(THEME)
SS: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets--but on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions--Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(THEME UP)
GK: It was the end of March in St. Paul, a time of year when spring appears every day around 3 in the afternoon and winter resumes about 4:30 and it goes on like that for weeks and if you had any sense you'd go berserk, but thanks to chronic depression, we stay about the same. I was sitting in my office, looking at a brochure for a Late Winter Get-Away Weekend to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and then the phone rang----- (PHONE RING, PICKUP) Yeah, this is Guy Noir-----
TR (ON PHONE, BREATHING): Mr. Noir, I need your help. (BREATHING, DARTH VADER LIKE) I need you to find me a carpool I can join to get to work in the morning.
GK: I've got kind of a long waiting list here, sir.
TR (DARTH): That's all right, I can wait. (BREATHING)
GK: I'll get back to you as soon as I can. (BRIDGE) There's been a bus strike in the Twin Cities and that's why the sudden interest in carpooling. Mass transit here has always been a problem because Minnesotans basically don't like each other ---- they try to because they think they should but they don't and so the Twin Cities is the second most sprawling urban area in America after L.A. You've got people commuting into downtown from up near Canada, a six-hour commute each way and daddy gets home at midnight, wakes up the kids, interacts for an hour, and then daddy gets back in the car and drives to the office. It's hard to have mass transit when people are trying to live as far from other people as possible . So every morning and every afternoon, you have two million cars with two million people in them inching along the freeways and listening to talk show guys talk about government as if it were a dread disease (TR RUSH: My friends, if John Kerry is elected, this country will become like Soviet Russia in three months!) and now with the bus strike, it's even worse. (KNOCKS ON DOOR) - Yeah, come on in, the door's unlocked. (DOOR OPEN, FOOTSTEPS, DOOR CLOSE) Yeah. What can I do for you?
TK: I was just about to tell you.
GK: Okay. Fine.
TK: Don't rush me. I just walked in the door.
GK: Okay.
TK: What's the hurry? You don't look like you got a whole lot going on. I walk through the door and suddenly I'm besieged with questions.
GK: Okay. Take your time.
TK: I came in cause I want to be part of a carpool ---- can you help me out with that? I gotta leave Maplewood around 6:30 and get to St. Louis Park by 9 and leave work around 5 and get home by 8. Okay?
GK: I'll try.
TK: I've been in four car pools and people keep walking out on me. I don't know what's going on. Do I smell bad or something? Huh? You tell me. What's wrong with people? Where's the sense of commitment? You say you're going to be in a carpool and then you pull out after a couple days?? What's that about? Huh? What's going on with people nowadays? I don't get it.
GK: What sort of people you want to ride with in a carpool?
TK: Makes no difference to me. Makes no difference to me whatsoever. But evidently it's a big problems for them.
GK: What's the problem?
TK: There is no problem. I'm an atheist. Is that a problem? I don't think so. Why should that be a problem? It's a free country, isn't it?
GK: What's this?
TK: The atheists' Pledge of Allegiance.
GK: Interesting. "I pledge allegiance to the flag
Of the United States of America
And to the Republic for which it stands
One nation under God, but not literally because he doesn't exist,
Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
P.S.--there is no God.
TK: You got a problem with that?
GK: I'll see what I can do. (BRIDGE). ---- A lot of Minnesotans never learned basic social skills. They learned survival skills, like how to live off moss and lichen and how to dig a snow cave and stay warm in it, but not how to make conversation in a car with strangers for three hours. (PHONE RING) (PICK UP) Yeah, Guy Noir here.
TR (ON PHONE): Yeah, you the guy who's looking for a carpool?
GK: I have clients who are, yes----
TR (ON PHONE): They're not women, are they?
GK: No.
TR (ON PHONE): Just checking. We had a woman for awhile and she had to use the rearview mirror to put her eyeshadow on and then she'd spray this perfume that smelled like diesel fuel but we couldn't roll down the windows because then her hair would get messed up and I had to hold her purse on my lap when she put on her pantyhose.
GK: Okay.
TR (ON PHONE): You ever sit next to a full-size woman in her mid-fifties as she puts on pantyhose? It ain't for the timid, believe me. How about folk music? I don't want somebody who's gonna show up one morning with a whole bunch of cassette tapes that he thinks everybody else has to hear and he plays one and he sings along with it ---- you know what I mean?
GK: I do.
TR (ON PHONE): Good. We don't sing in my carpool. Maybe some carpools do. Mine doesn't. Your client like sports?
GK: Sure.
TR (ON PHONE): Good. But he's not a Packers fan, right?
GK: No.
TR (ON PHONE): Good. How about cats?
GK: What about cats?
TR (ON PHONE): No cat owners. That's a rule. I got a couple Dobermans and if I come home with cat hair on me, sometimes their reaction is sort of sudden - it can get kind of hairy-- how about politics?
GK: Strictly in the middle. Avoid politics. Take no sides.
TR (ON PHONE): Good. We had a Democrat in the pool once and he spent the whole two hours talking about the need for rapid transit. (BRIDGE) (PHONE RING, PICK UP)
GK: Yeah?
SS (ON PHONE): Yeah - you the guy who's looking for a carpool? -- Listen, I'm in a carpool with two other gals, we're driving an all-terrain vehicle and we're all construction workers -- you don't mind if there's a gun rack mounted in the cab, do you? And a big black Labrador named Natasha? Excuse me. (OFF) Hey, you scumsucker! Where'd you learn to drive? A nursing home? Go back to Wisconsin! (GUNFIRE) - Okay, I'm back. I'm calling from the car.
GK: I gathered that. Listen, let me get back to you about it, okay? .(PHONE RING, PICK UP) Yeah?
TR (ON PHONE, SOFT VOICE): I'm calling about carpooling?
GK: I see.
TR (SOFT): I'm looking for a carpool to join.
GK: All right.
TR (SOFT): I've been looking for the past fifteen years.
GK: So you're not employed?
TR (SOFT): As soon as I find a carpool, I'll find a job. I need to ride with people who don't use driving to express the anger bottled-up inside them because my family moved when I was as a child and the trauma of leaving Apple Valley and moving to Mahtomedi left me with issues I've spent years trying to resolve.
GK: Well, you take your time with that, sir. No rush. (BRIDGE) It's interesting, I'll say that. I'm a big city guy and here I am in a big city of people who don't feel comfortable in public because they were brought up not to talk to strangers (FOOTSTEPS AND STOP)
SS: Oh. Sorry. The door was open.
GK: That's okay. Come in.
SS: You sure? I don't mean to bother you. (HEART POUNDING)
GK: You're not. I always perspire like this when it's spring. (BRIDGE) She was the sort of woman a guy dreams of meeting,: gorgeous, pale complexion--wearing a black mini-skirt so short I could see London and France and parts of Berlin. She moved like a warm front across my office. Her blouse was so tight I could read her blood pressure from across the room.
SS: Are you the man who's organizing car pools?
GK: I am---
SS: I used to take the bus to work and then this darn transit strike came along -
GK: You came to the right place.
SS: I was in a carpool and it drove me crazy. These guys sitting there, not saying anything, just breathing through their mouths.
GK: Not all guys are like that. I can find you some nose breathers.
SS: I can only listen to classical music in the morning. Preferably Bach.
GK: Not a problem.
SS: Actually, I'd prefer a Lutheran carpool. Lutherans are so easy to be with.
GK: Well, that is most certainly true.
SS: Are you Lutheran?
GK: Well, I don't get all worked up about it, but I've been to a few church functions, yes.
SS: Do you believe it's a sin to waste good food?
GK: I do. Take all you want but eat what you take. That's my principle.
SS: And you're not hoity-toity?
GK: Nope. Don't think you're special cause you're not. That's my motto.
SS: You seem really nice.
GK: So do you.
SS: I've got to get from Marine on St. Croix down to Bloomington at 5:30 in the morning and home by 3:30.
GK: That's not a problem.
SS: Are you sure?
GK: This is the most amazing coincidence, but that happens to be my daily route. (BRIDGE) So for the past week I've been driving Solveig to work in the morning and picking her up in the evening. (BACH PIANO) I discovered that she is fabulously wealthy from the Palomino ranch left to her by her late husband, and that she is pretty much through with the grieving process and thinking about dating again. She thinks my name is Ingmar and I'm an investment counselor. I figured I could clear that up when we get to know each other better, which, if this transit strike will just go on for a few more weeks, we might do. The bus drivers want more health benefits and they want it paid in exact change. I'm writing to the governor to tell him to hold firm.
(THEME)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questionsffGuy Noir, Private Eye. (OUT)