Once there was a lady with a sun hat who sat on a bench in the Butterfly Pavilion in Central Park with a large tote bag. She waited for hours in the summer heat on a Sunday afternoon for her suitor.
“He told me he’d be coming,” she said to herself, sighing at his rather late arrival.
As she fanned herself, she thought about the man she was waiting for. When she couldn’t think about it any longer, she took a fashion magazine from her purse and flipped through it. It was a welcome distraction.
Then, a butterfly came and sat on her shoulder, and she spoke to the creature.
“I think I’ll call you Skipper,” she said to the winged creature. “I’ve been waiting for my gentle man,” she whispered to the butterfly. “Do you think you could find him?”
The butterfly flew around her head in circles, and her eyes followed him through the pavilion. As it grew late in the day, the twinkle lights on the ivy sparkled, and she put on a sweater.
“I know I have the right day,” the lady said, as the butterfly came and sat on her shoulder again. She looked at his bright blue and yellow colors, with a touch of red, green, and black.
“I can’t stand to wait any longer,” she said to the butterfly. “I have other things to do.”
The butterfly fluttered around her and knocked rose petals onto her lap from a nearby bush. She thought the butterfly did not want her to leave.
“Why, that was nice of you!” she said, collecting the rose petals from her sundress and putting them in her pocket. “Now, if only the gentle man would show up,” she said. “He told me he’d be here, and here I am.”
As the lady grabbed her things and stood up, a wind blew through the pavilion, and she heard a voice. She wondered how such a wind could blow through an enclosed space.
“I’ve been here all along,” said the voice in the wind, as she watched in awe while the butterfly changed into a man. She was breathless with astonishment.
The gentle man stood in the middle of the pavilion in a dark blue suit with a yellow, red, and green tie. She wasn’t quite sure what to say or how to respond.
“These are for you,” the man said to the lady, handing her a bouquet of red roses from the bushes in the garden.
“It was you all along,” the lady said to her suitor with a gasp. A group of butterflies burst into the pavilion.
Then, the gentle man took the lady’s hand, and they danced in the Butterfly Pavilion in the moonlight. Right before they danced to the last song in their minds, they both turned into butterflies and flew off together.
Copyright 2016 Jennifer Waters
LOGLINE
A lonely lady waiting for her suitor in Central Park’s Butterfly Pavilion discovers that the butterfly keeping her company is the gentle man she’s been waiting for all along.
PITCH
A woman waits for her suitor in the Butterfly Pavilion in Central Park, passing the time with a magazine as a brightly colored butterfly repeatedly lands on her shoulder. As the day grows late, the butterfly brings her rose petals, seeming to urge her not to leave. When she finally stands to go, a mysterious wind fills the pavilion, and a voice reveals that the butterfly has been the suitor all along. The butterfly transforms into a man in a blue suit who presents her with roses, and after butterflies fill the pavilion, he takes her hand. The two dance in the moonlit pavilion until, at the end of the night, they both transform into butterflies and fly away together.
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