The Seahearts is being written for the one and only Viggo!
We left off with BENJAMIN driving home to his own piece of music in the soft rain. He has left Wanchese and Fisherman’s Wharf. He had told CASSIE he would bring fish for dinner, but he forgot! CASSIE’S mother TINA PINKERTON has been fussing around the antiseptic kitchen in the MERMAID CASTLE baking seven boxes of Ghirardelli brownies. She can’t really cook anything so all frozen and so forth. She knows he will be coming to dinner with the fish! So she has made like 30 perverse concoctions of canned and frozen casseroles and these are waiting on the endless countertop in her kitchen.
BENJAMIN arrives at his cottage while the last strains of this song play:
The clouds have broken up into the most beautiful colored sunset out over the ocean. He is sitting in his Mercedes with top down just breathing in all the colors out to sea and smiling. I’m going to be alright, Beth. He touches one hand up to his heart as he thinks of her. I will be.
At the door to the cottage he touches both of the sea beans shaped as hearts by the weathered old door. 
The sign for the “Seahearts & Dreamers” cottage is nearly falling off its hinges. He smiles remembering all the way back to when he had been ten and his father had brought him to Nags Head for his birthday. It had been so intact then. I’ll need to fix you while I’m here, he thought. I wonder if there are any tools lying around in here, as he pushed the old French door open.
BENJAMIN COTTAGE (look but not this far gone)
The floors glimmered golden in the sunset light, and the first thing he did was to begin lighting the mariner’s lamps. The piano he had played as a child that summer so long ago, an old upright was dusty in the corner. He cleaned it off, slowly and lovingly stroking the keys. It wasn’t very long until he was playing “Chopsticks” — just the opener — the first thing he had ever learned.
He felt happy again. Off he kicked his city shoes and with great panache began to dance and slide in his socks across the polished wood of the floor in the golden late light pouring in from the bank of windows facing the sea.
Little did he know that CASSIE had heard the tinkling on the keys, and she was so excited they were finally going to have a dinner guest in the vastness of the MERMAID CASTLE that she had run across the gravel between their houses and she stood peeking in the French door at his antics. She had never seen a grown man dance. Finally she banged on the glass.
“Hey Mister.”
Benjamin turned and smiled at her. “Hello Cassie,” he waved.
“Mommy made dinner.”
“Wonderful.”
“Did you catch a fish?”
“Oh no,” he thought, placing a hand to his forehead. “Oh Cassie I forgot.”
“That’s okay.”
“Honey I’m sorry.”
“Mommy made a huge dinner, and you should see all the brownies.”
“Seven kinds?”
“We did all my favorites for you.”
“Do you think she will forgive me then?” He knelt as he said it.
Cassie nodded her head up and down smiling at him.
“What were you playing?”
“Chopsticks.”
“Can I watch?”
“Sure, can you play?”
“No, Mommy doesn’t like too much noise out of me.”
“What?”
“She always says children should be seen and not heard.”
“Cassie?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to learn to play Chopsticks?”
“Could I?”
“My dad taught me when I was your age.”
“He did?”
“On this very piano that you see.”
“You were here when you were my age?”
“I was!”
“Mommy said your house was haunted.”
Benjamin laughed as he said, “Come on, you can take a seat and watch me at first. You take that part of the bench and I’ll sit here.”
Very soon the two of them were plinking away at the keys, both of their hands moving ensemble. Cassie had never felt this happy. The two of them were bathed in golden light as the last of the sunset faded. Cassie played what Benjamin had taught her, just once before dinner, all by herself.
*mood
“I guess you can call me Benjamin,” he laughed, as Cassie grabbed his hand and tugged on it.
“Let’s go eat,” she said. “Wait til you see all the brownies!”
VALENTINE BONNAIRE - WRITER 