RENTtalia Ch. 1 - Rent

RENTtalia Ch 1 – Rent

"December 24, 1989. 9:00pm Eastern standard time. From here on in, I shoot without a script…See if anything comes with it…Instead of my old shit…"  Alfred F. Jones thought as he stood on the sidewalk, filming a homeless man attempting to "clean" the windshield of a grumpy businessman's car.

"Go on, get outta here!" the man shouts in his New Yorker accent. "Hey!" But the hobo acts as if he didn't hear that at all.

        "I said get off the window!" the driver shouts one final time before speeding off down the street, effectively removing the homeless guy with the squeegee in the process.

        The blond man wearing a bomber jacket and holding his video camera in his hand slowly pulls the lens away from his face and gives an almost disgusted look in the spot where the fancy car was just a second ago. He attaches the video camera back on his trusty bike and rides off down the street in the direction of his apartment which he shared with his good friend and failed rock star: Arthur Kirkland.

       "How do you document real life, when real life's getting more like fiction each day?" He asked himself while pedaling amongst the traffic of the Big Apple. Then he steered his bike down an alley that was mostly dark except for one small fire in a trash can that was burning, giving light and some warmth to the homeless huddled around it.

       "Headlines, breadlines, blow my mind," he sang. "And now this deadline: eviction or pay...RENT!" He shouted the last word, putting much emphasis on it.

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        Now cut to his apartment, where Arthur is complaining about life as well. He was sitting on a table in the mostly dark apartment, except for the glow of a few lamps. In his hands he was holding his old acoustic guitar, appearing as if he was once again trying to write a song that would make it big.

        "How do you write a song when the chords sound wrong, though they used to sound right and rare?" he sang with only a hint of his British accent showing through. Just then the already dim lights cut out, signaling that their power had been shut off.

        The Englishman hopped up from his seat, singing, "When the notes are sour where is the power that you once had to ignite the air?" He set his precious guitar down and walked across the surprisingly spacious apartment to check to see if it was only  a fuse that had blown.  


       Back to Alfred riding on his bike, and though these two friends weren't in the same place at the moment, they were definitely riding on the same brain wave here.

      "We're hungry and frozen," Alfred sang.


      "Some life that we've chosen!" the fuse box sparked and the Brit with big eyebrows finished the line perfectly, sounding more than a little pissed off, slamming the door to the fuse box as he sang. Then the American boy had finally arrived at his apartment building, now carrying his royal blue bike over his shoulder. He walked up to the multitude of eviction notices taped to the door, and he asked no one in particular,

      "How we gonna pay?" With that he ripped the paper off and then walked into the apartment where Arthur was and set down his bike.

      "How we gonna pay?" Arthur sang and looked at the other blonde man, who then promptly showed him the incriminating black and white eviction notice. He took the paper into his own hands and examined it closely. Now the two were singing together in perfect harmony…

      "How we gonna pay…last years rent!?" Then, as if on queue, the phone rang in the middle of their song and Alfred moved to go and answer it.

      "Hello?" he spoke into the receiver.

       A friendly, French-accented voice replied, "Heeey, guess who's back in town? It's Francis, mon ami, throw down the keys!" A man with shoulder-length golden blond hair stood at a payphone right across the street from Alfred and Arthur's apartment. He hung up the germ-infested piece of plastic and walked out into the street a ways, then Alfred walked out onto the balcony and smiled at the sight of his old friend.

       "Hey!" he shouted and tossed down the small ring of keys. Francis let the keys slip and they came clattering to the pavement, causing him to have to bend over and pick them up. Alfred then walked back inside the darkened apartment to wait for his friend to come on up.

       The Frenchman started walking over while looking down at the keys, trying to find the specific one he would need to open the door. But then three people from out of nowhere came and surrounded Francis.

      "Hey, you got a light?" one asked as the blond dug in his pocket. That's when the second moved to attack him. Francis blocked him and pushed him back. "Merde…" he spoke, trying to get the man away. Then one came from behind with a crow bar in hand, and Francis pushed him and started to run away from the three thugs.

      "You son of a bitch!" they shouted after him, hot on his tail. Francis stupidly ran into a nearby alley, hoping to lose them. But unfortunately he tripped and the three descended upon him, two picking him up and pinning his arms to the brick wall while the third punched him repeatedly. They threw him harshly back to the ground, took his long leather coat and sprinted away before Francis could get back up and stop them.

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      Meanwhile, up in the apartment, Arthur was lighting every candle they had in the place, while continuing the song, "How do you start a fire when there's nothing to burn, and it feels like there's something stuck in your flue?"

      He then moved a trash can over and positioned it right under a broken sunlight, and Alfred came over singing, "How do you generate heat when you can't feel your feet, and their turning blue?"  

     He angrily threw a couple pieces of crumpled up paper into the can and Arthur ripped away the tarp that had been covering up said broken window on the ceiling. The bespectacled blond then took out what seemed to be a script for a play and flicked his lighter on, holding it under the massive stack of papers saying,

     "You light up a mean blaze…"

     "…with posters!" Arthur cut in, almost sounding merry.

     "…and screenplays," the blue eyed blond sang as his papers went ablaze, the green eyed man held a poster into the flame and soon it caught on fire as well.

     "How we gonna pay?" the two sang and dropped their burning papers into the trash receptacle, setting everything else in there on fire as well. It grew to be quite a massive fire.

     "How we gonna pay? How we gonna pay…Last years rent!?" the two sang, again in harmony.

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      Now, back to Francis, he was struggling to sit up and lean against the cold brick wall. He had a bloody nose. The look on his face made him appear absolutely terrified, as he sang in his soulful voice.

     "How do you stay on your feet when on every street it's trick-or-treat, and tonight it's trick!?" he exclaimed, pressing his hand to his face, checking to see if he was bleeding as badly as he felt he was.

     "Welcome back to town," he spoke and a wave of nausea passed over him, "Oh I should lie down, everything's brown and…uh-oh! I feel sick…"

     Alfred went back out onto the balcony and leaned over, looking in the direction that Francis would've gone in to get into the apartment. "Where is he?" he asked, talking to no one in particular.


     "Getting dizzy," the beaten Frenchman mumbled in the alleyway as he moved to lie back down.



     Now Arthur came out onto the balcony and the two began to sing again, "How we gonna pay…"

     As it turns out they were not the only ones that night worrying about how to pay the bills. Their neighbor a floor below them—-a girl with dark brown hair that she normally wore in pigtails with ribbons that came from the small island of Seychelles—-was out too, and she was burning another eviction notice in her hand. Her voice was added to the singing.

     "How we gonna pay…?" Now, the whole apartment complex was out; all were burning papers and bitching and moaning about paying to live there.

     "How we gonna pay, last years rent!?" They sang as a chorus and let their flaming notices drop to the street below. With that, Alfred rushed back into the apartment with Arthur trailing close behind.

     "The music ignites the night with passionate fire," the glasses-wearing young blond sang, picking up more papers to throw into their little fire.

     "The narration pops and crackles with incendiary wit," the blond Briton said eloquently as he "looked" at the pages of a possible screenplay he held in his hand. Both men then tossed the pages into the flames, not even caring about the potential worth they could have.

     "Zoom in as they burn the past to the ground," Alfred sang. Then Arthur joined in and they sang together again, "And feel the heat of the future's glow!" Their fire was at an even more impressive size than it was just a little bit ago.

     "How do you leave the past behind, when it keeps finding ways to get to your heart?" Then the two picked up the burning trash can and brought it out onto their metal balcony.

     "It reaches way down deep and tears you inside out 'til you're torn apart!" they sang in unison and dumped the burning scripts and concert posters over the railing. "Rent!" they shouted exasperatedly watching the ashes of their work float to the pavement below.

     Now everyone was singing together again, "How can you connect in age, where strangers, landlords, lovers, your own blood cells betray!?" Just then a very nice vehicle turned down the lot, an angry mob following close behind. In that very car was the land lord: Ludwig Beilschmidt.

     The mob of people swarmed his car as he was attempting to exit it, singing, "What binds the fabric together, when the raging, shifting, winds of change, keep ripping away?"

     An exasperated Mr. Beilschmidt got out of the car and joined in on the song, "Draw a line in the sand and then make a stand…"

     Then Arthur cut in with a clever line. "Use your camera to spar!" he sang, mimicking what Alfred did when he filmed. The other blond on the balcony pointed dramatically at his friend saying, "Use your guitar!"

     "When they act tough, you call their bluff!" everyone shouted.

     "We're not gonna pay…we're not gonna pay…we're not gonna pay…" everyone sang in low voices, slowly rising with each "we're not gonna pay", more burning papers fell and they reached a climax when they sang, "Last year's rent!"

     But instead of just cutting it off there, they continued their declaration by including, "This year's rent! Next year's rent! Rent, rent, rent, rent, rent!"

     "We're not gon' pay rent! 'Cause everything is rent!" they sang, holding out the last note and bringing their rebellious song to a close. Then a large portion of the crowd began to shout insults at the German landlord.

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     The girl from Seychelles smiled down at someone she know that was standing down below, a boy with straight, shoulder length blond hair, holding a bucket and drumsticks waved back at her and then walked off.

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     The mob began to slowly go back inside, and Ludwig took another look back at his car to see a homeless man leaning up against it. This did not please him one bit.

     "Hey, bum! Get your ass off of my Porsche!" he demanded. The bum hit the car and pointed at the tall, German with slicked back, blond hair before walking off into the night.

     "Look Ludwig, that attitude toward the homeless is exactly what Maria is protesting!" Alfred called down to him.

     "Maria," the tall landlord began, "is protesting losing her performance space, not my attitude."

     He walked over to his car and motioned to the two blonds standing on the balcony, "Come down here, I want to talk with you." He opened the door and took something out of the expensive vehicle.

Alfred rolled his eyes and stormed inside to do as he was told. Arthur was about to leave as well, but he looked down over the balcony to see his Seychellois neighbor looking back up at him with big brown eyes. She took a puff of her cigarette and smiled sweetly up at him. The British man looked back at her for a moment but then proceeded to follow his friend downstairs. The girl just smiled again and then went back inside her apartment.
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