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EPISODE ONE

A beautiful Southern Belle, Victoria, waits beneath a moss-draped giant oak. The air is thick with a sunny fog, which makes for a dreamy, almost surreal setting. Victoria fans herself. We HEAR a typewriter clacking. “Let me do that for you.” A handsome, dark-haired man, CHARLES, steps out from behind the tree, his chest bare. He drops his scythe. The typewriter again clacks away. “Let me do that for you, ma’am.” Charles, now a strapping black man, drops his scythe. Victoria steps closer to Charles, hands him the fan. He drops that, too. She reaches out, presses her palm against his chest. Their eyes lock. Charles reaches out and rips her dress down. There’s a SCREAM. Fai, reading glasses on, sits at her IBM Selectric typewriter in the backroom/office at the Gemini Club. She listens. Another SCREAM and BREAKING GLASS. “God damned sonofabitch, Wade.” She looks out through a window (two way mirror) and from her POV we see WADE, sleeves rolled up, five day growth, pummeling a bar patron. Fai pushes away from her IBM and pulls open a metal desk drawer, retrieves a stubby black jack.

Inside the club, Wade’s onslaught continues. A dancer, TAWNY, tugs at him from behind, SCREAMING, CRYING. A small crowd gathers around. The other dancers stand on the stage. Roy, the bartender, behind them, shaking his head. Fai pushes her way to fray, rears back, whacks Wade in the back of the head hard, twice. Wade falls onto the patron. Tawny pulls Fai back,
“Don’t hurt him.” Fai tells her she’s had enough, wants him out before the bus gets here and wants Tawny to go get some makeup on that cheek. Things seem to have simmered until Wade pulls a knife on Fai, brandishes it threateningly. We hear a CACHUCK, as Roy racks a shotgun at the bar. “I’ll cut you in half and it won’t be clean. Get out.”

Fai makes nice with the bar patron as Wade makes his violent exit. Tawny watches Wade leave, pulls out a pill box, takes a pill, heads for the dressing room.

Outside the Gemini, Wade climbs into his pickup, blows up a ton of dust and pulls away, just as the yellow school bus grinds to a stop and Opal climbs out. The bus chugs off. A boy leans out the window and yells something nasty to Opal, who is unfazed as she walks into the club.

DENNY’S STUDIO. DENNY’s turning the hand crank on a film viewer. We see tiny flashes of two people having sex flying by. Some tacky porno music in the bg. “Damn, very nice stuff. I am good.” He gets back to work, but is interrupted by a KNOCK on the door. He leans back pushes it open. A very chesty, half-naked blonde leans in. “I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. Dunhill,” she giggles. “Lester here yet?” A big black man pokes his head over her shoulder. “Sorry, got stuck with a delivery down in Titusville.” “You ready?” “Always ready, Mr. Dunhill.”