Before Sunrise & Before Sunset

Fade in. 1 INTERIOR: TRAIN - AFTERNOON The Eurail rolls along. Inside, passengers sleep, read, and stare out the window. A few walk up and down the aisles. C00ELINE, a young woman in her mid-twenties, is curled up in her seatreading Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye. Strikingly attractive, she plays it down by wearing no makeup, a loose-fitting vintage dress, and flat shoes. She continues reading while taking an occasional bite of a chocolate bar. Sitting four rows back and on the other side of the aisle, JESSE, also mid-twenties, is engrossed in Klaus Kinski's memoir,All I Need Is Love. Casually good-looking but a little scruffy, he dresses in the jeans and T-shirt mode. Suddenly a couple, two fortyish types who have been arguing semiquietly in the seat behindCELINE, start yelling at each other in German. TheWIFEtakes a swipe at the newspaper theHUSBANDhas been screening himself behind. WIFE Will you put down that damn newspaper and listen to me? HUSBAND What've I been doing the last thirty minutes? Would you shut up for Chrissake? WIFE You shut up! How dare you tell me to shut up! It's the same damn thing all over again! I can't believe- HUSBAND I said shut up! I'm putting down my newspaper and telling you to shut up. CELINEsuddenly gets up, grabs her bag, and starts looking for another seat. A few rows back, she finds a seat across the aisle fromJESSE.Before sitting down, they make brief eye contact and kind of shake their heads and smile at the tension. Just as she settles in and goes back to her book, theWIFEgets up and storms down the aisle.JESSEandCELINEfollow her with their eyes, and as she passes them they find they are looking right at each other. He makes a funny "uh-oh" face. JESSE Do you have any idea what they're arguing about? Do you speak English? CELINE Yes. But no, I don't know. My German is not that good. (a beat) Have you ever heard that as couples get older they lose their ability to hear each other? JESSE Really? CELINE Supposedly men lose their ability to hear higher-pitched sounds and women eventually lose hearing on the low end. I guess they sort of nullify each other or something. JESSE Must be nature's way of allowing couples to grow old together and not kill each other, I guess. There's a slightly awkward moment where they don't know if they should continue talking or not. She glances back down at her book but he keeps looking at her. JESSE(continued)What are you reading? She holds up the book so he can see what it is. CELINE How about you? He shows her what he's reading. Neither has much to say about the other's reading material. CELINE(continued)There are so many weird people on the train, no? Last week on my way to Budapest I was sitting and talking with four other people in the lounge car and it turned out that three of them had killed people. JESSE No way. CELINE Really. One was a war veteran, one had murdered her boyfriend, and another had caused a bad car wreck. JESSE So you were the only one who hadn't killed anyone? CELINE No, I was one of them. Which one do you think? She laughs and he slowly joins her. JESSE I know what you mean. I've met some weirdos. There was this British guy sitting across from me the other day who kept throwing his body against the back of his chair, yelling about how we should all join together and stop the train. He was saying, "Everybody, now, we can stop technology. All together . . ." CELINE So what happened? He demonstrates by throwing his body against his seat. JESSE And you know, me and a few others tried for a while, but we couldn't stop technology. TheWIFEwho stormed away earlier suddenly comes back and the argument resumes, right in front of them. JESKrizan, Kim is the author of 'Before Sunrise & Before Sunset ', published 2005 under ISBN 9781400096046 and ISBN 1400096049.