking into his sofa like a skewered marshmallow over a fire. It didn’t work, but when the grunting meathead jumped from one ledge to another impossibly distanced ledge with a shout that sounded like an actual lion’s roar had been added in post-production, Ruben laughed until he was doubled over and wiping tears from his eyes.
“See!” Mary said, her voice full of mirth. “You’re enjoying it.”
As the high-octane scene transitioned to a quieter one set in a sparsely furnished cabin, a random woman with oddly clean hair but dirty clothing appeared and tended to his wound with random bits of scrap fabric and murky liquor. The hero kept calling her “doll,” and Ruben asked, “Does she have a name?”
“They might’ve mentioned it. I can’t remember. But she’s not the same lady from the other movies.”
When a slow saxophone instrumental started playing, Ruben knew what was coming. The action hero and the unnamed woman inched closer to one another before rushing to lock lips and tear at each other’s clothes. The same erratic camera movement used in the fight scene was again employed.
As the couple began lowering themselves onto crates with exposed nails, Mary said, “She’s going to get impaled in more ways than one if she’s not careful.”
“I’m guessing the risk of tetanus is part of the thrill,” he replied.
They watched more of the movie, laughing at the special effects and dialogue and sharing ample commentary on the illogical plot, until Mary suddenly said to him, “I should let you go. Release you from this torture.”
