Day 17: 29,026 Words

I managed to get my writing done on the earlier side today! I'm slowly finishing up the Celebrity Feud Support Group retreat weekend— I want to get as much out of it as I can. I sent some of this to the group, but I think there's more here to love.

But after James had left, and everyone was settling in at the Picton Street Bed and Breakfast, Isla started to notice some changes within the group. Richard Gere and Sylvester Stallone were working on a puzzle together by the fireplace. The puzzle was a print of a particularly saccharine Trisha “Trish” Romance painting, where a blonde mother with a single hair braid was watching her similarly blonde children play on the grass outside of their large Victorian home on a sunny summer day. They seemed soothed by the depiction of “ideal” family life, which boded well for the group’s upcoming visit to the Romance Inn the next day. Taylor Kitsch and David Boreanaz appeared to have been tuckered out by a day of mini sticks mischief, and a few too many rum-free “Dip a Moji-TOE In” cocktails, to get up to any more shenanigans. Too tired to fight each other, they were watching an old Don Cherry “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Hockey” tape. The video featured a compilation of NHL plays, goals, saves, bloopers, and hits, focusing on the 1994 NHL season, and was set to backing rock and techno music. Of course, the rock and techno music were the least objectionable parts of the tape. Don “Grapes” Cherry, an increasingly senile male hockey commentator, was known for his out of touch hockey opinions, his hatred of European hockey players, his racism and misogyny, his support for the War in Iraq (that history did not validate), and his dislike of “pinko commies.”

Isla did not know where they got the tape, let alone a tape player. Needless to say, the quality of the picture was incredibly poor. It certainly didn’t help that the aspect ratio was totally off, which wasn’t doing the terrible production value and abysmal definition any favours. Her father, whose dislike of Don Cherry was only matched by his distaste for low-quality television picture and sound, would have been seething if he had been there. Lucky for him, he wasn’t. Isla wished that she didn’t have to witness the screening of the tape, either. 

Most mysteriously, The Rock and Vin Diesel were sitting on opposite ends of the room glaring at each other wordlessly. They were each tapping their fingers feverishly, with a fervour Isla had never seen before.

“Morse code,” Sylvester Stallone said as he slid down on the couch next to her, out of nowhere. It was extremely off-putting.

“Taking a break from your puzzle?” Isla asked him.

“We got all the outside pieces into place,” he said proudly. “But I got distracted by the Morse code from Vin and Dwayne.”

“What? That’s what they’re doing?” Abigail cried. “They’re talking to each other?”

“That’s what the tapping is,” Sylvester Stallone replied. “After starring in the hit World War II epic Nazi Submarine, as the famous Nazi hunter named Jack Switchblade, I would recognize it anywhere.”

“Oh yes, I remember seeing that movie! I loved it,” Isla lied. She had not heard of the movie, she had not seen the movie, and she had not loved the movie. “I wonder how they learned Morse code. Can you tell what they’re saying?”

Sylvester Stallone paused for a few beats, listening intently. 

“I think that Vin Diesel just said, ‘I hate you.’” Stallone paused again for a moment. “Oh, I think that The Rock just called Vin Diesel a candy ass.”

“Oh,” Isla said, feeling deflated. Admittedly, she wasn’t sure what she had expected. The angry looks on their faces suggested that they definitely weren’t having a pleasant conversation. “I was hoping that relations between them were going to thaw.”

“Honestly, this is an improvement. At least they are talking to each other. They haven’t spoken directly in years.”

“I guess I’ll take it,” Isla said finally. 

She turned to face Stallone for the first time in their conversation, since she had previously been so focused on the tense Morse code exchange between The Rock and Vin Diesel. 

Stallone took a sip from his mug. Isla had made a pot of chamomile tea earlier, with hopes of soothing the frayed nerves of the group. The tea made sense; the mug did not. The bed and breakfast had plain white mugs for guests. This mug, for some reason, said “Don’t Ask Who Alan Is” in black, all caps letters on one side. 

“Where did you get that mug?” she asked him suspiciously. 

“This mug?” he said, turning it around to take a better look at it. He read the message on the mug and shrugged his shoulders. “It was just the first one that I grabbed off the counter.”

“Really?” Isla said again, in disbelief. “It was just there? How?”

They did not have any mugs with cryptic Alan-centred messages at the bed and breakfast. It just didn’t make any sense.

But Stallone had already gotten up and left her, to get back to his puzzle with Richard Gere. He left Isla alone with her questions, which included, but were not limited to: who is Alan?