Book of the Month

In the fall of 1987, BOB (30s), who has always coveted his friend MERRILL (60s) for his success, life, and lifestyle, chat on their morning train commute from New Jersey to New York City. Merrill, a successful publisher, encourages Bob, a lonely widower, to submit his manuscript for a book he’s written, and soon Merrill has greenlit Bob’s book to be their next Book of the Month. Bob is elated, until he learns that Merrill has tasked STEPHANIE (late 20s) with making several substantive changes. Bob connects with Stephanie, and the two hit it off immediately. He convinces her to spend the weekend with him, rather than making painstaking changes to his manuscript. When Bob arrives at Merrill’s office, Merrill tells him Stephanie has been murdered. Merrill confesses that, years ago, he accepted money from a covert organization to keep his business afloat. In return, they said someday they may need him to insert a line into a Book of the Month – the sentence would signal to a deep cover operative in Russia to detonate a nuclear bomb that had been smuggled into Russia and hidden in the Kremlin. When Stephanie failed to make the changes to Bob’s book, it was inadvertently published with the code. Bob cannot believe this – one single sentence in his book would now be the end of the world. Fearing that he may be under watch, he transforms himself into a homeless man and meets SISTER MARGARET. He offers to take Sister Margaret, a Catholic nun stationed at St. George's Ukrainian Church in New York, abroad for a special religious conference in Kiev. Bob transforms himself into a priest to secure a visa to travel to the USSR and the two fly abroad – Sister Margaret in search of salvation and Bob in search of the covert operative, hoping to persuade the operative to not detonate the bomb. Bob arrives at the Kremlin and soon finds himself purposely shackled and bound after he tries to enter a restricted area. There, in detention, he finds the operative he has been searching for, who assures Bob that nothing will stop him from detonating the bomb. The operative’s partner DIAK dispatches the operative and helps Bob escape, but as Bob enters an alley behind the Kremlin, he is knocked unconscious by an unknown man. Bob wakes up in a familiar bedroom, which he recalls having been Merrill’s, however it has been slightly changed to become personalized as Bob’s. Bob is soon escorted to Merrill’s office where the staff address him as Merrill and all pictures of Merrill now have now been replaced with Bob’s face superimposed in them. An editor arrives with the newest manuscript for the Book of the Month. Bob picks it up and peers closely at it – it’s titled “Diak’s Consent.” Bob realizes then, he has now attained the persona, life, and lifestyle that he had coveted by literally becoming Merrill.