SF Chapter 130: Divorce
Mitchell took a deep breath and began to ask, "Let's go one by one. Are there too many girls coming around?"
Berta, who had just arrived, snorted.
"Well, Alan hasn't had any since he got here," Dani pointed out.
"I can testify in favor of Alan," Berta chimed in. "He got nothing. Not whatsoever. Not a single one."
"Thank you, Berta," Alan glared at her. She simply ignored him.
Dani continued his defense. "And in these past few months, I've been very discreet with the girls I sleep with. Not even Charlie knows their names."
He finished, "So the number of girls Jake sees around here is normal for a house with three single men."
"We can do the same with drinking," Charlie commented. "Alan only drinks when he's signing his alimony check."
"But with how much you drink, Charlie," Berta interjected, "at most you can say this is a normal house of three boozers."
"Okay..." Mitchell muttered, feeling lost.
"It gets better, Mitchell," Dani reassured him. "Charlie hasn't been smoking regularly for a while now. Only during poker nights. But that's understandable - whiskey and a Cuban cigar are a must!"
"And I almost never smoke. It can affect your sexual performance. I need every single bit of that energy," he added with a smirk. "Alan, obviously, never smokes."
"About gambling, I don't let Jake bet," Charlie remarked. "At most, I gave him a taste of my action."
Alan snapped, "Charlie!"
"What? He's not going to learn the point spread, the over-under, or how to shoot craps at school."
"Okay, we really need to work on our defense," Mitchell said, taking another deep breath.
Berta chimed in again. "Let me say something, as a mother."
"You have children?" Charlie and Daniel were surprised.
"I have three."
"Three? Wow," Charlie joked, "you gotta start learning to say no, little lady."
Berta ignored him and went on. "I even have a granddaughter. But her father sent her to an all-girls boarding school in Europe years ago."
"Why?" Dani asked, curious.
"She lost her virginity to some dumb little punk on a trip she took."
"Damn. Poor girl. Losing it to a dumb punk," Dani said, feeling sorry for Berta's granddaughter.
"Poor girl? Please," Berta snorted. "According to her father, those two 'disappeared' for the entire trip and came back looking like they'd survived a cult."
"That horny little bastard scrambled her brain," she added.
"I hate those. Don't you hate those?" Charlie remarked.
Dani nodded in agreement.
The others shot them a glare, since they were exactly the kind of horny bastards they were talking about.
Berta finished the story, "So I agreed with him sending her to an all-girls boarding school. I mean, if she gets a high school diploma before she gets a baby, she'll be the first one in the family."
"Alright, that's all well and good. But can we go back to Jake?" Alan spoke sarcastically.
"Oh, about Jake," Berta said, remembering what she was going to say before getting sidetracked by her granddaughter Prudence.
"You don't have to worry about losing custody of him," she stated, looking at Alan.
"That kid is a handful. And sloppy. Just let your ex-wife take care of him for a full month, no weekends off, and you'll see her begging for shared custody."
"You can glare at her, Alan, but she does have a point," Dani shrugged.
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After talking things through, Dani and Mitchell went over to their sister's house.
Mitchell and Cam were also going to be part of the movie - one as the protagonist's friend, while the other would play the psychic Dr. Fredrichs.
While Cam and Mitchell were rehearsing with their scripts in hand, Daniel stood in the corner of the kitchen with the director and Phil.
"Your sister is a natural," the director said, praising Claire. "She plays a possessed woman like no one else."
Phil laughed at that.
"Yeah, my sister is incredible." Dani agreed. "But I don't think she'd even need to be possessed. She's scarier than any demon-possessed person!"
"Gosh, she would ground the demon that dared to possess her!" he joked.
The three of them burst out laughing.
Meanwhile, nearby, having heard everything, Claire was holding a knife with an unsettling half-smile - almost as if she were deciding who to kill first.
Mitchell walked over to his sister. "Wow, Claire, you're really in character," he gestured toward her face.
"What did you say, Mitchell?" she turned to him.
"Nothing..."
[Claire commentary]
"I'm loving making a horror movie," Claire revealed.
"The only annoying thing is that the house gets a bit messy with all the stuff we use to create the effects."
She grew a little thoughtful. "I might even ask Dani if we could do another one in the future - maybe much later on, though. After all, I need to take care of my kids!"
[Commentary ends]
[Haley commentary]
"I'm loving Mom making the movie," Haley revealed.
"She's focused and putting all her energy into it, so she hasn't been bothering us as much."
She smirked. "I even got easy points toward my car!"
The idea of Haley saving her V-card until she turned 18 in exchange for a car had pretty much been forgotten.
"We need to make Dani write another horror movie for Mom!"
[Commentary ends]
"Hey, it's really nice to see your own movie being filmed," Dani said, sitting on the couch while drinking his coffee.
Claire and Phil were filming a scene with Cam from one part of the movie.
Alex, who was, as always, studying with a book and notebook at the table, sitting next to her uncle, remarked,
"That's really strange coming from someone who's already made two movies."
"Yeah, well, I didn't take part in the filming," Dani commented.
"Uncle Dan," Luke said, coming in from the backyard.
Alex scoffed before he could say anything else. "Luke, put some pants on."
"That's what I wanted to talk about, Uncle Dan. You should make the movie take longer," Luke suggested.
"So I can walk around the house in just my shorts without Mom bothering me."
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