When I discovered one house on the list was haunted I gave the real estate agent no rest until he took me there. Honestly I had to do that man’s job for him. It was raining so heavily that morning that his car was like a bathysphere.
“I want to at least look at it. Cheer up; if there are leaks we’re sure to see them.”
“That’s it.” The agent still seemed very depressed as he reached for his golf umbrella. “It’s been empty fourteen years. No modernization whatever.”
Better and better. The bathrooms and kitchens I’d been seeing were like lip-sticked hogs in toe- shoes. There might even be original paneling. Peering out of the window I could see nothing through the darkening rain. “What’s it haunted by?”
I saw his wattles quiver in battle with his chin. Was I interfering with the real estate agent’s code?
“Various things.” Unadroitly he tried changing the subject and actually selling. “It has a view of the river. And it’s a real bargain.”
“Like what things?” Not reaching for my own umbrella or putting up my hood might tempt disclosure. I saw him wondering he could talk me out of going further.
(Sigh) “Oswald Pewlett saw a fireball.”
I was entranced! Had he searched his memory for the spectre least likely to queer a deal? “There
was a fire?”
He hastened to reassure. “A green fire.cold fire that doesn’t burn.”
A Delicious! I had to see it now! I pulled
galoshes over my ivory heels. “Let’s go!”
Perched above the road, the house was reached by a corkscrew of steps. The porch was an addition, so it was full of leaks, but the house was solid as a rock. Silent. High ceilinged. Original paneling. One bathroom for seven bedrooms, a marvelous thirties kitchen with no appliances, and a single light bulb in the exact center of every ceiling. This could be fun.
The real estate agent ensconced himself by the library window with its view of the river and refused to go upstairs. “I’ve seen it,” he said, pulling his fishing hat down over his ears as if assaulted by inner rain.
Upstairs there was no fireball, but the floors were littered with little glittery shards that turned out to be flies’ wings. No flies, mind you, only their wings. Thrifty spiders, I suppose who dine on all but isinglass. Is that how fairy legends started, I wondered. Fairy wings and flies’ wings – hard to tell the difference. I’m on the side of spiders. They can have all the flies they want.
And that’s how I bought The Old Chase Place.
THREE – DELIVER US
I should never have told Arnold the place was haunted, but I couldn’t resist bragging. “It has everything,” I sang.
“Air-conditioning too, so it seems,” he groused. He was always out to ruin my good time.
“That’s just the wind off the river. A natural chill factor. And real oak, too.”
“I’m not complaining.” He couldn’t help but warm to so much wood. In the city everything is “faux”. Alas the rooms were rather small, and in strange juxtaposition. Not a rich man’s house, you wouldn’t say, but perhaps the warren of a worrier.
“This will be my study,” said Arnold. He chose the one room in the house that still had a working fireplace – the others had been fitted with hideous stovepipes. But I didn’t argue, because at last he was smiling.
We were having a picnic lunch when the Sears truck drove up with the appliances. I didn’t see the accident because in my condition, meals are serious events. If I’m going to spend all morning nauseated then I’m going to spend all afternoon eating. (And all evening sleeping it off.) So when Arnold rose to show the hirelings what a forceful homeowner he could be, I pulled the fried chicken bucket closer.
When I heard a crunch and a hoarse cry I did run to the window. The ramp had fallen off the steps, tossing the refrigerator and pinning a delivery man. His mouth was open – I could see blood – and he was gasping for air. He reminded me of the fish my uncle caught on his
many unsporting ventures into the wild. He loved watching creatures die. He once presented me with a still- beating fish heart, saying, “It’s only the stupidest that go on living after they are really dead.” The fish, the headless running chickens — I guess the joke was on them, if they didn’t know they were dead. But the delivery man was not dead; we all affirmed the fact.
There was a flurry of activity while the driver jumped into the truck to call for help – we didn’t have a phone yet and cell phones don’t work out here. The fire and rescue truck arrived after about ten minutes to take over. Arnold had to help the second delivery man move in the appliance. “Get a camera,” he hissed.
He wanted me to take pictures of the ramp and the steps to show, although our porch was in sorry condition, it was the ramp anchoring that was at fault (them) and not the steps (us). That’s because it’s so important in life to figure out whose fault everything is.
“He’ll be all right,” I offered. “He had a lot of meat on him.”
“Jesus, Sharl,” said Arnold, “I heard his bones go crunch.” And that was the end of that picnic.
At least I had a brand new oven, refrigerator, dishwasher and washer/dryer. I went back to applying the coat of dark green paint to make the room picture-perfect. Hunter green for Hunter (boy or girl); a super-infant guaranteed to make all his mother’s dreams come true.
Andrew looked up from the Food section of the Sunday Times. “Did he jump out of his coffin and give everybody the finger?”
“No.” I sat down on a Brazilian leather cube impersonating a chair. “He left me a lot of money.”
That made Arnold sit up straight. Finally I had produced something worthy to compete with three- melon risotto. “How much?”
“A lot.” Two beats. “All of it.”
I hadn’t seen Arnold this excited in a long time. “This is the uncle we never once went to visit, even though he only lived in New Rochelle?”
“He’s the one.”
“And there are a lot of other relatives…” I saw the penny drop. “Is this the same guy who used to feel you up when you were little?”
“He’s the one.”
Arnold whistled. “Wow!” he said, “Break out the champagne! Let’s drink to old fashioned Calvinist guilt!”
But I couldn’t drink. “There’s an unpaid
housekeeper who says she’ll sue.” I tried dismissing that
ugly scene from my mind. But ugly scenes don’t go so easily.
“Screw her,” he laughed, “Doubtless the old man did. To the one who got away!” he snorkled. “With…” drum-roll on the glass coffee table… “all the money!”
“I could split it with her,” I said thoughtfully. “Except that I need it all.” And if I divorced Arnold, I’d have to split it with him.
His eyes narrowed over my unusual decisiveness. “Sounds like you’ve made a plan.”
“I have. I’m pregnant and I’m moving.”
He rose to pursue me to the kitchen. I was the pursued one now.
“Rich? Pregnant? Moving?” He banged his palm against his chest. “It’s a lot to handle for one afternoon. Where are you going, oh helpmeet?”
“Upstate. The country.” There was no champagne. Of course not. There had been nothing to celebrate for so, so long. I poured us each an apple juice. “You could come with.” Two beats. “But you’d have to give up your girlfriend.”
Surprise! I saw him try to toss it off and keep on dancing. “What’s that? Getting jealous are we? Symptomatic of your condition?”
“Gayle.” I leaned forward, giving back the name. “She sent me such a charming letter.” In which she stated her utter non-comprehension of why the moody bitch wouldn’t just step aside and let the poor, kind, considerate man go free. Ugh. Apple juice is disgustingly sweet. I’ve never understood how adults can covet the provinces of children. Poor little sugar addicts, they are ruined before they start. I tried adding powdered tea from a mix. Still bad. The no-liquor lifestyle is a tough sell.
He was sputtering like a damp firecracker. But it was not Arnold’s turn to speak.
“Screwing students is the beginning of the end for a teacher. You’re lucky she notified me and not the superintendent.”
Unfortunately I could always read Arnold’s mind. He really needs to get some more interesting thoughts. I saw him deciding he’d better stop aimless denial until confronted with the evidence against him.
“Why upstate?” he bartered, testing me. “Why not, say, Europe?”
“Because,” I answered, “I like to get something for my money.” That alone made me my uncle’s worthy heir. Glittering silver dollars lit the darkened rooms of memory. I persisted — for I’m nothing if not persistent — “Haven’t you heard of the curse of the lottery winner? They spend it all and then some. I want a property I can buy outright – debt-free.” Wouldn’t it be heaven owing nobody nothing?
He toddled toward the window on his be- jeaned insect legs. He looks much better in big-boy pants. Was he trying to imagine life without me? Or without New York? So I sealed the deal with a siren song. “You could finish your screenplay…”
They’re not letting anyone in. Do you know who lives in Room 824?
JAZZ
Actually, I live there.
SOLIZ
Oh, you do, do you? Well, some guy fell out your window.
JAZZ
Just like your dream!
SOLIZ
(threateningly)
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
CHASE
Some guy? Who?
SOLIZ
Unidentified. You can’t see him, he’s under a tent.
CHASE
Can’t Jazz collect her stuff?
SOLIZ
Come back later. It’s chaos over there.
(SOLIZfrees them from tape; JAZZandCHASElurch off downstage)
JAZZ
This is Soliz’s dream. I remember if she doesn’t.
CHASE
Except this was a guy.
JAZZ
Let’s hope it was Bex.
CHASE
So now you’re pro-violence?
JAZZ
Who’s saying I pushed him? It would be so unlike me.
CHASE
So, no going home for you.
JAZZ
Hadleigh was never my home.
CHASE
Well, you can camp out at my place while we figure out what to do with this new corpse.
JAZZ
Makes me harder for Bex to find. On the other hand when he does, he’ll just get madder.
CHASE
We’ve got enough problems without worrying about satisfying his unsatisfiable psyche. We’ve got three dead bodies!
JAZZ
And God knows how many crime scenes. Explain exactly why soulmating requires detective work?
CHASE
Maybe nature is one big crime scene. Red of tooth and claw.
JAZZ
You and your classical education.
CHASE
Voilã! Here we are at my place.
SCENE VIII – Lights go up on CHASE’S APT – disheveled male bedroom/kitchenette
JAZZ
This is definitely a crime scene.
(Throws herself into a low-slung chair)
CHASE
(Sitting close)
You expected harp music? Hey, you admitted your life was a crime scene too.
JAZZ
I guess I thought the point of soulmates is all the hard work would be magically be done.
CHASE
So no going over the past trying to understand and explain the mess? Wouldn’t that be nice!
JAZZ
Why can’t we just escape the mess? The mess would no longer matter. We could rise above the mess.
CHASE
Your fantasy forgets about the demons. If we’ve unleashed demons –
JAZZ
Who’s to say we unleashed them? I’m not responsible for Bex.
CHASE
Yet he’s out there, rampaging. At least I know I’m responsible for Corso.
JAZZ
But Corso’s using your involvement to keep his rampage going. Oh. Touché. I see what you mean.
CHASE
We’re dissociating. Living each other’s nightmares.
JAZZ
At least we’re braving hell together.
(they touch hands)
CHASE
If it’s purgatory, graduation’s a possibility.
JAZZ
We’re on a multiple universe scavenger hunt!
CHASE
A time and space jigsaw puzzle!
JAZZ
We need to get to the crime scene before the crime happens.
CHASE
How would we know it was a crime scene?
JAZZ
Tell me what you know. What Corso did to you.
CHASE
God! You know I don’t want to talk about it.
JAZZ
What specifically are you afraid will happen if you talk about it?
CHASE
That this whole thing would shatter right in front of me. I would wreck – whatever this is happening between us.
JAZZ
Maybe we’re meant to reveal, not repair, each other’s real selves.
CHASE
Let’s talk about your fears and malfeasance. That’s more fun for me.
JAZZ
Somebody increased power by sucking out ours. We’re going to reclaim it. Tell your soulmate what Dr. Corso did to you.
CHASE
If you know, aren’t you ruined too? How can I stay with someone who knows this disgusting thing about me?
JAZZ
I guess we’ll just have to see. We need to free ourselves to be with each other.
CHASE
But there’s the difference, right there – you left Bex, I pursued Corso. I came after him.
JAZZ
You are so competitive. If you need to be “worst”, prove it.
CHASE
He was a teacher at my choir school. Latin, of all things. We spent an eternity on the Aeneid. God, I hate talking about this. I haven’t talked about it since I was fifteen, with the lawyers and judges.
JAZZ
He molested you?
CHASE
Between my ninth and thirteenth years. He had a way of making us compete to be “the favorite”. If you could just get on that easy street, life became golden. Finally I saw what a prisoner I was. Mustered up the courage to get the hell out of there.
JAZZ
Jesus.
CHASE
Great pillow talk, huh? And that’s not the worst of it.
JAZZ
How could it get worse?
CHASE
I brought him other boys. Whatever he wanted.
JAZZ
You were a kid. None of this could possibly be your fault.
CHASE
Yet here I am. Still a slave.
JAZZ
But you found your soulmate.
(They hug)
How did it end?
CHASE
It hasn’tended. I mean, the sex thing ended when Corso met my sister – my twin sister – and decided he was ready to branch out. He was like, deliver her or else. That woke me up. I went home and refused to go back to school. I finally told my parents.
JAZZ
And?
CHASE
They pretty much behaved the worst they possibly could. First, they didn’t believe me. My dad has always been a total bastard making fun of me for singing in a high voice and wearing a lace collar and Mom was sort of a “the church can do no wrong” nut. You know, like, who are you going to believe, a priest or your own lying eyes? They just couldn’t take it in. Butthena kid at school hanged himself and things started to snowball. Corso got kicked out. People started suing. My dad smelled a payday. The other families accepted settlements not to squeal. Everybody settled except my father. He was holding out for the Big Money that was going to make all his dreams come true.
JAZZ
Then what?
CHASE
What always happens with my Dad. He was having such a good time holding the whip, he waited too long. The minute I turned sixteen, I got legally emancipated. I could prove that Dad was hitting me – I had the sense to record him – so the judge refused to give Dad the cash. Dad declared bankruptcy and I finished high school on my own. Living at the Y.
(Restless pacing)
So on top of everything else, I’m singlehandedly responsible for the destruction of my family.
JAZZ
Scapegoating. People need someone to blame, it’s another form of hostage-taking. This isn’t your fault. Time to forgive yourself.
Here’s more fodder for my theory that reality is totally submerged – it’s never what you think you see.
JAZZ
Sounds deep.
(CHASE plays with his phone, paws through lists, makes a choice, phone to ear)
CHASE
Uh oh.
JAZZ
What gives?
CHASE
Howk’s work phone at the Health Center is disconnected.
(Paws through more lists, tries another number)
And her voicemail is full. I’m listening to it now.
JAZZ
You’re listening to her voicemail?
CHASE
Default pincode. Most employees never change it. Sounds like she didn’t show up Friday and they can’t get hold of her.
JAZZ
That’s not good. Any calls from Corso?
CHASE
Not one. And that’s not good either. Let’s try something else.
(Fingers phone)
She lives at Punch Drunk Apartments. Punch Brook’s it’s name but Punch Drunk’s more appropriate to the lowly adjuncts.
JAZZ
Poor Howk.
CHASE
Not answer there either.
(Stands up)
It’s a five minute walk.
(They walk to the edge of the stage. BEX darts out, snaps a picture of them)
JAZZ
Kiss me, quick.
(Throws herself into CHASE’s arms for a long smooch. BEX exits.)
SCENE VI – HOWK’s APARTMENT
CHASE
How’d you do that?
JAZZ
Giving Bex material for his revenge porn site.
CHASE
Not what I mean. How’d we get here so fast?
JAZZ
You said it was a short walk.
CHASE
Not that short. You kissed me.
JAZZ
You liked it.
CHASE
You triggered a flashback. Maybe we’re dreaming. Maybe we’ve fallen into some weird wormhole vortex thing.
JAZZ
Ugh. Just one more crime scene. What happened here?
(She pushes a door, it falls down)
Is this even true?
CHASE
Maybe it’s meta-truth. Super-truth.
(Furniture thrown around, plants and upholstery dismembered)
Somebody had fun.
JAZZ
Why’s the multiverse such a nasty place? And what’s all this pink stuff?
CHASE
Looks like insulation. Somebody searching for something.
JAZZ
Well, they must have found it. The bedroom’s untouched.
CHASE
I don’t believe it. There’s no body?
JAZZ
I didn’t see one.
CHASE
Did you look under the bed?
JAZZ
You look under the bed! I’m opening this closet!
(Disgusting corpse falls out, suspended mid-air)
Aaargh!
CHASE
That’s Howk all right. She looks – drowned. And her skin’s all eaten off with some kind of acid.
JAZZ
I’m getting out of here. Everywhere we go is death.
CHASE
Smells like Corso. That’s Corso’s M.O. Find out what’s alive and kill it. He stinks of sulfur. My guess is he was searching for whatever she held over him. Better get the drop on him before he comes after us.
JAZZ
Maybe that sex tape?
CHASE
But that’s over at his place.
JAZZ
Maybe we’re going backwards and forwards in time. A U-turn in the multiverse.
CHASE
Maybe he killed Howk and hid her body. Remember Zane’s dream?
JAZZ
The abandoned warehouse? The toxic condemned site?
CHASE
Perfect place to stash a corpse. People are afraid to enter. Very Corso.
JAZZ
OK you solved this one. God, you’re competitive.
CHASE
History is moving us forward. It has to.
JAZZ
This just isn’t what the Tibetan monks promised me. The moment we considered love, death was everywhere.
CHASE
I prefer Dante. Dante’s my guide. He says you go through hell to get to heaven.
JAZZ
Dante! Weird subject for psych majors!
CHASE
There’s a lot about me you don’t know. You need a firm grip on purgatory to understand law.
JAZZ
I think I’m coming down with something.
CHASE
You’re coming down with me. Kiss me.
JAZZ
(Fending him off)
What if I’m infectious?
CHASE
If you’re my soulmate I’m hoping you’re infectious. Maybe I could get back my soul.
JAZZ
Where’d it go?
CHASE
Taken hostage.
JAZZ
By –
(Their kiss triggers police car lights & sirens)
You’re right, I feel better.
CHASE
Sirens when we kiss – that’s a first for me.
(They kiss more)
JAZZ
Are they after us or our crime scene?
CHASE
We’re after them. Look where we are.
JAZZ
This is my dorm! Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
CHASE
Let’s kiss forever.
SCENE VII – Outside Hadleigh, FRESHMAN DORM
(Enter SOLIZ, dressed like a security guard, stringing crime scene tape)
SOLIZ
Hey! Watch your step! Respect my perimeter! O, hi guys.
(They can’t step away – tape impedes)
JAZZ
What the hell happened here?
SOLIZ
Nobody knows. Keep moving.
JAZZ
But this is my dorm! I live here!
SOLIZ
They’re not letting anyone in. Do you know who lives in Room 824?
JAZZ
Actually, I live there.
SOLIZ
Oh, you do, do you? Well, some guy fell out your window.
Back in DREAM LAB – CORSO calling with baton and headphones)
CORSO
Children! Come back! Playtime is over! Wake up, children! Don’t get lost in NeverNeverLand!
(CORSOconductsFlight of the Valkyrie. JAZZandCHASEare sucked apart to opposite sides of the stage. Lowlights come up on Dream Lab. CHASEfalls back on his recliner. Other students thrashing and moaning. JAZZ falls to floor, CHASEstruggles to her side to help her up)
JAZZ
(Retching)
I think I saw death.
CHASE
And I saw the face of evil.
CORSO
(Appearing with a roll of paper towels and a bucket of water bottles – lights up all the way, music down)
Rough sleep?
CHASE
Yeah. But was worth it.
CORSO
I’m talking to Miss Suzino. Gave yourself a bloody nose there, sport.
(CORSOhands out bottles of water)
JAZZ
(feels her face)
I did? Is it my blood?
KOO
I’m definitely going to throw up.
CORSO
First times are always the worst times. Care for a basin?
KOO
No, I want a bathroom.
(Staggers off futon, SOLIZ reaches out to her)
SOLIZ
I’ll help her.
(They lurch off behind Ladies Locker)
CORSO
Any more foreheads require mopping? Allow me to audition my Florence Nightingale impersonation. I’ve been universally praised for my bedside manner.
JAZZ
(Mopping herself)
Maybe I’m the one who died.
CORSO
Forget the safe word?
RAD
There’s a safe word? Now he tells us.
CHASE
How about “Stop”. Or “No”?
CORSO
The problem with that is behind the fear lies the wish.
CHASE
Behind the wish lies the demon. So there is no safe word.
CORSO
How about “I quit”? Is that what you’re trying to say, Mr. Quinn?
CHASE
You first.
CORSO
(They glare at each other. Horrible retching noises from locker room)
Now, now, now. Just when we were getting along so well.
(ZANEhas stood up and is lurching around as if sleepwalking.)
CORSO
Mr. Braden, assist your colleague back to his launching pad.
(RADstands up, goes toZANE, wakes him, and leads him to his futon to sit.SOLIZbrings a green-facedKOO out of the Ladies’)
RAD
My name is Borden.
CORSO
Now wasn’t that fun? Good times. Upchucking can hardly be an unusual experience for you, Miss Loflin.
SOLIZ
Don’t give her so much next time. She’s little. She can’t get the same dose as everyone else.
CORSO
I wish the guinea pigs would stop wrestling with me for control of this experiment. I make the decisions around here. The doctor knows what he’s doing.
SOLIZ
Sorry.
CORSO
Now I posit the ultimate question. Anybody “fly”? Did we achieve liftoff?
SOLIZ
I think I fell. It seemed so real. Maybe it was only a dream.
CORSO
Only a tear in the fabric the universe, a burp from the hippocampus, a haiku from the collective unconscious, an oracle of future empowerment? Speak to us, Miss D’Accosta. Tell us everything.
SOLIZ
(Stands up to act out events she describes)
I was in the elevator at Hadleigh – for some reason I was in a big hurry. I remember looking at my watch but my watch had stopped. It was an analog watch without any hands.The elevator opened on the top floor and I rushed out. All these people were staring at me and they started to laugh. I realized I was naked. I couldn’t get back in the elevator – the doors had melted. The floors were melting and the whole building lurched to one side. I panicked. I was thrown against people and I hate people touching me but I was helpless. No soulmates, just a gang. I’m scared of gangs. They were herding me. But there was the window so I jumped right through, thinking, maybe I can fly. I felt the glass tearing apart my body. At first I felt this great release. A sense of excitement. Like I can do anything I want, like I got away with it. I was trying to move my arms and legs – it seemed like slo-mo – so I pumped and pumped – moving more frantically – but I knew all along it wouldn’t work. It doesn’t work with swimming. You’ve got to find the peaceful center but there was no peaceful center. So I fell – knowing you’d be disappointed and maybe flunk me but hoping my crushed body could tell the scientists something. That second before I hit I was – it was the most disgusting feeling – suspended, staring at the chalk outline where I my corpse would be. I remember thinking, “I hope we get a second chance” but all I heard was laughter. Others were getting it. Others were doing it. Splat! Face-first into the pavement. I felt my face pushed into my brain, my spine crumbling– body turning inside out, I became “the visible woman” with her organs on the outside. That was right before my organs exploded like water balloons and there was nothing left. I was completely gone and so there was nothing left to go to heaven, no welcoming light, no happy faces. Just sadness and loss; a night of blackout drinking. That couldn’thave been an out of body experience. It was more like a nightmare. Right?
(SOLIZ’s face is sweaty, anxious. CORSO, hand to chin, considering)
CORSO
A classic shame dream. You felt humiliated by your naked body – a very nice body I might add – as if by some unwilling revelation of your essential self. A common anxiety dream, I assure you. Hampered by cultural imperatives your attempted “escape” was disguised as self-punishment; you “looked down”, ergo tumbled and fell. Almost Greek in its simplicity. I especially liked the note about the handless watch. Very Dali-esque.
RAD
I’m all for naked dreams.
JAZZ
Our naked selves aren’t our essential selves.
CORSO
(Looking at her very displeased. Those guinea pigs again)
How so, Miss Suzino?
JAZZ
I mean, everyone’s naked body is alike. Choices reveal our essential selves.
CORSO
Spoken like a fashion major. How jejeune.
CHASE
I know what she means. It’s why people get tattoos.
CORSO
Says a tattooed denizen of the underclass.
ZANE
Everybody’s naked body is not alike! I wish!
RAD
(Trying so hard to be ZANE’s buddy)
Right! I mean, if only!
JAZZ
I mean generally.
CORSO
We split hairs. Nevertheless you expose the dangers of word selection, Miss D’Accosta. Forget “flying”. Who went elsewhere? Absolutely elsewhere? Just tell me that.
(JAZZshakes head impatiently and crabwalks out of Dream Lab down the steps toward audience.
JAZZ
Where is this place? It smells like death. The end of everything.
(A dead body falls from rafters ands hangs by its elbows obstructingJAZZ’s path – she struggles with it)
JAZZ
Hey! Watch where you’re going! Get out of my way!
(Feels up the body in a panicked way)
JAZZ
Oh, my God, I’m so sorry! Did I bump into you? Are you all right? Are you OK?. What’s wrong?
(She wrestles & dances with swinging corpse, batters it like a punching bag. EnterCHASE who pulls her away. His eyes are open)
CHASE
What is this – a morgue? Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.
JAZZ
(Can’t leave her partner)
Someone died and I’ve gone blind.
CHASE
You’re notblind. Open your eyes. Just don’t look behind you.
(Turns her, kisses her. She resists at first, then leans into him as the kiss deepens. She opens her eyes, feeling his face)
JAZZ
It’s you.
CHASE
What are you doing in a morgue?
JAZZ
This is the basement.
(Turns, sees corpse)
Aaagh!
CHASE
Leave her. She’s past help.
JAZZ
Did she fall?
CHASE
Not with her head bashed in. Come on. We’re urgently required elsewhere.
(Hustles her past the orchestra pit and back up on stage)
JAZZ
Shouldn’t we call somebody?
CHASE
We’ve got to keep moving. Something’s stalking us.
JAZZ
That’s just my boyfriend. He won’t go home. Keeps threatening me.
(Grabbing CHASE frenziedly)
Maybe the dead body is me!
CHASE
It’s some old lady past her sell-by date.
JAZZ
Where are you taking me? Won’t we get into trouble for leaving? Where are we?
(SCENE III – Lights go up on CORSO’s APARTMENT set. Doorstands between JAZZ, CHASE anda room of bed, bureau, chairs. Ambiance created by candles, tossed books and clothes)
JAZZ
Where did this come from? Did we like – soul travel?
CHASE
(laughs)
Maybe that bastard Corso really hit on something! The irony – you can’t imagine. Flying! Couldn’t you feel it? While we were kissing.
JAZZ
All I know is you dragged me somewhere I don’t want to be. Where is this? YUCK! Smells like old socks in here.
CHASE
Better than your morgue. This is Corso’s place.
JAZZ
How do you know?
CHASE
I helped him move in.
JAZZ
But why are we here? Is lab over? Maybe we won’t get paid.
CHASE
(Opening drawers and tossing clothes and papers)
There are more important things than money.
JAZZ
Said by someone who obviously has some. Are we dreaming?
CHASE
Together? In my dream you would be more cooperative.
JAZZ
And in my dream you wouldn’t waste time dragging me to Professor Corso’s bachelor hideaway.
CHASE
We’re real. It’s Corso’s razzle-dazzle that isn’t real.
JAZZ
Why? How do you know? I need that money and those credits.
CHASE
The closer you get to it the further it will recede.
JAZZ
You don’t talk like a soulmate. I don’t think you care anything about me.
CHASE
I don’t know you. I’ve got obligations, is all.
JAZZ
You’re wasting precious dream time pawing through Dr. Corso’s private stuff when we should be getting to know each other.
CHASE
In my experience opportunities like this are one time only.
JAZZ
It just doesn’t feel the way I expected.
CHASE
Don’t be so self-referential.
JAZZ
You literally CAN’T be my soulmate. I thought Corso lived on a farm in the country.
CHASE
His wife kicked him out.
JAZZ
She did? Aren’t you going to have to put everything back?
CHASE
He’ll never prove it was us – we’ve got the perfect alibi.
JAZZ
Why is my soulmate a criminal? Lucky me. I really can pick ‘em. So what are you searching for?
CHASE
Evidence. What he’s really up to. Don’t ever believe the magician’s misdirection. He’s the king of mind games. Look at this.
(Flourishes paper)
JAZZ
What’s that?
CHASE
Bankruptcy filings! Divorce filings!
JAZZ
What’s THAT have to do with anything?
CHASE
A desperate Corso is a dangerous Corso.
(Throws her a scrapbook)
See if there’s anything in here.
JAZZ
(Studying the pictures)
“First mass, 1978!” He did say he used to be a priest.
CHASE
True. Imagine Corso absolving people!
JAZZ
He told me the church expelled him.
CHASE
True again. The best lies always contain some truth.
JAZZ
For falling in love, he said.
CHASE
Bzzz! Not! Lie!
JAZZ
No pictures of his wife in here. I wonder what she looks like. All these pictures are of him.
CHASE
The prince of fauxmance cares only about himself. He married her for cash. Look, here’s a picture of you. You must be his type.
JAZZ
That’s Bettie Page. People are always saying I look like her. I ‘ve never worn a leopardskin bra. He certainly was a buck-toothed, buzz-cut wunderkind. Must have had work done.
CHASE
Sold his soul to the devil, is what happened.
JAZZ
If this is astral projection – how come I still have a body?
CHASE
(Looks up briefly)
You don’t like your body? I like your body.
JAZZ
That’s not it…I just figured we’d be essences. I was looking forward to floating around like an essential spirit.
CHASE
But how would we recognize each other? Dante recognized the spirits that he saw in hell and heaven. Makes sense to me. All things considered, I’d rather have a body to experience things with.
JAZZ
I get that. But why do some bodies wind up dead? I keep thinking about that poor old lady –
CHASE
(Still looting)
Here’s a restraining order. He’s not allowed to come within a thousand feet of Evangeline Corso.
JAZZ
Wow. Have you ever met Mrs. Corso?
CHASE
Twice. She was very nice the first time. Obviously older than him, but an interesting talker. But the second time she started screaming about eco-terrorism, about how something was poisoning her, how she was suddenly allergic to everything. He had to pull her off me.
JAZZ
Corso, you suspect?
CHASE
Big time. He’s the only terrorist I know.
JAZZ
You can add Bex to that list.
CHASE
I doubt he equals Corso’s sheer lethality.
JAZZ
Give him time. You really have it in for Corso.
CHASE
He had it in for me.
(The TV has its back to us. When CHASE bumps it, blue light flickers on)
JAZZ
Look at this. Seems like Corso and the Howk are having a Thing.
CHASE
Are you surprised? She really throws down, if you know what I’m saying.I was there at the same time as Soliz and she came on to both of us.
JAZZ
Some people are like that. It’s all performance art.
CHASE
This look like performance art to you?
(JAZZjumps)
JAZZ
That’s disgusting! Turn it off.
(TV off)
Nobody really wants to be strangled. That must be a performance, for sure. Because don’t we know she’s still alive?
CHASE
Do we?
JAZZ
(She sits down on bed to watch him loot)
Think we’ll remember this when we get back to normal?
CHASE
I’m pretty sure you and I have different definitions of normal. I can’t tell you what will happen. I’m a first timer, too. We have to play it the best we can.
JAZZ
If this is a dream, maybe we’re making it up as we go along.
CHASE
If you’re not a psychology major, you don’t know about the maze-solving worms.
JAZZ
(JAZZputs chin on hand)
You’re right. Never heard of it. Do tell.
CHASE
They taught these worms to solve complex mazes, you know, by giving them rewards. And then they ground them up and fed them to these otherworms.
JAZZ
What a mean thing to do!
CHASE
Except the new worms knew the maze first time.
JAZZ
So that proves…what?
CHASE
Memory is chemical.
(Taps his head)
JAZZ
So Corso’s going to grind us up and feed us…to the alternates?
CHASE
Trust me. He would if he could.
(Pulling out drawers. JAZZ tosses CORSO’s messy sheets)
JAZZ
I can’t believe we’ll get away with this.
(Jumps to her feet)
Yuck! I’m wet. I sat in their wet spot! It’s blood!
(Looks in a panic at her hands, wipes them on her pants, touches her cheeks, increasingly upset.)
Yuck, yuck, yuck! There’s blood on this sheet and now it’s on me!
CHASE
Sssh. You’re not really here.
JAZZ
You just said we were!
(She throws the papers he’s gathering in the air, he grabs her and starts kissing her)
Now you’re getting it on you.
CHASE
I’m getting you on me. I’m starting to think you really are my soulmate.
JAZZ
(Kissing him back)
So please get me out of this disgusting place.
CHASE
I’m sorry I’m so bad at this. It’s just that I can never forget.
A trial is a cutaway of its time and place, a look not just into mores and modalities but secrets and sewage. Two of the most interesting trials I have seen – and I watched every day – were Beth Carpenter’s trial in New London, CT and Michael Peterson’s in Raleigh, N.C. (both 2002, both for first degree murder.)
Each trial exposed the inner workings of a family (two families in the Carpenter case) and were so enormously influential for me that I wrote fiction about them.
Both trials revealed levels of shocking hypocrisy so deep we could have been in Victorian London; these accused would do anything to get what they wanted while maintaining social appearances.
At the time of his wife’s death Michael Peterson was gay sexting on hotmilitarystud.com; and although he insisted his wife knew about his affairs her daughter (who lived with them) did not think so. But the real shock in this case was that an identical death was exhumed from his past – another woman who died on bloody staircase. Both skulls revealed seven blows to the top of the head.
The first woman’s daughters – whom Peterson acquired along with her assets – thought she had died of an aneurysm. What would it feel like to see their mother’s real skull revealed in court for all the world to see? That was the genesis of Depraved Heart, though I changed everything else to create my own world.
In the Carpenter case, Beth came from a family of strivers who felt soiled and humiliated by their other daughter’s marriage to a part time stripper tow truck driver. Beth was accustomed to ordering her boyfriends around – two of them testified that she took over their cars and bank accounts as soon as they showed interest. Her boss, Hayman Clein, a successful Connecticut real estate attorney, fell for her attractions and became her virtual slave. When she asked him to find her a hit man, he offered up his coke dealer – and the three of them went down for the crime. That this simple ask keeping her own hands clean made Beth a murderer too is something she should have known – she also was a lawyer.
I used aspects of her overpowering character to create my Queen of Swords.
It’s a truism that real life needs to be toned down for fiction: no one would believe it.
(Leonard & Virginia Woolf in the Conservatory at Dalingridge Hall)
VIRGINIA If only I could trust you.
LEONARD You can.
VIRGINIA But these drugs turn my brain to cotton wool. There’s a pattern behind the cotton wool, if only I could find it. Did you know the Duckworths, that incestuous race, were cotton merchants? Coining money from the cotton wool that packs me now. If only I could fight back! But my will is so fragmented. My theory is that we all live so dishonestly, unconsciously, disconnected and detached. You are such a stranger! Everything about you is different. That must be why I married you.
LEONARD Tell me everything, Virginia. Tell me what you fear, so we can kill it.
VIRGINIA Where does one begin? Last night I looked in the mirror beneath a pitiless light and suddenly a dreadful animal face showed itself behind me. He bellowed, he stared, his nostrils flared. The pig’s snout broke the mirror until my thighs ached. How could one forget the thrusting of that ugly snout, the snout that meant starvation, pain and death? The purple foaming stain. Somehow it was all my fault. Roars of laughter at my expense. Dream or was it a memory? All that’s left is hopeless sadness. Being dragged down into a pit of absolute despair. Powerlessness. Paralysis. That’s what I remember.
LEONARD Begin at the beginning.
VIRGINIA The beginning is insomnia. I lie awake at night listening to a senile old man gasping, croaking vile indecencies. I thought it was Father, having a fit of the horrors. But the nurse said it was only a cat. Or perhaps the beginning was the whooping cough. I think I knew happiness before I became so ill. The grownups laughed with me, not at me. Whooping cough steals the breath – none of us could breathe. The atmosphere was tangled, matted with emotion. All the children came down with it, all of us gasping. Mother ran from bed to bed until her skin was paper thin and the bones stood out. I used to wonder if Mother had traded my life for hers, until I remembered she preferred the boys. Women serve, men are served.
LEONARD But all of you recovered.
VIRGINIA They threw me into a tank with Gerald, the alligator. Drowning. I knew I must not sink. Couldn’t get my head above the whirlpool.
LEONARD Go on.
VIRGINIA They covered the mirrors when Mother died. I was thirteen. Vanessa was sixteen, Thoby fifteen. Stella was twenty-five, quite grown up. George was twenty-seven, Gerald twenty-four. Adrian was twelve. No one told me what was happening. I was taken to her bed to say good bye but Mother seemed reproachful, so condemning and stern. She said, “Hold yourself straight, little Goat.”
LEONARD Why were you called Goat?
VIRGINIA I was Goat because I couldn’t control my purple rages. The others hated that he talked to me and gave me books. He didn’t allow Stella to read Cousine Bette but said it couldn’t harm me, because I had read Gibbons on the fall of Rome.
LEONARD Did everyone have nicknames?
VIRGINIA Adrian was Wombat, Nessa was the Saint. Thoby was the Goth because he fought. Mother advised self-control to everyone but Father. My mother had two characters, I think. Her real self, and the Angel in the House. Stifler and the life-giver. And to this day I have the oddest feeling that I’m two people, too.
LEONARD Are you talking about the poet Coventry Patmore’s Angel in the House?
VIRGINIA Yes. Wasn’t she so popular? Singing, “Sacrifice. Sacrifice yourself.” I caught her by the throat and killed her. It was self-defense. I had to kill her or she would have killed me.
LEONARD Your mother died of pneumonia, Virginia. Don’t feel guilty, Children are disgustingly violent, every one of them. It’s a wonder anyone lives to grow up. I’ve decided brute strength is the enemy of thought – that’s why bullies rule and why we must all be pacifists and abjure force, even though it goes against our natures. Tell me, was this “angel” thing why Nessa was called Saint?
VIRGINIA No. That was because she was too proud to tell a lie. We hid from Father in the garden, and when he demanded, Didn’t we hear me calling? We all said No. Only Nessa said Yes. I told her she was an old fraud.
LEONARD Goat is the worst name, I think.
VIRGINIA No, that was Stella! She was the Cow, because she brought the milk.
LEONARD These nicknames are strangely degrading.
VIRGINIA I named myself Miss Jan. I so longed to be someone else. Laura was the worst of us but she was called Her Ladyship of the Lake.
LEONARD How old was Laura and why on earth was she called that?
VIRGINIA Laura was exactly Gerald’s age. But she was gone by the time mother died. Sent away, because she wouldn’t mind. Father said she was the Giver of the Sword because she forced him to punish her. Then she screamed so he had to punish her more. When Maitland was writing Father’s life he said that everything about Laura would have to be suppressed. Everyone hated Laura.
LEONARD Why did you hate her?
VIRGINIA Temper tantrums. We all had temper tantrums, but hers were worse. Father was still having them, but Mother could calm him.
LEONARD So, Laura went to an asylum?
VIRGINIA When I was ten. Until then she lived with a governess at the top of the house. At night, we heard her howling like an animal.
LEONARD Did your parents ever say what exactly was the problem?
VIRGINIA Mother said she was wicked. Father said she was perverse. Thoby thought she wouldn’t stop touching herself. I read all Father’s letters when I helped Maitland with his book. Father begged Mother to marry him to help with Laura.
LEONARD But she couldn’t help, could she?
VIRGINIA Abominable system, family life. It goes from ignorance and indifference to denial and contempt, open attack and ultimate destruction. None of it was Mother’s fault. She was always visiting the poor and making them clothes. I always thought the poor knew how to enjoy themselves better than we do, because we are cooped up, day after day while they walk out freely.
LEONARD Did you ever visit Laura?
VIRGINIA Once I went with Stella. Laura spoke only gibberish. The only comprehensible sentence was, “I told him to go away.” I couldn’t go back because that was where I saw the deformed men.
LEONARD I don’t understand why Stella was The Cow. Wasn’t she a young, beautiful girl?
VIRGINIA I thought her lovelier than Mother. She was so pale, so white, she looked like cow parsley by moonlight. I don’t think Mother loved her, really. She was Mother’s loyal handmaid. Stella taught us our letters. She was supposed to look after Father when Mother was gone, and Mother was absent a lot.
LEONARD Where did your mother go?
VIRGINIA Nursing the sick. Mother loved nursing the sick, she said they were easier than the well. She seemed always so far away, in her mind. When we spoke to her she looked through us as if she didn’t see us. While Mother was gone, Stella stood in for her.
LEONARD Didn’t Stella have a life of her own?
VIRGINIA She turned down proposals, I know that. Mother didn’t want her to marry. Cousin Jem was obsessed with her – we children were frightened of him.
LEONARD Cousin Jem? Wasn’t he the mad cousin?
VIRGINIA Yes, but before he was locked up, he conceived a passion for Stella. He would run into the house, shouting, while Stella fled up the front stairs. He pursued her, bellowing, right to the nursery where he speared our toast on his swordstick. I thought he looked like a tormented bull. Father said to tell him Stella wasn’t home, but Mother said she could never bar her door to Jem. She said she loved him and he needed us because he was banned from all his clubs. Once he abducted me and Mother.
LEONARD He abducted you?
VIRGINIA Yes, funny, I’d forgotten it till just this moment. I suppose that’s how memory works. He took us to his rooms because he wanted me to pose for him. Mother didn’t want to go, but she couldn’t stop him. As he painted, he declaimed his own poetry:
“if all the harm that were done by men were doubled and doubled and doubled again squared and raised to the power of ten there wouldn’t be nearly enough, not near to keep a small girl for a tenth of a year.”
LEONARD And you were a small girl.
VIRGINIA I was. The smallest. I never saw the picture.
LEONARD How did you get away?
VIRGINIA Did I get away? I don’t remember. I always stammered when I told him Stella wasn’t home so he knew I was lying. When he grabbed me by the collar I thought of the Ripper Man who had been in all the papers. This is what they must have felt, those women, when they were grabbed by Ripper Man. I’m afraid I wet myself and Nurse was angry. She punished everything I did, but I never listened to her. Nurse claimed all emotions like fear, dread, disgust – come from desiring the wrong food or not moving one’s bowels. Children must accept whatever’s given. If you show a preference, then that’s the very thing you’re not allowed to have. It’s as bad for a girl to cry for what she wants as for a boy to land a blow. Yet we did both, because Nurse was nobody.
LEONARD Cousin Jem was taken away to the madhouse. That was a good thing, surely.
VIRGINIA Where he starved himself to death, and that’s what I shall do if ever you lock me up in one of those places.
LEONARD Go back to your mother’s death.
VIRGINIA I didn’t know what had happened until I saw the nurses crying. I thought they were pretending and we should laugh at them but everyone pulled a face. I went to kiss Mother but she was cold as iron. I never touch iron without thinking of her. Father caromed off people and walls, seeking anyone to wail against. It was like being shut up in a cage with a wild beast.
LEONARD My family was rigidly quiet when my father died. Stiff upper lip, get on with it, try harder, everyone must buckle down. That sort of thing.
VIRGINIA A family is a conspiracy, driven by uncontrollable lusts. I saw a man sitting with mother’s corpse but the others saw no one there. We became unmoored, entering a time of hopeless suspense, muddle, mismanagement, battling the stupidity of those in power. It was as if a finger had been laid upon our lips, sentencing us to a sultry, opaque miasma that choked us and blinded us. Father shouted at Stella if she didn’t stock his writing paper or ordered too much fish. I knew it really was because she couldn’t tell him he was a first-rate writer, as mother always did. Stella had no mind and nobody respected her. Poor father was haunted by fears that he only had a third-class mind.
LEONARD And did he, do you think?
VIRGINIA His ego crippled him. Self-assertion is so loathsome. Father began writing The Mausoleum Book. About death. He wailed from the top of the stairs, “We perished, each alone.” Nothing is to be dreaded so much as egotism. Stella tried her best to rescue us. I wasn’t kind to her because she dragged me to the dentist and ordered all my clothes. I couldn’t bear standing for inspection while being stuck with pins. She was made me wear stays for the first time. Then Stella fell in love.
LEONARD With Jack Waller Hills. Did you like him?
VIRGINIA I did then, but I realized later he was a terrible old Fascist. He used to say, “the weak are wrongdoers who foul the nets.” I know he meant me, that I was a weak wrongdoer. In the end, he was a typical man who liked to have his way. He always put his great hoof down. But at first, he seemed the only truth-teller we had ever met. I was thirsty for knowledge, and he knew things. He taught me how to sugar trees for moths, how to collect and mount butterflies, how to take pride in killing beautiful things. He told me everything about sex, about “street love”, common love, why it is that women can never walk alone. I was so shocked. I asked, What about honor? He said men never think of honor, that they had women constantly, so all their talk of purity is nonsense. Every man has his whore. Every woman except the cheap ones must be locked up tight. Yet they call women fallen! Men are the whores. It makes no sense to me.
LEONARD It does sound mad.
VIRGINIA The night Jack proposed a tramp broken into the garden. Thoby threatened him, shouting at him to go away. We were always frightened of tramps – it seemed they could get in anywhere. I was afraid one had invaded the house and was lurking and leering, waiting to pounce. But it was only Jack. When Father found out about the engagement he tried to stop the wedding but Stella had her own money so he could do nothing. He postponed the wedding until Stella agreed to buy the house next door so that she could still take care of him. During all this Nessa and I were forced to chaperone. You can’t think how awful it is to sit between a couple whispering and trying to touch. I was so angry at Stella I broke my umbrella in half.
LEONARD Child chaperones? Whatever will they think of next?
VIRGINIA I know! I often think I’m the only one who isn’t crazy! Stella and Jack convinced the aunts that Nessa and I could accompany them properly to Bognor but immediately we got there they sent us two out into the rain so they could be alone. We were soaked to the skin!
LEONARD Was there no one who could speak for you?
VIRGINIA The old aunts were the worst of the lot. They curdled our brains with their falsehoods and their pieties. The wedding was the most horrible ordeal. Nessa and I resolved to be Stoic and show no emotion, as if it were nothing touching us. If ever you show feelings you are treated like a beast at the zoo and will never escape the cage. Thus we were buried beneath obligations, under torrents of uncomfortable clothes, awkward visits and unspeakable rituals. I think we are to be congratulated, you and I, that we sidestepped that whole mess so neatly.
LEONARD Yes, the registry office is so much better. It’s over so fast. But after the wedding?
VIRGINIA The happy couple went to Italy, and we were left alone with Father. He was awful to Nessa, how I hated him! He shouted at her as he’d shouted at Stella. But Nessa stood up to him, she was a rock, she didn’t care. That’s when she summoned up her supreme indifference. It’s the bane of all who love her.
LEONARD But Vanessa had no money of her own.
VIRGINIA No. If Stella hadn’t given us allowances we would have had to beg Father for every penny. And then Stella and Jack came home early because Stella was ill.
LEONARD What was wrong with her?
VIRGINIA Violet Dickinson told me Jack must have hurt her with his violent lovemaking. That he broke her somehow. But Violet was just a spinster, so what could she possibly know? The doctors called it appendicitis but you know what cretins they turned out to be. They couldn’t operate because of the baby – she was pregnant, of course. On the night she died, I was sleeping in her new house – in her dressing room in fact –
LEONARD You were sleeping in Stella’s dressing room?
VIRGINIA Yes, I’d been so ill, you see. I always got ill when people went away. But Stella was dying so they sent George to fetch me. George the over-fed pug dog, fat as a louse, beady-eyed as a rat. He wrapped me in Stella’s fur cape and carried me back to Father’s house.
LEONARD And then?
VIRGINIA Stella died and Jack was left bereaved. Now we had two widowers wailing. The men in our family hardly waited for the bodies to be buried before turning to their next victim. I remember Jack holding my wrist on one side so tightly he left bruises, and George holding me on the other side. I was trapped, you see, I couldn’t get away. George won so Jack settled on Nessa. They actually wanted to marry! I couldn’t believe it. I told Nessa, you can’t be serious! She said, “So you’re against me too,” and gave me a look that broke my heart. But she knew they couldn’t marry because of the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Act.
LEONARD They could have married in France.
VIRGINIA That’s what they say about everything, that “the French get away with it.” Luckily it all blew over because Nessa was granted a place at the Slade. Then I was quite alone. George pounced immediately and began ordering clothes and jewels to release me into society. I was the sacrificial offering to his violent gusts of passion and his mean little piggy brain.
LEONARD
And then?
VIRGINIA
And then Father began to die and I went mad a little. After he died, I went mad a lot.
LEONARD
Well, it isn’t any wonder, from what I’ve heard. If you are mad then so am I.
VIRGINIA You can’t think how long I’ve waited for those words!
(she reaches out a hand to him – he clutches it and kisses it)
LEONARD
Dearest! You will always be my only love!
(they gaze at each other, both trembling with pent-up emotion)
VIRGINIA But darling, if Dr. Craig consigns me to deepest darkness you will have to marry someone else. You can’t waste your life waiting for me.
LEONARD That won’t happen. Craig says our future’s what we make of it.
VIRGINIA Oh, honey mongoose! Let’s make a pact right now to rise above the nay-sayers. You have given me all the best things I have ever had in life, rescued me from the cliff edge again and again. You have been absolutely perfect to me, and I have been disgraceful to you. You work so hard and I do nothing. It’s all my fault. I was mad and angry before I met you and I am madder and angrier right now. I want you to know that I do want to cuddle you but I don’t know how to show it. In spite of my vilest imaginings I’ve always known that I love you and that you love me.
(he leans his face towards her, she awkwardly moves closer and they kiss delicately)
LEONARD Virginia, I promise not to ever push you any farther than you want to go.
VIRGINIA Oh honey! And I promise to follow all your rules; early bed, milk for breakfast; just so long as I can always read and write.
(they embrace)
LEONARD
If ever you cease writing I shall divorce you immediately.
VIRGINIA
(laughing awkwardly as if she has forgotten how)
It’s a bargain. Oh, darling, shall we really have our own press and print all our own work?
LEONARD Yes, and some of your friends if they are good enough. You decide.
VIRGINIA
And can I have a bulldog, too? I’ve always wanted a bulldog pup.
LEONARD
Certainly, my pet.
VIRGINIA
And can we live in London? A new house all our own?
LEONARD
Not London but perhaps some leafy suburb.
VIRGINIA
Leonard! Suburbs!
LEONARD
Think of the bulldog, Virginia. He must have a healthful life.
VIRGINIA
You’re right of course, Leonard. You are always right.
LEONARD
Bulldogs need a place to roam.
VIRGINIA
Fresh air and food. Lots of good red steak.
LEONARD
May I order dinner now, Virginia? Surely, it’s time.
VIRGINIA Yes, Leonard.
(She clutches his hand fiercely while with his other he rings the bell) CURTAIN – END
VIRGINIA Go away, Leonard. I can’t bear to hear you lie to me.
LEONARD I’m not lying when I say I want you to get well more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.
VIRGINIA Don’t bother making me feel guilty, I already know I’m wasting your life. If only I weren’t so stupid a Mandrill, so unworthy of her poor, virtuous outsider Mongoose who is so thin, who trembles so much and who tries so hard. You have headaches too, you suffer from recurring malaria. Why should you toil so that I can be idle? I know these doctors’ bills are crushing us. Nessa sold the silver, I sold the jewelry, Thoby sold the Thackeray letters. What’s left, Leonard? Will you scheme with them to isolate me until there’s nothing left?
LEONARD I can earn money writing. I’ve proved that. You can earn money writing, you’ve proved that. But to get back in the fight we must be hardy and strong.
VIRGINIA I should never have married you. What kind of a wife can I ever be? Save yourself, Leonard. It’s too late for me. Let the wind blow, let the poppy seed itself, let the carnation mate with the cabbage. Let the swallow build her nest in the drawing room where the thistle thrusts between the tiles. Let all civilization be like broken china tangled over with blackberries and grass.
LEONARD That you demand so much of existence, still fighting as you sit among George’s flowers, shows you’re feeling better. What we must do is keep up the strengthening. A few more days, Virginia.
VIRGINIA But how can I return to you? There’s the undisputed fact of my sexual cowardice. Perhaps it’s really nothing but my terror of real life that keeps me in this nunnery. I tried telling my parents but they didn’t want to hear. Parents have forgotten their own childhood. Or they don’t want to remember.
LEONARD What did you try to tell them? You can say anything to me.
VIRGINIA I saw the spirits of evil as soon as I could speak, but because I was a girl child I was not supposed to know. Each child hugs its vice, brooding over the swollen vein, the bruised flesh that was white and sweet but yesterday.
LEONARD I told my parents that life is unquestionably vile and humanity’s nothing but an ant heap. Parents never want to hear that.
VIRGINIA That’s what I love about you, Leonard. You at least will speak the truth. Sometimes.
LEONARD It’s a fallacy to think that children are happy. They’re not. I never suffered so much as when I was a child. Children never forget injustice. But here is the heart of it, Virginia. What we write depends upon what we think. What “spirits of evil” did you see?
VIRGINIA Going to practice Dr. Head’s talking cure on me, are you? Is that the plan? I could make up a dozen stories – I see a dozen pictures. But when I open my mouth I am locked up and shut away. What is my true story? Something lies deeply buried. Shall I grasp it or let it mortify in the depths of my mind? I want to describe the world seen without a self. But I am afraid that there is no future. There are no words.
LEONARD There are words, and there is a future we shall make. Tell me. Tell me everything.
VIRGINIA When I was young, I dug furiously to uncover myself. When I discovered that I was me and not anyone else it seemed a wonderful achievement. Once I sat beside my stepsister Stella on roots as hard as skeletons, and the next day she was a skeleton. It’s strange how the dead leap out on us at street corners or in dreams. Don’t you remember that morning at breakfast when I saw my mother? You said she wasn’t there.
LEONARD I saw nothing.
VIRGINIA Cambridge educated everything but your eyes. What is the hope of talking to you? That was the morning was when I first became aware of the enemies who change but are always present; the forces we must fight even though we suffer terribly becoming separate bodies. Don’t you recognize the enemy advancing against us, pawing at his pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy.
LEONARD Marriage is the opposing force against death. A marriage of true minds can fight all enemies. Once upon a time we shared our thoughts, and fell in love. I needed someone who could hold her own, and there you were. You are the only wife I ever wanted, the only woman I have ever loved. Please, Virginia, I want you to come back to me.
VIRGINIA
(dazzled)
Oh to be a wife, to be wanted, would be so complete! Is it possible, Leonard, after the terrors, the disgusting dangers we have seen?
LEONARD If it isn’t I don’t want to live either.
(She holds out a hand to him. They clutch hands briefly)
VIRGINIA Sit down, Leonard. You look silly on your knees.
(She looks away. LEONARD sits)
VIRGINIA I used to make the family laugh. They thought me clever. But when I chased the evil spirits through a hole in the escallonia hedge, I resolved to tell the exact truth and write down the phenomena I’d seen. But no one believed me, and at that moment the laughter turned against me. I said, must not we find some way to get outside ourselves, to give our brains a wider scope? My parents declared God was dead and the world empty and meaningless. Father said to be weak is to be wretched. He said that Society is a ravenous appetite, and Nature is a state of war. You’ve laughed at me behind my back, I know you have. You, my own husband, want to get rid of me, to lock me up forever and steal my money.
LEONARD I love you, Virginia. Maybe it’s a bad thing to love you as much as I do – it cuts me off from the outside world. But the outside world is worthless and your world is so rich. When I went away to school for the first time I was shocked and appalled by the horrifying corruption of dirty-minded schoolboys. It marked me. Then I realized all of humanity are mean, nasty, untruthful, cowardly, and cruel. Perhaps I’ve been searching for a world that doesn’t exist.
VIRGINIA Perhaps we both have.
LEONARD If you will care for your health – if you will allow me to care for your health – you’ll recover. As you’ve recovered before.
VIRGINIA Nessa won’t rest till I’m brought low. When she was ill with typhoid Savage wanted to put her in a home but I backed her up! I told Savage I would care for her. Now look at what she’s done to me. You betrayed our secret, telling Nessa I’m a frigid failure as a wife. She told Clive and now everyone knows. They’re all laughing, jeering. plotting behind my back. You were sent to Ceylon to break the natives and now you’ve been sent to break me. I have been derided, insulted, sacrificed and betrayed, by all of you.
LEONARD Virginia, I am on your side. My eyes were opened in Ceylon. I was an anti-imperialist wallowing in the fleshpots of imperialism. But I changed. Now I support the independence movement with all my heart. All problems can be solved by science and logic, Virginia. It was I who was a failure as a husband. It was my marital duty to arouse you but you seemed so afraid of me. At my wit’s end, I asked your older sister for help.
VIRGINIA Does she offer lessons in humiliation? She knows how better than anyone. Is it my fault that I hate my legs being pried apart? I should never have married you, but I couldn’t bear to remain a spinster. I was struggling at everything, and you seemed so different. You said you liked women. You said you admired women’s minds.
LEONARD It’s true. Women feel more deeply, think more deeply, talk more deeply.
VIRGINIA Yet men demand obedience. You want me to obey you but I never will. You know nothing about me. Did you know that before I tried to die I read a book? Would you like to know which one?
LEONARD Which book did you read?
VIRGINIA It was your book. Your book that I read.
LEONARD My book?
VIRGINIA Your book about me.
LEONARD (a gratified author, in spite of everything)
You read The Wise Virgins? What did you think?
VIRGINIA So you admit it’s about me!
LEONARD Virginia, please. I’d love to discuss my book with you.
(She hesitates, turning away her face, then facing him with rage)
VIRGINIA
You locked me away so I’d never find out!
LEONARD You were ordered rest cures long before you met me! I don’t believe in guilt or blame. Honestly, I wanted you to read my book as soon as you were well.
VIRGINIA I won’t be stamped and stereotyped. You have publicly lampooned me as a frozen, dowdy, fussy, futile woman.
LEONARD Not true at all. I called you my Aspasia.
VIRGINIA “Cold and snowy, like the rocks.” You said.
LEONARD I’m a bad writer. I agree. I’ve got nothing of your genius. I can never explain what I really want to say. If it’s any comfort to you no one else likes or understands it either. Sales are awful. All I was attempting to do was contrast the world of a poor Jew from Putney with the rarified aristocratic Olympus for which he yearns.
VIRGINIA You hold my world in contempt because you can never be a gentleman.
LEONARD Virginia, you hold “your world” in contempt.
VIRGINIA And then the hero marries the other girl. The stupid, cow-eyed one! It’s a betrayal.
LEONARD It’s just a bad novel, I’ll give you that. Don’t laugh at me. Not everyone is born with your gifts. Consider my perspective. Any rational mind must inevitably face disillusion and depression. I tried to show how poor Harry just couldn’t escape his past. He couldn’t but I think we can. I probably shouldn’t have published it but Arnold was willing and I couldn’t bear to waste all that work and all that suffering.
VIRGINIA What can you, a prizewinning Apostle from Cambridge, an imperialist potentate of a subject country, possibly know of real suffering?
LEONARD Virginia, I’m a Jew from Putney. All my life I’ve been spat upon. Job is the only book of the Bible I ever understood. Who ridiculed who first? I trained myself to avoid personal feeling. Admit you despised me. Your set. You made me into a joke.
VIRGINIA My set despises everyone. That’s what we do. It’s self-defense, from growing up amongst the most monumental hypocrites.
LEONARD You despised me personally. Be honest. You hated kissing me. You could barely bring yourself to marry me.
VIRGINIA But I did it, didn’t I!
LEONARD You wanted to shock them. You were competing with Nessa to see who could be most scandalous.
VIRGINIA I wouldn’t dare compete with Nessa. Competition is a male thing. It’s a brutal, endless game. I think all competition should be abolished.
LEONARD But it’s all you ever do! Your flirtation with her husband –
VIRGINIA (cringes visibly)
Oh God, not that. Somehow that memory turns a knife in me more than anything. How it catches at me, the fangs of that old pain. I know I lost Vanessa forever. She will never forgive me. I simply couldn’t comprehend why she married such a strange, intolerable creature with his twitching pink skin and a jerky laugh. Before Clive, Nessa and I drifted together on a sea of seducing half-brothers, hiding together beneath the dining room table. We spoke a special animal language.
LEONARD But you were no longer children. Vanessa waited till twenty-eight to marry.
VIRGINIA Who would willingly grow up? I never wanted to. As soon as you’re pushed out of the nursery, the happy moments vanish. Vanessa was the bowl of golden water that brims but never overflows. I lie prostrate at her shrine and still she won’t forgive me. When she brought home friends from the Slade they laughed at me behind the door. You can’t think what it feels like, having one’s self so thoroughly extinguished.
LEONARD I do know it. That was my exact experience at both St. Paul’s and Cambridge. St. Paul’s was a disgusting brothel, but at Trinity I met G. E. Moore. He taught me how to ask the important questions.
VIRGINIA
And what are the important questions?
LEONARD The most important question is why. Why can’t Vanessa forgive a mere flirtation? She must know by now that Clive sets out to bed every woman he meets. You at least resisted him.
VIRGINIA But I did wrong. Clive and I made common cause against my sister, his own wife. Some things should be sacred.
LEONARD
Wasn’t it true that he respected your intellectual work more than he could ever appreciate Vanessa’s daubs?
VIRGINIA Leonard! How can you!
LEONARD
If it’s the truth, shouldn’t we say so?
VIRGINIA
I tried speaking the truth, yet here I am locked up among the imbeciles. And weren’t we just arguing whether all imbeciles should be killed?
LEONARD You’re hardly “locked up with the imbeciles” at Dalingridge Hall!
VIRGINIA You’re wrong. In this castle beats the very heart of idiocy and evil. Aren’t you the one who said the most dangerous imbeciles are running the nation? Here I am at home among the hunters, where the miner sweats and dies and maiden faith is rudely strumpeted.
LEONARD But you used to love George! He told me you’d make an adorable wife.
VIRGINIA Perhaps I’ve been given too much time to think. Get a sense of proportion, the doctors keep telling me. So now I stare for the first time into the very mouth of doom. Look your last on all things lovely.
LEONARD Virginia, if you don’t want to be called crazy, you really must explain yourself. Whatever do you mean?
VIRGINIA George behaved little better than a brute. He never let me alone for a moment. That he was the pet of duchesses hardly excuses him. And yet it was Gerald who broke my hymen, when I was six years old. It’s a painful process. and now I freeze like ice. Give up on me, Leonard, there’s no awakening the dead. I’m ruined by incest, I’ve even desired my own sister. I’m locked up because I stew in murder, just as Laura did. I long to slice Gerald’s fat, transparent flesh, to take a rifle and shoot George directly in his smug, piggy face. Or could I bag him with a net and killing bottle? And why shouldn’t I turn on my tormentors? I suffered, I was helpless, why should I be the one forced to writhe with shame? I longed to be petted but instead was trapped in a cage with lions as sulky and angry as they were ferocious. I’m just a little monkey and little monkeys are too easily squashed and trampled. It’s too late for me, Leonard. My body is spoiled forever by George and Gerald.
LEONARD (shocked)
George? Gerald? These are pillars of society, your own half-brothers! It’s so unbelievable.
VIRGINIA George drowned us in kisses, me and Vanessa. Each kiss was an amputation. I used to sign my work, “One of the Drowned.” Oh, those horrible parties! The oppressive gatherings of Stephenses ground one to a pulp. Because I wanted to discuss Plato I was told I had no conversation. George was so angry! After I removed my ball gown and stripped off my gloves and stockings, he would come into my room and lock the door.
LEONARD But how can any of this be true? How could nobody have noticed it?
VIRGINIA Everyone did notice it. People contrive to bend it to the conventional heroic shape because he kept insisting on the purity of his love. I saw him kissing Countess Carnarvon behind a pillar at the opera! And now she’s his mother-in-law. I asked to join the British Sex Society, dedicated to the study of parent/child incest, but they wouldn’t let me in. Now that you know, you’ll have to spit in George’s face at the club.
LEONARD We don’t belong to the same clubs.
VIRGINIA Then when you thank him for this execrable house, challenge him to a duel. Will he at least feel some regret? Will he take the pigeon gun and blast himself instead? Then the aristocracy will hate me because it’s all my fault. Yet is it not a noble work, letting light in upon the evil Duckworths? Probably he’ll feel nothing. Possibly some vague imbalance.
LEONARD Let’s try to be objective, Virginia.
VIRGINIA If only I could! What a luxury that would be! How I hunger for the objectivity of beloved Macaulay or the stern analysis of cherished Carlyle. Lockhart’s ten volume Life of Scott was the best present I ever received. Reading relieves all my pain, but they won’t let me read anything here. In spite of them I’m continuing to learn. Only life itself matters, nothing but life – and the process of discovery, the everlasting perpetual process, and not the thing itself at all.
LEONARD
Virginia, I am speechless.
VIRGINIA
Now you know how it feels. I used to think it would be enough to have someone share my loneliness. But if no one believes me, the solitude is total. The Duckworths are guilty of nameless atrocities, and you’re complicit. You locked me away here, so I couldn’t speak. As soon as I open my mouth they try to destroy me. It’s a conspiracy of hush.
LEONARD If this is something you’ve only just remembered how can it possibly be true? It sounds mad.
VIRGINIA I don’t think memory is always at the forefront, Leonard. There’s only so much a human being can bear. Memory comes and goes. One requires tools to think with, to make sense of one’s experience, and these tools are alternately dull and sharp.
LEONARD Well, there are some things no one wants to think about.
VIRGINIA It’s clearer in my mind than the bad, stodgy meal I was force-fed yesterday. Our summer place at St. Ives, in the dining room; I must have been six years old. Eighteen-year-old Gerald lifted me up to a high ledge and explored my private parts. I fought and I struggled but I couldn’t get away. I could see his face in the dining room mirror. It was the face of a demon. I’ve seen that face since, on the drooling men who expose themselves in the park. Now I no longer look in mirrors. I can’t cross a puddle. The depth looks back at me, concealing malicious, hairy arms to reach out and grab. I can’t go forward, I am stuck in the loop of the six, no power even to lift my legs.
LEONARD The loop of the six? I don’t understand.
VIRGINIA
I was learning numbers. Six was my number. But I couldn’t close the loop.
LEONARD
This was Gerald you say? But Gerald is your publisher!
VIRGINIA I know! If I am not a madwoman, then the world itself is mad. What was I to do? I wrote a book and my incestuous brother was a publisher! Who else would even look at my work? When I delivered my manuscript to Gerald I was in such acute despair – so near the precipice!
LEONARD Did you tell anyone?
VIRGINIA I told Nessa and she told Dr. Savage. Who is an idiot, as you well know.
LEONARD I can’t believe it. Gerald seems so – so – well, ordinary. So completely controlled.
VIRGINIA Get out of here! I’m sorry I told you. I wish I was dead!
(She is tearing at her own throat – he rushes forward to hold her hands down, lifting her body out of the chair)
The use of force is all you know!
LEONARD Virginia, I love you.
(He kisses her neck, she becomes a dead weight. He lowers her carefully into the chair, arranges a blanket on her knees)
VIRGINIA When you touch me, I feel nothing. My body goes dead. That’s how I froze when George came into my room, night after night.
LEONARD Oh, Beloved!
VIRGINIA Don’t. He called me that. I don’t want to be loved, I want to be believed.
(Lights up on Hamptons cottage, as before. WHITNEY assaults the door.)
WHITNEY Charmayne!! Charmayne!!
(Her stepmother opens the door. Slower, less confident; accusatory)
CHARMAYNE You’ve been avoiding me, Whitney. Why haven’t you returned my calls? I thought we were besties.
WHITNEY I wanted to bring you something.
CHARMAYNE (Haughty, but momentarily excited in spite of herself)
And what could you possibly give the woman who has everything?
WHITNEY Just this.
(Tenders a bullet)
CHARMAYNE Ooooo, scary! And what’s this supposed to represent?
WHITNEY It’s a bullet, Charmayne. It matches the bullets in your gun, the bullets all over this beach and the bullets in your stepfather.
CHARMAYNE My stepfather!
WHITNEY Yup. I’ve been to visit his grave.
CHARMAYNE Well, thank you for this –
(Mockingly, as she throws it out to sea)
I was never was two-faced as you, Whitney. My stepfather – who’s in hell, as you very well know from the personal, confidential disclosures that I made to you during a Girls Night Out – doesn’t have a grave. Anyway, nobody cares about that old stuff anymore.
WHITNEY There’s no statute of limitations on murder.
CHARMAYNE (Tries to grab her)
Statute! Limitations! Whit, do you need cash to go to law school?
WHITNEY (Evading her neatly)
It’s time to answer for what you’ve done.
(CHARMAYNE walks past her towards the ocean – crossed arms, thinking)
CHARMAYNE Your father wouldn’t want this.
WHITNEY I’m not doing it for him. I’m doing it for me.
CHARMAYNE This feels so odd. It’s not what I expected, at all. You never fail to surprise me, Whitney. Your enmity is so flattering. I feel… courted.
(Turns around to face WHITNEY, back in control)
So you think you know everything about me now?
WHITNEY I know all I need to know. For example, that you’re wondering right now whether it’s worth your while to get rid of me. Whether I have a partner in my researches who knows everything I’m doing. And the answer is yes.
CHARMAYNE I was not wondering how to get rid of you, Whitney! As if! I couldn’t get rid of you if I tried. You’re one of the Immortals.
WHITNEY Am I supposed to know what that is?
CHARMAYNE We Immortals have been here since time immemorial. We recognize each other. We are transformable, but essentially indestructible.
WHITNEY Wow, that’s so comforting. Lucky for us! And now it’s time for my second gift. I’m going to tell your fortune.
(Sits at the patio set table and starts shuffling cards)
CHARMAYNE (Approaching nervously, interested in spite of herself)
You can’t tell my fortune.
WHITNEY I’m the only one who can.
CHARMAYNE But that’s not my deck. So you can’t use it.
WHITNEY No. It’s my deck. You have to play the cards the goddess deals, right? Sit down. First, I’ll tell you your past.
(Produces a card – Hermit leaps up on the screen. Cards seemingly tremble, shimmer in the air) Recognize him?
(CHARMAYNE sits down)
CHARMAYNE It’s the Hermit.
WHITNEY There he is, with his broom and his light. Don’t you recognize him?
CHARMAYNE That’s a staff.
WHITNEY It’s a broom. It’s holding him up more than he’s holding it up. I saw him. I spoke to him. Mr. Butterbatch.
CHARMAYNE (Sounds delighted)
Old Butterbatch! Is HE still ticking! I can scarcely believe it – he was a hundred when I knew him. How is the old geezer?
WHITNEY Fine and dandy. I must say he remembers you very well, Destiny. He told me all about how the police have been longing to find the source of the female DNA all over the frog gigger they found sticking out of Burt’s throat. You must have cut yourself! Imagine that! Probably just a little nick. How would you even have noticed it, when there was so much blood?
CHARMAYNE Burt was vile, Whitney. Vile. Anyone would have done it. He needed to be put down.
WHITNEY Maybe, Charmayne. Who can judge? O, right, this guy! Justice!
(Tarot card leaps up to screen and trembles in the air)
CHARMAYNE Justice is female, Whitney. But I have faith in you. You’ll figure it out.
WHITNEY Must be where the phrase “stings like a bitch” comes from. And see that box she’s sitting on? That’s the box they’re going to put you in.
CHARMAYNE No one’s putting me in a box. Never.
WHITNEY Oh, they’re going to put you in a box, Charmayne. They’re going to put you in a series of boxes, like some kind of dangerous Matrushka doll. That’s three separate states you’ve unleashed mayhem in and they’re all going to want a crack at you. And who’s this? The Lovers!
(Tarot card onscreen)
There’s your girlfriend, Charmayne Carr. You must have known the cards would turn on you someday, Charmayne. Why don’t you just tell her family where you stashed that body? The prosecutor’s going to get it out of you, one way or another. After a few weeks of instant mashed potato mix, egg substitute, baloney and wonderbread you’ll tell them anything they want to know.
CHARMAYNE (Mocking) Shows what you know! I wonder if your much-vaunted “classical education” isn’t a pair of distortion goggles after all. Dr Carr’s family rejected her and she never gave a damn for any of them! She was free of all that. And for your information, the Lovers was never was her card. She was the Empress.
WHITNEY You said you weren’t two-faced like me, Charmayne. But you were careful, weren’t you? Did you give her the honor of confronting her the way I’m confronting you now or did wait until her back was turned?
CHARMAYNE She gave me her life! She was longing for me to absorb her! It was her free choice, one I wouldn’t expect you to understand. I was an Immortal! She recognized it and she yielded.
WHITNEY Sure, sure. That’s what always happens. The fish throws himself into the boat to save you from spearing it. Tell yourself anything that lets you sleep at night. Oh, wait, you can’t sleep, can you? It’s starting to show on your face.
(CHARMAYNE stands up and turns away, touching her face)
CHARMAYNE That was just mean, Whitney. That was uncalled for.
(WHITNEY produces another Tarot card – it leaps to the screen and shimmers in the air) Who’s this? An Emperor with the long white beard! Who can that be, I wonder!
CHARMAYNE (Turned away from the card, forces herself to sit down, put her feet up and make a show of relaxing)
Let me guess. A certain cardiac surgeon of our acquaintance?
WHITNEY Thoracic.
CHARMAYNE Thoracic surgeon. Now we get within sight of your real problem, Whitney, the real fountain of your rage. Your father was such a charming man, even in extreme old age. The Lady of Life met the Lord of Death: it was just the way he wanted it, it had to happen. He was so touchingly eager to enrich me, to pass along his acquisitions. You’re just jealous because he found a new pupil.
WHITNEY You thanked him by killing him!
CHARMAYNE I did reward him, Whitney. Your father was suffering. He begged me to put him out of his misery. Would you like me to summon him from the grave so you can ask him? You’ll see I’m right! I think from the first moment our eyes met in the job interview he knew I was the only one who could get the job done exactly the way he wanted. He begged me for that extra dose of morphine. Having a body became a torment to him. He could no longer enjoy anything.
WHITNEY As your body will torment you, while you rot away in jail. But at least somebody will get to enjoy it – whatever bullies or “Immortals” you’re lucky – or unlucky enough to run into. They’ll pass you around like a pizza.
CHARMAYNE (Snatches her feet off the table) I’m not going to jail, silly Whitney! Not ever! I served my time!
WHITNEY (Pulling herself forcibly together she produces another card – Judgment on screen – hugely vibrating )
Sorry, Pearleen – or whoever you are this week – childhood doesn’t count. Now here’s a lady you’ve never met. She showed me your stepfather’s grave.
CHARMAYNE (Labored change of tactics)
I like this new you, Whitney. So forceful, so ablaze.
(Pretends to shiver)
It’s so sexy. Pity it’s all wasted, that you’ve been so misled. Judgment is not the card you’ve been looking for all your life.
(Picks it up and sends it spinning – onscreen card – which she avoids looking at – seems to swell)
WHITNEY But this is the one card we have in common. The lady who tends your stepfather’s grave – saving it for the investigators – she brandished a trumpet and everything. Looks like the goddess has given up on you, Charmayne.
CHARMAYNE Nice try, but my stepfather doesn’t have a grave. He didn’t deserve one.
WHITNEY Yeah, he does, and I took a picture of it. See?
(Shows her phone)
The Hidden Glade developers found him when they paved over Dead Lake and they treated him to a nice box of his very own. There he is, just waiting for someone to find a match to those bullets.
(She pulls a bullet from a chain around her neck)
This bullet, for example. I chose it from the many bullets you’ve sprayed around this beach. You’ll never find them all.
CHARMAYNE (Crossed arms) I never transitioned anyone that didn’t want it or deserve it.
WHITNEY Transition! Now there’s a word! But the law doesn’t respect your private language, you know. They have a language all their own. You killed Charmayne Carr to steal her identity. You killed my father to get rich. You killed the night manager to steal his stash. You killed your stepfather to steal his wheels and run away.
CHARMAYNE (Firing up immediately)
None of that is true and you of all people –
WHITNEY That’s what they’ll say. I’m just trying to prepare you. That’s what prosecutors always say, based on what they can prove. It’s worst case scenario right at the beginning, Pearleen, so prepare yourself. I’m sure your oh-so-expensive defense attorney will explain to them about your “Immortals” theory. That’ll sound good to the jury. Or maybe he’ll just give up and plead insanity. Possibly you should represent yourself in court – after you’ve had all that plastic surgery you’ve been thinking about.
CHARMAYNE I ‘m not bothering with the law, Whitney. Don’t you see that the law’s a charade? A puppet dance for marionettes? I was greedy for life, Whitney. For ecstasy, for joy. For experiences and possessions, so I took them. I’m not ashamed. I’ve had everything I ever wanted.
WHITNEY Then isn’t it time?
CHARMAYNE For what?
WHITNEY To give up.
CHARMAYNE I’ll never give up!
WHITNEY (Produces a final card)
Because here’s your future. The Hanged Man. He sees the world upside down. And it’s the last thing he sees.
(Card onscreen)
CHARMAYNE You’re young, Whitney. Nothing wrong with that! You know nothing about the real world, by which I mean the invisible world that pulses beneath the visible. Your father kept you from it with that “classical education”. You need to take your time figuring out who – and what you really are. I could help you. We could share all this.
WHITNEY No.
(Throws a card at her – Death appears onscreen)
Death, Charmayne. That’s your future. Your future is Death.
CHARMAYNE (Upends the table, scattering everything – rises from her chair)
I can’t die. It won’t happen. Didn’t I explain it to you? Listen, Whitney. We make our own reality. You’re my mirror.
WHITNEY I’m your parabolic mirror, sent to fry you to a crisp.
CHARMAYNE Don’t say it like that. What if I admit you’ve won? Here, take the dagger. Now you’re the new Queen of Swords.
WHITNEY Someone told me never to “settle”.
CHARMAYNE (Kneeling beside her)
It’s breaking my heart that I can’t explain this to you.
WHITNEY Don’t kid yourself, Destiny. A heart was one of the encumbrances you left behind.
CHARMAYNE Is this what love feels like? I’m not used to wanting things I can’t have.
WHITNEY You just tried to convince me you’re immortal, you’ll never talk me into thinking you’re human!
CHARMAYNE It’s so strange! You feel about me the way I thought about them. Murder kills feeling. And if you can’t feel, you can’t enjoy. If you can’t enjoy, you might as well be dead.
WHITNEY I guess there’s a limit to everything, and you’ve reached yours.
CHARMAYNE (Turns to face the audience)
Maybe it is my time to find out my next stage. I’ve always wondered who I really am. Your father called me a “living doll,” Burt said I was cold as ice, the Empress named me “the marble-hearted”. My step-dad said I wasn’t a little girl, I was a cockroach like him.
(Touches WHITNEY)
Help me.
WHITNEY I’m helping you to see that it’s the end. You’ve had a good run, but it’s over.
CHARMAYNE You don’t even know what you’re rejecting! Let me show you what you’re missing –
(Tries to embrace WHITNEY who pushes her away)
WHITNEY (Roughly)
You’re not my type.
CHARMAYNE Isn’t there anything I can give you to change your mind? Think, Whitney. Aren’t I the only person in the universe who really understands you? Sees you for what you are?
WHITNEY Actually, you aren’t. But there is something you can give me.
CHARMAYNE (Such relief)
What? Anything! Name it.
WHITNEY I want you to prove your immortality.
(Points out to the audience)
Swim out there. Keep swimming. And don’t come back.
CHARMAYNE Are you sure that’s what you really want?
WHITNEY (Gesturing)
Challenge your Goddess to a swimming match. Be my guest. Bye-bye.
CHARMAYNE A swim? That’s all you want? When I am willing to share everything? All the secrets?
WHITNEY A swim to eternity. That’s all that I want.
CHARMAYNE (Brittle laugh)
You can see me naked any time, Whitney. No need to go through all this.
WHITNEY Just swim. I don’t care how.
CHARMAYNE But it’s freezing!
WHITNEY You swim here every night.
CHARMAYNE But the weather’s changed. It’s gone dark and cold. Still, they say beyond the water lies a place where all waters part. I could re-invent myself.
(Looking out)
So once again I’m the initiate, am I? It’s funny how things come around.
(Comes closer peering way, way out beyond the audience’s eyes.)
I wonder what’s out there. A little tequila before I go? For old time’s sake?
WHITNEY You’ve had all the tequila. Go.
(WHITNEY’S implacable so CHARMAYNE starts undressing.)
CHARMAYNE Look at my beautiful body, Whit. Won’t it be a shame to waste it?
WHITNEY Stop begging and save your strength.
CHARMAYNE (Insulted)
Begging? Is that what you think I’m doing?
(To herself)
The Empress told me that to find your dominant was heaven. I see it now. You’re the goddess who can never be denied.
(Bows at her feet – WHITNEY steps away in agitation)
WHITNEY Stuff it. Soft soap won’t work on me. I’ve never had it and I don’t want it. Your goddess is out there. Go find her.
CHARMAYNE (Kicking her clothes away)
This is all so different from what I imagined. I’m so different. It’s the ultimate surprise.
WHITNEY You may have more surprises waiting just around the corner.
CHARMAYNE I can feel myself getting younger. Like a child, begging for that one last story before lights out! Who knew after all this time that sacrifice – that giving up my strength would prove to be the missing fountain of youth! Will the Goddess reveal herself to me unveiled? Whose face will she wear, I wonder?
(Shivers)
WHITNEY You knew this was coming! You had to know!
CHARMAYNE I thought if my past ever caught up to me I’d…be destroyed. Disemboweled like the Hanging Man. Poison. The asp. Who knew it would feel so sweet? Relief.
WHITNEY (Somewhat shaken)
More cons.
CHARMAYNE What relief to concentrate on the physical challenge ahead. Oh, the blessing of the physical!
(Steps into the “water”, clutching her arms.)
There was always another freedom, right around the corner. What new thing comes next? Freedom’s the lover I pursued all my life, and still she evades me. There’s always a greater freedom… somewhere.
(Steps down into the audience. Swimming)
Suddenly I feel so shy. It’s like being thirteen again. If my stepfather had never existed, who would I have become?
WHITNEY (Coming down to the water to watch)
Maybe you’ll find out.
CHARMAYNE The Empress recommended surrender. She said it felt so good! They all told me…or tried to tell me. Who could predict that Death would come to me as a beautiful young woman?
(Breaststroke)
Is this right? Am I doing it right?
(WHITNEY gestures “farther out”. CHARMAYNE blows her a kiss.)
Goodbye, my nemesis.
(Faces outwards.)
Hello, Virginity!
(Swims away through the audience. Exit.)
(WHITNEY drops her “Judgment” pose, leaps to her feet, paces up and down the beach, peering out to sea. Increasingly anxious. Enter EIGHT to stand behind her and put his arms around her. She shakes him loose. Pacing.)
EIGHT Is she gone?
WHITNEY
I’ll never know! I thought it was all an act! I never thought it would work! She can’t be gone if I don’t feel she’s gone, can she? I’m so scared she injected herself inside me, like a brainworm! Am I a murderer now, too?
(Calls loudly)
Wait, wait! I’ve changed my mind! Come back! Let’s talk!
(EIGHT tries to calm her, she collapses into bitter weeping.)
EIGHT You’re acting like you lost your best friend. Don’t forget she was your bitterest enemy. She was the world’s enemy.
WHITNEY You confused her with your demon, but she was my demon.
(Shaking her head)
No, no. It was over too fast. What did I say? I blurted out a bunch of lies, just like she did. I had to turn myself into her in order to catch her! What if I can’t change back? I did everything wrong.
EIGHT (Hugs her)
Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re decompressing. You were in an impossible situation. It worked! You did everything right.
WHITNEY But I miss her. Now I have nothing. No offense, but now I have nobody.
EIGHT No offense taken. You’re just feeling the emptiness where the anger used to be. Let it melt away. Of course it’s going to hurt. There’s a whole wide world out there and it needs you. The universe is full of treasure.
WHITNEY Didn’t I tell you I hate it when you talk about treasure?
EIGHT No. Sorry. Maybe I need a new expression.
WHITNEY I need a lot of new expressions. New words. I need a whole new language.
EIGHT It’s out there, Whitney. When you can’t manage forgiveness, just let go.
WHITNEY That’s what she said! It’s myself I can’t forgive.
EIGHT It takes awhile. You’ll figure it out. It’s like being born all over again. I have faith in you.
WHITNEY She said that too!
EIGHT She doesn’t own ideas, Whitney. She doesn’t own emotions, or the past, or even the future. She used those things as camouflage for her greed. For her appetites. Come. Walk with me.
WHITNEY No. No. I can’t leave. She might come back. You’re just trying to re-make me in your image.
EIGHT Absolutely not. The thing I like most about you is, you’re not me. Take your time, Whitney. This is your chance to be you. You’re telling your own fortune, now.
WHITNEY (Looking out over the ocean)
If I’m telling my own fortune I might as well give myself a really good one. Do you think she’s really gone?
EIGHT She’s less than nothing now. Hold my hand.
(Touching her)
You’re cold. Don’t you want to go inside?
WHITNEY No. I have to stay right here. For awhile.
(Sits down.)
In case she comes back. She might come back. Will you wait with me? At least till dark? Or till I get used to missing her? There were so many things I forgot to say.
EIGHT Rehearse them. Tell them all to me. I’m here.
(Sits beside her, they clutch hands, staring out into the audience. Lights out)
Alysse Aallyn 