STRANGE

DEBBIE and JIM arrive in San Francisco to celebrate 20 years of marriage, which is to say they arrive with a plan and a problem. Debbie suspects Jim’s interest has cooled and she hopes to light a fire under him. While Jim suspects the world has moved on without him—his hairline, his job, and his relevance all slipping away in quiet agreement. Debbie hopes this anniversary vacation will help them turn a corner in their relationship, but when Jim literally turns a corner on the way to a movie, temptation or stupidity overcomes him when he is waylaid by VERONICA—beautiful, mournful, and burdened by a problem upstairs. Jim, flattered and foolish, follows her.

Inside the apartment, things unfold with the logic of a bad dream. A moan from the back room reveals BUDDY, supposedly wheelchair-bound and vegetative. Warm beer is offered. Clothes come off. Jim blacks out. He wakens to a punch in the face and Buddy—now miraculously ambulatory—rifling through Jim’s laptop. The con is revealed, though not yet its size.

Jim runs. He flags a POLICEMAN. He tells his wife nothing. He does everything wrong in the correct order.

Buddy and Veronica stay two steps ahead, feeding Debbie a gentle lie while tightening the screws on Jim. They’ve found his bond fund. They’d like access. They’re prepared to be persuasive. Jim is introduced to his new life—literally—stuffed into Buddy’s wheelchair and dragged through a series of humiliations, including a firearm-free robbery of MR. WU’s Chinese restaurant, where the only thing more dangerous than the food is Mr. Wu’s son.

A rescue attempt via the Policeman turns out to be just another layer of the con. Money begins to move. Violence begins to feel inevitable. Debbie finally spots Veronica and tackles her in public, achieving nothing except clarity: this should have never gone this far.

Bodies drop. Loyalties evaporate. Jim, bloodied but briefly resourceful, turns the tables in the only way he can—messily, painfully, and too late to keep things clean. DETECTIVE BASS arrives with Debbie as the situation detonates into a grimly comic resolution.

Jim survives. Barely. The marriage survives—changed, chastened, and wiser in the narrow sense that comes from learning exactly how little control anyone ever had to begin with. Somewhere in the wreckage, Jim realizes he has found, in fact, a new life in the old life, a great life, and he won’t ever forget it. But will Debbie?

(“Recommend” -- Baseline’s Spec Market)