Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Chapter 12

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Long time no The Room Novelization! As you can imagine, spending so much time in The Room eventually makes you feel like an atomic bomb waiting to go off. Suffice to say, it was getting very difficult coming up with new ways to phrase identical dialog and describe increasingly repetitive situations, so I took what I figured would be a permanent breather. But then the good folks (folk?) over at The Room facebook page were kind enough to post about this site again, reminding me after two months that it existed! Thanks to them there's a new influx of readers, so I figured I should finish what I started. Anyways, without further Author's Note, here is the first of the climatic chapters of The Room Novelization.


As the door to Lisa's apartment swung open, she couldn't help but notice that something seemed...off about her mother. They'd just returned from another mother-daughter excursion, their thirteenth that week, and Claudette had hardly spoken a word the whole afternoon.

"You look really tired today, Mom," Lisa said, "Are you feeling OK?"

Claudette raised a dismissive hand. "I didn't get much sleep last night."

"Why not? What's wrong?"

"You remember my friend, Sherley Hamilton?"

Lisa did. She was an old lady, like her mother.

"Uh-huh."

"She wants to buy a new house, so I asked Johnny if he could help her with the down payment!"

Perfectly reasonable request, thought Lisa. Future husbands (good ones) pay for their wives mother's friend's house's down payments. Simple as that.

"All he can tell me it's an awkward situation," Claudette continued, "I expected your husband to be a little more generous."

Lisa rolled her eyes. "He's not my husband."

"I know, I know!" Claudette said, walking towards the couch, "but Johnny is part of our family!"

"Mom, I don't love Johnny anymore." Lisa said for what felt like the thirty-third time in about an hour. When were people going to get it through their heads!

"I don't even like him!", she added.

It was Claudette's turn to roll her eyes.

Lisa knew exactly what it would take to force her mother to take her seriously.

"I had sex with someone else." she said.

"You can't be serious!"

Meanwhile, Johnny was lurking by the stairs the whole time, listening to everything everyone was saying like a master spy. What was it Lisa had just said? She slept with someone else? He didn't believe it. Wouldn't. Not Lisa, not his Lisa. He kept spying, stealthy like a raven in the night.

Lisa sighed. "You don't understand."

"Who? Who is it?" Claudette asked.

"I don't want to talk about it." Lisa hardly ever wanted to talk about anything, ever. Yet, oddly, she always ended up complaining at length to all her friends and family at every opportunity. It was one of Lisa's more enigmatic features, and it drove Johnny (and, indeed, Mark, Johnny's best friend) absolutely wild.

"You don't want to talk about it? Then why did you bring it up in the first place!" Claudette had a knack for pointing things out like that. Lisa couldn't stand it.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" Claudette shook her head, "if you think I'm tired today, wait till you see me tomorrow!"

Claudette was also adept at spinning terrifying threats. She started making for the door.

"Are you coming to the party?" Lisa asked.

"I suppose so..."

And with that, having stopped in the house for about three minutes, the two ladies were gone, left to resume their all-day excursion. Leaving Johnny alone in the house.

"How can they say this about me?" he said aloud, to no one. "I don't believe it! I show them! I will record everything!"

He couldn't believe that Lisa would ever be unfaithful to him, but if she was, he needed to know for sure. And there was one bullet-proof way of finding out.

He made his way, slyly for some reason, over to the phone.

From out of his pocket he withdrew a massive tape recorder and began to carefully connect it to the phone line. Johnny always kept the recorder at close reach in case a situation like this might arise, as it did once in the home country.

Slowly he connected the wires. Red to red, yellow to yellow, green to blue. He realized his mistake with the green wire and connected it to the green socket. The blue wire then went into the blue socket as it should have all along. The wiring complete, he replaced the shell of the machine, so as not to arouse suspicion.

He took a tape from his shirt pocket and placed it in. A quick check, and it was hidden under the table.

He adjusted the books and plant on the table, ensuring it was just as he had left it.

There. It was done. He would record everything.

With that, Johnny smiled a sneaky smile and crept up the staircase, awaiting Lisa's return.