• Went to the gym daily to bulk up in order to become strong and worthy of her, using “for Serena” as his concentration mantra in between reps
• Played Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” on repeat during Tabata workouts to keep his focus pure
• Casually looked up tennis scoring names on his phone just before starting conversation with her, clenching his fist and muttering to himself, “It’s love, fifteen, thirty, forty, game, you can do this, Aubrey”
• Played carnival games regularly in order to experience the feeling of constantly winning so he’d have something to talk about with her, and also a lot of stuffed animals to give her
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INT. DAY. It is early morning — the sun is coming in through the window. CHANNING TATUM is asleep in bed, one foot hanging over the edge. He is wearing oversized blue footie pajamas — NOT a Snuggie; old-fashioned footie pajamas with the buttons in the back — and snoring gently. MARK RUFFALO climbs in through the window.

MARK RUFFALO: Channing. Channing. [No response. He nudges CHANNING gently.] Hey, Channing.

[He nudges CHANNING less gently this time, who rolls off the bed and onto the floor.]

CHANNING TATUM [blearily, as if still half-asleep]: Whozzat. m’fight you. Fight you in the…face. Mmf.

MARK RUFFALO: You have to get up, Channing Tatum. We’re best friends, and today is fox-catching day.

CHANNING TATUM: Oh, shit.

[CHANNING leaps up and executes a series of flawless air kicks.]

CHANNING TATUM: Lemme just put on my good track pants. It’s time to do some…

[Screen fades to black]

FOXCATCHING

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1

It is the summer before seventh grade and that show is on every weekday afternoon at 4:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. You know that show. The one with the sensitive alien dude who was born in an egg and the girl with the rainbow hair who you wish you could be even though her best friend is invisible and she’s kind of crazy, but it’s a cute kind of crazy, and her friend turns out to be real in the end so it doesn’t matter anyway. That show. It’s in repeats right now but might come back next fall. There are only twenty-six episodes of that show so in two weeks and change you can see them all though sometimes your mom makes you go to the chiropractor for your sinus headaches so you have to tape it. The same tape, one episode over another, until the image looks like strips of soggy newsprint left out in the rain too long.

2

You do an AOL keyword search, which is what you do back then. You go on usenet, which is what you do back then. You join a letter-writing campaign, which is what you do back then. You harangue the show’s producer about the general downward spiral in the myth arc in season two, which is what you do back then.

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The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl, who was also an American, so they were both Americans, with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went on to Madrid, as was its custom.

“What should we drink?” the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.

“It’s pretty hot,” the man said. “Let’s drink beer.”

“Dos cervezas,” the man said into the curtain.

“Big ones?” a woman asked from the doorway.

“Yes. Two big ones.”

The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

“They look like white elephants,” she said. This was because they were white elephants, but she did not know that yet. The white elephants held themselves very still.

“Don’t move,” one of the white elephants said out of the corner of its mouth. “Be very quiet.”

“Shh,” said another.

“I’ve never seen one,” the man drank his beer.

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

“I might have,” the man said. ‘just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.”

The girl looked at the bead curtain. “They’ve painted something on it,” she said.” What does it say?”

“Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.”

“Could we try it?”

The man called “Listen” through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.

“Four reales.”

“We want two Anis del Toro.”

“With water? ”

“Do you want it with water?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “Is it good with water?”

“It’s all right.”

“You want them with water?” asked the woman.

“Yes, with water.”

“It tastes like licorice,” the girl said and put the glass down.

“That’s the way with everything.”

“Not particularly,” the girl said. “Lots of things don’t taste like licorice. Flank steak, for example. And mangos. Papayas. Papayas don’t taste good, but they don’t taste like licorice.”

“Oh, cut it out.”

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