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B. Walker Sampson
Location: Long Island City, NY
Email: walkbens@hotmail.com
Pushlished In: American Theatre
Other: Works in the publications department at Theatre Communications Group and teach creative writing at Hofstra University; his play "Clear Across" was produced in the 1999 Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival at the Harold Clurman Theatre and his newest, "Evacuating Standstill," will be given a staged reading in New York City at the end of July, 2000
ACTS IN BETWEEN Characters:
CLYDE: male; spent
PETRY: female; jazz-happy
SAUL: male; aiming to please
MARTA: female; not accomodated
KEITH: male; incurably so
LLAN: female; sputtering
Scene:
Two double beds, each making up a half of the stage. These beds contain a rotating chain of paired people, all in their twenties and all in post-coital discussion.
(Light on BED RIGHT: CLYDE and PETRY.)
PETRY
Dangerous.
CLYDE
Yes.
PETRY
That was dangerous.
CLYDE
I’m glad.
PETRY
I could write on you. Trace space between your sweat, make some lines, what would you want the lines to say?
CLYDE
Occupied.
PETRY
Please do not disturb, please do not disturb my baby. My baby is mine, mine to bother and yours to walk on by. Keep the door closed, it’s all secret in here.
CLYDE
Would you consider it an insult . . .
PETRY
I wouldn’t consider it an insult. I’d check the texture of the words before I was hurt, then I’d filter through your meaning, find something worthwhile in a put down.
CLYDE
I was just going to put on some on music.
PETRY
No radio in here, baby. Just an alarm clock.
CLYDE
No. I have one in the other room.
PETRY
I knew a woman once: she broke all the strings to her guitar. She cut her hair, made strings out of that. Music grew from her.
CLYDE
God, Petry. She strums so hard her strings break, her hair isn’t going to hold up.
PETRY
It was only a lie to make you feel better.
CLYDE
Did I ever tell you I was a dog person? (Beat.) I never had a dog. I always wanted a dog. We had cats in our house. Three of them. Two of them were gray, one, brown. that’s the way I knew their names, so I always called two cats the same what’s the difference, with what they do. Damn things rub your leg and run away. Walk along the thatched roof eaves and never bother falling. The bitch of it was: I’m allergic. Not to cats; to dogs.
(Beat.)
PETRY
You’re a devil, Clyde. A bitch-devil with a base mouth.
(DARK on BED-RIGHT.
LIGHT on BED-LEFT.)
MARTA
I didn’t know you were going to waste my time.
SAUL
I was hoping on a sequence of chances. You’re a complicated woman, Marta, and it’s going to take some time to learn . . . everything about you includes this, you know, what you need and at what velocity.
MARTA
In the other room, on my shelf of books, in what I’ve affectionately dubbed the reference section, there is an encyclopedia of dramatic terms. There’s something in the A’s that applies to your little promise and plea, and that word is this: audition.
SAUL
Well, then in time I’ll come to accept that but, you must excuse me, but in the meantime, I plan on dealing with it very badly, sweating over it at work, out drinking, in the midst of job interviews, pounding my fist both figuratively and intellectually at the chance I might have had with your company.
MARTA
In short, you thought about it too much before it started.
SAUL
It was beautiful, what I thought.
(Beat.)
MARTA
I took the day off, Tuesday, you know. As a rule, I go in sick as a hemorrhaging poodle, because I always want to save up my days. That’s what I fantasize about, those times when Stanley’s in a meeting and the phone stops ringing in those mysterious, mystical pieces of silence in the office. As an assistant, you really do run out of time to help yourself. You don’t have a department, you have somebody else’s department. Your meaning is only a subtext of somebody’s else’s meaning, but you have to work your ass off to become a full-fledged definition. These are the things that frustrate me, Saul, but my teeth are well-accustomed to be gritted and going on. But I look forward to the time I have to myself, the time for all this energy to wash out of my body, to get myself ready for the new energy I have to put into it. (Beat.) And the point, as applied to you, here hanging on my every word, is that nothing washed. (Gets out of the bed.)
SAUL
Where are you going?
MARTA
To finish up. (She crosses the stage, getting into the other bed with PETRY, as CLYDE sits in the dark downstage of the beds. The LIGHT remains on BED-LEFT, as LLAN gets in bed with SAUL.)
SAUL
Why do you do that?
LLAN
Why what?
SAUL
Just sort of bolt afterwards to the kitchen. To set the coffeemaker.
LLAN
Oh, you know I get sleepy afterwards. I want to make sure I get that done.
SAUL
If you want, I could do that. I’m awake and stressed afterwards.
LLAN
Oh, no, that’s fine. You don’t drink coffee, it’s really really fine.
SAUL
I know, I know, but it makes it feel like it never even happened. You know, like I, like I . . .
LLAN
Oh, but it did, don’t worry about that.
SAUL
Yes, but if it meant you’d stay for a while, even fall asleep while you did some sort of absent-minded gesture on my chest, maybe, then I would barter with setting the coffeemaker for the morning.
LLAN
That’s why I dart, dear. To make-believe I was never gone. (Beat.) Though last night I . . . (Beat.) Oh that was awful.
SAUL
What?
LLAN
I can’t believe I said that.
SAUL
What?
LLAN
Work is hard. Isn’t it, starting out, it’s so hard. You feel like you have to get through so much crap to get to the stuff you like. You feel like you should be a masochist after all that time wasted funneling, oversleeping, and having the sisters shave your pubic hair in college. I know, I know.
SAUL
Geez, Llan. I can’t keep up with you. Sometimes I wonder if . . . (Beat.) There’s someplace I’ve been . . .
LLAN
No, you’re overworked, I understand. These are the times when the workplace is our livingspace, and nights are spent at our desk wondering if the keyboard might not be the worst kind of pillow. It’s not, you know, but you know. I had a frog once--it was my pet, and it lived in a glass case. And I used to accuse it of being boring--all it did was puff it’s throat and blink, but never when you asked it to. It never blinked on command. It never responded to my love the way I pre-planned for it to. But then I apologized, in tears, because I realized I could never expect that from the frog because I didn’t understand the frog--the frog had problems, the frog was complicated. The frog was exhausted, it had no time for me, it was exhausted from the monotony.
SAUL
Llan?
LLAN
Saul! Saul! I don’t deserve you, Saul!
SAUL
I know we have misunderstanding . . .
LLAN
We understand each other perfectly. But then it stops.
SAUL
What?
LLAN
It stops.
(Beat.)
SAUL
Last night, I . . .
LLAN
No, it’s stopped. I stopped it, I . . .
(KEITH enters, getting into bed next to LLAN; SAUL is edged out of the bed in the shuffle.)
KEITH
Sorry, man. Better lay.
(SAUL retreats to dark downstage with CLYDE. DARK on BED-LEFT,
LIGHT on BED-RIGHT.)
MARTA
I guess I believe that, too.
PETRY
It’s not men and women, it’s . . .
MARTA
Pleasure, right.
PETRY
So I understand you like to work with your hands.
MARTA
Uh, I type.
PETRY
Someone told me. Someone told me what you did in your spare time.
MARTA
Somebody may have the wrong idea.
PETRY
Alas. "What does it matter; what you say about a person." Is that how it goes, I haven’t been in a movie theater for so long.
MARTA
What do you do?
PETRY
Capture snowflakes on my tongue.
MARTA
No. Where do you work?
PETRY
(Doing a snow-angel in the bed.) Geography?
MARTA
Yes.
PETRY
Washington Heights. But I do work all over. I love the way the globe just spins around, you could make each city a sort of globe. No north, no south, just a sphere of trains, taxis, and pumping pavement. (Beat.) Columbia, doll.
MARTA
You’re a student.
PETRY
No, I have a grant. (Beat.) There’s a whole field that takes the way we funny people behave and takes it down to sea and land, when we’re growing and when we’re grown up. I look at people without sand stuck to their feet, but who dream of dipping back in, one toe at a time. (Beat.) There’s a man I made love to, had something like a seizure when he came, a gesture he didn’t mean, quick to the left. I spent a lot of time with this man, as a friend--he was the most masculine of men, always wanted to be a man, never wanted to not have the composure of a man. But when this man came, it was beautiful and violent all at once, and his head snapped quick and quick and his eyes filled up with tears of joy.
(Beat.)
MARTA
There is something I do in my spare time. You know what it is?
PETRY
(Taking MARTA’s head into her hands and massaging her lobes.) Old big laundry bag you have, old stuff that got all wet and you didn’t leave out to dry. Old towel left on the tile after the bath, bunched up and crusted.
(LIGHT on CLYDE and SAUL, the latter’s head on the former’s knees; LIGHT on BED-RIGHT remains.)
MARTA
That’s not my head you’re talking about.
PETRY
Old swollen head, let me help.
MARTA
That hurts.
CLYDE
That’s an interesting fantasy you’ve got going there.
SAUL
I’m under the bed, while this Cro-Magnon man breaks the springs, plunging his hunting spear repeatedly into my late companion.
CLYDE
What ever soars your skies.
SAUL
It takes me back to level.
CLYDE
Brings you out here. (Beat.) I was with someone . . .she was with a lot of people, but we were --home base, you know.
SAUL
Home base?
(Beat.)
CLYDE
Of course, off on my own . . .
SAUL
(Standing up.) Listen, I . . . I’m going to grad school in the fall. Which means I have taken things lightly as of late. Everything is set--I’m not relocating, I don’t think, so I don’t have to move. I’m going to be clearing in on Sterne and Joyce, so I’m even reading some Louis L’Amour this summer to clear the palate. And she smiles like a straw-man, a scarecrow, a sort of zig-zag line that frustrates me to no end. And I think about other places to go, and I wonder if she knows what I’m thinking. If she knows where I’ve been, and how much I’ve failed . . . (Beat.) I think it bothers her, and it bothers me that I construct her unsettling . . .because she doesn’t flaunt it. (Beat.) Except with the Cro-Magnon Man. (Beat. He moves into the dark, behind BED-LEFT.) And she works so hard.
CLYDE
Even when I’m not on my own . . .
(DARK on DOWNSTAGE; SAUL disappears beneath BED-LEFT, which is now in LIGHT.
KEITH kisses LLAN, facing away, on the shoulder. She doesn’t react.)
PETRY
The hurt is nice. It leads in.
KEITH
Was it great? (Again kisses LLAN on the shoulder.)
LLAN
Good. Very good.
KEITH
For some people, this is something to do when you’re in love, you’re on a date. Something quick, and then on with the rest of things.
MARTA
That’s a flat pain, and you didn’t let me tell you what I like to do in my spare time.
KEITH
(Knocking on her head.) What’s going on in there? (Beat.) Let me tell you though, whose hands you have been in. I’m schooled. This is the kind of thing I know. I have a major, and an expertise. (Beat.) Hello? When are you going to come out?
LLAN
(Dreamy.) I already came out. Went back in.
MARTA
I like to make lists. It fills the gaps, between when things need to be done, I think about what I can do, for myself.
LLAN
I’m thinking about reading.
KEITH
You’re not listening. (Kisses at her ear.) Listen.
LLAN
Too tired. I think all the words would slur together, even if I wasn’t saying them. Sort of like . . .
MARTA
I thought I told you to stop. Will you please?
PETRY
Would you want me to stop, please? (Beat.) What was the next thing on your list?
MARTA
They never get done. It’s a list just for me. It sounds nice, but it never gets done.
PETRY
Someone else had your list. They showed it to me in a bar. They were making fun of you. I took the list from them and put it in their throat.
MARTA
You waste your time with that mystic crap. (Sits up.) I should really . . .
LLAN
There are all these books. Sometimes I buy them, and put them in order. When I’m going to read them, holidays, three day weekends. (Beat.) There’s something else I could be getting done, but now you’ve worn me out. (Sits up, suddenly.) Is this the second night you’ve been here?
PETRY
These are the moods I get in. You should have seen the last one.
MARTA
I’m sure I’ll see it sometime. (Getting out of the bed.) The next time I forget to leave the bar, alone. (Exits.)
LLAN
We haven’t moved from this bed. We haven’t moved from this bed. I have to do the dishes, I have two more volumes of Proust, I have to set the crock-pot, I have no time for a bed-in.
KEITH
Consider it a protest.
SAUL
(From under the bed.) A protest of what?
KEITH
I want you to tell me it wasn’t the best.
LLAN
It was the best.
SAUL
Ha!
KEITH
Stroke for stroke?
SAUL
Pucker for pecker.
LLAN
I would think, it just . . . (Beat.) It seemed like something I’d want to do once. And we did it. Twice.
SAUL
You might have been asleep for the rest.
LLAN
I never fall asleep in the middle.
SAUL
(Getting out from under the bed.) You’ve fallen asleep just before it starts.
LLAN
The week wears me out.
SAUL
What about that vacation, the motor inn? What else do you do in a motor inn?
LLAN
You catch up on things. I told you that’s what I wanted a vacation for.
SAUL
You exhaust yourself, trying to stay on top. And you never do. You’re a failure, and I love you.
LLAN
That’s an awful thing to say. I love you, too.
SAUL
That will do. Can I go to bed, now? I very nearly died under that bed, old Biff bearing the mattress down near the floor. (To KEITH.) You’re still here. Listen, we could be men and fight about this, but I’m going to warn you. I’m only going to get hurt. And that’s fine. Just, if you give me a concussion, lay me out on the pillow and put some Advil by the bed.
(KEITH exits, forlorn, and drops himself on to the RIGHT-BED. LIGHT comes back up there..)
Now he’ll cry like a real man.
(DARK on BED-LEFT.)
PETRY
You come in like it’s home for you. You’ve lost your jazz. Your feet pad like broken piano keys.
KEITH
Music’s played out. Don’t talk shit. Just do that thing where I don’t move.
PETRY
Are you speaking on familiar terms?
KEITH
Do that thing I showed you. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to feel. I want to be numb.
PETRY
I’ll start with your hands, move them with mine like you’re moving yourself. Start them on you head, where you press down and release, take everything inside of it. Then I’ll make your body ice. Ice that melts out your eyes.
(DARK on both BEDS. Light on ground downstage, where MARTA sits with CLYDE.)
MARTA
I feel like tomorrow’s the weekend.
CLYDE
One day’s not the weekend. Certainly not Wednesday.
MARTA
Is that what tomorrow is?
CLYDE
Wednesday all over. Hump-day: guy in college said I was the only one who didn’t get laid on hump-day. Then I stole his girl.
MARTA
Maybe it’s a day to remain celibate.
CLYDE
It’s a day. (Checks watch.) What are you doing tomorrow?
MARTA
Nothing.
CLYDE
Day off?
MARTA
No. I got fired. (Beat.) I suppose, maybe by the weekend, I’ll be upset.
CLYDE
Well, what I was going to ask you . . .
MARTA
I know, but I don’t think I want to make any plans.
CLYDE
I could get sick tomorrow. You never know. (Beat.) Maybe another time.
MARTA
Maybe’s good. It will be a surprise. If you feel lucky. "Do you feel lucky . . ."
Is that the line?
CLYDE
Not, really. Too menacing. (Beat.) You ever . . .
MARTA
Ever?
CLYDE
I was going to say something disgusting.
MARTA
Was it about animals?
CLYDE
God, no. (Beat.) You ever . . . The night . . . The dark . . . Sort of dangerous, but sort of . . . (Beat.) You ever?
MARTA
Never.
(Beat.)
CLYDE
What would you like to do?
(Beat.)
MARTA
Shhh . . .
(BLACKOUT.)