The Fan Letter (5 page)

“What I wanted to tell you was that your story was interesting and enjoyable. But since it isn't exactly a script or a novel, you should decide one way or the other.

“I suggest you go novel form and submit it for publication. There is a lot of interest in ‘The Time Police’ and the books do well. You have no chance as a script because there are too many legal problems for an outsider.

“Thank you for thinking of me. I have found the regulars are overwhelmed with mail and never see it. But I was handed your letter and script when I came onto the set.

“I just finished taping another episode called ‘Hexed Rex.’ Tell your friends.

“Thanks again for writing to me and the picture is great. Bye now.”

Phillip hung up the phone and then took out his wallet. He placed a quarter in the middle of Ron's desk and put the bent photo inside the wallet.

Gathering up the letter pages that he had just clipped to the story, he headed for the door.

“Thanks, bunny.”

T
hree hundred miles away, as a weary boutique clerk climbed the stairs leading to her apartment, she counted out loud as she went. “One thousand twelve. One thousand thirteen. One thousand fourteen. I swear they add more steps every night,” she muttered to herself as her key slipped into the lock.

Since it was mid-December and after six o'clock in the evening, the rooms were dark and cold. Leslie Nelson shrugged off her warm coat, dropping it along with her purse and the mail onto one end of her handy white sofa and turned on the lamp. A half-read newspaper still sat waiting on the small, round kitchen table. The weights on her cuckoo clock were close to touching the floor. Stacks of binder paper filled with her handwriting were systematically piled on a small lap desk and also covering most of the sofa.

Leslie looked around the small living room and shook her head with a sigh. “Oh, good. The maid's been here. She's really doing a bang-up job.”

According to her usual evening ritual, she now went towards the kitchen, pausing long enough to turn on the wall heater and turn off her answering machine. This evening, however, the red light on the answering machine was flashing.

Hitting the replay button, she was faintly surprised at how long it took the machine to rewind. If the light flashed at all, there were usually just hang-ups with no message. She sometimes wondered if the machine worked at all….

Taking a pen and scratch pad in hand, she let out a sigh. “Now what's wrong?” she wondered as the machine clicked and the first playback began.

There was a long pause, and then an obviously confused woman said something in a foreign language. As the sound of the phone being slammed down, Leslie rolled her eyes, pen still poised. “C'mon, people, I'm hungry,” she muttered.

Beep
. Click. “Leslie, this is Phillip Beck….”

Leslie dutifully wrote down the name Phillip Beck on the scratch pad and continued to listen to the message. Suddenly she froze mid-word as the deep, oddly-familiar voice continued and she recognized the name.

“…I wanted to tell you I received your script….”

Her tiredness flew away and her heart began pounding in her chest. A shrill “EEEK!” more than likely startled the people living in the apartments next to her.

Fumbling with shaking hands, Leslie turned up the volume and a wide, silly grin spread over her face as she stared at the answering machine.

“…suggest you go novel form and….”

“Novel? How!?” she found herself yelling at the machine.

“…and the books do well….”

“Where? Wait!”

“…the picture was great. Bye now.”

Listening to his phone hang up, she just stood there, motionless, as static continued coming from the machine. All of a sudden she sprang into motion. “Oh, I don't believe it! He called! Phillip Beck read it! I have to call Janice! I have to call Anne! I have to call Renee! EEEK!”

Quickly dialing, her best friend Janice answered and was confused at the half elated, half hysterical Leslie on the other end. “Jan, guess who called! You'll never guess. Listen!” she demanded to her now-amused friend.

The message replayed and now Leslie heard a shrill “Oh my god!” come through the phone.

They both began chattering excitedly and neither could hear or care what the other was trying to say. Finally running out of steam and laughing now, they both came to the same conclusion: This was an exciting event in their humdrum lives. A movie star, a television celebrity, someone famous had called Leslie!

Leslie was on the phone for another two hours replaying the tape for her different friends who had known about her writing as well as those she knew were fans of “The Time Police” television show. She came to realize that she was being asked the same question by all of them: “What are you going to do now?”

At first that stumped her. She wrote the stories. They were sent to the show. The actors read and liked them. That was it. She hadn't thought it out past that. What was she going to do next?

“I guess I'm going to rewrite my stories after I finish CHATEAU REX. What's novel form, anyway?” she asked all of them.

“I dunno.”

“Me, either,” Leslie responded, becoming a little more deflated each time she asked the question.

She had told Janice she hated rewriting.

“Get used to it,” blunt Janice had advised.

Even though Leslie and her friends didn't know exactly what would come next, they were all unanimous about one thing: Phillip Beck was one terrific guy. He was now endeared to them. He took some of his valuable time and contacted one of the outsiders. To the fans of “The Time Police,” he had now become their favorite actor. To them, he was now being referred to as “Leslie's Actor/Friend.”

In the days that followed, after Leslie came back down to earth, she started doing research on novel writing at the library. The only difference she could see between a novel and what she had already written was, basically, the length. That meant one thing: Rewrite everything.

She hurriedly finished her favorite story so far, CHATEAU REX, in which the Professor abducts Jane and falls in love with her. It was short—way too short—but now she had plans for it later. Leslie made a duplicate copy for “her actor” the next day at an office supply store, and then sat down to compose a thank-you letter to Phillip Beck. Realizing he would probably no longer be at the studio, she called Majestic Studio and was surprised to be given the name and address of Mr. Beck's agent, a Bill Michaels. They were “sure she could reach him that way.”

“
Hello, again, Phillip,

I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your phone call. It was nice of you to take the time to read my story and to let me know your thoughts. It was an unexpected bonus.

Majestic Studio gave me your agent's name and address. I wasn't sure this letter would reach you the same way as the last time. I hope you don't mind. I really wanted to thank you for your call and also to send you this story.

I know your life doesn't revolve around “The Time Police.” (Neither does mine.) It is a job in your business as an actor. But, you do such a good job with the Professor that I, in turn, enjoy writing about him!

Your call did raise some questions. Basically, how and where? How would I turn my stories into novels and where would they be sent? Script form doesn't seem wise at this point for me. I have a general, vague idea what a script might look like. (I'd love to see a page.)

I know. I know. I am runnething over with questions. Your business is fascinating to an outsider like myself. I have so many questions. For example, how long does it take to shoot an episode? Do you memorize all your lines or do you do piecework? Things of this nature.

After a year of writing, it is exciting to have someone say ‘I took the time. I enjoyed what you did.’ So, I appreciate that you did contact me.

Tell you what. I'll get an agent and then my agent will call your agent and we'll do lunch. It will be on me. And, the way I eat, it probably will be!

Thank you for making my day and giving me something constructive to think about. Next time you're in Amherst, I'll show you my chateau.

Best wishes,

Leslie Nelson”

T
wo years earlier, Leslie Nelson, suddenly having a lot of free time on her hands, found herself in a bit of a predicament. Her husband of two and a half years abruptly decided he didn't like married life any more, so why didn't she move out and he could have his house back to himself? She waited patiently for six months to see if things could be corrected, but the inevitable happened and they were able to reach an amicable settlement agreement. Irreconcilable Differences is what he listed as his reason, but only she knew the
real
reason. After those six months of hearing what an awful wife and lover she had been, her self-confidence plummeted to its lowest depth, Leslie left weak-kneed for her own apartment with the furniture she had had before her marriage. She couldn't help but feel disappointed, even when she knew in her heart that she had tried her hardest.

“Freedom!” might be the rallying cry from some quarters. However, what kind of freedom was it? Leslie did indeed have more free time, but she now found herself in an awkward position socially. All her married friends did things as couples. All her single friends were many years younger. She basically didn't fit in well any longer. More of this newfound free time was spent with her parents and more time was spent in front of the television to fill in the quiet evenings after her job in the upscale clothing shop.

As Leslie flipped through the dial, night after night, looking for that one great new show, she finally landed on a series called “The Time Police.” Hers was not a scientific mind, so some of the plots were a little over her head. But, the program became part of her routine and slowly she came to appreciate the unique show and developed a sort of sympathy and liking for the characters.

One of the characters she especially liked was The Loner. As the weeks went by, she began to notice a pattern…the writers always killed off his romantic partners. Leslie liked happy-ever-after endings—even though she well knew real life wasn't that way.

On one particular foggy morning in the valley, an idea planted itself in her brain as she got ready for work. It was a vague idea, but nevertheless an idea just the same.
Why not write an episode for The Loner where he gets to keep the girl?
she thought to herself. She had written down fantasies and dreams she had had over the years, embellishing them into short stories. She knew how to carry a story through to the end. This couldn't be much different, could it? She was quite familiar with the characters of the show. Why not?

Far different from her other off-the-wall ideas, she just couldn't get this one out of her mind. Soon a plot was forming and new characters were taking shape and getting named. As all this started to come together, she knew she had to run out and buy a large notebook and a supply of pens. Still, it wasn't until two weeks later that Leslie sat on her sofa with the first blank sheet of paper waiting on her lap desk. The title of her story had been chosen five days earlier: THE LONER FINDS LOVE. That part was easy.

The opening paragraph was not.

But once she committed the opening words to paper, she was amazed how easily the words and ideas flowed out onto the paper. Hours flew by. She made notes while she was at work when an idea came or a chance remark by a customer sparked an inspiration.

Her parents started seeing less of her and her television became dark and quiet. Her mother would call to see if she wanted to do something and Leslie would say she was busy in her apartment. She still hadn't yet told anyone what she was doing. At eight o'clock on Friday night, however, the pen would be put down and Leslie would take a one-hour break to watch and record on her VCR “The Time Police.”

When her best friend Janice would stop by on a Saturday afternoon, Leslie would quickly stuff the notebook under the sofa. She was amused when she realized she was actually saving a lot of money by not going to the mall so often with Janice or her mom.

In twenty-eight days, she had written ninety pages into the spiral notebook and wrote with an elaborate flourish “The End.” It took Leslie a little over two hours to reread her story, adding a word here and correcting spelling there, but, liking what she read, she made no significant changes.

The next morning, before they started working out front in the boutique, Leslie approached Janice and quietly held out a blue notebook. “Will you read something I wrote and give me your honest opinion?”

Janice took the spiral book and a look of amazement crossed her face as she thumbed through the many pages. “What is it?” Janice had read some of Leslie's stories before. One had centered on a vacation the two of them had taken together. Another had been a love story about a boy Leslie had had a crush on seven years earlier. Those were just short, cute stories. Janice wasn't expecting something like this. This looked serious.

Looking around to make sure their boss wasn't nearby to overhear, Leslie lowered her voice. “It's a story about the T.V. show ‘The Time Police.’ I…I had some time to kill,” was her only explanation as she blushed and walked away.

The notebook was returned the next morning and Janice was very enthusiastic. She, too, was a fan of The Loner. “Now that is more like it! Why can't they do an episode like that on the show!?”

Her reaction pleased Leslie. “You really like it?”

“Yes! Even though I didn't like how mean you made Andrew. That's not like him on the show.”

Leslie thought for a minute and shrugged. “I guess somebody had to be antagonistic. Not everyone gets along with everyone else. It's not all la-de-da.”

“I guess. What are you going to do with your story?”

“Do with it?” Leslie echoed with a frown. “I don't know. I just concentrated on writing the thing.” A mischievous grin came across her face. “Maybe I'll type it up and send it to Tom Young. Who knows? Maybe they'll use it on the show.”