TERRY GIBSON  

(Dance Interlude:

Music. Flashing nightclub lights.

As the high percussive opening bars and driving bass of War’s “Low Rider” are heard, a live mic and stand are set by a stagehand at a downstage left by the counter.

A singer enters and stands at the microphone, moving slightly to the music. He is black, fit, and fiftyish, in sunglasses and a black T-shirt and jeans. Something detached, ascetic, and quasi-priestlike about him.

The dancers trickle onstage to the music, one by one.

People of “diversity,” of all ages and ethnicities move together, each performer immersed in his or her own dance interpretation, from slow to frenzied. The singer/priest takes the mic and moves among them, performing the street weary vocals of the song. The dancers never look at the singer or recognize him as any kind of source for their enjoyment. They are a smiling, happy bunch, ages eight to eighty, as many as can be comfortably choreographed in the space. They dance through an entire play of “Low Rider,” some up on chairs, some on DAVID’s couch, all over.

As the song nears its end the dancers gradually disappear as they came, from behind curtains, back out the window, and through various openings in the set. The aisles and audience are off limits, however. Before exiting himself the singer makes any adjustments necessary to return DAVID’s apartment to its original condition. The mic and stand are removed by the same stagehand.

Silence.

Blackout.

When the lights come up for the second scene, DAVID’s apartment appears the same as it was when he and ELIZABETH had left it, no traces of the dancers being visible0.

Night.

Much later that same evening.

The CLIENT stands downstage right alone, with a look of agitation and uneasiness.

ELIZABETH opens the door and enters with a tightly controlled, suppressed outrage. She circles the room once and stops at the window, looking out. The door remains open behind her. Light from the hallway enters and softly illuminates the apartment. A long pause. She looks as if she’s been running.

DAVID steps into the door frame and stands there. He looks at ELIZABETH but appears calm. He turns on a light, closes the door, and enters. ELIZABETH does not move or turn to face him.

DAVID crosses to the kitchen. He finds another glass and pours a beverage into it. He holds the glass out for ELIZABETH to take but she does not respond. He returns to his original position where he stood facing downstage at the beginning of the play. No matter how emotional or high-pitched ELIZABETH’s arguments are about to become, DAVID, except where indicated, will respond only with well-mannered, detached sincerity.)

DAVID
You feel entitled to cooperation from people. To obedience.

ELIZABETH
People look at you and listen to you talk and see how ridiculous things are. The illusion is lost.

(Pause.)

ELIZABETH (looking around)
It’s a different room now. A different place.

DAVID
How do you . . .

ELIZABETH (harshly, interrupting)
We cherish that illusion. It took centuries to create and preserve.

DAVID
You’re like someone . . .

ELIZABETH
Each generation must reinvent the illusion, don’t you see? Adapt it to its own needs and requirements. And you shatter it with one of your stupid remarks. Like someone on television.

DAVID
On television? Me? That’s funny.

ELIZABETH
Is it?

DAVID
Yes. Like Godzilla.

ELIZABETH
How nice that you’re amused.

DAVID
That man was there tonight. “You chose this life.” Him.

ELIZABETH
How long have you been acting like this?

DAVID
I chose nothing.

ELIZABETH
You spoke to him again?

DAVID
What?

(Pause.)

ELIZABETH
You spoke to him? To that man?

DAVID
Yes, Roger. We spoke quite a bit. Roger something. He asked about you, you know. Did I tell you?

(DAVID removes a business card of Roger’s from his pocket and holds it out for ELIZABETH to take. She shows no interest in the card.)

ELIZABETH
Have you ever thought of seeing a psychiatrist?

DAVID (self-satisfied)
I chose nothing.

ELIZABETH
Have you ever been to a psychiatrist?

(Pause. Fuming.)

Do you ever notice the uncomfortable pause you elicit from people after you’ve spoken to them? After you’ve unveiled one of your insipid revelations?

(She laughs.)

Of course not, what am I saying?

They’re asking themselves

“Is it really necessary for me to respond to him, to this crustacean with the gall to address me in such a way in front of these people? People who I admire and respect? Will they regard me any less than they already do for having spoken to him more than I already have?”

You see, David, to converse or chat with you in these situations—and I’m telling you as a friend and a business associate—to regard you with anything other than pity is an act of charity and decency of acrobatic dimensions. Of self-sacrifice that requires the most strenuous tact. Then the problem of making sense of your observations. Of restoring what you’ve destroyed. People feel like the man with the rock.

DAVID (delighted)
Sisyphus?

(DAVID crosses to a small hors d’oeuvre tray on the counter.)

ELIZABETH
Yes! Him! Always uphill. Never ending. Listening to you they think

“This must be required of me for some reason that I can’t see, a reason that is being kept from me at this agonizing moment in time, with all these people watching. By some force in the universe I was never told of. An unknown, perhaps, an unknowable, force . . .”

But they endure, anyway, these people we meet and chat with. Who we do business with. They endure.

DAVID (offering)
Peanuts?

(The CLIENT turns and exits as before)

ELIZABETH
Listen to me. Two years ago, when I laid-off twelve hundred lazy imbeciles in Danville and Peoria and that other dump on the prairie . . .

DAVID
Bloomington . . . ?

ELIZABETH
Yes, Bloomington, I went to those towns and I looked at those sad, stupid faces and I thought

“What were you expecting? What do you think is going on here? What have you done to protect yourselves from your own ignorance? What have you done except show up to a job that I gave you. What right do you have to expect anything from me or from anyone but yourselves? What do you think is going on here? Why do we even bother with this conversation?”

I feel the same way about you now.

DAVID
May I interrupt?

(Pause.)

ELIZABETH
Yes. Please, do.

(DAVID returns the card to his pocket.)

DAVID

(removing his formal jacket, taking the baseball bat and Cubs hat from the Illinois cabinet)

You see, Elizabeth, you’ve forgotten, through no fault of your own, that the world we live in is man-made in a very literal sense. Roads. Buildings. Machines. And of how much you like it here. Oh, we’ll let a few of you, how shall I say, take part now and then if you’re going to be such a pain-in-the-ass about it. You can wear a fireman’s hat or carry a gun or a hammer around if you really want to for some strange reason not even worth comprehending. We like watching you, it’s amusing. But I do feel a little sorry for you, I think

“Wouldn’t they rather be picking carrots in the warm sun, or weaving baskets, or taking care of children? Don’t they see how lucky they are? What’s wrong with picking carrots?”

ELIZABETH
You’re puny.

DAVID
You like when the building moves a little bit? This building? Does it excite you? Good. Enjoy it. We made if that way. For you. It’s all just for you.

ELIZABETH
How much did you weigh at birth?

(The PEDIATRICIAN enters, white hospital jacket, and crosses downstage right. He stops and looks down gravely at “incubator”)

DAVID
A security guard downstairs? For you.

ELIZABETH
Just out of curiosity? I’d like to know.

DAVID
A uniformed security guard. Talk to him, you’ll see.

ELIZABETH
Four pounds, five, perhaps . . . ?

DAVID
He won’t shoot.

ELIZABETH
How did you ever survive?

DAVID
His gun isn’t loaded, anyway. He pushes a button and the police come.

ELIZABETH
And to think I almost let you fuck me.

DAVID
They surround the premises. It’s quite a performance.

ELIZABETH
Almost . . .

DAVID
In minutes.

ELIZABETH
A mystery. A great mystery.

DAVID (He crosses to the window, looks out, wondering, as a revelation)
I wonder if he has any bullets hidden away down there? Any real bullets?

ELIZABETH
It must have been such a struggle for you. Your mother refused to feed you. The doctors and nurses pitied you. You could only see their faces from your incubator in the hospital. No one touched or held or comforted you. They only pointed and stared down at you through the glass, and you couldn’t understand. Only cry. Your desperate animal cry.

DAVID
His name is Arthur. Introduce yourself.

ELIZABETH
A wonder in your own way, I suppose, now that I think about it. It’s admirable how you’ve survived.

DAVID (happily swinging bat at imaginary pitches)
Arthur James Monroe.

ELIZABETH
But I’m sorry to also have to say to you, David, that we don’t wonder anymore. We don’t have the time for such things. The stakes are much too high. We only evaluate and take action.

DAVID
We just call him Arthur.

ELIZABETH
Or dispose.

(PEDIATRICIAN exits upstage right)

It must be such a struggle for you.

DAVID
He prefers that.

ELIZABETH
The meetings. The decisions.

DAVID
He has another job, you know. A full-time job.

ELIZABETH
Are you listening to me?

DAVID
This is just for extra money. We could all use a little extra.

(swings)

ELIZABETH
I wonder if you’ll listen to anyone?

DAVID (He looks at her.)
I’m listening. I’m a good listener. My mother used to listen to John Philip Sousa records before going to work at the gum factory.

(Swings. Pause.)

ELIZABETH
I beg your pardon?

DAVID
Early in the morning. Before working. At the gum factory.

(roaring, menacing)

JOHN . . . PHILIP . . . SOUSA!!!

(silence)

ELIZABETH
I see.

DAVID (calm again)
To keep from blowing her brains out.

ELIZABETH
Charming.

DAVID
Chewing gum. You know, spearmint, peppermint. She’d come home from the supermarket and lock herself in the garage.

ELIZABETH
Nobody cares.

DAVID
All the ice cream would melt in the shopping bags. The TV dinners. But she tried.

ELIZABETH
Nobody.

DAVID (nostalgic)
Sometimes we rode together in a blue Chevy through a little town called Pleasant Hill.

(He crosses to the Illinois cabinet door.)

Pleasant Hill, Illinois. Through acres of corn in the sunshine. With my sisters. We crossed a small wooden bridge. We rode laughing and singing into an open valley. We passed a farm. A working farm, and waved to the farmer. Then we followed the road up into the woods, and disappeared.

(He turns back to face her.)

There was a red brick schoolhouse in Pleasant Hill. A playground. Empty swings. Dirt and gravel . . .

ELIZABETH
Shut up.

DAVID
Debris . . .

ELIZABETH
Silence yourself.

DAVID
Weeds and wildflowers along the road, clinging to a fence. The hot sun. Someone with a dog.

ELIZABETH
Shut your mouth.

(She returns quickly to the window, covering her ears with her hands.

Pause.)

DAVID (He crosses to her, speaking quietly as she covers her ears)
A paper bag blowing over the grass. A clear blue sky. No clouds. We didn’t have a radio, not in the car.

(Pause.

DAVID now crosses back to the sofa and sits, staring out)

I rode in the back seat. I wore a cotton T-shirt and a baseball cap. A breeze came into my face. Oh, I’m a good listener.

(Blackout. 

In darkness DAVID exits downstage right and ELIZABETH upstage left. Music. Duet: Joan Sutherland and Richard Conrad, “Caro Mio Ben.” slowly fades to background.

Low lights return gradually to reveal DAVID sitting shirtless and barefoot on the downstage sofa. A candle is lit somewhere on the set, perhaps on the counter. He lightly strums the old ukulele from the Illinois cabinet. He wears the raccoon hat. ELIZABETH stands at the window wearing only DAVID’s white dress shirt, naked underneath. She sips champagne again.)

DAVID (dreamy, with ukulele)
I like old things. Things that have been . . . appreciated . . . by someone else. Once upon a time.

ELIZABETH (Looking closely at her forearm, with drunken absorption, fascinated)
My body is getting softer. Spongy. My skin moves when I touch myself. It moves across my bones. I’m thirty-three.

DAVID
Anything. Things worth saving. Once upon a time.

ELIZABETH
I’m not a girl anymore.

(She pulls and pinches the flesh on her hips and buttocks, watching it recoil.)

DAVID
As if they were left for me to find. To recover from oblivion.

ELIZABETH
Huh. The connective tissue . . .

DAVID
And I find them.

ELIZABETH
. . . releases . . .

DAVID
Or they seem to find me. At antique shows and shops.

ELIZABETH
. . . underneath.

DAVID
They speak to me. It’s spooky.

(whispering)

They say, You’re the one. This is for you. I don’t even look at the cost. I pay whatever they ask.

ELIZABETH
Still, there were men tonight. Plenty of men.

DAVID
Then I leave.

ELIZABETH
I’m not worried. I have time.

DAVID
I walk out the door.

(Strums lightly. Pause.)

ELIZABETH (vacantly, out the window)
Will you please take off that stupid hat?

DAVID (ignoring her)
Old tools. You haven’t seen my tools.

(Pause.)

ELIZABETH
I’m cold.

DAVID
I have an awl with a mahogany handle.

(Pause.)

ELIZABETH
Do you know what they’re thinking?

(ELIZABETH finishes the last of the champagne in her glass. She crosses downstage to where DAVID is sitting on the couch and lays down with her head in his lap. Both are dreamy, distant. DAVID turns the uke pegs, holding the instrument up to his ear, quietly tuning it. The CLIENT reenters, same position as before.)

DAVID
Who? The men?

ELIZABETH
No. Our clients. At the party.

DAVID
Oh. No, I guess not.

ELIZABETH
The moment our backs are turned. After we’ve done our little routines about “Art and Asset Management”? We’re not fooling anybody. There is no illusion.

(DAVID listens.)

They’re thinking

(As she falls asleep)

CLIENT (over the audience)
I wonder what those moral cripples are up to? Can’t they do anything but pant and grovel after money? After me, after my money? A few fancy ideas about deferred interest. So what? Look at the way they strut around this place, like we’re all supposed to be kissing their asses. Well, here’s what we should do. We should bury their rosy Boy-and-Girl Scout faces into our sagging, suchered buttocks. Show them how business is really done. We’re old enough to be their parents. Shouldn’t they be at home in their pajamas?

(CLIENT exits upstage right)

ELIZABETH
We’re not fooling anybody . . .

(The champagne glass falls from her hand onto the floor as she drops off to sleep. DAVID picks up the glass, studies it, and places it on the end table. He looks at ELIZABETH sleeping and strokes her hair gently. He lifts her head onto a pillow as he rises. He moves upstage quietly with the ukulele to the back of the couch, watching her sleep. He returns the ukulele and the raccoon hat to the Illinois cabinet. He takes out a genuine Native American bow, an eagle feather hanging from the top, and a quiver of target arrows, like those found in any sporting goods store. He strings the bow. He puts on an Indian headdress from the cabinet. He crosses to the upstage window and unlocks and lowers the top half. Faint traffic sounds. Then he turns to face ELIZABETH.)

DAVID

(in a whisper, defiant, yet not to wake her, as if this information were exploding inside him)

Do you want to know something? Do you want to hear something really exciting? Something I just now found out? Just this very minute?

(He places an arrow into the bow.)

A second ago? Right here listening to you? I’ll tell you. I realize we’ve had our little differences, but I’ll tell you anyway. I like you. I think you have potential. But that’s beside the point. Anyway, here it is. Listen. Before I forget. This is it: I can do whatever I want to.

(He crosses up to the window and fires the arrow out, watching it sail through the night)

Did you hear that? I can do whatever I want. Me. David. Whatever I want. Isn’t that something?

(He reloads another arrow.)

What a great feeling! Do you have any idea what a great feeling that is!

Listen . . . I’ll tell you . . . I can . . . I . . . I can . . .

(He moves toward the couch and bends over ELIZABETH and whispers “what he can do” into her ear while she sleeps.

Rising, now standing over her)

Isn’t that fantastic! Or what about this . . .

(Bending over again, whispering into her ear. Then standing again)

Isn’t that GREAT! Isn’t that . . . isn’t . . .

(He leans over couch again and whispers into her ear as she sleeps. He crosses back to the window and fires the arrow, watches it sail at the moon. He reloads and fires another, and then another. Same business of watching. Pause.

The PROFESSOR enters and crosses downstage right holding up a single typed page over his head. He has a look of stern righteousness.

ELIZABETH now opens her eyes and rises from the couch, in a trance. DAVID looks at her, but the continues arrow business. She stands facing out and speaks softly, as if haunted. DAVID occasionally regards her over his shoulder but does not let what she says interfere with his arrow shooting.)

ELIZABETH
The professor held my bibliography up to the class. To the seminar. I was in the back and I could tell when I saw it that it was mine. My heart stopped. Everyone was quiet.

(DAVID fires an arrow, reloads.)

I heard people in front of me go “Shhhh” and point at the professor. It was either a reward or an execution about to happen, a golden halo or a banishment. No in-between, never an in-between. Probably a banishment. Everyone took out their notebooks and pencils to write down what the professor was about to say. Quickly. He waited. He was a famous professor. He walked across the front of the room holding up the paper, my bibliography, for everyone to see.

(DAVID fires again, reloads)

The room got even quieter. I was scared. When he’d finished I went to the ladies room because  I’d wet my pants. It didn’t matter what he had said, I would’ve wet my pants, anyways. But he said

PROFESSOR
Now this is how a bibliography should look when handed in to me.

(DAVID flattens against the wall as if he’d been spotted from the street. Maybe some guy is down there looking around trying to figure out where this goddamn arrow on the sidewalk came from. DAVID cautiously reloads another and peeks around the edge of the window so as not to be seen.)

ELIZABETH
He pointed with his free hand, at the names and titles on my bibliography. He said

PROFESSOR
This is how a bibliography should look. In chronological and alphabetical order. Name and title and publishing date. Look . . .

ELIZABETH
He said.

PROFESSOR
They’re all here . . .

ELIZABETH
And he read the names.

PROFESSOR
Alfred, J.R. . . . Kelso, T.M . . . Miller, S.L . . .

(DAVID fires another arrow, reloads.)

ELIZABETH
I remember them all. And the titles and dates. Preempting Sales Resistance (1973) by M. William Carr

PROFESSOR
Organizational Dynamics in a Changing World (1977) by Seymour Howell

ELIZABETH
Rasputin’s Marketplace (1978) by Sanford Shapiro

(ELIZABETH begins roaming around the space somnambulistically, continuing.)

ELIZABETH
The Fiscal Administration of Humans and Commodities (1983) by J. Kent-Sesser

PROFESSOR
Negotiating Employment Contracts (1986) by T.K. Snider (DAVID fires again, reloads)

ELIZABETH
Abstracts in Contractual Obligation (1988) by Orman Rower

PROFESSOR
Waivers of Subrogation and Applicability (1988) by Justin Case

ELIZABETH
Then he said

PROFESSOR
I am returning some of your bibliographies for revision. I will place Elizabeth’s here on the desk for those of you needing revision to examine after class. Thank you, Elizabeth.

(The PROFESSOR exists. ELIZABETH squats behind the sofa and pees on the floor. DAVID watches her. After she finishes, she crosses back down to the sofa and lays down as she was before.)

ELIZABETH
Then I got up and went to the bathroom.

(She pulls a blanket around her, and goes back to sleep. DAVID crosses to the pee spot with the bow and arrow and looks down at it, then at ELIZABETH. Long pause.)

DAVID
Abracadabra. Nobody chooses a thing.

(DAVID steps quietly away and toward the Illinois cabinet. He removes the headdress and replaces it with the raccoon hat. He puts the bow away and takes out the ukulele again. He strums it gently wandering the room for several seconds, singing a folk tune to himself, the Weavers’ version of Miriam Makeba’s “Suliram,” an Indonesian lullaby, softly, not quite sotto voce)

Suliram, suliram, ram, ram
Suliram yang manis
Adu hai indung suhoorang
Bidjakla sana dipanding manis
Tingla, tingi, si matahari
Suliram, anakla koorbau mati toortambat
Suli . . .

(He abruptly stops in midsong and stares at the ukulele in his hand, then at ELIZABETH. He rushes back to the cabinet and takes out a large book with various markers placed in the pages. He puts the ukulele away and from the back of the cabinet he very cautiously removes an authentic hand-carved Cherokee arrow. He holds the arrow out reverently and crosses downstage. He leans it against the arm of the couch, feathers down, arrowhead pointing upward. He finds one of Abraham Lincoln’s letters to Mary Owens in the book. He moves slowly back towards ELIZABETH, reading the letter to her in a gentle, sympathetic voice, with tenderness for her and for Lincoln. The Healy portrait of Lincoln in the cabinet is distinctly visible as before till curtain.)

DAVID
“I am often thinking about what we said of your coming to live in Springfield. I am afraid you would not be satisfied. There is a great deal of flourishing about in carriages here, which it would be your doom to see without sharing in it. You would have to be poor without having the means of hiding your poverty. Do you believe you could bear that patiently?

(ELIZABETH moans and turns away and faces into the couch. DAVID stops and watches her, then resumes.)

Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort. I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am, provided I saw no signs of discontent with you. What you have said to me may have been in jest, or I may have misunderstood it. If so, then let it be forgotten; if otherwise, I wish you would think seriously before you decide. You may not have been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more severe than you now imagine.

(Pause. DAVID stares at those words for a five-count, perhaps longer, then resumes)

I know you are capable of thinking correctly on any subject; and if you deliberate maturely upon this, before you decide, then I am willing to abide your decision.

(DAVID crosses to the counter and puts down the book. He goes to the refrigerator and takes out the champagne bottle. He uncorks it and takes a big gulp, wincing again. He stares into the space in front himself. Pause. He recorks the bottle and returns it to the refrigerator. He takes up the book and the Lincoln passage again, and reads.)

You must write me a good long letter after you get this. You have nothing else to do, and though it might not seem interesting to you, after you had written it, it would be a good deal of company to me in this ‘busy wilderness.’

Yours, etc.

Abraham Lincoln.”

(DAVID closes the book and crosses to the sofa. He lays down next to ELIZABETH, facing downstage, still cradling the book. His eyes are wide open, unblinking, staring out. He takes a slow deep breath and exhales.

Slow fade to black.

Pause.

Music: Sutherland/Conrad duet. Soft dawn light from the window.

DAVID and ELIZABETH are on the sofa wrapped in each others’ arms and legs, asleep, ELIZABETH still in DAVID’s shirt, DAVID in his underwear.

The Cherokee arrow remains propped against the arm of the sofa as DAVID left it. The Illinois cabinet is still open. The book lays on the floor in front of the sofa. The Healy portrait of Lincoln looks over the scene from wherever DAVID left it last, from inside or on top of the cabinet.

The CLIENT’s special fades in and the CLIENT returns to downstage right, and back to his cocktail party bantering in silence.

Pause.

The building “moves” again as in scene one, and ELIZABETH is startled awake. She opens her eyes thinly. She slowly rises from the sofa, her head throbbing and her eyes squinting and stands shakily studying the room the room and DAVID. She rubs her eyes and stumbles away from the sofa to walk around the room. The CLIENT continues silent cocktail party banter, grinning occasionally at some glib joke, sipping a cocktail of his own. DAVID remains sprawled asleep, all arms and legs and comically-opened mouth.

ELIZABETH walks behind the sofa and reacts to the smell of urine someplace, not knowing it is her own. She looks toward the Illinois cabinet and after a few steps toward it discovers the book DAVID read from laying on the floor, the Collected Writings of Abraham Lincoln. Sunlight builds through the window, traffic sounds of early morning buses and cabs.

She picks up the book from the floor awkwardly; it is heavy. Still squinting she fumbles through the pages. She looks at the cover and spine to identify the book’s author, and opens to a page. She holds it close to her face to read, again slowly, awkwardly, as if searching for some meaning to all this. DAVID snores once and rolls over to face the inside of the sofa, throwing a leg over the top. ELIZABETH looks at him. Pause. She now peers at the strange words in front of her—from an address of Lincoln’s to the Springfield, Illinois Young Men’s Lyceum—and begins to read, half asleep and half awake. The CLIENT beams, blushes, and delights in his milieu.)

ELIZABETH
“In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account running, under the date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them— they are a legacy bequeathed us by once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ’tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time, and untorn by usurpation—to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.”

(She yawns.

She closes the book with both hands and replaces it like a brick in the Illinois cabinet. It makes a heavy thud on the shelf.

She turns still slowly and achily back to face the room and discovers the Cherokee arrow.

She crosses down to the arrow and picks it up, a feeling of apprehension, revulsion, and attraction to it in doing so. Squinting less now, she studies the point, the feathers, and shaft with a gradual fascination. She withdraws her finger and hand quickly after touching the sharp arrow point, emitting a soft “Ouch!” She is only a few feet away now from the CLIENT who continues enjoying the party on her right, and DAVID asleep on her left.

With the arrow in her hand she crosses back to stage left of the window, several feet away but facing out it. She steps toward the window and her downstage hand, holding the arrow, slowly rises to shield her eyes from the sun, which now fully blazes. She stands in the fierce light with the arrow over her head for a five-count, turning her face away from the glare. The CLIENT continues his party babble. The sound of a distant jackhammer breaking up the concrete many blocks away is heard through the window. DAVID shifts and rolls on the sofa. ELIZABETH takes two reluctant steps backward, the arrow still aloft, her face away from the light, her body slightly bent at the waist. Blackout on ELIZABETH. She remains frozen in place. The CLIENT remains under his spot chattering away in his element. Hold light for a slow ten second fade.

Blackout.)  

  Scene One  

   Contributor’s notes
   Illinois Introduction   
   Introductions Reading Loop
   Tracking the Muse