By Carla Kelly

Lazybones that I am, I’m enjoying my current job. I’m a full-time novelist, and it’s great. I don’t make piles of money, but I make enough to stay home and write.
    My boss (moi) doesn’t mind if I wear old sweatpants to work. She never gets irritated by personal calls. She’d rather I didn’t eat at the keyboard, so I usually drink water, just to keep the old gal happy.
    Of course, there has to some discipline, working at home. What that means is I can’t spend all day watching Turner Classic Movies; at least, not until I’ve completed half a chapter for the day, or gotten my characters out of a nasty jam. Or written a column, like this one.
    I’ve observed a certain phenomenon in movies, so it’s time I gave it my attention. (Read: I’ll waste my time, so you don’t have to.) Have you noticed how every time the phone rings in a motion picture, It Always Matters?
    Case in point: On a Turner Classic Movie this morning, Barbara Stanwyck and James Cagney were having a cordial – dare I say friendly? – evening together, when the phone rang. She went into another room to answer it. When she came back, she looked as cold as an ice floe on the Weddell Sea. “You can leave now,” she said to James Cagney. Too bad for you, Jimmy.
    It’s always that way in movies. Beware the phone call – it invariably means heartbreak, agony or euphoria. Not in my house, where it’s usually telemarketers wanting to sell me something I don’t need. Gee, they’re hard to discourage, even with the Do Not Call Me Ever in This Lifetime or Beyond the Grave national registry.
    Or it might be a kid. Jeremy’s working nights on the border now, keeping you and me safe from Canadians, so he’ll call around noon to share the latest bit of government idiocy. Mary Ruth might call to describe Ruby’s latest criminal offense. (Ruby’s three; I rest my case.)
Ordinary stuff.  When the movie phone rings, look out. The polar ice cap has probably just exploded and Tom Cruise had by darn better start swimming.
I showed this column to my daughter, Sarah, and she wrote: “Be nice to see de Niro argue with some jerk who wants to sell him aluminum siding, hang up and continue to solve China’s threat to our economy.”
    Remember the ‘80s, when computers hit the movies and every motion picture seemed to revolve around messages sent or received? If there was a computer on screen, it might as well have been blinking “Plot Complication.” And how many times did the hero or villain have to figure out someone else’s password, in order to get into the computer? They always figured it out, too. And here I never thought actors were smart.
    My computer passwords are non-hackable. I always use obscure battles. Since no one reads or studies history anymore, my passwords are probably safer than atomic secrets. Oh, for sure safer than those. Besides, no one can spell Pyrrhic, anyway.  Or I use nineteenth century diseases. Phthisis, anyone?  These would never have worked in a 1980s movie, though, because some dumb actor would figure them out in seconds.
    Before telephones and computers, a favorite plot device of novelists was the letter. Jane Austen fans can testify to this, if they’ll recall how often letters play into the plot of Pride and Prejudice. And remember the bad ju-ju that starts when Bathsheba Everdene sends a Valentine to Squire Boldwood in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd?
    Yep. Look out for letters in literary classics. Sure as the world, the polar ice cap – or its nineteenth century equivalent – was about to explode. Or elope. Or profess undying love.
    And who can forget those Saturday morning TV Westerns, where Indians sent smoke signals? They couldn’t use a password, of course, and every single illiterate cowboy could read them. It was never anything as simple as “White Bear invites Clever Fox to dinner. Bring pemmican,” but usually something about a polar ice cap, or Lassie down a mine shaft.
    We novelists treasure our devices. My literary territory is usually the nineteenth century. My current manuscript begins with a surgeon receiving a letter informing him his father is alive, and a certain sea captain is married. Does it matter? You bet your life. I may be lazy as all get out, but I know a plot device when I write one.