Class Novel: Chapter 3 by Chad Oliver

Author's Note:

I tried to get the story moving a little more with this chapter. I introduced the movie she wants to make (though I didn't mention anything about the plot. I was going to, but I think that's a conversation the whole class needs to be a part of, and we can add those details to this chapter later or to a later chapter if it makes more sense). I got this idea of getting a quick buck from drug trial to fund a movie from a book I'm ready by Robert Rodriguez, a filmmaker who got the funding for his first movie in this way. He did it because he was a poor college student, but I made Nat do it because I wanted to show how badly she wanted this story to be told and this movie to be made. Part of me feels that this part of the chapter is a little overly dramatic. I introduced Eugene, the man behind the desk, as a quirky and odd employee at the hotel. I have an idea of him really wanting to be a part of the movie, and since Nat doesn't have money to hire professionals, she lets him tag along and help. I didn't introduce that idea at all in this chapter so if no one else likes it there's no pressure to do that.

I hope you like it, and I hope the next writer enjoys writing a phone conversation between Nat and her mother.

Chapter 3
Nat had her eyes closed. She took a deep breath. That card couldn't have said Jack Cozier. It doesn't make any sense.  She had met Jack's father before, and it wasn't Barrie. That business card didn't say Jack Cozier, it couldn't. She looked back at the card again.
Cody Jackson
Thank God, she thought. It made no sense for a man to give her a card saying Jack's name on it. Nat's brain jumbled up the letters into the last name she wanted to see. She unzipped her suitcase, slid the card in, and closed it again. With that brief moment of anxiety behind her, she walked to the Grand Aleutian Hotel, rolling her giant, packed suitcase behind her, her camera bag over her shoulder.
When she got to the door, an employee was waiting for her and he opened the for her, smiling and saying, "Welcome to the Grand Aleutian Hotel."
The inside was gorgeous. The first thing she noticed was the fireplace made of stone and the chimney that reached all the way to the ceiling and eventually out the top of the building. The furniture was all wood and looked hand-made. The walls were a gorgeous yellow. There was a large man with a thick mustache behind the desk. Nat thought the man would look a whole lot better without the facial hair, that mustache made him the only thing in the entire building that wasn't simply gorgeous. She wished he would stop smiling at him the way he was, it creeped her out. She approached him saying, "I have a reservation. MacMurray."
"Thank you for choosing the Grand Aleutian Hotel," he said. "Do you have a reservation with us."
Nat said, "Yes."
"Last name?"
"MacMurray."
Nat thought this man might be the slowest typer she had ever seen, on top of being the worst listener. When he finally typed in "MacMurray," he proudly clicked the enter key and then waited. "It's processing," he said.
The two stood listening to the beeps from the computer. Nat's phone started to buzz and she checked it. It was her mother again. She decided to wait until she was done at the desk to talk to her. She clicked ignore. The man at the desk, whose name tag read Eugene, went back and forth from checking the computer, to smiling at Nat. "So," he said. "Where are you from?"
"California."
"What brings you to Alaska?"
"Interesting you should ask, I--"
"Oh, it's loaded," he said. "I just see a Nat MacMurray. Is that your husband?"
"Nope," she said. "No, husband. It's just me."
"Oh, you're Nat? I'm terribly sorry."
She said, "That's fine, can I just have my room key?"
He handed her the card key saying, "Room 204."
Nat walked to the elevator and rode it up, alone. When the elevator opened up at the second floor to a long and narrow hallway with red carpet, Nat saw that the room numbers said 296 on the right side of the hallway and 295 on the left. She had a long walk down the hallway. When she got to the 250s, she got a sharp pain in her side.
She had forgotten to take her medicine.
Her brisk walk turned to a sprint. Her suitcase rocked back and forth as it rolled, struggling to keep up with Nat who was determined to get to her room. The pain started small, but it increased in area and in strength. Perhaps the running was making things worse, Nat thought.
She fumbled the card key around, struggling to fit it in the slot. She finally did and a small light illuminated a soft green, followed by a beep. She swung the door open dropped off her bags on the bed, and ran straight to the bathroom on the other side of the room. She threw up in the toilet. Another reminder of Jack and why she left him. He never understood Nat's passion for the film she wanted to make, and he couldn't accept that it came first in her life. Nat wanted this movie made and since no producer in Hollywood liked her screenplay, she would have to fund it herself, even if it meant participating in several drug trials, spending weeks at a time quarantined away from Jack, even if it meant suffering the consequences of the side effects later, even if it meant losing Jack. She sold her body to science for this movie.
She flushed her vomit down the toilet and walked back into the bedroom. Digging through her bag, she found her medicine and took two pills. She hadn't noticed earlier but the room was nice. A painting hung at the head of the bed, there was a rather large TV, and there was even a desk for her to work at.
Nat needed to start looking for locations, that's why she was here before anyone else in her 'crew,' which consisted of two other people: Susan, her director of photography, and Mike, her sound guy. The three would have to fill a lot more rolls than just their main ones, but since they were on a budget of under $10,000, there wasn't much they could do. They didn't have the luxury of hiring people to do these jobs. She pulled her notebook and her stapled-together screenplay and placed them on the desk. The next hour was spent scanning through all the slug lines in her script and making an inventory in her notebook on how many locations would be necessary for filming.
Her phone started buzzing. Nat's mother again. There was still so much to be done with this. She clicked ignore.
She completed her list. There were around thirty distinct locations. She wrote in "Unalaska Bay" next to one of the locations. The bodies of water here were one of the things that attracted her to filming in Alaska so she would definitely want to shoot there. The lake just outside the hotel might also work, so she wrote that in too. She also thought the chapel would be a great place to film so she wrote that in. That took care of three. Now she had to find twenty-seven more locations. Though, she thought, the longer she was there, surely she was bound to happen upon more quite easily. The rest of her crew would get there in two weeks so they should be ready to start shooting by then.
She looked back at the journal and circled the words "Coffee Shop." In the morning, that would be the first location she would look for. She needed to find a place to get coffee and put the finishing tweaks on her screenplay anyways so this accomplished two problems in one.
Her phone buzzed again. It was her mother. She groaned and answered the phone.
"Hey, mom."