NIGHT SWIMMING

Second chances.

Charlotte Clapp doesn’t look like the kind of person who would steal two million bucks from the bank where she works. But her doctor just told her that she has a year to live, and she wants to go out in style. Goodbye, New Hampshire—hello, New Orleans. Binging on beignets and mint-juleps, Charlotte listens to the soliloquies, rendered in contrived Cajun dialect, of a bartender named Henri and decides she has as much right to be happy as anyone else. Moving right along to Los Angeles, fat, plain Charlotte renames herself Blossom McBeal and buys a luxurious apartment for cash, no questions asked. After taking in the sights—Grauman’s Chinese, the La Brea Tar Pits, etc.—she spends endless lazy hours basking by the pool, splashing in the pool (where she feels blissfully weightless and free) and strikes up a friendship with Skip, the pool guy. Forlorn when he fails to show for several weeks, she swims laps. When he reappears, she’s thinner. They go to Disneyland. They have fun. But the feds are after her, in what has to be the slowest pursuit ever of a rather noticeable fugitive, and so is her doctor, who has to tell her that he made a mistake. Fortunately, by the time they do catch up with her she’s already experienced a night of memorable sex with Skip, and learned many lessons about life, not only from him but from other colorful characters as well, including an old lady named Dolly who dies and leaves her ten million. Charlotte/Blossom is—ta-da!—a celebrity at last, but will the New Hampshire judge forgive her when she stands trial? He just has to, right?

An amiable, rather babyish fantasy from newcomer Schwarz, creative director/writer of a New York ad firm.