Casablanca Massachusetts Chapter One
He was 23. It was 3 o’clock; he was in his PJ’s, drinking a mixer of wine and soda. He didn’t like the taste of wine. A Coppola wine, to answer the question that you weren’t asking; it says less about him than he thinks. What was the name of this mysterious figure, you might be asking. Let’s call him Conrad, because it’s his name. Nobody calls him that; they call him Conny - wasted a lot of time with that. Could have told you his name right at the beginning. To make up for that, let’s introduce another main character. Her name is Joe - short for Josephine. You probably guessed that. I wanted to tell you it anyways to get it out there. It says a lot about her parents - that will be important in the flashback later when they’re introduced. She bought a physics book; it wasn’t something human beings may actually read though, like Hawking. No, it had to be some long, dull tome, badly translated from Russian.
Conny remembered he had forgotten something, which would be a relief to Joe as Conny was her brother she was riding the train to stay with (she was afraid of flying) for the summer. She wasn’t comforted by the fact that he remembered that he had an appointment because she couldn’t read minds. Only three people could ever do that – including the author of that physics tome that put Joe to sleep as every word, besides being dull, was also stolen. That was a useless fact, something the audience does not need to know, that never enters into the story again, at least I hope not.
Conny ran down the stairs, remembering what he was supposed to do today, then got in his car and drove to make his meeting, driving stupidly fast. Joe woke up, packed the dull, dull book by a telepathic professor, and got off at the Casablanca Massachusetts’s station as Conny, who was picking her up, double-parked so he wouldn’t be late, to the relief of Joe.