We were both laughing when the train pulled out of Penn Station, but I didn’t really feel like laughing. I felt afraid. I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a good shepherd. I was wishing I’d told Zim about Mr. Barlow. Matthew Zimmermann had been a hero. Maybe Zim would have known how to save the snowshoer.

ACT III RULES FOR GHOSTS

30. THE WOMAN WITH THE BABY CARRIAGE

There are certain scenes from films you wish you never saw: in your mind, you keep replaying these scenes—or I do. Like those songs that get into your head, the ones you hate but you can’t stop singing.

Like most screenwriters, I keep rewriting my movies that were never made. I won’t presume to speak for other screenwriters, but I also keep rewriting certain scenes I didn’t write in the first place—even scenes from films I wish I never saw.

Am I the only one who does this? What if you wanted to be a fiction writer? What if you wrote novels, but you wanted to write screenplays, too? What if you suspected that your father had written the screenplay for a film you hated, and what if your father was in that same movie?

There are certain scenes in The Wrong Car that are in my head, like those songs I can’t stop singing. In my head, I’m in black and white, in 1956—I would have been too young to drive.

INT. GETAWAY CAR, PARKED. DAY.

The car is parked, but the motor is running. The GETAWAY DRIVER is Paul Goode (thirty); his handsomeness is not evident in the duckbill cap, a newsboy cap. A GUN MOLL sticks her pretty head into the open passenger-seat window.

GUN MOLL

Hey, what about me?

The GANGSTER in the passenger seat looks her over.

THIS GANGSTER

You gotta sit on someone’s lap.

The THREE GANGSTERS in the backseat give her a look.

ONE OF THE THREE

(points to the driver)

Not his lap. He’s gotta drive.

The gun moll takes a long look at the little driver.

GUN MOLL

(walking away)

No, thanks.

ANOTHER GANGSTER

Who’s the broad?

EXT. GETAWAY CAR, MOVING. DAY.

At a city intersection, the driver stops for a WOMAN WITH A BABY CARRIAGE in the pedestrian crosswalk.

ONE OF THE GANGSTERS (V.O.)

Just some broad.

INT. GETAWAY CAR, STOPPED. DAY.

In a hail of gunfire, the gangster in the passenger seat and the three thugs in the backseat are shot.

EXT. GETAWAY CAR, STOPPED. DAY.

The woman with the baby carriage has paused in the crosswalk while the ongoing gunfire riddles the getaway car; all four tires are shot, the car appears to slump, and gas and oil (and maybe blood) leak into the street.

CLOSER ON: the little driver sits unharmed and relaxed at the steering wheel, as if waiting for the light to change.

PULL BACK: the woman pulls a sawed-off shotgun out of the baby carriage; she approaches the getaway car as Paul Goode gets out of the driver’s-side door. He tips his duckbill cap to the woman, leaving the car door open for her. She shoots the slumped-over bodies of the dead passengers, just to make sure. Paul Goode nods to camera as he exits frame, as if the camera were one of the marksmen who ambushed the getaway car. Loose bills float through the blown-out windows of the car. Camera stays on the woman, transferring the satchels of money to the baby carriage, where she also stows the shotgun.