From tinkering with the notebook, he got to reading it, and presently a forgotten idea caught his attention. He thought about it and the idea took shape. Lennox got a yellow legal pad and soft pencils and began to block out a script, grunting and mumbling softly to himself in the low writer's grumble that only seismographs can record. Working away like that, Cooper and Lennox sounded like a duet between a peanut whistle and a cement mixer.
For the rest of the morning there was peace in the room, the old kind of peace they hadn't known in the past week. Once Cooper murmured: "Virgil, which sounds better?" He played two indistinguishable phrases and Lennox rumbled appropriately. Once Lennox grunted: "Wolfgang, which sounds better?" He read two indistinguishable phrases and Cooper keened appropriately. This was the secret of their friendship and their deep need for each other.
Creation is the loneliest work in the world, which is why most artists go stir-crazy. By some miracle of human chemistry, Cooper and Lennox were able to work together. Not only did they have companionship, a rare thing for working artists, but each was able to draw on the other's creative drive and enlarge his own. They never worked so well as when they worked together in the same room.
At 11:15, Lennox grunted and mumbled his way to the kitchen for more coffee, only to meet Cooper coming out with two cups in his hand. Lennox took one and then forgot why. With his pencil he absently shaded a moustache on Cooper's lip while Sam stood with eyes shut and hummed, unaware of his disfigurement.
"No!" Lennox exclaimed suddenly. "The whole point of the scene is that the ingénue pivots. More kissed against than kissing."
Cooper nodded to this gibberish, handed the second cup to Lennox and went back to the piano still nodding like a porcelain mandarin. Lennox returned to his yellow pad. The duet continued.
At 11:45 they met in the bathroom where Lennox added a goatee to the moustache.
At 12:30 they met in the storage closet alongside Sam's room where the cigarette cartons and stationery were stashed.
At 12:55, without a word or a sign to each other, they quit work simultaneously and became aware of themselves and the world around them. They were in the manic mood that always follows intense creative concentration.
"Good morning," Cooper said. "You're new in this ward, aren't you?"