Our love can never be, etc.

INT.  COFFEE SHOP — LATE AFTERNOON

An ordinary, Starbucks-esque coffee shop, with late-afternoon light flooding through the windows. Fashionable young men and women drift from the door to the counter and then back, a continual ebb and flow of customers. ZACK and ZOE sit at a table by the window, talking.

Zoe seizes Zack’s hand and stares deep into his eyes.

ZOE

You mean that all this time–

ZACK

Yes.

ZOE

And you never–

ZACK

I couldn’t.

ZOE

But why not?

ZACK

I just couldn’t.

ZOE

And now, after this, after you finally tell me this, you have to go to Tasmania?

ZACK

Yes. I’m sorry.

ZOE

But why?

ZACK

Somebody has to farm the Tasmanian chinchillas.

ZOE

Let someone else do it. Let someone else farm the chinchillas so that … so that we can be together at last.

ZACK

We can never be together, Zoe.

ZOE

But why? Oh, why?

ZACK

Because with no obstacles to our love, no one would have any reason to keep watching this third-rate TV show, season after season after season.

ZOE

They’d need a whole new plot.

ZACK

Nobody in television has the guts to jump off the money train for the sake of satisfying drama.

ZOE

Damn those writers. The bastards!

ZACK

Also, I have to inform you that you have terminal cancer.

ZOE

What? Why?

ZACK

You should be more careful what you say about the writers.