this essay begins in part 1
Who loves ya, baby?
Holly wakes in a hospital room with casts on both arms. There is pleasant banter with a nurse and then a doctor. She asks after Ariel.
"She's right here," Ariel agreed from the door. "May I come in?"
Ariel is on crutches. Actually, he doesn't say crutches, he only says she "hopped" into the room. But it turns out she has cracked ribs. If you have cracked ribs, you don't "hop", or if you do, you scream.
"You hurt your foot."
She shrugged. "Nothing. A sprain and a torn ligament. Two cracked ribs. But I would have been dead. You know why I'm not?"
I didn't answer. She touched one of my casts. "That's why. You broke my fall and I landed on top of you. You saved my life and I broke your arms."
… I didn't have an answer so I said, "Where's Jeff? Is he all right?"
"He'll be along soon. Jeff's not hurt . . . though I'm surprised he didn't break both ankles. He stalled in beside us so hard he should have. But Holly . . . Holly my very dear . . . I slipped in so that you and I could talk about him before he got here."
Holly diverts the conversation; it seems Ariel is going back to earth soon. Ariel returns to the topic on her mind.
" … But Holly . . . listen please and don't get angry. Its about Jeff. He hasn't treated you very well the last few days … But don't be angry with him. I'm leaving and everything will be the same."
Holly gets on her high horse and explains how she's a career woman and doesn't need romance. In quite a lengthy give-and-take (longer than necessary, I think) Ariel tries to straighten out her prideful confusion, finally ending with
… "How old am I?"
I managed not to boggle. "Huh? Older than Jeff thinks you are. Twenty-one at least. Maybe twenty-two."
She sighed. "Holly, I'm old enough to be your mother."
Holly doesn't believe it. (Quickly doing arithmetic: Holly's fifteen, Ariel could be in her thirties? Yeah, a 33-year-old actress in good shape; it checks out.)
"But that's why, though Jeff is a dear, there never was a chance that I could fall in love with him. But … the important thing is that he loves you."
"What? That's the silliest thing you've said yet! Oh, he likes me -- or did. But that's all." …
"Wait, Holly. I saw something you didn't because you were knocked cold. When you and I bumped, do you know what happened?"
"Uh, no."
"Jeff arrived like an avenging angel a split second behind us. He was ripping his wings off as he hit, getting his arms free. He didn't even look at me. He just stepped across me and picked you up and cradled you in his arms, all the while bawling his eyes out."
"He did?"
Here there is more self-conscious mulling by Holly, but she still refuses to break out of her "just partners" mindset. Then Jeff comes in.
He stopped in the door and looked at us, frowning.
"Hi, Ariel."
"Hi, Jeff."
"Hi, Fraction." He looked me over. "My, but you're a mess."
"You aren't very pretty yourself. I hear you have flat feet."
"Permanently. How do you brush your teeth with those things on your arms?"
"I don't."
Ariel leaves and Jeff says "Hold still" and kisses her.
… I was startled speechless because Jeff never kisses me, except birthday kisses, which don't count. But I tried to kiss back to show that I appreciated it.
… "Runt," he said mournfully, "you sure give me a lot of grief."
"You're no bargain yourself, flathead," I answered with dignity.
"I suppose not." He looked me over sadly. "What are you crying for?"
I didn't know that I had been. Then I remembered why. "Oh, Jeff -- I busted my pretty wings!"
"We'll get you some more. Uh, brace yourself. I'm going to do it again."
"All right." He did.
I supposed Hardesty & Hardesty has more rhythm than Jones & Hardesty.
It really sounds better.
OK, I'm just an old softy and I still get sniffly from "He just stepped across me and picked you up and cradled you in his arms", right on to the end. It's so sweet!
That said, there is a lot that could be better in this final scene. It's too long and talky. More seriously, Ariel and Jeff seem to have come out of the disaster with some new, deeper self-knowledge and changed attitudes. Holly has not. Right to the end she seems stuck in the obsession with Jeff as a partner in their design firm, unable to recognize a new, closer relation. You could say the last two lines show that change of attitude, but I'd like something more explicit -- something to show clearly she's stepped out of being a nerdy kid.
And in conclusion,
It was only on this careful re-reading that I realized that the argument where Ariel wants to try real wings and Jeff butts into the discussion is the pivot of the story. The cross-current of mistakes and different kinds of hurt pride (Jeff's, Holly's and also Ariel's) creates the final situation. All of Jeff's infatuation and Holly's hurt and jealousy feed into it, along with Ariel's basic selfishness. Out the other side comes a sequence of bad decisions that almost ends in tragedy but instead ends by crystallizing everyone's feelings. Despite my many nit-pickings, it's a finely-structured story.
They don't make science fiction feature movies without explosions in them, so this will never be a movie (or if it is, it will be unrecognizable). But if the SyFy channel wanted to make a nice special, this would do beautifully. Look at at the practicality: it has a small cast; the sets are all interiors; there's not a lot of special effects. The flying could all be done on wires in front of green-screens. And it's really a good story.
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