Most scenes together: Grady Tripp & James Leer (5), Grady Tripp & Terry Crabtree (3), Grady Tripp & Sara Gaskell (2)
Antonia "Tony" Sloviak Oh, that's such a beautiful Greenhouse.
It's Mrs. Gaskell's, it's her hobby.
I thought you were Mrs. Gaskell's hobby.
Piss off, will ya Crabs? I lost a wife today.
You'll find another one, you always do. She'll be younger, prettier; they always are.
What do we have here? This looks like... that's our old friend Mr. Codeine. That should take the old pinch out of the ankle. Want one?
No, thanks. I'm fine without them.
Right. That's why you were standing in the chancellor's backyard spinning that "cap gun" of yours. You're fine. Yeah, you're just as fit as a ****in' fiddle.
Hannah Green Grady, you know how in class you're always telling us that writers make choices?
Yeah.
Hannah Green And even though your book is really beautiful, I mean, amazingly beautiful, it's... it's at times... it's... very detailed. You know, with the genealogies of everyone's horses, and the dental records, and so on. And... I could be wrong, but it sort of reads in places like you didn't make any choices. At all. And I was just wondering if it might not be different if... if when you wrote you weren't always... under the influence.
Well... thank you for the thought, but shocking as it may sound, I am not the first writer to sip a little weed. Furthermore, it might surprise you to know that one book I wrote, as you say, "under the influence," just happened to win a little something called the Pen Award. Which, by the way, I accepted under the influence.
Hannah Green I'm not the downy innocent you painted me as.
That's a shame, we need all the downy innocents we can get.
It's just... for good luck. Some people carry rabbits' feet...
...You carry firearms.
Now, that is a big trunk. It holds a tuba, a suitcase, a dead dog, and a garment bag almost perfectly.
That's just what they used to say in the ads.
Professor Tripp? Can I ask you a question?
Yeah, James.
What are we going to do with... it?
I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out how to tell the Chancellor I murdered her husband's dog.
You?
Trust me, James, when the family pet's been assassinated, the owner doesn't want to hear one of her students was the trigger man.
Does she want to hear it was one of her professors?
...I've got tenure.
You're mad at me, aren't you? You're mad because I shot your girlfriend's dog.
It wasn't her dog, it was her husband's... [looking at James] Who said anything about a girlfriend?
Okay, James, I wish you hadn't shot my girlfriends dog. Even though Poe and I were not exactly what you'd call simpatico, that's no reason he should've taken two in the chest.
You didn't happen to call our house last night, did you?
I think I might have, yes.
What do you think you might have said?
I think I might have said I was in love with you. [pause] He told you?
He told me.
And what did you say?
I said it didn't sound like you.
It's comforting to know that America's children have you for a teacher.
Nobody teaches a writer anything. You tell'em what you know. You tell'em to find their voice and stay with it. You tell the ones that have it to keep at it. You tell the ones that don't have it to keep at it too because that's the only way they're gonna get to where they're going. Of course, it does help if you know where you wanna go. Helping my students figure that out...that and Sara...that's what's made these last years worthwhile.
Let me get this straight. Jerry Nathan owes you money, so as collateral he gives you his car.
Only I'm beginning to think that the car wasn't exactly Jerry's to give.
Ah, so whose car was it?
My guess? Vernon Hardapple.
The hood jumper?
He said a few things that lead me to believe that the car was his.
Such as?
"That's my car, mother****er."
Why did you keep writing this book if you didn't even know what it was about?
I couldn't stop.
Mm.
My God, I wear the same scent as a transvestite.
As for me, I lost everything: my wife, my book, my job, everything that I thought was important. But I finally knew where I wanted to go. And now I have someone to help me get there.
I had no business trudging up to James Leer's parents' house in the middle of the night. Not when all that really mattered was trying to make things right with Sarah. But we had decided to rescue James Leer. I wasn't quite sure from what because I was pretty much convinced that everything that came out of James' mouth was basically horseshit. But maybe that really didn't matter. Sometimes people just need to be rescued.
