Shrubs in the Eternal City

Dear Mr. Scorsese,
I have submitted for your review excerpts from my new and arguably groundbreaking script “Chula” that chronicles the love affair between a docile former gymnastics teacher (Chula) and a crusty turret-ridden Navy man (Hank).

Excerpt 1
[Hank and Chula sit talking on the front porch swing; Hank reminisces. Chula itches her ass on account of her recent bout with an unidentifiable form of scabies]

Hank
…The ocean made me stiff (gently touching his crotch), always did, so I joined the Navy. To my mother it was inexplicable. She knew only the roar of the Penates on a dusty day. But me, I yearned like a whore to cohabit with the waves, to sail the seas, and shoot Japs [Bang!] and Japs [Bang!] and Japs [Bang!] [Bang!]. So I signed their papers, jumped on that shit of a bus and…

Chula
Hank, honey, you should’ve stuck with Jersey stoop ball. Sure you shot the Japs but that that was yesterday, today we’re old and bored; the offspring of some shadowy gravedigger. My ass is peeling off in shelves and you’re playing soda jerk in some five-and-ten war fantasy.

Hank
Well shit, there’s the religious decree! Mary Magdalene is a Judas, an itchy Judas, who would piss on a man’s vigilance to summon a dollar, a dime, to her waiting and ever sagging bosom! Well, green dollar! You take the bosom, I’ll take the rasher! It’s my heart and her… her…Tet Offensive! May the heroic verse read: Straight outta high school Bitch and Sonofabitch doff the crown of sanity for a roll in the hay!

Chula [sweetly, sincerely, gently touching Hank as she speaks]
Honey I’m parched, pass the lemonade.

Excerpt 2
[Hank takes Chula on vacation to Branson, MO. They sit lucidly on a bench in front of Baldknobbers Country Music Theater. Chula’s scabies are more easily managed]

Chula [internal monologue]
Oh Hank. If they made a four-hundred day clock I’d buy them all. Then we’d stay here forever; you the American Diplomat, me the sexy JC Penney mannequin.

Hank [internal monologue]
My ship’s run aground and Branson is my dry dock. But don’t patch the hole honey, don’t even read the manual. It is my solemn vow that we’ll never return to the world, the wolf pack, all that contrived mess of yesterday.

Chula [internal monologue]
But you would be the naughty American Diplomat, you’d stalk me through Menswear and down to the basement, my tight mannequin buttocks flashing red on your sex radar.

Hank [internal monologue]
In Branson all is quiet, truly sans the noise factor. Out there (his eyes look homeward) even the birds interpose. The damn robins, well, just like the Japs, they flit and flut about on a happy seven dwarves kind of mission: to keep me from the Eternal City. The city of happiness, all warm and held to the water by the cypress.

[A large semi-truck creeps slowly by. It has taken a wrong turn and mistakenly entered the pedestrian district. Only Chula seems to notice. Hank remains in his eternal city dream. Chula watches the truck, slightly disturbed. The text on the large semi-trailer reads “Branson Composite Trees and Shrubs”

Chula [now speaks]
Hank, what’s a composite tree?