Profiles in Solitude

Kirk Douglas meets Greta Garbo.

Scene: An old diner past midnight.
The Formica is chipped like time's teeth. The lighting hums like an old projector.
The kind of place where the pie is always available, but joy is strictly by request.

Kirk Douglas sits like a coiled spring—chin forward, jaw carved in granite by ego and effort. Across from him sits Greta Garbo, still as marble, eyes like frost watching fire. A cigarette rests between her fingers, untouched but lit, like she forgot it was real.

DOUGLAS (leans in, voice just short of a growl):
So. You really don’t want to be alone. You just want people to think you do.
GARBO (blows a thin line of smoke, eyes not leaving his):
And you want to be loved so badly, you made war look noble and lust look like poetry.
DOUGLAS:
I am poetry. Just written with a chisel instead of a pen.
GARBO (quietly amused):
Chisels break things.
DOUGLAS:
They also sculpt legacies.
GARBO:
They also chip statues into lies. You ever tire of pretending that ambition is virtue?
DOUGLAS:
Only when it doesn’t work.
GARBO:
It always works. That’s the tragedy. You get what you want, and it still isn’t enough.

A waitress refills the coffee. Neither of them touches it. The air tastes like unsaid things.
DOUGLAS:You left the game. Just walked away. When the world was throwing roses, you closed the curtain.
GARBO:
I didn’t want to be a prisoner of applause. It’s addictive, and it always ends the same: silence.
DOUGLAS (snorts):
Silence is for monks. I wanted noise. Headlines. Gasps. An entrance that echoed. A final bow with teeth in it.
GARBO:
And now?
DOUGLAS (shrugs, almost sadly):
Now I’m in a diner talking to a myth who made a career out of not needing anybody. That count as noise?
GARBO (soft, but cutting):
You played Spartacus. But you wanted to be Caesar.
DOUGLAS:
Damn right. Caesar got the credit. Spartacus got the cross.
GARBO:
And I played queens who melted, women who longed. But off-screen, I was the iceberg. Safe. Unreachable. And still they talked about me like I was a scandal waiting to happen.
DOUGLAS:
Because you never gave ‘em enough to hate. Or love. That’s what they couldn’t forgive. The mystery.
GARBO:
They didn’t want a woman. They wanted a symbol they could explain. So I became unreadable. That’s power.
DOUGLAS:
Power? Power is crawling up from nothing and slapping the industry across the face until they spell your name right in gold.
GARBO:
And then what? You win. You stand alone at the top. And find out it’s windier than you expected.
DOUGLAS:
Better to freeze on Everest than sweat in obscurity.

The jukebox groans. Plays something old and brave. A Sinatra tune maybe, but faded—like memory through fogged glass.
GARBO:Do you ever regret the roles?
DOUGLAS:
Only the ones where I was polite. I didn’t do “soft” well. I needed sharp edges, bloody knuckles, righteous rage.
GARBO:
And the roles where you were vulnerable?
DOUGLAS (quiet now):
I made those loud too. I yelled even when I cried. I didn’t know how to whisper on film. They had to feel me in the back row.
GARBO:
I whispered. And they leaned forward. That was my trick.
DOUGLAS (grins):
They leaned, sure. But did they ever touch you?
GARBO:
Only when I wasn’t looking. And I learned to stop blinking.

He finally sips the coffee. It's cold. He drinks anyway.DOUGLAS:You know, I’d have cast you in something. If we’d shared a frame. Would’ve liked that.
GARBO:
You’d have devoured me.
DOUGLAS:
Not if you stared me down first.
GARBO:
Then it would’ve been a war.
DOUGLAS:
A beautiful one. You, the untouchable queen. Me, the defiant gladiator. People would’ve felt that.
GARBO:
They wouldn’t have survived it.

Pause. Both look out the window. The world is still turning out there. Slowly, like an old reel.
DOUGLAS:They say you said, “I want to be alone.”
GARBO:
I never said that. I said, “I want to be let alone.” There’s a difference. One is solitude. The other is peace.
DOUGLAS:
I wouldn’t know the difference. I’ve been chasing applause since I had teeth.
GARBO:
And now?
DOUGLAS:
Now the applause is quieter. So I listen to it in my head. Sometimes, it sounds like screaming.
GARBO:
Mine sounds like silence. Still. Steady. Like I never left the frame.

The check arrives. Neither one reaches for it. Dead stars don’t pay tabs.
DOUGLAS:
If you came back for one scene, just one last role, what would it be?
GARBO (thinks, long and slow):
A woman reading a book on a train. Window seat. No makeup. No lines. Just… being. And the camera stays with her until the world forgets she was ever famous.
DOUGLAS:
That’s not a movie. That’s a ghost story.
GARBO:
Exactly.
DOUGLAS:
I’d come back as a man trying to make his son proud without punching anything.
GARBO:
You think you could pull it off?
DOUGLAS (half a smile):
With the right lighting, maybe.

They rise slowly. She leaves a lipstick stain on the coffee cup. He leaves nothing. Just the scent of ambition and old cologne.They exit like legends should—together but apart, framed in neon and regret.
Fade out.
Credits roll in marble and flame.