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  What people are saying about …

  Screen Play

  “Fans are going to love Chris Coppernoll’s latest novel. Screen Play is an inspiring tale of friendship and faith set amidst the complexities of Hollywood and cleverly combined with an uplifting love story reminiscent of Sleepless in Seattle.”

  Tina Ann Forkner, author of Rose House and Ruby Among Us

  “Screen Play brings you front-row seats to Broadway, delivers backstage passes to friendship and ambition, and shouts ‘bravo!’ to the longest-running show on earth—the unexpected love story

  Ray Blackston, author of Flabbergasted

  “With Screen Play, Coppernoll establishes himself as a man in touch with his time. It’s a poignant love story, beautifully told within the context of an honest relationship with God. The characters will stay with you—and so will the relevant spiritual insights.”

  Gwen Faulkenberry, speaker, author of Love Finds You in Romeo, Colorado, A Beautiful Life, and A Beautiful Day

  “As I sat back and read this gripping inspirational and emotional story, I saw my own life woven throughout the pages. This isn’t just one woman’s journey of struggles and triumphs. If you’ve ever hit rock bottom, felt worthless, questioned God’s will for your life, and prayed for Him to rescue you, then you will see yourself throughout these pages too. Screen Play made me want to start writing the next chapter of my life today and realize that if we’ll take the limits off of God and release our faith in uncommon ways, then we will begin to see God do uncommon things. What you thought was the end is going to turn out to be a new beginning.”

  Tammy Trent, recording artist, speaker, and author of Learning to Breathe Again

  “This is more than a romance. Chris Coppernoll subtly develops his own deepening themes of community, isolation, and trust. He deftly shows us how God both uses His people right where they are and moves them to places they could have never reached without Him. Screen Play will leave readers satisfied with Harper’s love story—but transformed by God’s love story playing out within the pages of this novel.”

  Christa Parrish, author of Home Another Way and Watch Over Me

  “You will be captured by the characters and story in this book. Chris Coppernoll skillfully composes a symphony full of the elements of life: romance, disappointment, surprise, and ultimately hope.”

  Anne Jackson, speaker and author of Mad Church Disease and Permission to Speak Freely

  “From the curtain’s first rise to the final ovation, Screen Play is a great read! Romance, humor, adventure, drama—this is storytelling to savor!”

  Kimberly Stuart, author of Act Two and Stretch Marks

  “Chris Coppernoll is rapidly becoming the go-to guy for the inspirational fiction genre. In Screen Play, he has created believable, three-dimensional characters and set them in situations that reek of real life. Who says the theater is no place for Christians? Coppernoll convincingly proves them wrong.”

  Mike Parker, actor, director, and playwright of the stage play Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray

  SCREEN PLAY

  Published by David C. Cook

  4050 Lee Vance View

  Colorado Springs, CO 80918 U.S.A.

  David C. Cook Distribution Canada

  55 Woodslee Avenue, Paris, Ontario, Canada N3L 3E5

  David C. Cook U.K., Kingsway Communications

  Eastbourne, East Sussex BN23 6NT, England

  David C. Cook and the graphic circle C logo

  are registered trademarks of Cook Communications Ministries.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes,

  no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form

  without written permission from the publisher.

  This story is a work of fiction. All characters and events are the product of

  the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead,

  is coincidental. LoveSetMatch.com is a fictitious Web site imagined by

  the author. As of this book’s publication date, no such site existed.

  LCCN 2009910527

  ISBN 978-1-4347-6482-9

  eISBN 978-0-7814-0372-6

  © 2010 Chris Coppernoll

  The author is represented by MacGregor Literary.

  The Team: Andrea Christian, Steve Parolini, Sarah Schultz, Caitlyn York, Karen Athen

  Cover design: Amy Kiechlin

  Cover images: iStockPhoto.com, royalty-free

  First Edition 2010

  To Gray,

  always

  Acknowledgments

  An author friend says writing the novel’s acknowledgment page is its most formidable task. How can everyone responsible for bringing a novel to fruition be recognized? A special thanks goes to my agent, mentor, and friend, Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary, for representing my writing and for his sage counsel regarding all matters literary. I’d like to acknowledge Don Pape, Terry Behimer, and everyone at David C. Cook for the opportunity to write stories. Significant recognition is due my editor, Stephen Parolini, for his creative contribution to Providence, A Beautiful Fall, and Screen Play. Thanks to Caitlyn York, for her eye for detail and energy. I’d like to thank my daughter, Gray, for her love and inspiration, and Christa, without qualifiers, for allowing Him to inspire her to slip a silly little card into a package with her book that started our brand-new adventure. And finally, our Lord, Jesus Christ, who closes old doors and makes all things new.

  CC

  “How’d ya like to spend Christmas

  on Christmas Island?”

  Lyle Moraine, “Christmas Island”

  “There are motives I cannot discover,

  dreams I cannot realize. My God, search me.”

  Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

  ~ One ~

  I absolutely had to be in New York by 1:30 p.m. Did my life depend upon it? Yes, as a matter of fact, it did. Just the thought of calling Ben or Avril with bad news from O’Hare churned my stomach and made my face prickle with a dizzying fear. I joined a sea of travelers bundled in parkas, hoods, hats, and gloves; they stretched out in front of me, pressing in and wresting me through a queue of red velvet theater ropes.

  All of Chicago wanted to flee the blizzard they’d awakened to. Sometime after midnight the sky exploded with snowflakes. Icy white parachutists fell from their celestial perch as innocently as doves. The year’s last snowstorm tucked the city in with a white blanket knitted through the long winter’s night.

  When I reached the American Airlines check-in, I hoisted one of my two black canvas bags onto the scale for the ticket agent.

  “Harper Gray?” she asked, confirming my reservation.

  “Yes.”

  She returned my driver’s license, dropping her gaze to the workstation and tapping my information into the system. At the kiosk next to me, a large Texan with a silver rodeo buckle typed on his iPhone with his thumbs, mumbling something about checking the weather in Dallas.

  Computers, I thought. What don’t we use them for?

  It was obvious how many of my fellow travelers were heading somewhere for the New Year’s Eve festivities. I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on a cluster of merry college students reveling in their Christmas break. They joked and chattered, mentioning Times Square, unbothered by long lines or the imminent threat of weather delays. At thirty, almost thirty-one, I could no longer relate to their carefree lifestyle. Too much water under the bridge, most of it dark and all of i
t numbing.

  “Here you are,” the ticket agent said, handing me a boarding pass still warm from the printer. I fumbled with my things, stuffing my photo ID into my wallet as a mother and her young son squeezed in next to me. The crowd current swept me away from the ticket counter, denying me a chance to ask the agent the one question I most wanted answered.

  Is anyone flying out of here this morning?

  I rolled my carry-on through the main concourse. I’d used the small black Samsonite for so many trips, I thought the airlines should paste labels on it like an old vaudevillian’s steamer trunk. A row of display monitors hung from a galvanized pipe, cobalt blue icicles glowing all the brighter in the dark and windowless hallway. I joined a beleaguered crowd of gawkers studying the departure screens. Their collective moans of frustration confirmed what I already knew. My flight—indeed, all flights out of O’Hare—was:

  DELAYED

  I pinched my eyes shut. This was not what I needed. Not today, not today of all days. I absolutely had to be in New York by 1:30 p.m. Did my life depend upon it? Yes, as a matter of fact, it did.

  ~ Two ~

  When my travel alarm jolted me from dead slumber that morning, I’d climbed out of my warm bed and stepped into a cold shower, after which I pulled on jeans in a dimly lit two-bedroom apartment. The walls were bare, stripped of framed artwork, curio shelves, and knickknacks. The kitchen was cleared of dishes, pots, pans, and silver. The last piece of cozy furniture, my double bed and headboard, remained only because my landlady said she’d take possession of it after I was gone.

  I’d booked the 6:05 a.m. direct flight to LaGuardia the day Ben called with his blessed invitation. He’d offered to purchase my ticket, saving me the embarrassment of asking him for money since there was no way on earth I could afford airfare on my own. I attributed the good fortune to God’s provision, solely based on the timing of Ben’s call, coming as it did after I’d sent skyward my own blizzard of fervent prayers. These were desperate prayers, all punctuated with the exclamation point “Help me!”

  I slipped out of the apartment, locking the door behind me for the last time, wheeled my suitcases quietly down an empty hallway, and dropped my keys through the brass letter slot belonging to the building supervisor. Apartment 319.

  It had been only a year but felt like a thousand since Avril and I had shared this place together. Those were amazing times. We were both working, making good money, and I’d fallen in love.

  But life can change on a dime, leaving you with little more than a nickel. Work ended in those first weeks of January. Avril abruptly left for Newbury, Massachusetts, thrilled to be working on a new project in the Bay State, while I wouldn’t earn a paycheck for the next twelve months. Capping the ugliest January on record, Sam had reserved a quiet table for two at La Maison Rouge to celebrate my thirtieth birthday. Avril was certain I’d receive a gift I could wear on my left ring finger, but Sam presented me with news; he was moving to Los Angeles. A week later Sam departed, never asking if I’d like to go with him or even if I’d be okay without him.

  The next day I woke up to the unmistakable sensation of drowning.

  My charmed life had been interrupted by sudden impact with an iceberg. I cracked, filling up with the relentless rush of water until all buoyancy was gone. I spent the next year alone, unemployed and unloved, watching my life fall apart piece by piece until all of it fit into two black canvas bags.

  That early morning as I wrestled two unwieldy suitcases out the front entrance and down icy concrete steps, I felt fragile, agoraphobic. The cold seeped through my thin leather flats; mine were the only prints in the freshly fallen snow. Easy, weightless flakes swirled through the air, and I said another prayer, an apology for entertaining thoughts of the cab driver finding me hypothermic when he arrived, and how it might all be easier that way.

  It had crossed my mind. Yes, that thought. The idea of taking my own life, however repugnant, carried with it the promise of solving everything. It was a false promise that rattled me, clueing me in that I needed rescue. When the checkered taxicab picked me up, I felt like I was boarding one of those orange-and-white coast guard choppers they use to pull stranded victims from the icy waters.

  To the other passengers at Gate 12 killing time on their laptops or thumbing through the latest Christa Parrish novel, I must have looked like any other stranded traveler balancing a paper coffee cup on her knee. But inside? I was the memory keeper, a woman bearing the scars of a naive walk onto an icy lake, hearing the frightening sounds of cracking ice, and then feeling the unthinkable plunge into frozen darkness.

  ~ Three ~

  For two hours, we watched the snowplows scrape the runways, listened to colicky babies cry, and waited for a breakthrough. I thought of calling my mom in Orlando, or my dad in Elizabethtown, but after a year of telling them things were fine when they weren’t, I decided to forego the playacting.

  The first beam appeared from the burning yellow sun. It cut through the sky, puncturing holes in the cobweb clouds. A stressed-out gate agent announced our boarding over the intercom, happy to uncork the exits and let people drain out into planes.

  The flight was packed. I wedged myself into a seat between a man who started snoring before takeoff and a surgeon talking on her cell phone about organ transplantation. I slid a dog-eared copy of Apartment 19, the classic American play by Arthur Mouldain, out of my carry-on. I’d found it in a used bookstore on Michigan Avenue the day I received the blessed call. I cracked open the paperback once again, pouring the words into my mind like hot cocoa into a thermos. I reread Bella’s note, too, folded between the pages. She offered just thirteen words of encouragement, but they meant the world to me.

  I believe in you. God has a purpose and plan for your life. Bella

  At one fifteen, I pulled open the elegant pane-glass doors of the Carney Theatre on West Forty-fourth Street and let myself inside. Angels, not the heavenly sort, but kindhearted benefactors, had recently donated millions toward renovating the 702-seat Carney. I’d read about it online at a Chicago public library on State Street.

  I tiptoed across a sprawling sea of bright red carpet toward two open doors on the other side of the lobby and entered the darkened theater. Before my eyes adjusted completely to the room’s murky darkness, I parked my luggage against the back wall and quietly pulled open the clamshell seat so as not to disturb the actors rehearsing onstage, or any of the half-dozen strangers scattered around the theater. My breathing felt rushed, a result of speed-walking and nerves, so I tried drawing in long, deep breaths while transitioning into a strange, new world. I recognized the play’s director, Ben Hughes, even in silhouette, sitting ahead of me in the shadows, but then I’d know him anywhere. I couldn’t identify the stranger sitting next to him, a woman leaning in, whispering as two actresses rehearsed on the lighted Carney stage. I wondered how well she knew him.

  Everyone knew the two actresses onstage—everyone familiar with the New York theater world and network television, anyway.

  Avril LaCorria—my blonde-haired, easily thin, twenty-eight-year-old best friend, who I hadn’t laid eyes on since our year together in Chicago—and Helen Payne.

  I’d never met Helen, but it was impossible not to know the legend. Her hit TV show, Mystery Detected, had aired each Sunday night for ten years in every home in America, including my own. I’d watched it countless times with my mother while I was growing up. Helen was sixty, I guessed, with a robust build and the confident poise of a Broadway star. She’d dressed for rehearsal in a dark sword-pleated skirt, frilly white blouse, and unbuttoned tan cardigan to chase away the chill of the large Broadway theater.

  “I come on stage left,” Helen said, walking through her moves. “Stand at center stage and … where will she be?” Helen asked, pointing over at Avril in a way that suggested even after four weeks of rehearsals she didn’t yet know Avril’
s name.

  “Right where she is now,” Ben said. He stood, reestablishing his directorial authority.

  I leaned forward in the back row, resting my arms over the theater seat in front of me. It was my first look at the much-touted revival of Apartment 19.

  “Shouldn’t she be further back, Ben?” Helen asked, as if it were the only position that truly made any sense. “Or if she were even sitting when I came in, I could just give my first line—Why are you still here in the apartment?—to myself rather than asking her directly. The audience will think I don’t know she’s even there.”

  “Helen, I’m fine with that, but let’s just walk through this once again with Avril at the front of the stage. The audience will get the tension that she’s supposed to have left, but she’s still in the apartment with you.”

  Judging by Helen’s expression, a brief but contemptuous stare, she didn’t much care for Ben rejecting her suggestion. Without further rebuttal, Helen exited the stage, tapping her heels sharply as she returned to the wings.

  “From the top again,” Ben said, slipping back into the obscurity of his theater seat. A moment later Helen reentered, this time in character. Even without benefit of a costume, props, or theater makeup, her transformation into Audrey Bradford was utterly mesmerizing.

  She took her mark at center stage, glaring at Avril’s character, Roxy Dupree, the eccentric and emotionally unbalanced tenant who rents a single room in the wealthy widow’s large New York apartment. With neurotic contempt exuding from her large presence, Helen Payne delivered her line.

  Why are you still here in the apartment?

  Avril looked as though the pent-up tension in Helen’s question had knocked the answer clean out of her head. She stammered.

  I wanted to speak with you. I was afraid we got off on the wrong foot.

  Helen pointed a sharpened finger into the wings at stage right. I want you out of this apartment, now! Avril reacted like she’d been Tasered, her body crippled by an electric shock. The intensity onstage was palpable. Prima donna or not, Helen Payne knew her stuff. Each line she delivered sent chills up my spine. The method actor moved with purpose around the stage, a caged tiger, every subtle gesture underlining what a monster her character was.