Internal Revenue Service vs. Menaechmi

Will Owen

comedy

* Introductory Information

Internal Revenue Service vs. Menaechmi is a comedy. It reprises what is for sure the oldest living playplot out there -- that of Plautus' Menaechmi and Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. As in The Comedy of Errors, this re-use of that old plotstory also hinges on the confusion generated by two sets of identical twins.

Concept: On the one hand, this is a straightforward, full-length play -- the script for the playing of straight-on theater-show that is very full-length, focused on sustained, bravura acting -- and funny. On the other hand, this script is also an experiment in a hybrid form: fusing television mini-series and performance video- documentary. That is, this script can be divided and tailored for presentation as a handful of episodes for serial viewing, produced as theater before a live audience but for video documentation aimed at synching with the ever-growing way (particularly true in the world of opera and ballet) that more and more people are experiencing, albeit at no-longer-live second-hand, theaterworks through screen devices. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the technology that is most transforming nearly all the traditional performance arts is that of those ever more high-performance pixelscreens, their equally high- performance sound systems, and the global, digital distribution capability of the many different kinds of streaming platforms. Indeed, recent decades have seen the development of new sub-genre of filmmaking, that of videoworks aimed at ever- more-effectively recording stage performances for presentation on digitally-driven screens of one kind or another -- from the tennis- court size HD-projection screens of large movie theaters to the playing-card size lightboxes that our tele...phones are now. One of the best things about this relatively new artform of performance video-documentation is that it is necessarily focused -- at times close-up -- on the performers and their artistry. That is, the best of these videoworks shiningly-brilliantly record the acting (and whether that acting is primarily grounded in speech, song or dance etc. is immaterial to my point here about what this new form of videoart does so well). Incidentally (and obviously) this is all very revealing of my own outlook as a theater-maker: the whole point is the acting, all that other stuff -- the plot, the characters, the dialogue, the lights-and-set spectacle etc. etc. -- is just a pretext for putting on acting, the greater, and more humanly communicative, the better.

Production Requirements: This play can be played across the spectrum of production logistics: from day lighting with everyday wear for costumes and no sets, to deep-pockets tech-palace lighting and costume and set design etc. As a theme of the play is wealth inequality in America today and some of the characters download charts etc. on that subject to their phones to show to each other, a way of sharing those visuals with the members of the audience is required.

Plot Synopsis: In his office high in the Manhattan skyline Bill Menaechmi (NYB -- New York Bill) fends off the IRS as he pursues his global, mega-money deal-spinning. After chewing out his lawyers for not taking care of his tax problems, NYB takes off for a week-long business trip to the Caymans and Monte Carlo. Meanwhile, at offices of the IRS, three compliance enforcement officials -- Molly Pistol, Clifton Mayfield, and Dan Darling -- are working on how to track down the elusive financier. Their investigative efforts turn up a web profile in California they believe could well be that of their quarry in hideout -- but it's that of the other of the two long-lost, identical-twin Menaechmi brothers. The IRS officers send a stern e-mail, requiring that Bill Menaechmi to be at his apartment in New York in one week's time, or else... Bill Menaechmi (CAB -- California Bill) returns to his pad after a morning of surfing, and, as he makes coffee and talks to his dog, CAB gets the message, is mystified by it, but decides he'd better head 'cross country and show up at the appointed place and time.

A week later, at NYB's apartment overlooking Central Park, NYB's homemaker wife, Alice, is getting a visit from her identical twin sister, Amanda, a glamorous fashion industry executive. Alice confesses her estrangement from her husband. Amanda, who has never had much liking nor respect for Alice's Bill, encourages Alice in her inclination to take some time to take stock, away from her neglectful, workaholic husband. To prevent his sure-to-follow divorce lawyers from dispossessing Alice of her home on the grounds she abandoned it when leaving him, Amanda proposes to stay in the apartment to stand in for Alice's continued occupancy and ownership of it. Alice packs a bag and moves out, leaving Amanda in the apartment alone. Meanwhile, at a nearby airport, at the general aviation terminal used by private jets, NYB, returning from his trip, is lured into a limo he was led to believe was the one that had been arranged, as usual, to pick him up. By the time he realizes that he's the victim of a gang of criminal consters, he's well on his way to being hustled to their safe house, stripped of the digital keys to his accounts, knocked out with knock-out fluid, and left to sleep it off in the back seat of an abandoned car.

CAB arrives for the tax audit appointment at NYB's apartment. Amanda takes him for her sister's husband and he takes her for an IRS agent. Unsure what to make of the situation he's walked into, but staying true to his go-with-the-flow hipster ways, CAB -- since Amanda makes no move to make him leave -- ends up settling in to spend the night. Meanwhile, NYB has come to, penniless and documentless, and suffering the memory loss induced by the knock-out fluid. He's mugged for his coat and shoes. Back at the apartment, over dinner, CAB sets in against the sarcasm and disdain he's getting from Amanda -- to no avail. And he falls for her, hard.

Back on the street, NYB finds his way to a homeless shelter to get issued other shoes and a coat. He falls in with other destitutes, is asked about himself, and pieces of his lost memory start coming back to him. That night at the apartment, CAB comes to Amanda's room. Though tempted by him despite her conviction that he's her sister's rebarbative husband, she rejects him. Out on the street, NYB's hallucinatory state promts his newfound sidekicks to take him down into the tunnels beneath the city to try a spiritual cure. NYB samples the renegade devotions practicing in hiding underground, but doesn't go for any. In the morning in the apartment, over breakfast, CAB's ardor for her turns Amanda to give in to him, and their love affair begins.

At the offices of the IRS, the three lawyers/special agents arrive at work lamenting how the government shutdown then just ending prevented them from getting to NYB's as planned. They gripe about the system, and they decide to just show up at NYB's apartment that very day. Meanwhile, NYB runs into his wife, Alice, in Central Park. She catalyzes the full return of his memory, and agrees to go back home with him. Back at the apartment, Amanda's guilty remorse has frozen her intimacy with CAB -- just as NYB and her sister walk in on them. And then, the arrival of the IRS brings the long-lost identical twin Menaechmi brothers face-to-face again. How CAB and NYB wound up with the same name and separated at birth is discovered, and the long-lost identical twin brothers are, at long last, joyfully reunited -- only to have to face the IRS. And all live happily ever after, including the IRS ☺.

Casting Breakdown: Five actress roles (Amanda, Alice, Molly, Effie, Nancy); seven actor roles (New York Bill, California Bill, Dan, Clifton, Cashman, Crewfer, Big Jim); and a chorus, the members of which play hierarchs and devotees in underground ceremonials. The roles of Molly/Effie, Dan/Crewfer and Clifton/Cashman can be doubled. The chorus can be replaced by pre-recorded voice-overs. Nearly all this play's characters are older rather than younger. One notional age line-up might be: late middle age/early senior -- New York Bill, California Bill, Alice, Amanda late thirties/early forties -- Molly, Effie, Dan, Crewfer within sight of retirement age -- Clifton, Cashman old before their time -- Big Jim, Nancy

Scene Breakdown: The action takes place in ten backgrounds: the power-office of NYB, the lowrent surferpad of CAB, an IRS office, the palatial apartment of NYB, a general aviation terminal, a limo, a rundown hideout apartment, a street, tunnels under the city, a bench in Central Park.

SETTINGS AND TIMELINE

THE ACTION TAKES PLACE IN NEW YORK CITY AND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NOW

I -- Start Day-- NYB's office; IRS office; CAB's surfer pad

II -- Day a Week Later -- NYB's apartment; airport, limo and safehouse; city street

III -- That Night -- NYB's apartment; tunnels underground IV -- The Morning After -- IRS office; Central Park; NYB's apartment

CHARACTERS

BILL MENAECHMI Global Financier and Compulsive Tax Evader (New York Bill) BILL MENAECHMI Senior Surfer and Temp Worker (California Bill) NYB and CAB are long-lost, identical twin brothers.

ALICE wife of NYB AMANDA fashion industry executive Alice and Amanda are identical twin sisters.

MOLLY PISTOL IRS Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement CLIFTON MAYFIELD Director, IRS Office of Criminal Investigations DAN DARLING IRS Special Agent

CASHMAN Boss of Trio Criminal Consters CREWFER Criminal Conster EFFIE Criminal Conster

BIG JIM MARION Destitute NANCY LITTLESTEPS Destitute

HIERARCHS AND DEVOTEES IN UNDERGROUND CEREMONIALS

* I -- Start Day

♦

§

I 1: office of New York Bill (NYB); chracteres are NYB and Secretary/Assistant; NYB is on; Secretary/Assistant is off. Lines enclosed in { } are into phone. Lines enclosed in [ ] are to Secretary/Assistant (who can appear or not).

NEW YORK BILL {Orgh! Listen to me. I know. This is what you..what we've..all, always wanted. This is..the..the unifying one. ... Would I steer you wrong? ... You don't understand yet, that's why I'm explaining. ... Sure it's a big bet -- I mean, investment -- even for you and me. But it'll soon be so much more. ... Would I even be talking to you if you weren't in this league? This puts you in on the bootup of a fusionation of desireability-perception the markets -- all of 'em -- 'll be goldrushing for in a matter of months. ... Listen, the're two kinds of people in this world, the stupids and the super-stupids -- and I'm talking to you 'cause I thought you weren't one or the other. And you're making me worry I was wrong? ... Think -- try to anyway -- this is like meaning itself we're packaging for buying and selling, owning and transforming -- disembodied from any one or other means that expresses it. ... No, that is not a philosophical question. You want a philosophical question? I got one -- just for you. Are you a Vienna sausage or are you an all-meat torpedo? That is the question. ... Yeah, yeah I'm a cultured guy alright -- that's not the issue here! Making money -- hyper-big money -- that's the issue here. ... C'mon, it's not the product; it's what suckers -- I mean customers -- no, I mean partners..like you -- believe it is. ... I mean everything I say with total sincerity, otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you. You know that. I'm Bill. Your real friend, Bill -- not your mugbook, never-heard-of-again flazooley friend, your real, human- hearted, true-friend-forever, Bill. I'm one of those -- the few, the lasting -- what-friends-are-for you-can-always-count-on friend. You know that, don't you? Yeah. Look, in today's total now, the winners that adapt with success -- the killerkings in this sharkfest, okay? -- are the ones who are first to take those quantum leaps of change into newly-minted space latent possibility will soon be burgeoning to fill. Yeah! Did I say that? You don't how lucky you are I'm bringing you aboard this deal. ... Listen to me, and do yourself a favor. Start thinking newthink like you did it all the time. What's a cyber- derivative blockchain secure debt-instrument financial thingamajig like this anyway? You too can be a master of the future because I've cornered the last sure thing out there -- the earnings-to-come and work-to-be of all the world's good debt-payers too proud to default - - 'cause that's the only money left out there that's not already dead, decomposing in ciphered entropy and losing, losing that mojo-magic of self-replicating, self-renewing value. It's the soul itself of money you can reach for possessing here -- it's so erotic just to think about it -- where'd the world of desire it makes go 'round be without it, right? ... Look, either you're in there first with how to exploit features newly evolved, or you're out of there -- and vulnerable to extinction as a real player. And that's not me, and that's not you. ... Why? 'Cause you and I are somebodies 'cause ours are gold-solid droplets of precious time like I'm spending now on you, and not 'cause we got gushers of hollow money it behooves you to invest with me before the clock runs out on your only opportunity. ... So what? So you want to keep thinking oldthink like you're some nobody poor person with lots of worthless time and a little precious money? ... Reliable? Reliable? Fear, fear your money won't mean as much tomorrow as today, so fear it might as well run out on you like some thankless floozy, and what you can do to save yourself from that angering humiliation are the most reliable leverage you can have. Come on, what d'you think's the system's source of energy? We're talking about the emotion-driven essence of what we're really living for if we're really living -- earnings and more earnings, money and more money, making more and more of itself like digital rabbits gone viralcrazy in the burrows of monetary cyberspace, but that we only know is real and ours when we're trading it in for something else, alive in the lemming race with everybody else displaying, envying, buying, investing, betting, speculating and selling -- chasing that wish-star comet's tail of..of making others wish they were you -- hah! -- having what you have, owning what you own, jealous of you and your success -- yee-ah! stupid suckers! -- because we trust that gives us respect in others' eyes. ... And now, with me, you can grab that magic mojo golden ring of total emotional -- I mean financial -- universal masterhood, forever...... It almost makes you tear up, doesn't it, the futility -- I mean humanity - - of it. So no wonder they'll all go for it, right? ... Yes, now -- with me, with this -- we can live beyond fear of money's two-timing, treacherous uncertainty. ... Me? Misuse my gift of gab to lie to you? God forbid! Can't you see? This is buying and selling distance and time itself, not like feet or seconds or miles or hours or whatever. We've tied it, system-wide, to the underlying..underlying..that's everybody's got to believe is there no matter..no matter what. ... What do you think money today really is anyway? That becomes -- makes us -- the use we put it to? Is buying and selling derivative debts and productive companies the same as buying and selling groceries and sex? You know what I mean, or I wouldn't be talking to you. ... And this will package it, for desire and possession, in a way that is..so far..unthought of -- like this is the speed of light and only we know what it is that sets the mass and energy everybody else is floundering -- hoarding and wasting, making and spending in. ... Founder, flounder, fuh-hoo-lola! So you're a cultured guy too? But I'm still richer than you! Orgh! ... Oh, wait, wait..sorry. ... Yes, I'm listening. I promise. ... My data integration is fast enough, and now there is enough data -- and mega-data can know everything about every money matter that matters, about everybody -- so we can trend it all, all if it's in this planetary economy, bought and sold and monetized -- and it's all, all paid for with promises of one kind or another that promise to be accepted in payment of something else by someone else later..and promises are kept..or not, but the money's still out there somewhere, right? Trust or no trust, God or no God. ... Yeah, yeah, yeah -- and I got something else that's big enough too. You remember what is the question? Look it, it is belief. You know that. No faith is strong like faith in money that keeps its value. And no betrayal more embittering than that of money that goes down the tubes of flushaway inflation, deadbeat default, and digital defritterment. ... The risk is right, right now, okay? ... My experience of global financial markets meltdown tells me so. ... Are you an artist in this, or just some big-office salaryman in financial bureaucracy? ... Sure, it's going to cost you money -- it's costing me money. But what league do we want to play in now? Success isn't playing in the big leagues, success is moving up to the next league before the other guys know it's there. Like Zendom's greatest warrior-philosopher once said, "Do you want to feed the sharks from the edge of tank, or from in the tank?" ... Huh?! I don't know -- what do I know about Zen anything? I'm just making this up as I go along. ... You don't believe me, huh? ... Uh-huh? Why would I tell you my secret? ... Okay, I'll tell you -- just you -- because I'm your real friend. I can hear, like no one else, the sound that money makes when it's not making money -- a plaintive burbling like a soft farting tone as if beset by constant, anxious agitation -- the worries, doubts and fears setting in about its value -- as it flatulates away. Can you hear it? Can you hear the unassuming but insistent urgency of it? Can you feel how you yearn to answer it? So like a perfume -- of a woman, say -- that once it fills your nostrils you can't not smell it -- once the sound of what hyper-replication is doing to your money fills your mind, you can't think about anything else. You can't let your money go to the guillotine of over digitalization that way like some airhead theater-loving Mary Antoinette while all those super stupids lining the streets howl for a bleeding victim, can you? But now with me, we've got the sure, no-worries answer beyond their reach. ... Exactly. That's why what I'm doing is creating the next money -- and I'm trying to do that for you, and you won't let me. ... I'm not trying to make you richer; I'm trying to make you happier. We're already crazy rich so that's not the point anymore is it? I want you to close your eyes and think of all those other average gazillionaires like you and me all snubby and snug packed up tight in their can like a clutch of wet wurtzels..have you ever visited a submarine..can you envision how big torpedoes are, I mean by comparison? ... Nope, oldthink again. It's too interdependent to break apart. It's a single, global society-wide belief-system, and nobody can bail out. Where else can we put our faith in money? Mars? Heaven? ... And now we're creating this distillation of money's deep value-maker -- all of it, disrobed in its beckoning, restless transformational possibility -- virginal and virtual, for all to desire, and trade for more! ... What? What kind of question is that? Do fish believe in water? Who can opt out? And crazy rich doesn't know what crazy rich is until after we're through. ... Hey, I'm a real friend, okay? But this isn't that kind of world. ... Look out your window. Look out your window like I'm doing. What do you see? ... Yeah, big, blue and yonder -- cloudlessly clear -- with nobody but stars above and angels can tish down on you. You know what everybody else sees? They see walls, walls, walls of windows reaching up and side and skew-ways and down and every whichway like some contemporary art nightmare blocking off the sun. Millions of windows like gateways into walled space and out every window they got their moons hanging out, spreading their cheeks and like it's all trickling down, on the hapless, schlepping multitudes below. And I can't believe it, like you want to be like just another one down there with them, like shopping, drooped down with fancy paper bags, hoping for a bitsy buzz of happiness from the redolent amulets inside? And I thought you had real ambition...... It is that kind of world, and everybody wants to pretend, believe like it isn't. But I made it up here where there's nobody can moon on me but the Lord above. And here's where I'm going to stay. So you want to lose your grip, shoot down that melt-slide meantime others climb up over top of you; go ahead! Stay out..like retire. Go ahead, sit on it; hold in your money like you got financial constipation. You know what happens to people can't risk their money, strategically risk their money -- that are psychosomafinancially constricted? ... Tell me something -- yes, I promise, just one more thing -- how's it going to feel after you die rich, doubled over, groaning in pain, hugging in all your money? ... Right. So take a prudent risk to live, live upright and free as absolute king of the mountain now. Like me! So I'm going to ask you one more philosophical question -- just one more -- I promise -- just for you. Do you know what feels like to live like a man, live like a man whose mojo just won't joe? ... Uh-huh. Believe it. And that's what'll happen to you -- just pooping out to the big good-bye as time goes by -- just like it's happening to your money, as all that hyper-replicated liquidity slowly bleeds into the shambles of the real economy. Remember, it's risk itself and its thrilling ride that rids time of its entropy, and keeps you rock and rolling forever young, beautiful and rich. Yes! So what do you say? ... Call me back. Let me know -- soon -- today's ticket, ride or stay behind. ... Yeah, I'll tell her. Yeah, Alice, that's right. Say hi to your wife too. Bye.} You read it off your "spouse's name" field on your whatever gizmo -- pretend for me you really knew, or care, you sadsack excuse for financial greatness..with that brasstacks glintz-boobies trophy wife..we should all be so lucky..like the rest of them lucky suckees and their luckier..sad little whores? Orgh! Why do I even try to help these people? [Where's that call I had in to Scott?]

SECRETARY/ASSISTANT from off over intercom etc. [I had him and he was holding but]

NEW YORK BILL [Oh? Oh-ho!? He hung up on me? He thinks I've reached my peak and now he's going to climb up past me? He wants to play like now he's the man with the money magic mojo? Get him back.] So he can ask me make some peanuts contribution to some political party that leaves those little power-trip goldfish going oh with their fat lips, "oh, a million dollars". Exited like feeding time -- trying to buy access and influence with government -- orgh, way those yokels there do things now -- so subtle -- like they're for opening cash envelopes instead of briefing papers. Hah! Scott baby, making it today is being free of all that dinosaur government..government- civic stuff -- living where none of that dinasaur political paleontology got no way to touch you. [Forget getting him back. If he calls back, tell him I'll return the call as soon as time -- God willing -- will permit. No, tell him I'll call him back, maybe, if I feel like it.] Oh Lord, you see I haven't forgotten you. And Lord, thank you for having helped me make myself so wildly successful, achieving total financial ascendency and freedom... And please, oh Lord I beg you, help me make sure I keep making more and more, and please dear Lord, help me make sure those super-stupids don't take it any of it away from me..ever and forever, Amen.

SECRETARY/ASSISTANT from off over intercom etc. [Sir, what was that?]

NEW YORK BILL [What was what? Orgh! Never mind.]

SECRETARY/ASSISTANT from off over intercom etc. [Yessir. You also had a call from the IRS. Third time they've called this morning.]

NYB [Pffft! You know what to do. Have 'em call my lawyers.] The IRS... Like they're dealing with some kind of under-reporting shopkeeper that's got citizenship responsibilities he's derelict in. [How much was that law firm bill last year? What do those hootsie-tootsie Hottentot butts think I pay them for?] Lawyers nowadays -- it's like you work for them.

SEC [The firm called too.]

NYB [Yeah, alright. Get 'em for me.] Snap their suspenders 'bout what to do 'bout them pathetic government guys. SEC [And your wife called.]

NYB [What did she want?]

SEC [She said she wanted to talk to you.]

NYB [She wanted to talk to me?] ... Talk to me about what? Something good about housekeeping maybe? What do I look like, a seal of approval? Sure, sure honey, go ahead. We got the money! Like I'm supposed to have time to care and worry about the things we buy and what they cost? What's the point of being rich? I'm in this sphere now and she just couldn't follow..like she just can't change the outlook of her upbringing..and estrangement happens. What can two people today, no longer in the same psychological-financial habitat..still have..but... She's still the only one..looked at me and took me in..like ever since those college days stuck by me like I was some lostdog waif and ever since she's the only one I can trust... Orgh! while all those joe-college jockposhes treated me like some mega-loser super-twerp..but like who's king of the mountain now, huh? And even mom liked her..like only Alice could bring some some sun and sweetness to the bitter rancour of mom's usual lifemood..mom..always guiltying me up going on and on 'bout how she loved me twiceover like I didn't deserve it all, and denying even dad's existence..until I gave up even asking what the story was..she'd just look away and scowl and say, "don't be a dreamer, be an actor..." And so I am. Orgh! [You get the firm for me yet?]

SEC [Not yet, no. But the IRS is on again; they just called back.]

NYB [No way!..You talk to them, you acknowledge..you make 'em legit. And I'm not subject. I'm out of there.] "You're fired!" That's what that palooka ought to do to the whole IRS -- that way he could chisel some more free-ride money, and be a little less bankrupt. Orgh!

SEC [What? What I do?] NYB [What? Not you!] Orgh! Don't get me started. Orgh! World I work in's its own sphere, money's got a consubstantial real and virtual life of its own in cybereconomics now and they just don't get that yet -- and it couldn't care less about their stupid wars and inequality and welfare issues and social and economic policy debates, and I couldn't care less either. Money has no hopes and fears, only ones and zeros -- and that's why they're all so super-stupid about it -- so super-stupid some of 'em even think they're happy! Orgh! [Tell 'em I'm on an important business trip; and they can talk to my lawyers.] And just talk -- brief and counter-brief, in their irrelevant jurisdictional blabfestoola, like some super-stupid endless monologue in a ridiculously long play. Remember records? Orgh!

NYB [Got it.] {Hey there counselor, how's my lawyer man? Getting ready to send me another bill maybe? For all your fine work keeping me clear of ill-informed interference. At umpteen hundred dollars an hour which is more than most people on this planet make in a month! How much was that last bill? Or what do you hootsie-tooties call them -- invoices for honoraria? Honoraria for desmearing my tush! What am I paying you for if I've got the IRS shooping up my whoosh? Lucky me, huh? ... What!? ... Absolutely not! ... If I was out there rights violating, like in a relationship with somebody else, like assaulting, exploiting and taking away from other persons or their property, you better bet I would not be above the law! But I'm not doing anything like that. Where I work is simply beyond society; the markets and the networks and the algorithms they run on are in charge here, and that's different, and I'm not doing anything wrong! All that governments thing has no rightful say-so here. What I do is legitimate. It is. But it's in its own world -- with its environment making its way-the-world-works laws. And all them bureaucrats and politicians they got illusion that's what. Regulation's for countries -- you know, like with populations and fixed place on Earth. And all that's not part of my working world; it's just not. ... So send them back to electioneering, income transfers, directing traffic and collecting W-2s! ... I don't care what they want. All I know's whatever they want, they got no right trying to get it. ... It's not the money; it's that it doesn't make any sense! Let the businessmen and farmers and lawyers and employees or whoever pay for the dingdang debt service and medicare and aircraft carriers and law enforcement and foreign wars and log rolls and pork barrels, like they live in communities or whatever and are stuck stakeholding somewhere. I'm -- look around -- I'm above all that -- I'm not meaningfully located down there, alright? Why do you think I work so relentlessly hard all the time? I'm free of all that. Orgh! That's the way it is. ... Well, make 'em understand it. ... I don't know -- make it legal. That's your job! You can find a way I can generate money and not pay taxes -- I'm the one who should be getting paid boatloads of free extra bonus money for performing an extremely valuable public service, making more and more money out of hot empty air atomically confusionating sheer ideas -- and anyway, taxable, non- taxable, soft money, hard money, cash money, credit money, bit money, byte money, this money, that money -- what's the diff'rence anymore? It's all programs routines crunch-a-munching data -- pretty soon money'll be worth as much as great music recordings -- priceless..and free. Lucky..lucky you -- so busy listening to great free music, you'll have no time left to spend your worthless money. But you lawyers and the super-stupids all got to believe it means something valuable, right, cause it's legal tender -- but guess what, your system's not really in charge of guaranteeing that anymore -- so we should all have that fifth martini at this long free lunch of rolling the stuff out like avalanches of cutsey green bit-byte rabbits. But I'm not going to get the hangover headache, you are -- cause I don't get to listen to your super-stupid dreamland music, I got to listen to the relentless beat of money farting. Orgh! ... What?! I don't care what it costs! Orgh! I'm so crazy rich, money is completely worthless to me! ... What do you mean, "so why don't I just pay my taxes?" Cause they're not mine -- how many times do I have to tell you!? I'm free of all that..that! ... Orgh! Listen to me. I know. Money is money; that's what it is, right? I mean you still believe that, don't you? ... What? You have doubts? ... Am I paying you or are you paying me? What is this relationship, huh? A Platonic partnership? Do I pay my bills, or what? Are you giving me value's worth or not? Value of what -- just cause you're working so hard doesn't mean you're getting results, even if I'm still paying you! Orgh! ... Hey look, I'm on a trip -- a long trip -- for a week or so. And when I come back, I don't want to hear any more about it. Or I'll take my business elsewhere as you social nicee, privilege-of-attorney blahblah guys want to forget how's this world really works. The way I see it, the way my world works, I shouldn't even need a lawyer, no less your whole flock of 'em! ... When a lion eats a zebra, does the zebra's family get to sue? ... Of course I'm serious! That's the way that world works -- naturally works. And my world's got its ecosystemic nature too -- and lawyers, taxes, and countries and governments and all their super-stupid conflicts and hordes of ignorant poor people are not meaningfully operative in it, see? I can't help that; that's the way it is. ... So you do your job, and I'll do mine. That way, I can keep paying you your honoraria though I shouldn't have to so you can keep packing all that money right back up there where the sun don't never shine! Orgh! Alright? Bye.} [Call the airport. I'm going on a trip.]

SEC [Where? They've got to file a flight plan.]

NYB [Monaco. With a stop in the Caymans. And Montevideo on the way back.]

SEC [Montevideo?]

NYB [I'm giving you a tip. Remember it. Uruguay is the world's best kept investment secret.]

SEC [Yessir. Thank you. And I thought Africa had all kinds of problems.]

NYB [Right. You want to understand something else? Why are things secret? Because people don't know about them. And what if you have no idea what you can do about that?]

SEC [Um, I don't know.]

NYB [Right again.] Right again -- and what secrets don't we all know, even in our own lives, that others keep from us for reasons of their own? And our ignorance shapes us more than we know. What did mom mean, always saying she loved me double and some things are better left unknown?

SEC [I'll make the arrangements, call you on the plane.] NYB [Right. Good. I'm out of here.]

SEC [What about your wife?]

NYB [My wife... What about my wife? ... Tell her I had to crash on this deal. No, tell her I love her. No, tell her I'll call her back when..when?] Oh Lord, Lord yes, yes I know and it still fills me with fear she'll leave me, and... Orgh! Orgh, I'm just too busy. What doesn't she see? [Forget it. I'm out of here.]

SEC [One more thing. Doris and Mike wanted to meet with you about]

NYB [oh-ho? So? Who's not happy? Employees can't be happy -- not compared to owners they can't, at least not for long. I wasn't. So just bring in some consultant shoot them up with some of that opiate of the employed -- yes! participatory leadership, stakeholding, trust and teambuilding -- all that -- like it's not all about making more money for Mister Big. Yeah, right. That's just the way it is too. Oh, just pay them more money -- that should keep them glowing with transitory good feeling, for a while anyway. I'm out of here.]

SEC [Yessir! How 'bout me?]

NYB [You too! Pay everybody more money, there's an unlimited supply out there now!] Yikes! What if I'm right? What will happen to my real money? Like the kind backed by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. Maybe I should pay taxes? Hah! Never! Not worth it -- not the way they're pouring moneyoceans out of rabbit hats so governments can pretend the financial system's solvent. ... Yikes... Pretty soon not even poor people'll believe in money! Orgh!

♦

§ §

I 2: IRS office space; characters are IRS lawyers Dan Darling (Special Agent), Clifton Mayfield (Director, Office of Criminal Investigations), and Molly Pistol (Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement); Dan is on.

DAN And try and try and keep on, keep on trying oh! to focus on this flipping work -- and I just can't -- like frisk-pup wired and back in high school and in love and God, oh God, good God almighty so much, so much worse! And she -- like she could walk in any minute now, and I -- I can't -- what's happening to me? -- pretend, pretend what happened didn't and I don't feel oh..the way I do -- and she -- miss mastery like born to full control, the laughing steel-princess -- that for awakening desire yet puts to shame the golden glory of summer's rosen dawns -- but oh -- like acts like doesn't feel at all, and racks it up that night that now it's like the most deep meaning moment of my life so far to just some unexpected what-got-into-us like after another late night in the office when all I thought -- did I? -- breathing her walk by -- what was I thinking, really, then in front of her right here -- oh, just say good night -- but I -- like to be helpful? -- oh offered aghh...deputy commissioner for us here, how I could drive her home. And so we talked and talked and talked and talked all night so aimless driving blind and round and round the city's glare and dim of shifting shapes -- its buildingscapes and runway streets -- until the rose-red glows of dawn -- like strengthless -- forced us through her door. And all my dreams for love came true. Oh love, God-awful love why can't you be that whatall bliss that Romance promises us, and not abject us in this twist anxiety where fused, desire and stress un-siezes us? I only think of how I want to see and talk to her but just the thought that now -- please no -- she's here! and I'm duck and covering in shock inert reactionless beneath the blows -- barrage of incoming rocketing inside -- like my every hormone battery's mad minute gets set off sparked instant her eyes meet mine, and -- me! -- I blush blood red and pale snow white, who faced up always to hits life sent my way feel like some pogue rabbit wanting to run away.

CLIFTON coming on Danny Danny, morning morning..what're you doing?

DAN Talking to my phone, what's it look I'm doing?

CLIFTON Not working. What's with you, man? Where's the ol' Dan been? Been some time now I seen something's got to you.

DAN Me? No! Nothing new in my life, Clifton -- no nothing at all. New car I bought's old news -- so, no nothing new with me that you and everybody here -- whole office -- wouldn't know all about already.

CLIFTON Uh-huh.

DAN Yo man -- my life of legend just rolls right on, the way I've always been: so truest blue -- oh happy few -- right ready, livin' the dream, way straight shooters do; so blessed, to live by chance and love by choice. Duty calls, hear the worksong of my voice; got wood to chop, keep winter's cold at bay, so leave the chips fly where they may; come tarryin' time for love and leisure, well darlin', come on talk to me of love and pleasure; might be, folks say, devil may care, all I know, 's I've long been live and loving there. CLIFTON Uh-huh. "Live by chance and love by choice" don't we all? You know Danny, going now into my third decade of compliance enforcement experience, I've learned to believe absolutely everything everybody tells me, specially when they've convinced themselves that all their liestalk's total truth. Look, I'm not asking to pry into your private life, but as your caring, responsible supervisor and senior colleague. You haven't been yourself. Any unhealthy lifestyle, stress disorder, hitting-up-that-wall type issues in your life maybe we can help with? Dan, are you alright?

DAN No! No I'm not! Cliff, I've fallen in love.

CLIFTON Wuh-huh! Hit that love wall! You ain't just lucky my name ain't Brickton! Ho! Congratulations! Why that's bigger than reaching retirement.

DAN Oh! If you knew. I don't want to be in love with her, and she doesn't want to be in love with me -- and we both are, I know it. Oh!

CLIFTON Uh-huh? Could be death and taxes, my man -- that we wish were problems to be sorted through and managed, but are destinies to be shouldered and undergone. And I only want to know one thing, that makes all the difference. Seriously, Daniel, does your momma approve of her?

DAN Clifton, we're a thousand clicks of sandstorm from there, and maybe never make it.

CLIFTON Somebody from work, by chance?

DAN No! Oh no, no way. Office romance -- uh! -- death drink of disaster.

CLIFTON I wish everybody was that sensible. Anything else you want to tell me? Just in case I can help, Dan. And I'm only going to ask this once.

DAN Cliff, some things sometimes, you can't trust, even those you trust the most with.

CLIFTON Okay. I understand. You're the playmaker, got the ball open this conversation again, and I don't want to take it from you. ... Whoo- ee-uh, my man Dan, in love! Uh-huh!

DAN Don't make it worse than it already is. And all my thanks, okay?

CLIFTON Why I'm here.

DAN Do that caring leadership thing -- cause some things only learned by example?

CLIFTON We got work to do. You see the boss yet this morning?

DAN No sir. No.

CLIFTON Well you going to. She

DAN oh no...

CLIFTON What? Hey, she's not so bad. And I think she likes you, maybe -- hard to tell sometimes, under that uber-professional don't-even- think-you-can-mess-with-me look and attitude. But as appointees go, she's light years better than some of them mean little fools so full of insecurities I've had to work with -- you'll see. Anyway, she's hot -- 'way hot DAN her?

CLIFTON Huh? Yeah, on that Menaechmi case. Did you see the e- -- oooh, I think I hear those shoes...

DAN oooh...

MOLLY coming on Good morning, good morning. (You're here?)

DAN (I am.)

MOLLY Did you see my e-mails this morning? No, obviously, because you didn't answer them, right?

DAN No. Yes. I don't know.

MOLLY Dan...

DAN Molly...

CLIFTON Yes ma'am -- and we were just about to answer with our plan of action for finding Mr. Meneachmi.

MOLLY Yeah? So? Well-planned is only the first step to well-done. How're we going to get this guy?

CLIFTON Ma'am, with all due respect to your recent appointment as our new deputy commissioner for services and enforcement

MOLLY I know what my job is, thank you DAN Well, at least what it's called anyway

MOLLY Watch it, buster -- this administration isn't friendly to smart alecks

DAN (Or even smart people -- smart enough not to fall in love...)

MOLLY What was that?

DAN Molly -- nothing at all, no ma'am -- nothing

MOLLY Dan...

CLIFTON Hrgm, yes ma'am -- but still -- no guy. Case, please. How're we going to resolve this case? We're a government bureaucracy, we're charged with

MOLLY Revenue accruement

CLIFTON Ma'am, I understand the White House doesn't want us to use the word taxes any more but

DAN Just say are-ay...hey, hey, hey.

CLIFTON Just say passing away...hey, hey, hey.

MOLLY Dan...

DAN Molly... MOLLY Okay, you can say taxes in here -- but don't let anybody out there hear you -- especially reporters.

CLIFTON Yea ma'am, but still, we'are a government bureaucracy out to apply the law equally and fairly to millions and millions of completely different individuals -- and of course there's no way to do that, individually, like people see themselves. So, no guys, no gals, no persons individual with a whole human life, socio-economic history and own life story -- cast adrift in the dysfunctional tax politics of our red and blue, settlers and immigrants schizoid society.

DAN Wow... Clifton... I never knew... But what about

CLIFTON Yo man. Exactly -- and native Americans and the children of slavery left out -- 'way out -- cast mid-ocean adrift all the ways of disincluded like some kind of ghostlies -- so richly whole but so poorly, barely glimpsed like shadows -- cutout scarecrows in the darkness, in the mind of privileged America. So, so cases, cases not people, please -- so we can keep alive a mighty..mighty distant dream here, of equality before the law for every person -- so with consideration limited to matters the law specifically specifies are relevant.

MOLLY Thank you for the wise and lawyerly advice. I sincerely appreciate it. And Clifton, when politics allows, I'll be sure to ask for more. Look -- I understand lots of people have issues with our administration -- but you got to realize, these guys don't internalize that the law sets limits to what they can do -- that's how it protects everybody -- but for them it's just a nuisance to be bulldozed aside when they want something -- that's why they're bigman bully boy empowered guys who get what they want -- look, they get elected.

DAN And we're not.

MOLLY And if they didn't, they wouldn't be rich and powerful and boss and intimidating all around them -- so let's get real.

DAN So what's so different about this Menaechmi we're so hot on?

MOLLY He's a defiant, deliberate, deadbeat criminal evader and not a legal

DAN Slitheringly snaky snivelingly self-sorry

MOLLY Yes, avoider -- and that's legal.

DAN Barely.

MOLLY Maybe. And after all we've been saying during the campaign about free-riding drone

CLIFTON Scapegoat these and scapegoat those

MOLLY No.

CLIFTON Yes.

MOLLY Dream on. Anyway -- with means diversity the way it is, it's just something no administration can afford -- not ours, not any -- and if the hostile press got a hold of how guys like this like in totoal impunity just get away

CLIFTON Scott free.

MOLLY Has nothing to do with it. And this guy's a bigbigtime deadbeat evader, and we got a duty to get him. DAN So, if we know he's a bad guy, we'd be right to plant the evidence on him -- set him up and take him out, so as to do our higher duty to protect the public.

MOLLY Danny, he's a member of the citizen public, and like you and me he has rights -- that it's our job to secure -- whether he deserves it or not got's nothing to do with it.

DAN But he doesn't deserve it -- he's a bad guy -- renegade way off the reservation. Molly, you just said so.

MOLLY Rights in here in the person, within or beyond the pale.

DAN No they don't. If he was some kind of terrorist out there -- we'd take him out just like that -- pow! -- no questions asked, shoot first, due process talktalk later.

CLIFTON And when we shoot away the wrong persons in intelops and drone wars world, not talk at all?

DAN Managing risk is not just a financial problem. Savages got to be put down before they do their hurting of the innocent.

CLIFTON Man, you're in the wrong job. You want to put on that sealsuit, get on the supershooter team -- that way you can come to work dressed like that, make every day Holloween around here.

DAN You want to watch me yawn? You know how many other people there are out there think their office life ought to be a comedy series?

CLIFTON And most of them are right. Am I right? I can see it now -- episode one -- Dapper Dan Goes Ninjaman! MOLLY C'mon, we got find him before we can even start to build a case against him. How does he manage to be so elusive? Like he's so so rich he's been ascended into some Elysium on Earth, far gone across all the Potomacs of contention and struggle, beyond society and citizenship.

CLIFTON There's a prosecutable case here somewhere -- "case..." We're reviewing what we've got -- we may know he's guilty, but that doesn't mean we can get a conviction -- but Molly, you're right -- this guy, this guy he's doing this on purpose. You should see all the junk his lawyers send us -- and he keeps paying for it.

MOLLY Get a conviction... We can't get him to answer his phone.

DAN For all we can tell there's no him to answer. All the shells and legal fictions he's got working overtime to fill his money bags, he might as well not personally be the owner.

MOLLY Hey, at some point somebody always owns it.

DAN Not necessarily... Corporations -- in all their thousand kinds and sizes, and country of incorporation and nationality of ownership...

MOLLY Danny, dee ay does not stand for devil's advocate. Come on, how long you been doing investigations? If it's in the private sector -- legal or illegal -- somebody always owns it. Hey, every time, every time after you get past all the onshores and offshores, the whole ten yards of three-card montying and legal fakery, big pretend of Russian dolls and Chinese boxes

DAN (Molly..).

MOLLY (Dan...) CLIFTON Eh...? ... Why I'd reckon all Russian dolls are made in China now too.

MOLLY (Ohhh...) Are they? Russian dolls and Chinese boxes -- and American legal fictions? No, there's always someone, or someones - - somebody always owns it. Whether they want anybody to know it or not, that's not my point. Actually I'm for a new age of privacy -- the government doesn't need to know what all you've got and how you got it if you got it legally -- you just have to bear your fair share of the cost of securing your rights -- all of 'em -- the infrastructure of secure property -- all of it -- included. We just need to check you paid your full share, but only when there's cause to check..in case.

CLIFTON There's always cause to check -- don't check, don't happen -- when the get-awayers start getting away, whoo-uh..viral contagious -- you're listening to tax-collection..compliance..experience here, not wishful thinking. And with this guy, we ain't just got the smoke of cause, we got the bonfire of guilt.

DAN Somebody doesn't always own it. What about what non-profits own?

CLIFTON And a lot of them own a lot, making them rich too.

DAN Yeah and how 'bout in some inheritance cases.

MOLLY Well then somebody wants to own it. Believe it -- there's always someone -- it's persons, always persons that got that thing, that avid pride and patheticness of possess, and extending the self to things like the things you have, seen by others, win dignity and identity for you -- it's mine, and I'm one who has one, see!?

DAN Yeah, I do. And by the way how much did that new purse cost you there? MOLLY It's a handbag, not a purse and how much it cost me is none of your business. How I squander my money is my business and nobody else's -- privacy, remember? And in inheritance fights they just want to legally own after they maybe stole it -- that guilt for having took with no right and nagging wish to get it straight with all the papers for all the world to see it's theirs and clean. Hah! Like paperwork with seals from courts could put to rest the toss and turn of guilty secrets, drip and burn of acid truths, that rot the metal, making leaky sieves of what were once the bright and burnished plates of our clear conscience, that sealed up our idealism?

DAN Hey, people forget and just convince themselves.

MOLLY No they don't; they remember and convince everybody else. Ask any respectable, successful money-launderer.

CLIFTON Yeah, and we help them.

MOLLY No we don't.

DAN Yeah we do. They pay their taxes; they're home free. There's no way we can go after all -- even most -- that commit financial crimes -- so they can get away with it, and they all know it. And it all washes off, and in a very short time -- the casualty splatterings in the wake of the arms trafficking, the imploded lives of the bigtime fraud victims, the debased corrupted politicians, the desperation of the addict's families, the humiliation of the crack whores

CLIFTON Whoa! Episode two -- Ninjaman Goes Preacher Man!

DAN They are the bad guys. What they do does bad things to innocent people. We're the good guys -- and guess who winds up in charge if we don't take them out? CLIFTON Pow! Just like that, right? And if you get to decide, guess who might just be gone, just like that -- due to a slight mistake.

DAN I don't know, so we can pay blood money to the families of those we take out by mistake. We did that a lot back

MOLLY Maybe we can send flowers too?

CLIFTON Aw...momma would so touched.

MOLLY Dan, collateral casualties is killing of the innocent and the guilt of that may not wash off so fast after all. I got a cousin, came back from deployment over there -- been a while now too -- and he's still not over the shambles of those he saw that shock and awe left unintended in their wake.

DAN Yeah, and maybe can't even talk about it really.

MOLLY Dan...?

CLIFTON Now I think we should all take a mid-morning shopping break -- get our minds off of all this kind of stuff. Or go fill out our own tax returns -- that works too -- pretty soon we'll be so confused we won't be able to think about anything -- so might as well light up that screen..surfing stupidities listening to free music when you're supposed to be working. Which brings me back to the wonder of this job -- what makes them want so bad to get away with it when nine times out of ten they already got so much they couldn't possibly need to keep and get some more?

MOLLY Cause, they're people, and it's only persons got that need -- need to dream themselves different, dream that if they just owned that, bought that -- made those acquisitions -- they'd be seen as more, more..more by those around. You know, it's not cause people want to keep up with the Joneses in their world, it's cause they yearn more than they know for that envy and admiration only their Joneses got to give. That's why you bought that car, right Danny? So you could close your eyes and envision them that count for you watching you, you..owning it, relaxed in it, identifying you, like in your mind they're wishing they could be you?

DAN I didn't buy that vehicle thinking so..so guys'u'd get green 'n' girls'u'd want me. I bought it 'cause it's clearly a work of superior, cutting- edge automotive engineering, technology and manufacture. And I've developed a true appreciation of that.

CLIFTON turning away/going to other cubicle etc. to focus on a workstation screen/case files/other work, etc. Oh yeah, like I've developed a true connoisseurship of contemporary art -- when there's no nudity -- uh-huh. And who's who's Joneses? Ain't that the question? This guy's got to be track-downable, somehow. What world's he live in?

DAN (And anyway, you look so great in that car and you know it. And now for me it's like always our car from now on.)

MOLLY (Danny, don't remind me -- oh, the car made me do it.)

DAN (No it didn't -- not the way we were overpowered. Molly...)

MOLLY (Oh I... What happened...something made me helpless...)

DAN (I know, me too. And it's the last thing we were looking for, like lifted, born again to destiny -- and you know it. Molly...)

MOLLY (Ohh...Danny, no... No, it's not something I decided.)

DAN (Molly I) MOLLY (Dan, we're in the office. And I'm like a big boss around here.) And right, like I'm a pure connoisseur of superior handbag design, materials and workmanship -- so I'm good for keeping it in a box at home where nobody can see me with it? Like I wanted it, bought it, like it could be the sound of one hand clapping, unseen unhearably, unenviable? Are those the case files?

CLIFTON And now you want another one? I told you you should go shopping... (together -- maybe give that going steady designer purse gift? "Uh-huh"? I can't believe this. Who would've thought -- wait til people start talking)

DAN (no!)

CLIFTON (Got to hand it to you, Dan -- when you do deathdrink of disaster, you do a double.) Ahem, yes ma'am..hip young people today, that's what they do, they go fashion shopping together. I read all about it in the lifestyle pages of what used to be the world's most serious newspaper.

MOLLY Oh absolutely. Forget sex. Shopping. So much more dangerous -- like credit card Russian roulette -- like there you are at the end of the monthly bleeding cycle and there's no money -- I mean billing cycle -- (oh! what's happening to me?). Yes, as I was remarking, I do want another one, and the right shoes to go with them. Cause once we all get some we all go right back to scheming to get some more -- and dream out the next episode of our story of us looked at, soon with jealousy, and then resentment. Ever seen a dog or a company feel the need to own? Animals and things don't care about property and money. They can't -- no matter what the law'll lead you to believe is possible. If it's not a person, it can't, can't care -- cold as stone -- about ownership -- ever steal anything from a dog? an organization? how upset do those its get? But persons owning? When it's possessors, hah! If it's a man, woman or child, watch out all it makes them feel. I'm telling you, it's got to be a someone to emotionally take part in economic relations with others. The corporations and the rest of those legal fictions are just our totemic tools for that.

CLIFTON What?! But things can still pay taxes.

DAN And enjoy it too. Right? I mean ask any big businesses and mega multi-national -- they never waste any time or talent even thinking about taxes.

CLIFTON Definitely. They're always thinking about how they can pay more taxes. That's why all them CEOs and kingpins and their lobbyists are always in there spending all that time and money schmoozing the poor politicians -- flattering them, and legally clip and watering them so they'll grow crook'd and dwarfish like Bonsai are to free- standing trees -- to help them find ways to make sure they and their profit centers can pay more taxes.

MOLLY You know a surprising lot of persons would be happy to pay more taxes if only the system truly made for equality for all and was truly understandable by all -- and not..not what we're struggling to enforce now. And this guy, he's like up there in the one hundred and thirty thousand that have a net worth of over 50 million -- and it doesn't look like he's paid a dime for decades since he got really really rich. And I don't even want to think what the sly fire-eaters from the world-is-flat news would to to us with their story of "administration colludes with wholesale avoidance by entire micro- demographic of hyper-rich blah blah blah" oh!

CLIFTON Evasion's what's illegal.

MOLLY You explain the difference to all the voters feeling so put upon out there.

CLIFTON Ma'am, wealth inequality has always MOLLY Wherewithal disparity! Even better, means diversity!

CLIFTON But that doesn't mean anything and surreptiously conflates

MOLLY Exactly. Please, the White House messaging masters have asked us to eschew any use of the words wealth and inequality in this connection -- what if ordinary people started fearing the way the system's set up now has implications for their dignity and empowerment as citizens and really kindled up some hooh-hah populist revanchist movement -- and here I am -- me -- conniving so they won't? Is that what happens when a true-blue conservative idealist becomes Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement? (With a troubled conscience for having learned that actually going into politics is the surest way to lose all idealism? Must be why I have a headache? Oh...)

DAN (Maybe you're just getting your period?)

MOLLY desperately, as if on verge of tears (No I'm not.)

DAN (You sure? Molly... We only slept together once. ... I'm going to be a dad.)

MOLLY (Who are you to decide if I want to be a mom too, mister so-sure-of- yourself? How do you even know if there isn't someone else in my life?)

DAN ('Cause you love me, not somebody else. That's the way it is. And I know it. And so do you.)

MOLLY (Oh Danny yes...)

DAN (And it's not that bad, just destiny. Molly, listen to me) MOLLY (Yes, it is that bad.) Ahem..yes! Yes it is that bad. Look it up yourself -- distro of wealth -- and empowerment -- today among the members of the planet's population.

CLIFTON And you're like going to be paying for that one car til you're middle- aged.

DAN looking up on his phone etc. So funny. One percent have one half of the wealth -- that's seven- and-half million of seven-and-a-half billion persons who have one- hundred-and-thirty of the two-hundred-and-sixty trillion dollars worth of wealth that's owned privately.

CLIFTON Hey man, if democracy didn't require taxpayer participation it'u'd be so easier to just collect a fair share from them and exempt everybody else.

MOLLY And everybody else are such sheep, they could well go for it.

DAN What?

MOLLY also looking at her phone, etc. Never mind. I learned a lot I wish I didn't know about democracy working on the campaign. Listen, we got work to do here. Back to it. Find this guy for me. ... Ohhh...... Huh, seven-and-a-half million -- one percent of that number is the same as the seventy-five thousand pages of the all-inclusive Commerce Clearing House's Standard Federal Tax Reporter -- and even if Title 26 itself were only one percent of that, at seven-hundred-and-fifty clearly written pages how many average citizens would get through that just-can't- put-it-down, best-selling blockbuster, and understand it and consent to it? And just current Federal tax law is nearly four times that seven-hundred-and-fifty pages. See, it's right here, Dan (and if you send me any more of these messages pledging your love for me -- Dan they're making me desperately confused -- don't you see what you're doing to me?). CLIFTON That's so misleading -- that seventy-five thousand pages thing isn't the tax code, it's resources for lawyers.

DAN (Molly, just breathing in your closeness now makes)

MOLLY (Dan... Stop. This isn't. What if? Ohh... I can't be in love with you.)

DAN (Molly, capacity for committment ain't but capacity for not giving up.)

CLIFTON (Oh Dan if you knew the contradictions of my feelings, you'd pity me.)

DAN (Molly, I love you. Ever since that night, and now you're going to listen to me, li'l miss got-all-the-answers 'cause maybe you don't)

CLIFTON Ma'am, you were saying about the tax code?

MOLLY (oh Danny, if you knew how just want to fall, like a melody turns in to return to its end. But I can't.) Yes. I know. As I was saying about the tax code? Why yes, it's like..it's like the tax code..the tax code is so stuck -- like only men, who are lawyers, could've created anything so stuck in being..like men who are lawyers -- and so tiresomely so, like with that hammering endless repetition of their porn vids so indifferent to the persons of the women in them -- stentorian and jargon aphasic -- it makes sense to them -- smug and self-regarding, incorrigable and so self-important, and blithely, so dismissively indifferent to how insulting all the untransparent complexity of the law is to the ordinary citizens subject to it -- and on top of that totally unrealistic as to what makes people relatively richer or poorer the way we live today. It's not just about income and its finaglement. Sometimes I try to imagine how different they would be if the tax laws and that citizen-selfgovernment relationship were the work of women -- who aren't lawyers. CLIFTON No, please -- not that too! It's all that's left! Taxation policy and big finance are the last bastion of supremacist patriarchy still intact today. And now you going to take the no-girls-allowed, whites- males-only de facto signs down off the last treehouse? And invade that too? Can there be nothing left sacred to the traditional American way?

MOLLY No. Not if I have anything to do with it.

CLIFTON Yallah! So here's going to come the American Spring, and it's going to be about the new equality deal for all, starting with tax reform that's truly equal for all? 'Stead of what these circle jerk old guys in Congress come up with -- cut the bigbig Bills taxes no doubt about it? Right. I'm going back to my office routine, where I can pretend I'm safe from social earthquake-tsunamis, thank you. And I'm going to find this guy.

DAN Yeah, like a good mom with common sense had wrote the tax laws.

MOLLY Yeah....

DAN (Yeah... Like living in a modest house in the suburbs with her loving husband, both stressed and careful to keep up with that mortgage and all the car payments, but loving strong together to bring the kids up right -- for flag and family, land and country -- and always showing up, in the line, of those PTA meetings to fight to save good public schools for all, and being there for every little league game and school performance, and giving up so much to save for college - - and pay their taxes and do real self-government -- and giving thanks for the liberty to do it their own selves -- what's wrong with that?)

MOLLY breaking into tears (No! That's what my mom and dad struggled so..so I could escape!)

DAN (Molly, I) MOLLY (It's nothing -- just thinking of my mom and dad that's all -- their great American middleclass collapsing into the underclass and all their sacrifices so I could escape into the overclass.)

DAN embracing her (It'll be alright. I promise.)

MOLLY (Don't promise. Deliver.) Oh, where's my purse -- I mean handbag! Oh!

CLIFTON intent on screen in other cubicle etc. There's got to be some trace of him somewhere here. And -- why by women, who aren't lawyers? You're a lawyer.

DAN Oh yeah, we're all lawyers here -- and this is the USA -- so who else is grown up enough to be in charge here?

MOLLY (And now my make-up's all over my face.)

DAN (You're so beautiful.)

MOLLY regaining her composure etc. Because..because..because... Because when women become lawyers -- good lawyers -- they become like men, and rightly so I guess, stuffed with abstraction, atilt enebriated by dominance through that command of language that honed by centuries of distinctions and decisions doth parse the confusion and ambiguity of life into the cut and dried of predecents and categories established in the law, enforceable, to cudgel the helpless uninitiated into poor submission. We're here to make living for people better, not the other way around. And all that articulate superbness also makes them intimidating, like me? DAN (Molly, I admire you so much.)

MOLLY (Dan...I...I...luh)

CLIFTON Whoa! Whoa! Look at this. I think I found him. Yes!

DAN (What? You can tell me. I love you.)

MOLLY (I'm so confused.)

DAN (Molly...)

MOLLY (Dan...)

CLIFTON Listen! "Grand Kahuna Bill Menaechmi, seen here accepting a participant's cup from this year's organizing committee has competed in the annual Masters Surfing Championship ever since the association established the event. Bill's never won, but he's always showed up. Speaking earlier to International Surfing News' Pipeline Peggy, Bill had this to say, 'You know, I started surfing as a kid to ride waves and meet surfer girls -- and the great joys in life just don't change.'" Uh-huh -- man, only one tired ass geezer could say something that lame. I bet it's him -- retiree surfing bum, the perfect incognito for our -- big-time -- evader financier.

MOLLY Let's not let wishful thinking jump us to conclusions.

DAN Unless we know we're right.

CLIFTON Let's go. Activate! What do you think we're doing here? Waiting for retirement? Find this guy's social pages and run the namecheck again for the birthdate. And then we're going to send ninjaman here blow his cover and take him down, yeah!

DAN Going to make him my friend first, hu-hu.

MOLLY Well, the birthdate checks out. Looks like you could be right.

CLIFTON I'm probably right. I mean how many William Harold Menaechmis can there be out there, born on the same day?

DAN Man, look at these pics. Talk about a life lived in low-rent beachland. No taxpaying here, hey?

MOLLY There should be taxpaying everywhere, by everybody -- even if it's just a little itty bit, so all citizens are in the same system -- together.

CLIFTON C'mon, we are all lawyers here and you know as well as I do all them lawyers in Congress could never get together and dare to pass a tax law that would be same for all when all are not financially the same.

DAN Yeah, but tell us anyway, what's it going to be like, your tax code built on the wisdom of working moms?

MOLLY To fit with wealth and earnings for richer for poorer like we live that now? I'm sorry, mentally we're just not ready for that -- maybe because we're lawyers -- and recoil from reasonable equity that's equal, but is so unfair that it's unjust?

DAN Just because we're lawyers doesn't mean we're like in our own, separate reality.

MOLLY That, my dear Counsel, is a debatable proposition. And if the only thing, truly equal in this life for all, is that it ends? So if life is unequal, unfair and unjust why should taxes make it more so? If what -- a hell so paved with special favors and fine intentions -- is what we have now that through complexity and would-be fairness unintendingly enables even more inequality in dignity in treatment before the law?

DAN Molly, taxes is about money -- like just to pay for necessary government

CLIFTON And short-sighted preventive wars and income transfers and all the rights securing the state provides -- like through your salary and mine?

MOLLY What we decide to do with the money is different from how we decide to get it -- that's the deep difference in outlook -- why we're not ready. Taxation is not a fundraising problem, it's an empowerment issue.

CLIFTON That's why the poor are kept out. So go on...right on.

MOLLY Near ev'ry pol'cy, paradoxic'ly (like marriage intends fulfilling bliss but yet is so much frustration and constraint?) in unintended consequences also makes results so opposite to its ends when seen from perspectives other than those of its design. So, I'm just suggesting, why not choose equality over fairness, simplicity over complexity, empowerment over indignity, and live with those dysfunctions for the sake of truly equal under law, taxing only individuals as citizens and all each owns under the law's astonishing array of Chinese boxes and Russian dolls in a way that's truthful about who has how much more or less in the way we live today.

CLIFTON Wow...Molly... You're suggesting no more taxes on corporations and other things like that?

MOLLY I'm suggesting only people pay for their government -- so it's really theirs.

DAN Paying taxes a privilege for persons only? Like regardless of... Yeah, that'u'd be great but

CLIFTON taking out his phone, etc. Fact is you can figure it right here on any one of these how- rich/how-poor apps -- fill in all the fields that make up -- or are just symptomatic of -- the difference financially and it tells you right off exactly where you line up in our globe's soon-to-be ten billion strong human spectrum of denudedly paupered to regaledly billionaired -- and some'll work it down to your state, zip code or block. With what big data knows, the results are always pretty much exactly the same even though all the different apps can't agree at all on what all fields and factors to use to calibrate relative positioning, that we all know so well how to so precisely feel.

MOLLY And so all the great tax lawyers'll recycle their wit from parsing the law to parsing appraisals of what's worth how much? Be a whole industry now quite exact at appraising and assessing all you have, or don't; and earned, or didn't; or gained in capital besides, or don't have the wherewithall to even start -- and the algorithms are easy and at hand to calculate each burden in a way we can agree is fair enough, and light enough for each to bear eas'ly enough, yet still, still progressive, inter-linked to every one of all the other ones that related duly share the price of rights secured for enabling happiness' pursuit. DAN You're right. But Molly, to hell with taxes. We got more important things to deal with now. Molly..Molly..Molly, my love, Love's all I think of. Every day, all day, love takes away all thoughts but one -- the will to taking you. And yeah, I'm now the fool that that love makes of men who'll dare to live a love that's true. And through workdays' this 'n' that 'n' hassle 'n' jive what started out as mere attraction's been transformed into a deep'ning admiration that sparked alive my ambition for desire and left reformed the way I look at what I want to do in life. And yeah, my guess is I'm more shocked than you that who I want is you, and as my wife. So Molly, now I got to know, can you love me too? If not, then put me down and forever leave it be; If so, then for worse or better plan on taking me.

MOLLY I do.

CLIFTON Man, the things that go on in an office -- and you'd never know it.

MOLLY What're are you doing always going off and talking straight with the people in the audience? That's like breaking the spell, you know.

DAN Yeah. This is supposed to be a serious play. About making dysfunctional taxation policy truly representational!?

CLIFTON Who else am I going to talk with? Look at you two. Locked up like with only each other like there's nobody else really there. Whoa! Episode three -- True Love Comes True.

MOLLY No... I can't -- not now... Oh Dan how can I believe you?

DAN Molly...? CLIFTON Whoa! Stop. Hold everything. Episode four -- She Changes Her Mind.

MOLLY If you're using your mind, you're also changing it.

CLIFTON Man be smart, but woman smarter.

MOLLY Oh! This way we're never going to catch any crooks. Now we got to get to this guy

CLIFTON Pursue this case! Where do these guys hang out, anyway? I mean where is he? I don't even think his lawyer knows. Like now, he could be virtually present anywhere -- live on a boat in the middle of the ocean and still run all his in-, and dis- investments -- like right from a handheld.

DAN Like right from his surfer pad there. But he's also got a wife and apartment in New York. I didn't mention we found the address and all earlier.

MOLLY Why not?

DAN I was thinking about something else.

MOLLY Don't stop. We'll see.

CLIFTON Here we go again. And somebody called?

DAN Yeah, various times. We even talked to his wife. Every time, she said call him at the office, and..strange..every time she said if we got him, tell him she'd like to talk him too. MOLLY Like what? He quit talking to her? Like not long after the honeymoon?

CLIFTON And we all know what happens when we call the office.

DAN So he's got to have a hideaway -- out there right by low-rent big- waves beach -- and we can find it, and his email address there.

MOLLY So send him the riot act. Tell him he's got to be at his apartment in New York in one week's time -- ten AM one week from today to the day -- exact -- so we can talk to him -- or else. Draft something up, and I want to see it before it goes.

CLIFTON at workstation while Dan and Molly look over his shoulder We'll get somebody right on it. In fact, this one I'm going to do myself -- now. "Greetings" -- that should get him anxiating if he's got any memory.

DAN Wait til he gets to the signature line, he'll be laced through with fear -- "Sincerely, Clifton C. Mayfield, Director, Office of Criminal Investigations, United States Internal Revenue Service".

MOLLY No, this one I'll sign myself. But go easy on the legalistic slam stuff -- get some fear tingle his spine, but make it make sense -- we got to like show respect for all taxpayers, like they're also citizens, even the deadbeat ones.

CLIFTON I got it. Yo, it's me -- at the writing person's potter's wheel -- phrase turning, molding and twirling, encising and tailing, yes! -- memo- making -- from the Earthlive language playclaydough -- and give me some hotter topping here than "dilatory compliance" to go with the hmmm-good home-boy boilerplate basil and tomato sauce.

DAN "Deadbeat ways." MOLLY No, leave it, "your seemingly dilatory, compliance record".

DAN You're not just a great lawyer, you're a great bureaucrat.

MOLLY I'm a great lot of other things.

DAN I know.

CLIFTON Yeah yeah, "seemingly dilatory, compliance record requires a review, including a personal availability for a statement by you"

DAN "under oath."

MOLLY No, no need -- superfluous.

CLIFTON Yeah, career criminals specialize in lying under oath -- could be professional actors -- "accompanied by counsel, as is your right, in regard to your adherence to the stipulations applicable to the calculation of your personal income tax liability pursuant to Title 26 Code of Federal Regulations" and I got all the right cites right here..like I'm doing this in my sleep.

MOLLY Go for it. That complicated how they passed it, that must be how we want it. Still...so we should all be rich tax lawyers.

CLIFTON There. How's that? And so the bottom line here's Molly

MOLLY S. Pistol

DAN Deputy Commissioner MOLLY for Services and Enforcement

CLIFTON United States Internal Revenue Service.

DAN I'm losing my boots -- fever shivering -- just hearing it.

CLIFTON So what's the "S" for?

MOLLY Sarah -- like in salt of the earth.

DAN Yeah.

CLIFTON So? Good to go?

MOLLY Great. Send it. Even if we just get a receipt confirmation, we'll know there's somebody's there.

CLIFTON Gone. Laserlight down the glass wire.

MOLLY Okay. Hey, let's all go shopping -- and the espressos're on me.

CLIFTON I hear you there.

DAN I'm down for that. So Clifton, what's the C for?

CLIFTON Calvin, Dan; what else?

MOLLY Dan... DAN Molly...

CLIFTON Let's go. Aw, look at you two -- you should go off dance-and- singing.

MOLLY What? Like do a sing-and-move number?

DAN Yeah -- that's always a great way to end a scene.

CLIFTON Uh-huh. Like "Internal Revenue Service -- the Musical" -- I think a lot of people here would appreciate that. Am I right? singing and dancing etc.

CLIFTON Hmmm...

DAN Hmmm...

MOLLY Hmmm...

I was born a happy baby safe at home with ma and pa never thought I'd leave my fam'ly for that cold cruel world so raw but afer all my school and learnin' got grown up and started earnin' and aw -- jeepers creepers -- here is what I saw:

I saw miles and miles of taxes big as that wide blue Texas sky I saw miles and miles of taxes that I'd be paying til I die.

And if you're someone like me just an average you or you oh my oh say can you see that there's not much we can do -- set up so the rich pay poorly with the poor shut out completely so the paylifting that's heavy 's all done by me and you: so you got miles and miles of taxes clear as that big wide Texas sky yeah you got miles and miles of taxes that you'll be paying til you die.

♦

§ § §

I 3: background is low-rent surfer pad of California Bill (CAB); CAB comes on from a morning of surfing as his dog, Woofie, either comes on with CAB or is already on, waiting. The dog can be played a real dog or by a robot-prop dog or the barks, yowls, etc. can be heard from off as CAB talks to the dog, the dog responds, etc.

CALIFORNIA BILL HA-ARGH! Ride, ride, ride! Ride, ride, ride! Ho sea, sea-wave rider, see what you've done to me; you made me love you, and now I can't get free. Mighty, mighty barrelback, take me in your hand -- heaven's glassroom greenlight where so happily I stand! Hey, Woof -- oh Woofie baby -- we're back. And I -- yeah -- rode like a young man, like a young man again. Oh yes yes yes -- and you're such a good dog! Oh yes! And nothing left in this traitor world of disillusion and deception that a man can trust, save a good and faithful dog to talk to, and a strong, clean wave to ride. Cause I love the life I live. And I live the life I love. Got that wild surf in my blood. Cause I'm a wave-rider, baby. Hear me now, Woofie. Hear me now.

WOOFIE Woof, woof etc. CALIFORNIA BILL Huh-oh..ohh-ah! Sing out like a primate, made his self king, kill-cry of the hero -- triumph here today, cause you know tomorrow hard death just waits there, everyone's fate. Yeah-ah, but not today, so my life's a rave cause I'm come home from a hot date with a mighty mighty, cool cool wave. Oh Woofie if you knew -- like laughter, like singing, dogs don't surf either huh?

WOOFIE Woof, woof etc.

CALIFORNIA BILL Ohohoho-oh, ohohoh-oh, take me to the sand shoreline; ohohoho-oh, ohohoh-oh, pad me out past the breakline; catch me one down-the-line line-up and: feel the heart that stirs 'neath them ocean ribs, like Earth herself she sigh and breathe; then rush me stoked cause I got dibs on the song that sings in that curler's seethe. Sea of mine, see me so small, in that breaker's line that takes it all. Ho-daddy-momma feel life herself done come in heat; when I got that monster boomer 'neath my feet! Ho, Woofie, and someday soon these old bones'll fade out under -- get worked one last time over destiny's falls -- and that'll be the last time for this old man surfer, huh, Woof? And you're an old dog too now.

WOOFIE Woof, woof etc.

CAB Hey, let's get a shot of that old joe going -- nothing like that java for chasing age and melancholy away. It's the children's hands that pick it give it that rejuvenating power. You want to hear a joke, Woof? You know, could be like the material writers and advisors write for the talk show hosts and politicians on TV, like for an opening monologue or presidential debate.

W Woof, woof etc.

CAB Yeah I know -- what you really want's one them who-knows-what- they-put-in-it bone-bisqui-treats -- give 'em that eternal shelf-life flavor -- probably put the same stuff in our food -- no wonder we're all living so long -- good dog! oh yes!

W Woof, woof etc.

CAB Yeah well, I'm going to tell you anyway. Say you're Sherlock Holmes in America today and walk into the dwelling place of somebody from that viral ballooning -- what've the politicians made up to call it so it sounds like what it isn't -- that newly financially challenged demographic -- En-Eff-Cee-Dee -- sounds like some kind of financially transmitted debility huh? -- and so how can you tell if who lives there's the new, used-to-be middle -class working poor or the old, always-with-you culture-of-poverty poor?

W Woooooof etc.

CAB You can't tell can you? Yeah, well wait til you have start eating that poor poor people's dog food.

W Woooooof etc.

CAB You don't think it's funny? Huh.. Wouldn't connect? Audience just flat-wall at you? Ain't no bunker-buster facts known to all can penetrate collective denial -- that once the dream's dead for too many, it's dead for all. Okay, so that was a trial joke and like you're my focus group. Hey Woof, you know how political advisors pick focus groups? Like lawyers pick juries. No wonder them politicians think we think they're not guilty of just talking that equal opportunity trash talk while still just working for the rich.

W Woooooof... etc.

CAB I knew I'd make you laugh, Woofie -- and not just 'cause I love you -- 'cause it's too true -- successful pols ain't got no other option -- 'cause the money-givers just got them locked up cold -- must feel like some kind of psychic jail almost, be trapped in that system, sucking all them fundraising dicks all day and night. But like anything else, you get used to it I guess -- dislocate and numb out -- or you get out and leave the life. Mmmh..it's a thrill to that sense when first struck by something smell so good. Dig it! Kind of the opposite of smelling you, huh Woofie? But I do love you anyway. Which brings up digging the thousand stresses of making means to meet the ends to keep you in that dog food fit for humans and keep me in this nectar fit for gods. Whoa, Woof, like I like it -- crude oil thick and jet fuel potent. Huh! But every pleasure's haunted by the nagging spur of work to find to stand and parry all the cut and slash of bills that life keeps raining due -- the food, the rent, the car, the this, the that -- til you can near drop dead from sheer exhaustion, yeah right there down 'cross your own threshold fighting hard to keep that got-no-backstop-money wolf at bay.

W Woof, woof etc.

CAB Oh 'way too tired to still head for the beach -- the way the stress of ever-straitened means -- that pressure's -- got that constant drop on you dead in its cross-hairs and embitters even sweet and well-earned pleasures. So why not just let go, go for release from being responsible, and take to that ol' sugarweed and whiskey honey right from the daily get-go breakfast of losers and have that wolf just come on in, and make his own self right at home and run your life right down to ruin? Whoa-hey! Come on in right now, Mister Wolf, and sit right here and watch with me some hype-up lietime made just to take our money -- for you and me, twenty-four seven, right here on pixelperfect, giant TV til we're both too drugged and drunk to see -- that we don't even have, huh Woofie? Well someday, maybe?

W Woooooof... etc.

CAB Yeah, you would vote against it -- kick-out and sink, warm in self- pity, enveloped in helplessness' swell -- so okay -- not today either 'cause you need them squares a day of that supermarket yummy-yuk dog food right on the beep of the habitual hour? Right, Woof? And if I had it in me I'd tell you another joke -- about how can you tell the difference 'tween all them years with the wolf still just outside and all them years with the wolf inside, living right here at home with you? And there but for fortune, and habits of the will... til the humiliation and debilities of old and tired take down core capability -- still try or don't try -- and both the stand on their own and the fallen down become the same -- old and poor and respectless. Stay strong, stay sober, stay sane -- and keep surfing -- only way to survive getting old and getting poorer. But so far, so good, right? Yeah! and after chow-down and caffeine happy-time and I check me e-mails, you and me Woofie baby we're going for a walk -- yeah -- maybe meet some good looking dogs walking their surfer girls?

W Woof! woof! etc.

CAB wait a minute... Yeah, why not? -- and we'll meet some good looking dolls too -- like you. Every day's your lucky day when you can ride some great waves and talk to a good dog. Yeah, good dog!

W Woof, woof etc. CAB Good too, huh? Right on the beep of the habitu'l hour -- so good for me. Until one of these days on one of those big waves I'll miss -- misread -- despite keen cunning, daily practice...and the devil -- nope, there ain't but math-cold mass kinetics -- in them tons of stonestiff hurtling water, crumple me right up and break my ass. So if you're lucky then the why I don't come back to feed you's just I'm laid up in the hospital -- but they won't let me out 'cause I can't pay 'cause there's no insurance I can pay for'll pay for me. So you're the one that's got to come to get me to come-to and get me out. Yeah! So how 'bout that for a true-life brave and faithful dog adventure for you? And keep your chops tight on that selfie stick while you're dodging, running on your your way, and quick you'll be the world's most viral doll of all! Sneak into that disfunction semi-antiseptic death dungeon, jump up on my bed and drool me up awake -- escape! But then, the ones that people actually have, they're never the accidents they expected -- ones they stayed focused on staying prevented. Still, I still need surfing like I need a broken hip. 'Cause, well that's the way it just is, Woof -- to live super-hip and happy's like a full-time job so work, like's got to slip to a part-time gig in life -- so maybe they could do a hipness replacement too? -- while I'm waiting for you to come get me -- and I could come-to like focused on taking up something else that's passionate and 'way serious and so true-cool like surfing is -- like music.

W Woooooof... etc.

CAB What do you mean, "wooooof"? "Darling" -- and she did -- "how can you even think something like that about me? I'm not just some stupid loser surfer dude..." I'm an okay singer too, Woofie, I am! And she left me -- just like that. Even though I thought she loved me. Like I'm not practical enough or something. "Why can't you buckle down and get real? Aren't you afraid of the future?" "What future?" -- that's what got to her. "Do this, don't do that; go there, be here; fix this, change that; why didn't you...!? Don't you see what's going to happen?" "Fine! Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it!" "But darling, I got to go surfing". Like surfing's not real, or what? Huh, so no more true-love wonder-woman for me in life -- like I'm wiped out and heartbroken worked over -- no more riding love's waves of emotion, no more chilling in love's calm sea of conversational companionship...gentle swells like long sighs of sleepy tenderness before the heave and curl and ecstasy of erotic wonderness? Yah, don't worry about it. The worst won't happen will it? 'Cause it has? In every way. So all that's left to sing a song of sadness at love's loss? Listen to me Woofie, and sing with me too.

W Woooooof... etc.

If the dog is played by an agile robot-prop dog with good sound capability, the dog sings and dances too.

If words could move the sun round across the nights and days, if worlds could trace our footsteps back and show us a different way, we'd listen to our story just to see how it might end -- if words could only bring our love back again.

And if words could take us back to when that time was ours, and lead us to the box or bin where we misplaced those hours, we'd listen to our story just to see how it might end -- if words could only bring our love back again.

So we went in search of new things -- how could we know what we were choosing? Pixie dust and wanderlust were in our eyes and blinded us.

But if words could turn back rivers up the mountains from the sea, if words could put a heartbeat back in our stone-cold memory, we'd listen to our story just to see how it might end -- if words could only bring our love back again.

People change and love is fragile but sometimes I still imagine, in between our dreams and lies where the moment passed us by.

We'd listen to our story just to see how it might end -- if words could only bring our love back again, if words could only bring our love back again.

CAB How 'bout that, huh?

W Woooooof... etc.

CAB What do you mean, "wooooof"? Okay, so maybe I should stick to surfing, huh? At least there I know what I'm really doing? Cause if there's one place where I'm always so full focused on the churning forces' balance, it's footed on that joystick deck when waves get big -- so like a wingset in heavy weather and pilots if they're any good at all, huh Woof? Oh yeah. Why we always try to take the train, huh? And anyway ol' miz lonely what's-her-name next door, she'll come by and let you out come get me -- like I go by, watching out for her, in case I see something's amiss. So how'd we get, so wordless, to this deal -- like it was plain neighborliness that orchid exotic and unspoken like some wild osmosis blooms between the lone lost humans drear in this urban manglesplat -- what were their dreams as individuals, now fantasies so all so faded too, so all that's left is life with no more hope of change that's real -- like Spring-green tendril buds of give me something more to grow and live-for? It's hope has to die the last I guess or we'd give up that ghost right now and exit? Back alone? What's the spark of shared...what? Huh, Woof? And oh it's true, you're such a good dog!

W Woof, woof etc.

CAB Like to will to action for community's companionship? Like that's my problem now? What if she was right? Like me now -- my age and permanently temping, man... And good thing that for honesty, and sound work habits with strong math and lit'racy skills, and 'way low pay, there's always some work out there. Huh, Woof? And I won't let you down...I hope. So put up the gitars, lock down the song time, and wake the screen, light up the gateway and let's see -- wait a minute -- think I'll make another thimbleful of this bewitch-me brew, against the no-news/bad-news that in all liklihood is all that's in that e-mail stack. Yeah, don't you know it too? And while I'm there like find out who's gone naked latest like that great news should mean something to me? Hey, they say that everybody gets some good news, eventually -- maybe the last news everybody gets? So crank her up, and let's see what fool work they're maybe offering me. But still, I'd be remiss to not think on in deepest thanks oh all the good taxpayers out there for paying, and paying for all those years for me of free, great public schools -- so I could throw away my life this way on happiness and surfing, and barely make a living anyway. Woofie baby, I'm going to finish this coffee tell you a story, okay?

W Woooooof... etc. CAB Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. Once upon a time there was an happy man who lived in the U.S.A. with a happy dog. And he lived believing in effectively secured rights and representative self- government and the free enterprise way of life. And what did it get him? High expectations and hard dissapointments. But, the hope to it had such a hold on him, that despite the sense experience should've drove into him, he just couldn't let go the possible of it. And he figured out the good it gave him he got from how he held fast to the dream, despite the hurt and dismay of the facts of fortune, life and power around him here. How 'bout that, huh Woof?

W Woooooof... etc.

CAB checking his e-mail Wouldn't vote for that either, huh? Too much realism. Tell me about it, Roof. My dad was that way too -- nothing ever worked out for him, but he kept believing it could -- maybe part of the reason the marriage he never talked about broke up -- leastways he kept me going to school anyway. Glad I don't have kids -- 'cept you, huh? hah! -- way we've let so much of teaching and learning slide away to let's-all-just-pretend-it's-education. Man, got to update the screen life around here too one of these days. This thing's like flying a DC- 3 today. Got indelible grime like oil leaks on the keyboard cowling, and blunt and slow like a lumbering gnat in CPU speed and power. Huh? "IRS dot gov"? Man, talk about haywire networks misdelivering. Why would they want me? Wait a minute! "Greetings." Whoa -- when they're too old to draft, draft their money instead, if they got any. ... Man... "Molly S. ...noooo... Deputy Commissioner for..." What'd I do? Woofie, this is no joke, they're going to send me to the taxpayer equivalent of Guantanamo. And oh don't try come and and get me there in government secrets- and-unaccountability-land, you be dead-dog-electrocuted by the time your selfie-stick brushed the first fence.

W Woooooof... etc.

CAB You're telling me? And they say I got to be there too..that address in New York -- one week from today, ten ayem -- or else! William Harold Menaechmi -- yeah -- they got my name, date of birth..hu- uh, somebody rich stole my identity, so they could pass for poor? That'll be the day. ... They got my socials too..it's got to be me. What're we going to do, Woof?

W Woooooof... etc.

CAB You're on. They want me, they'll get me -- and a piece of my mind on their chumpster way of dissing everyday people without even trying. Go on and eat the last of that, we're going

W woooooof... etc.

CAB Not that good anymore, now you're not hungry? And no we're not now going for a walk to see ol' ms. lonely down the street -- cause she wants too bad to be in love with me and I can't take it, all that hurt and needfulness out there everywhere -- but she'll like be taking care of you a time 'cause, like it was time of my youth come back from, well, the past anyway, I'm driving clear cross country and make this gig with these government gals. Let's go, Woof. So where we're going now is size-up our pawprint, get in the car and burn that gasoline right over to the highrent park side clear 'cross town so that way we can walk round there instead -- that way the only thing strung out'll be the waterfall hair of dolls in the sun and breeze, walking their surfer dogs, and not the souls tressed up in dim lit dank and stillness there behind the junkie eyes in the park round here.

W Woooooof... etc.

CAB That's right -- and you're going to meet the dogdoll of your dreams, walking her take-your-breath-away like a cannon shot clone-of-some-star woman. Yeah, I personally guarantee it. I do. What else have they go to do but look so good? Like you -- oh yes you're such a beautiful dog you! Not like some poor outsider that's got to fight for community cause the rich dogs don't need it -- it's the lost dogs need that humane society, and that's not you now mister supermarket yuk-yummies. Uh-uh! And you should'a seen yourself when we first started, and I pulled you out so you could be a saved-hound from whatever grinder they send greyhounds when they're done with and can no longer run -- and they my guess is put that in the fishfarm food so me -- and you -- all get to eat it too -- and why can't they feed them farm fish what them fish they eat in nature -- like insect egg flour pellets and not that wheat belly flaky food from the carbon crazy cereals agrafury? Huh? Problem ain't progress can't happen -- problem is every vested interest makes sure no progress happens that cuts its sacred margin.

W Woof, woof etc.

CAB laughing Yeah! And you? You used to be so dis-esteemed, so vicious-scared, sad-whine bedraggled -- now look at you, mister lord-dog byronic, after all my years of richly spoiling you -- you proud and perfect super-good-dog you -- so now we get to drive clear 'cross town this way so you can walk at home with your own kind. So that way might as well head clear 'cross country too.

W Woof, woof etc.

CAB Ho! Whoa! Head me cross the wide country. Ho! Whoa! Take me home to the highway. And then we're going to take you down the street to ol' ms lonely, and I'm going to crank up the wreckster -- if it can make it to that park (before they lock-out securitize- privatize that too) clear 'cross the social planet of the city's demographics spectrum, it can make it clear 'cross the country to New York City -- yeah, drive them three thousand miles all the way! Sixty-Six backwards, Woof, just to see once more who all's there still there from sea to shining sea. Like the girl I left behind -- like she didn't leave me -- you're going to wait for me, right Woof? Wait for me like you always do when I hit that hard safariing -- that in the end's where all my money goes.

W Woof, woof etc.

CAB Listen to me now, listen to me Woofie! Yes if you ever plan to head back East, take that highway, take that my way that's the road that's travelled least -- ribbon of dreams that wraps a continent away. 'Cause yes I'm leaving that el-lay tangleland behind, got bright dawn on one side, dark ocean the other, oh my engine's spurring, I am still dreaming, past the last of the nightlife, fast fading, still eying -- down Santa Monica's boulevard ride. Mountains and desert, still a long way away, now it's all one endless suburb that grows more every day. Yo San Bernadino! And on down to the flat wide of Barstow to Ludlow -- so big and so still, so hot and so dry. Hey adios, California (el diablo can have you), and hi ho, yippee yay, here I am, Arizona! Kingman to Winslow like I'm some rocket on wheels -- can't stand to stop that's how good this highway feels! So I'm oh so small 'neath that big sky so high, but I'll hold this whole world inside till the moment I'll die. Gas and some chow now in ol' New Mexico and back hard on the road -- Gallup to Tucumcari! Soon as I get there I'm raring to go -- so, oh Amarillo! but I got miles still of Texas, so why, what me worry? Ho, whoa, whoa, whoa, oh here's Oklahoma -- and if I don't get some sleep it'll all soon be over; it's a restless motel with that cheap sex aroma but romance of the road's for dream-sweet rolling in clover! Morning, big breakfast, some oil for the car and I'm in Missouri 'fore the day's gone too far. But gave a quick kiss to Kansas, that's all she'd allow. Come on, listen to me Woofie cause I'm cooking now! Wheat fields to cornfields and then here starts that sprawl I'm close to St.Louie -- could be anyplace urban at all. And I'm beginning to feel that I'm tiring of this trip til there grand and so pretty's mighty Mississip. Roll on big muddy 'neath them six lanes below I'd love to slow flow you down but I got too long to go. Now land of Lincoln, launch some hope in me that still brave 'n' free can take pow'r from money -- not vigilant 'nuff for, for of and by it'll turn out another fool empty lie. And I'm on to Chicago and the end of that road -- and I still got half the country to bop by you know! Yeah, if you ever plan to head back East, take that highway, take that my way that's the road that's travelled least -- ribbon of dreams that wraps a continent away. Now, come on Woofie, let's go.

W Woof! woof! woof! etc.

* II -- Day a Week Later

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§

II 1: background is apartment of NY Bill; characters are Alice and Amanda; Alice and Amanda are identical twin sisters. Alice is on as doorbell rings and Amanda arrives.

ALICE Oh 'Manda, my Amanda thanks oh thanks so much for coming as I'm really not, not much myself these days, and wish so bad I didn't have to face exactly why.

AMANDA Oh Alice, Alice I'm here straight from the airport -- your message here got me worried so -- so what's diff'rent now that hasn't been this way for...?

ALICE Oh nothing I suppose 'cept just with time I see so much more clear the bleak an no-end, and inner dislocation I've been living now so long.

AMANDA It's desolation that you mean?

ALICE Oh I mean both, may be, for all I know. Where I am in my life I feel there's no..no.. no me who's there for something worth my time. I'm...

AMANDA Oh my Alice, oh don't cry, here let me hold you -- though there's the other me would blurt to you: go back to denial, it works for me -- so far.

ALICE Amanda, all our lives when I've been sobbing you turn it right around and make it end in laughter.

AMANDA What else is left to reach for but to laugh, as acting through our lives this way we wend through carefree freefall merrily tumbling numb with absurdity, anguished with memory of how we thought that it was going to be; and when we wish we didn't have to look, we see the spectre of the truth that this is all there is -- haranguing us -- jumping up, dismaying so our resentful mind we wish we could make it shut its eyes and flee.

ALICE It didn't used to be that way for me or you.

AMANDA Yeah.

ALICE Oh how it all comes back to me, your arms so strong and warm around me now -- our childhood so together -- along with all that then came after; oh how does life go wrong so bad when we've got everything that's good?

AMANDA Yeah, yeah. ... If things could make us happy why with all the stuff we all got now we'd all be blithely billionaire in bliss and happiness.

ALICE If things...

AMANDA Hey, no poor little rich girl -- not me, not you. ALICE You're right.

AMANDA And make me a cup of decent tea now will you, and tell me all about --'bout all...what all we both already know.

ALICE I'll be right back.

AMANDA And anyplace that I should put my suitcase? Never mind. Alice, why, in a neurotically neat, for-the-glossies hyper-palace such as this is there -- no, I get it, I get it -- contemporary art, like you can walk right by it -- a picture-perfect installation piece of a vintage vacuum cleaner smackeye square in the middle of this living room floor?

ALICE Yeah, so you remember? It used to be mom's -- and I had it renewed.

AMANDA So it's completely old and tired and completely new and now?

ALICE Yeah and I also found and bought another one that's like exactly like it on the web -- so I've got two in case you want one too?

AMANDA Alice, I want to be a normal woman -- so I like need more housework like I need a hole in the head. And Alice, oh my Alice you got to let it go -- the past, and all what should've..could've..been, but didn't turn out that way at all...not at all. And anyway why don't you get a maid?

ALICE 'Cause I don't speak those other languages, and I don't like being with people I can't talk to.

AMANDA So get a maid with a college degree in English. With all the money your husband's got why not get a whole platoon of maids with PhDs? And you're still pushing 'round the vacuum, making the beds and doing the dishes?

ALICE And what did our mother do most of her life? And anyway, there's only one bed here to make.

AMANDA She had kids.

ALICE Right. Us.

AMANDA We were so lucky.

ALICE We were. Here.

AMANDA Thanks.

ALICE It's so good of you Amanda to come to see me. You look so great too, like you always do. I can see where you've been. How was it? And someday maybe, Bill and me can go to Milan too?

AMANDA More likely he'd just buy a chunk of Italy and ship it over here.

AMANDA Freeze dried and stackable if possible -- and all so he wouldn't have to take time to share it with me? AMANDA C'mon, I didn't mean it that way. You've always turned things around against yourself that way. And trip was great. Milan this -- anytime -- of year -- who cares about the weather -- there's always great music, great coffee, great clothes if you know where to find them. And that part of next season's line's almost a wrap -- don't know if I'm groggy from the airplane air or blur of tech packs and color cards and hecticness of work -- and now I'm back.

ALICE So what did you do, Amanda?

AMANDA I worked. I went to the opera. I bought clothes. I drank too much coffee. I put up with a lot of boring idiots, and so drank 'way too much spumante.

ALICE You have such a glamorous life, Amanda -- you do!

AMANDA And I did it all alone...

ALICE You always had the special life. Not me. Mom made you the star and me the houseworm because she thought we'd be happier that way, closer to our characters and nature.

AMANDA Loving parents know their children better than

ALICE We maybe know ourselves?

AMANDA And if they're wrong then does love redeem mistakes it's made ALICE and harm it's done?

AMANDA That I don't know.

ALICE I know I didn't really mind, I think, because I love you so, and could I felt live through admiring you -- you had it all it seemed -- and like destined for it -- even were a covergirl -- and I remember that like it was yesterday the thrill I felt seeing your face up there looking down on all from the newstand rack. Some guys back then they even started looking at me too, seeing I looked like you. I still laugh now the way you launched a thousand dreams like some daydream epidemic'd hit like all the guys got stricken by a moonlook flu and all the girls got green wishing to be you across the campus and those of all our sister schools.

AMANDA Those were the days, and nights, and life and friends, and sulturation in dreamlike plans, back then -- how we felt so special, so unselfconsciously entitled to great success, and even greater happiness.

ALICE Amanda, you have tremendous success.

AMANDA I do have that, and thank God for it. And you -- I know -- Alice, it shouldn't feel that way.

ALICE You're the one who told me once it's no use telling others how they should feel 'cause they feel like they do. For me, now it's too late.

AMANDA You have an ashtray around here? In this lab-clean model of firm discernment and calm and sound aesthetic judgement.

ALICE Amanda, I can't believe you still smoke.

AMANDA Well, at least I'm not smoking anything else.

ALICE Amanda! And at your age.

AMANDA I'm going to arrange for an award for you my Alice, for being among the few remaining, with the moral sense and sound sensibility to still be shocked by irresponsible, self-indulgent, bad behavior.

ALICE Like Mom used to say.

They laugh together.

AMANDA May be it's not too late -- ever -- to earn the arduous success of trying to change -- though your life Alice maybe needs to be more messed up on the outside, and less inside.

ALICE Unlike yours? Look who's talking.

AMANDA Deep down, I'm so sanely, neuroright together it scares me -- and all I want's go crazy over someone deserving to give me all to. Is it tragedy or farce to be and live a pretty decent, goodstrong person and have never lived true love, so being-transforming, deep and lasting

ALICE Before it's all too late? AMANDA Yeah...yeah. Well if eighty's the new sixty -- we're not yet forty!

ALICE You have any boyfriends, at all?

AMANDA No, but I have the accessories our advertising promises will get me the ideal one.

ALICE Now let me hold you.

AMANDA Oh. ... I'm alright. It is the way it is, however much we might wish it weren't -- we are who we are and there's no changing that -- and we're still the lucky ones by far.

ALICE Well your name is Amanda -- like maybe you could win your own Elyot in the truelove powerball theater lottery?

AMANDA You know Alice, the way you think it's like you've missed your destiny -- like should've been some screwball dafty dame in a romcom play.

ALICE Be so much better than what I am now.

AMANDA Don't talk like that -- we're stuck with this -- and maybe...oh maybe it'll be alright. I hope.

ALICE What if no-it-won't?

AMANDA Yeah, I'll likely get stuck with some goofy dufus wierdo senior surfer dude lives with a singing dog who'll never get like even a prelim'nary clue what an extr'ordinary woman -- me -- he's got who only wants to love him so.

ALICE What if he really loves you?

AMANDA What if...what if... You know what happens when a character like in a play stops trusting the playmaker riffing up their destiny of what's to happen to them in the end?

ALICE Amanda! Dont' you now talk like that -- or it's you who... well I mean that way you'll never be happy.

AMANDA With my destiny, 'cause not of my own making? Well why not -- there's so many that're happy and didn't they make themselves that way? So well, why not me too...?

ALICE Don't cry Amanda -- or I'm going to cry too...

AMANDA Alice all I want's to fall in love and live happily ever after.

ALICE So do I -- and I've been married for decades!

AMANDA So what would be the good of saying to you now you never should've married such a stupid jerk?

ALICE So now it's too late -- too late for me too? I'm right -- no-it-won't -- it can't, can't work. Two old, poor little rich girls fall in love with the right, good man -- and live happily ever after. How could anybody even begin to care less? I mean what could possibly be less interesting like for the members of a real audience?

AMANDA What do I care about the members of the audience in their rich and real otherworld out there? I want to be happy.

ALICE You can't be unless they are too!

AMANDA I need the riches of your fantasy to make of my poor train of acting bits a figure of like someone with dignity that -- almost who -- caring about befits. You, who experiencing its beauty, right then, separate the dancer from the dance possessed of imagination's pow'r'n'generosity and so transform perform into performance, separate all my poor speech and gesture from this poor playing's dysfunction, enabling me to build, creditably, for your honest pleasure a character empowered to make her own destiny. For there's no escaping playing's poverty, without your investing imagination richly.

ALICE Why anybody'd invest all that for us?

AMANDA Invest it for themselves -- in own self-interest here now in this our living co-present community.

ALICE Can't work -- that's just not how the world sees old rich girls -- beneath appearances, shiftless, dysfunctional, undeserving and self- pitying -- Amanda, that'u'd be like investing big big money in great great schools for all people equally -- rich and poor and in-between -- give everybody the ever-earning personal capital of an independently great education -- nobody's going to do that -- certainly not in United States today -- where some of us are like busting at the seams with more money than we know what to do with. So we're just going to have to stay the way we are.

AMANDA "Underneath appearances"? -- frustrated, disempowered and unhappy, and we'll see what all we can do 'bout that.

ALICE No we won't, it's all set up, inexorable -- the powers that be, determined, hard-eyed, set to better die than cede the slightest bit of sharing pow'r on others' terms -- like likelier we'd set off devise our own, listening, overhearing our own best selves, changing the lines by destiny set down for us? There's nothing we can do is there?

AMANDA Don't cry Alice -- or I'm going to cry too...

ALICE Crying so hard -- the stress of it all I guess -- oh, it's going to like wash all the makeup off my face.

AMANDA Here's a handkerchief.

ALICE Ohhh... Well -- wow -- at least that's a really snazzy pocketbook.

AMANDA Right. The one the clips campaign has reeling in the glamorous true-love boyfriend -- like it's destiny. Oh yeah -- our new, day minaudiére my dear, ouf! Among my babies in this next collection, luv, and going to be a smash topseller -- and it's strongly pretty too -- though I'm not sure that matters much -- but stuff it full of big bills and most still can't afford it, so it's going to sell like hotcakes, clear across this airport planet everywhere there's lucky ones for whom money's merely means, not obstacle. And that's my talent, hunches, of the look of things that kindle, desire of humans to display. I think I'm right 'bout this one too. We'll see. Hard to tell for sure before, with these these baublets' kind of hype and merchandize.

ALICE Amanda, you're not in like merchandising -- you're in real high fashion.

AMANDA Yeah, yeah.

ALICE And you, you used to have such trenchant thoughts about the why of it that made it worth your time?

AMANDA When younger, it's easier to play the glosstough gal untouchable in glamor's blinding hologram by any shade of life's dull pain and cares, and like a hard-boiled smart-aleck say stuff that sounded so, so good to make me look so cool.

ALICE But you, you were -- still are -- the real thing and said

AMANDA Stupidities -- like in

ALICE This world of constant, shifty change well then why not trust in what's dead-eye solid ever changing

AMANDA The fashion and our clothes?

ALICE And look at you now. Who also said fashion's only interesting if you stay perfectly ahead of it? AMANDA And look at me look now.

ALICE Perfect creative every day in every way.

AMANDA Daily habits -- good and bad -- do we make them -- or they make us -- to the very end? As now I look with some dismay at my devotion to my excellence at this -- proud priestess in the cult of costumeclothes.

ALICE I'm sure there's nothing easy at all about it.

AMANDA Well, just don't tell anyone.

ALICE And we're not just proud of your success, we're also always hoping the glamor'll rub off.

AMANDA Yeah, yeah. I do what I can for one and all in that department too -- leadership by example and all that -- and why do some resent it so, they just won't take it -- search me? So tell me Alice, how're things really here for you?

ALICE Oh, I don't know -- can't complain.

AMANDA Alice, that might be a bad habit in your case.

ALICE Don't be funny; it hurts.

AMANDA Right. ALICE And so what else?

AMANDA What else? Let's make small talk, shall we? Forget about all that other stuff you know. You know, I just got back from Milan. I did.

ALICE It shows.

AMANDA It better. ... Maybe I'll never get used to all it costs. You remember all her attention -- her scrimper's act and show of love -- mom used to do to keep us sensible children in sensible clothes at sensible prices?

ALICE Yes. I remember. Amanda, I've forgotten nothing. Every day, all day, I remember everything I can;,br /> again, transforming it into memory renewed.

AMANDA Alice, I told you, you got to let it go.

ALICE It is so great of you Amanda, come see me like this -- and you are looking terrific.

AMANDA Yeah. ... Used to be such a thrill, and now it's like I'm in an occupational uniform.

ALICE I didn't just mean that. But that is I guess what makes you so effortlessly glamorous.

AMANDA Like I'm just the actorplayer of my own life, and not a real personcharacter who lives it? Like expectations pressuring, and yes, exhalting me -- be pretty! -- in others eyes so validate and dislocate us all? And like also of how many of our sisters here? Like some other wrote my lines in life and life I live's like not a life wrought by really me?

ALICE I know. How can it be? We're all set up -- have absolutely everything, and feel so rotten.

AMANDA So why don't you do something real and dump the guy?

ALICE No... Mom never would've done that to dad -- and anyway, I'd have to tell him and

AMANDA Well...?

ALICE I can't, I never see him.

AMANDA So?

ALICE So nothing -- we just go on the way we are.

AMANDA Longsuffering?

ALICE Why make it hurt more than it does by saying so? I have no use for nor no need for the truth -- and I can afford that. So let's talk about you.

AMANDA Right. I'm running ragged at the office doing -- what? I don't what thousand things sometimes -- all the usual cycle of the fashion year, so forever screechingly new and now.

ALICE Oh, I'm all alright. AMANDA Oh no, you're not.

ALICE Amanda, I can't be the only wife out there who's suffering from unrequited dutifulness? It must be this way for so many -- and so... so many of them are maids, so who am I to complain?

AMANDA So flip up some screwball wisecrack, make sure you don't feel sorry for yourself.

ALICE Amanda.

AMANDA Alice I admire you for it. I do. The fortitude, the commitment to time-immemorial's way of good wife in good standing for

ALICE For? In atomization's uncommunity what's left to stand in good standing in?

AMANDA That's why you think mom stuck with him?

ALICE I don't know -- she had kids. And anyway... anyway I always thought she liked it, the proud and able homemaker doing all those citizenship associational things -- like everybody depended on her even more than we did -- she mattered as a person in the density of that... that face-to-face conversational internextion she was in.

AMANDA Constrained by her role expected to be played like living in some village.

ALICE Yeah, that's it like we knew the neighbors and all as fam'lies like is was the 'burbs but with a lot of haunting vestig'al social habits of old neighborhood and

AMANDA She was a real wife, is that it? Not like me and you? Who had a real husband.

AMANDA What do you want to me to say? That it's not easy to stay the course of choices that I've made? And is that why I keep hanging on to hope with him.

AMANDA Am I asking the question?

ALICE You never liked him did you?

AMANDA No, I never did, and I was always right.

ALICE And you've been right all along, but time just has a way of blinding us to wrongs that just add up 'til the forest that we're lost in we don't see it for our looking just at this, or next...another tree. I haven't started hating him...so guess I've not stopped loving him, at least not yet abandoned what I'd hoped for for our love. It did seem so right then at the time, but then we were so young.

AMANDA I remember your wedding. It was the first of what was going to be so many. Dad was still alive. And yeah, we were so young. I feared it was your way of getting out of the whole twin sister thing. But you know I wasn't against it 'cause I resented you for that; it's that beneath I saw the snarling needfulness in him -- and nothing, nothing to admire at all. ALICE There's more to pity than to admire, maybe the way the money by which he needful dominates winds up dominating, defining him to one and all. And love may need admiring to last, but marriage doesn't. And I wasn't trying to get out of that twin sister thing. It's what it's been hardest for me to live without. All those...all these years.

AMANDA I know. At least when I let myself have time to think about it. And it was so right back then. I got carried away by it myself, the excitement of the wedding. Yeah, and I remember how you threw the bouquet right at me -- bee-line like a late-inning reliever's first strike fastball.

ALICE And that -- yuhgh she, even in grade school she like made me cringe she was so self, self everything -- she just pushed her fat mitt front of your face and took it.

AMANDA She was next to get married.

ALICE Yeah, and next twice after that.

AMANDA Four. Four now in all. I just saw she on her page she married again after number three finally settled -- and why I'm like her friend -- like why can't I say no to any selfie-friend request on this?

ALICE The poor guys -- bet they're not all still friends.

AMANDA Poor? Poor schmoor, those trophy wife takermen, I hope her divorce lawyers take all their money; at our age now, they know what fall they're riding for -- surprise! -- that playing with fire gets you burned. ALICE But young we didn't? It seemed so right back then I felt I walked in footprints marked out long before down the aisle and blur of faces I can see again -- like being a bride, the weight of pattern past, a door that going through to marriage'u'd take me in to a state that question-free'u'd offer me full rest. And so much for plans cause how it's turned out's only been the anguish of for nothing having given it my best. Are you right? Now you'd have me like move on and forget like this life I've dealt me's just some hand not played? You know, I'm banked in for years now of living to regret the consequence of mistakes I wish I hadn't made. So it's not in me to see my whole life's lived lied. Mistakes admitted can be worse than kept denied.

AMANDA And that's your price you pay for staying the course

ALICE Of my mistakes I've made? I know.

AMANDA Though what hurts more may be our virtues, when transgressed by those we love.

ALICE Maybe I should leave him?

AMANDA Don't. Unless you're doing it for you.

ALICE And not against him? Make up your mind why don't you?

AMANDA You know what I'm saying.

ALICE Oh God. Maybe I should -- a little. Like just to remind him.

AMANDA For example. ALICE Ridiculous. Like what? I'm going to take the bad example of some old wives saying, and apply it to my life today? How's it go? How searing thirst's surprise when your well you never noticed suddenly runs dry? And he'll come back from whatever trip he's on, open the door and find I'm gone -- and miss me? -- hah! he'll just

AMANDA Throw a raging silverback coniption fit and sic all his lawer minions on you tear you limb from limbless torse, and leave you squirming crippled -- all-your-fault divorced.

ALICE Amanda! Why'd everybody think it was such a good idea? He needed me.

AMANDA Needed Dad's money get him a leg-up ride the wheeldeal painted pony carousel

ALICE No! Okay, it helped to start

AMANDA And he rocketed 'way past that on his own, okay.

ALICE So why'd everybody think it was such a good idea? I got married. So long ago. So carried away. But there was a funny freedom to it, filling the role everyone wanted for me. And I peacefully sleepwalked through it til aching emptyness woke me up. Everybody saying how he was such a nice boy, and from such a nice family and so hard-working -- so sure to be going great places straight to the top.

AMANDA And he did. ALICE And he's been so intense in going and going and getting and staying there he never took the time out to grow up.

AMANDA Hey men don't bother growing up until growing old -- maybe -- forces them to.

ALICE And by then it's too late? They remind me of race cars like you see on TV. Zoooorgh, zoooorgh, zoooom -- going 'round and 'round that business track fast as humanly can be. Just going faster and faster -- zoooooooo -- and faster and faster

AMANDA Making more and more money.

ALICE Til pftt! They suddenly got to go home to the pits a minute, and they make a stop: tires go off, zip the new ones on, windshield gets wiped, gas up and they get their fluids vented -- even then their minds are still always at the office -- and ghrhm, ghrrrghm, ghrrrrrghm, zheeeeooom! back to that 'round and 'round and 'round on the hamster track.

AMANDA While in the grandstand, the girls, patient swivel eyeing from side to side wave smile and lassid verging on tumbling to exhaustion from sheer boredom.

ALICE Wave good-bye that way?

AMANDA Just to see?

ALICE Yeah. I think so.

AMANDA I know it was my idea but ALICE Catalysts aren't reactions' cause. I'm going to pack some things and go.

AMANDA And I'll stay here in case it doesn't work.

ALICE What?

AMANDA Look, say he doesn't grow up and learn all he's got, gears up the fury -- you got to protect yourself -- and he sends his divorce lawyers out to get you? They'll slam you for abandonment -- take the roof over your head, take every dime, and that'll be that.

ALICE What? Even if he did -- I mean, after all these years...

AMANDA Forget it. These guys are dead serious winners -- and once that anger adrenaline snaps in no more common sense or justice to it.

ALICE But that's not what I'm planning, I'm just

AMANDA I know. But what if? So if it comes to that, I'll be here occupying in your place and then they can't just take it cause you left it.

ALICE Come on. Why'd he even want to? He's got enough money to buy buildings full of apartments like this.

AMANDA So what? If he's going to go in for that kind of divorce, what's money got to do with it? Winning means humiliating. ALICE So you're going to stay here like my proxy twin?

AMANDA Or something like that. Anyway, he'd tell the difference.

ALICE I hope so!

AMANDA But nobody else will -- no lawyer no private eye no, no nobody -- I'll even wear your clothes.

ALICE That'll work -- I always get two of everything -- like the vacuum -- so the closets

AMANDA Are just like mom used to have for me and you? Alice, you got to let the past go

ALICE No matter how happy, Amanda, we used to be then?

AMANDA If you're going to go for your future, go.

ALICE So he's going to come home and what?

AMANDA I'm just going to tell him you're gone.

ALICE And he'll just mumble some sort of assent and go charge right on like just another day -- the day his wife of thirty years left him?

AMANDA These guys, sometimes it takes a while for things to sink in. So I'll just tell him it's his place too and he's welcome to stay -- but it's also still yours -- and he'd better do some thinking 'bout what it means you're gone. ALICE And what if he doesn't come home anytime soon? You've got things to do.

AMANDA No I don't. I'm bored of worrying about them. It's time for me to give my assistant her step up to take my place -- and make me look old and tired. I've been looking to take some time okay?

ALICE To do what?

AMANDA Figure out how much money I have, see if I can afford to trash this highclass worklife ratrace -- maybe take some acting classes? We'll talk on the phone okay?

ALICE I'm going to get some things. I'll be right back. Oh my God, Amanda -- I'll have done it...and then what?

Alice goes off.

AMANDA Alice...Alice, ther're any ashtrays anywhere here in this spacestation hospital house of yours? Never mind, these extraplanetary plants of yours look like they could use a hit of something soon to be an even more highly taxed toxsubstance, huh?

♦ ♦

§ §

II 2: background is civil aviation terminal, then limo on road and then hideout safehouse; characters are NY Bill, Cashman, Crewfer and Effie. In, or in front of, a civil aviation terminal used by private jets, Crewfer and Effie are on disguised as limo drivers. EFFIE I know that was her, man! Did you see? Hey, you missed a celebrity score, fool.

CREWFER Get back. You can't get exited to be here. Like the Cashman said, "Act like you belong." And you bug eyes on a toon face just like you never anywhere. Okay, this is corporate country of the stars, girl; but we are very cool, very cool, just like we do this everyday.

EFFIE Oh for sure; everyday, all day -- three sixty, seven four.

CREWFER Uh-huh. Stop waving that sign; is this a what, covention? No, it's a terminal. Just hold it. He'll see it. He can read -- that's for sure. You know, you got to act like you're..like you're..sophisticate.

EFFIE Yeah. Yeah. That's me. For me, home is that sophistocate world, yeah I'm that sophistocate girl, my life is that sophistocate whirl; so if you can't find me, 's cause I left home behind me; take that sophistitake, take...

CREWFER Chill out.

EFFIE What's his name?

CREWFER Muh..Muhkaymi, I don't know. You got it wrote up right there.

EFFIE Yeah. But I don't remember what the Cashman said it said. So why don't you read it?

CREWFER Cause I don't want to read it. What do you got to know how to read for anyway? I know what all them signs say cause they all got their letters in their brand way, you know. Right right here on my phone, I got all the icons. So I always know where I'm at, where I'm eating, where I'm buying, so... EFFIE So we're good.

CREWFER Yeah, cool.

NYB comes on.

NYB Hey, you're looking for me.

CREWFER Huhoh! Yeah. Mister Makyewaymi...yessir!

EFFIE Oh yeah, Muakyaymi, hey!

NYB Menaechmi.

CREWFER Sir! Yessir! Misterman! Sir!

EFFIE Huh? Yessir. Mister Kuhmaymi, sir.

NYB Menaechmi -- like I'm mun-ayke-mee.

EFFIE You got side pain there? Like on the heart side? But like I don't do heartache.

NYB Huh?

EFFIE Oh just letting you know. In case you want me like valuate your customerhood. Sir.

CREWFER Yeah, right this way. Did you have a nice flight, sir? Oh mister Menkaymi no -- she's going to help you with that bag. Swag that bag, you're the escort.

NYB Escort?

CREWFER We're like a full service limo service -- it's like it's an option, like we can bill you like she's a security escort like she's that like a security expert too.

NYB Uh-huh, like securities sexperts -- oh in our sector we work with them all the time.

EFFIE You like work in the financial services sector?

NYB Yeah. Just like tax collectors. Why aren't you guys the usual outfit picks me up?

CREWFER 'Cause we're the alternate outfit. See, like the office it's like they had to go for a replacement. You know, 'cause all the conventions and all this week.

NYB Conventions? People still have time for conventions?

EFFIE Oh for sure -- like that gives the hospitality sector time to work with all the security experts. Sir.

NYB Right. And I can tell you right now this is the last time your outfit's going to be working for me. Outrageous -- and totally ordinary.

CREWFER Oh, mister Kuhmakeme, sir -- uh, it's like her first day on the job so, so you know, we're still working on rubbing down the rough spots. NYB Oh of course; I understand -- poor people I suppose. Are you sure you're smart enough to be employed?

EFFIE As a security expert?

NYB Muh..Muh..sir! Parked right here -- brought our newest. Uh, on our option, would you like our sexpert ride with you in back or ride security up front?

EFFIE Maybe you got some man-ache I can take care of?

NYB My office ordered a limo service not a pimpmobile! And I'm going to be talking them so fast! Now get in, drive, and get me out of here! Now!

CREWFER Oh, are we going to do that, oh yessir mister Kumayme -- get you home right now no matter what the traffic situation.

NYB I don't what to go home. I want to go to the office. I've got work to do.

In limo on road. NYB takes out his phone to make a call.

EFFIE (Who's he calling?)

CREWFER (Oh, man...) Uh, mister Munkayme, you can't use that phone.

NYB Menaechmi!

CREWFER I'm saying, you can't use that phone. NYB What do you mean, I can't use that phone? It's my phone! No...

CREWFER Yeah, uh... It's regulations; they got new regulations now -- so's they can have airwave control.

NYB Well, I'm going to use it anyway, regulations or no regulations.

CREWFER No, you're not. You're going to throw it out the window right now!. Here.

NYB Wait a minute... Where we going anyway? Oh, shit...

CREWFER Don't get upset. We're not going to hurt you.

NYB Don't get upset. What do you guys want anyway? And where we going?

CREWFER We're going where we're going. Now toss that phone.

NYB Now we're not! And you're stopping right here and letting me out! It's not realistic! You can't get away with this! Do you know who I am!?

CREWFER showing gun You want to talk about realistic?

NYB You said you weren't going to hurt me.

CREWFER We're not. So long's you cooperate. See this? It's a long hat. Put it on past your neck. EFFIE Man, you could be going to Guantanamo Yeah. Hey, okay, it's not your day. But, you know, be like us -- sophisticate about it.

NYB Oh my God...

CREWFER He can't help you. People try him all the time, but... I ain't seen it change what happens to them.

NYB What's going to happen to me?

CREWFER Nothing. I told you. So long's you cooperate and do everything the Cashman says.

NYB The Cashman?

CREWFER Yeah. Just do exactly like he tells you, and you'll be alright. And he told me to tell you exactly that. See, like you're our customer, and we want you to have confidence. That's right, right?

EFFIE Yeah, that's it. That's the number one habit of the seven high an effective business organization has got to have to be good to go -- trust and confidence. Yeah. And we got all six coming up behind number one. So believe it. You'll see. And here we are now.

CREWFER And when she stops, you and me get out, walk up, walk in. Take that hat off! And what you see maybe looks like a nice neighborhood, but you try running, and we will get realistic.

EFFIE Okay.

CREWFER Go. NYB and Crewfer get out of limo and go into safehouse/hideout. Effie goes off. Cashman comes on.

CREWFER Cashman! Cashman!

CASHMAN Misterman, Duece!

CREWFER Put your eyes on that wall and keep them there! Freeze! Raise up your hands and hold them up upside the wall! Got the customer, Cashman.

CASHMAN And now we're going to artfully close the deal. Pad him out and sit him down.

NYB Can I say something?

CASHMAN In a minute. Someone will be right with you, Sir.

CREWFER No heat, no nothing but all this on him.

CASHMAN Sit down. Right there. Take a deep breath. Uhmmm... Rela -- no, check that; make that tense up, like you're on creative tension. Hey, like you're back in school, like you're going to take an exam -- and you're going to get an A, just like you always did, right? And you are going to graduate -- and walk away. You're not going to get hurt 'less you want to get hurt. That's what you wanted to say, right?

NYB I want to get out of here.

CASHMAN We understand. We beleive in listening to our customers. Now you listen. You got to answer all the questions right first. Okay? Okay, first question. CREWFER Keep looking at that wall!

CASHMAN Okay, first question: take out your checkbook; take out your checkbook and write a check.

NYB Right. How much? That's what this is all about?

CASHMAN Man, you're going to make the honor roll. I like that -- smart. You know, maybe there's our motto: smart business, smarter customers.

NYB How much?

CASHMAN I don't know. Like you're buying something, something big -- but not for you. You know, like an extra car for the maid to use.

NYB We don't have a maid.

CASHMAN Pretend.

NYB How much does a car cost?

CASHMAN Yeah, that's good. Start with that and keep going with exact numbers after, none of these all zeroes stuff. Make it like you bought a real thing; a real, expensive thing.

NYB Who do I make it out to?

CREWFER Don't worry about it; we got a stamp.

NYB Old school, huh? Right. CASHMAN Next question:

CREWFER What did I just say to you?

NYB What?

CASHMAN Next question: take out the plastics. One at at time. Take that pad, write your magic number down, your twenty-four hour limit, the location of the cash machines you mostly use, then pass them back - - one card, one sheet of paper at time.

CREWFER I'm not going to tell you again. Maybe you've seen me, but you haven't seen him.

NYB Sorry.

CREWFER No worries.

Effie comes on

CASHMAN He said he's sorry. And the customer is always right.

EFFIE Cashman! Cashman!

CASHMAN Mistergirl, trey!

EFFIE Looks like we got another satisfied customer. How 'bout that?

NYB Satisfied if I get out of here in one piece. CASHMANC There it is. You will.

EFFIE You're safe with us.

CREWFER Just keep them cards and letters coming.

EFFIE That's what it takes, uh-huh. Trust. Confidence. That's the first habit. And you got to give it so your customers have it. And we do, cause we got it. And all the others too. What do you think? That we're like street fever? No. We've been going to those mooks. Everyday. We undertand what makes for success. We know what it takes now -- to build a business, have strategy, realize entrepreneurship. That's what the Cashman's done. Right? He calls it...that's his genius. He's made the application from business success to...business success, like in real countries, where if you got the money, you can do what you want, no law, nobody going to stop you, you know what I mean?

NYB I'm the victim of a crime for God's sake.

CREWFER I told you. He could care less.

NYB Let Him decide what he cares about.

CREWFER Hey, if you don't find another card in there, we're going to make you write another check.

CASHMAN If you're going to be a victim of crime, now who's victim do you want to be? Somebody that's got their violence clip going inside? Got to put on that uncontrolled showtime, feed some jones inside? That aggression brain chemistry snaps out? Or like us? That we got principles, interests, you can trust? So that way you know you're not going to get hurt. So that's how lucky you are that you're dealing with us. See, we believe in win-win. NYB You've kidnapping me.

CASHMAN Man, that's a federal crime. Please. Slow motion hold-up, that's all. We don't need that big time kind of attention, right? Give us some credit, okay? That's our interest, so you can count on it.

NYB Right. Rational. Just the way people always are.

CASHMAN Like the Treygirl says, right? The name of the game is trust. Think about it. Like why'd we want to cut you up? Oh, blood all over the place, then got to pack out the body. Oh! Footprints. DNA. Please.

CREWFER Move your eyeballs back! You don't even look at his shoes, understand?

CASHMAN Dust a stranger, and then they'll look for real. Like the Mafia men say, kill only your own, and the police'll leave you alone. But when you wake up, maybe remember something, diddypop to the station house and file your complaint -- "I'm this limoworld man, and I been swagged down, right on the leather, right inside in my own limo" -- well, they won't laugh -- til you're gone. You know -- I mean, hey, I'm not a lawyer that's for sure -- but, there's crime..and there's crime -- and they only come looking hard, like look to put you in the timehouse, when it's that whoa, no mind, streetcrime kind. Hey, I chose this crimelife, you know, like postively you know what I mean? And I want to live it like businesslike, see? Like I'm like a crime executive entrepreneur, you see?

NYB Of course -- a mere choice of corporate governance... So what if you get caught?

EFFIE And how're we going to get caught? And convicted? No. See, cause we got the second habit. The second habit you got to have is authority and accountability. And we got it -- he's the Cashman and we're the Mistermen -- and that makes this organization tight all the way 'round. Cause just if somebody walks, don't mean somebody talks. That's right. And like the Cashman says, we got the third habit you got to have for businesslike crime success

CASHMAN Later. That's right...but, later.

EFFIE Yea, Cashman.

CREWFER That's it? You're sure? Sure sure?

CASHMAN You're doing alright, huh? Some limit, hey.

NYB Yeah, that's it. That's it. What're you going to do now, steal my watch?

CREWFER You know how much you get for a hot watch? And some sickface, tick tock boy toy like that, keep it -- it's yours.

EFFIE That's it?

CASHMAN That's it.

NYB That's it?

Effie hands glass/bottle/can to NYB.

CASHMAN Yeah. Take a break. You got to be thirsty, after you just got an A. You know, if these are not the right numbers, the Deuceman here -- Misterman Deuce here's going to have to come see you.

NYB And get realistic? CREWFER Not like I'm keeping this wallet for the bills inside, no, I'm safekeeping it cause I can't stand to forget you -- it's like in case I need an address reminder.

NYB The numbers are right. Now what happens?

CASHMAN Now we go back to work.

NYB I mean to me.

EFFIE You'll see.

NYB Right. Work.

CASHMAN Hey, I told you. Why don't you believe me? I chose this life. You think it's easy getting all this up? You don't think I got an investment to protect? I'm paying the rent on this place. I got payments on that limo -- got to keep current. I got expenses -- training my staff, you know hard that can be? Huh, you think it's easy hanging on that scanner, catching on the cell phones of them limo outfits? Then I got to figure out enough so I can call in to cancel so like they'll believe it. And then they got to be in the right place with the right sign and act so the customer'll believe it. And then maybe we got like three or four days before you wake up and they got to like hit the cash machines like not like raising suspicions -- you know how hard that is? You know how hard that is getting loyal, dedicated, competent employees today? It's hard, man, that's what it is, real hard work. Huh!

EFFIE That's it! Hard work!

CASHMAN I mean, I'm not complaining. Fact is, I'm blessed...have the opportunity... I'm proud to be a part of building this organization. EFFIE Oooh, yeah. Beautiful! Yeah. Yeah. That's the one they're going to think of next. That's the Cashman for you, gets there first. Hard work. Alright! You watch, they'll be putting it on them mooks any time now, and they'll make it a major centerpiece with tie-ins -- hard work, the major habit for success. Yeah. Like hard work's the top franchise and all the others is subsidies. I bet that's how you did it, huh?

NYB Huh?

CASHMAN Yeah, how'd you get so rich?

EFFIE I know. You just took them habits, took them inside, and just wouldn't let them die?

NYB Worked hard and played by the rules. That's what you want to hear?

CASHMAN Lighten up. Customers are partners, right? Where's your trust and confidence? How'd you do it, get up there, make it all your own?

NYB You want to know the truth? Insight and timing. I just deploy knowledge -- inside knowedge partly -- it's knowledge makes the world work now. Work was completely secondary. Really, if I work twice as hard twice as long, I don't make twice as much money, and if I work half as hard half days, now I'd still make, I don't know, eighty, ninety percent as much. That's cause it's not work. Work is when you wish you were doing something else.

EFFIE I know what you mean.

NYB Ohoh... Work is like now..where I wish..ohoh... See, when I'm working I never even think of doing anything else -- I never wish I was doing something else -- so that's all I do -- I'm always at the office working -- I mean notworking...I fill a littel dizzy... EFFIE Yeah. See. There it is. That's committment and concentration. That's the..that one's number..man, I forgot. Man, we got to come up with some kind hypnotic device make memory keep all these habits in line. You know, like you got the major habit for success and then you got the

CREWFER Yeah, like hard work's Snow White and then you got the dwarfs. Hi ho, ho ho, it's off to work we go, hi ho, hi ho...

NYB Ohohoh...

EFFIE Yeah. Yeah.

CASHMAN having noticed Crewfer took the bills out of the wallet and put them in his pocket Misterman Deuce..Misterman Deuce..if there's an attitude problem in an effective organization, we got to deal with it..we got to deal with it...

CREWFER Cashman! No, I'm one hundred and ten percent on -- seven habits, and hard work -- yeah, totally with the program; I didn't mean..dis any of this..no...

CASHMAN No, you didn't. I must've misunderstood. You'll have to excuse me. I mean, there are things that can be excused, right? And there are things that cannot be excused. Man, I must need one of them memory minders myself, keep my memory warmed up -- I can't remember one thing that can't be excused in an organization, can't even remember the worst thing that can't be excused...

EFFIE I know. That's going on your own, renegade personal profit-taking, right?

CREWFER Oh! Cashman! No, I wasn't taking that money; I just put in my pocket for safekeeping. I wasn't going to keep the money. No..uh uh. It belongs to the organization we are, not to us. You know I know that. I just saved it, cause we're busy, you know, in trusteeship.

CASHMAN assaulting Crewfer Uh-huh.

NYB Ohohohoh... Hey..hey..I don't feel so good. Nooo...

EFFIE Don't worry about it. That's the knock out fluid.

NYB looking at drink container Noooo..ohohohoh..noooo...

EFFIE Ohohoh yeaeaeah...

NYB Oh, oh no... Ohohoh... I can't stay awake.

EFFIE No, you can't. That's why it's knock out fluid.

NYB What.. What's it going to do to me? Uhuhuh...

CASHMAN Nothing. You'll wake up -- couple days or so. Maybe it'll take a while for your memory to come back on line, but..you'll be alright. Believe it.

NYB slumping asleep Uhohuhohuhoh...

CASHMAN Park him in a car. Lock the doors, help him not get hurt till he wakes up.

EFFIE Yea, Cashman. CASHMAN Then we go to work. Hi ho, hi ho...and you stay in line, uh-huh? Or next time the bones break.

CREWFER Oh yeah, yeah Cashman. Naw, naw..trusteeship..honest.

CASHMAN Uh-huh.

♦ ♦

§ § §

II 3: background is apartment of NYB; characters are Amanda and CA Bill. Amanda is on. Doorbell rings etc.

AMANDA Who is it?

CAB from off Bill Menaechmi.

AMANDA opening door as CAB comes on Don't you have a key?

CAB Huh? My name's Bill Menaechmi. I'm scheduled here for a review... This is the right place, right? I got the

AMANDA Hi, Bill. You're probably wondering what I'm doing here?

CAB Here? Well, I didn't know what to expect exactly, but I

AMANDA You don't recognize me do you? CAB No.

AMANDA That would be like you wouldn't it? Or maybe you are controlled enough to just cool your way through it?

CAB Am I supposed to follow you? I got all my records with me with my stuff, I brought it all along cause this isn't going to take that long. Cause once you see

AMANDA I'm not the one who's going to see. You are.

CAB And I guess knowing how to talk to people so dismissive like that way's why IRS agents don't need to carry guns?

AMANDA Huh? Oh, Bill... Nobody's going nuts here, okay? And there's no need for this to be a hostile process.

CAB No, of course not. We wish.

AMANDA Reasonableness, civility, mutual respect -- my cornerstones for interpersonal relations -- no matter how disagreeable -- and for doing business.

CAB Well, great! That's what we all want. Caring, intelligent, equal treatment.

AMANDA The way you've always treated? But, we'll never mind any of that troublesome, personal truth, right? Absolutely, this is your place too and you have your rights -- welcome to stay, but in the parameters I need for why I'm here. Alice has rights too. And as I surmise you've been able to conclude, I'm here like, virtually her, to make sure she gets them. CAB Alice? ... Ah, that's that new multi-billion dollar comprehensive super-big-data "customer serivce platform" you bought? Finally got it up and running I guess? Well, well, big brother's alive and well at the IRS -- and with a cuddly name like Alice.

AMANDA You are one cool customer. And I don't remember that about you. Laid back like you're going to gobbledygook it til you get the whole lock on what's happening and then call your lawyers in. Go ahead, pull the phone out of your pocket, punch them right up. Cause you know why, know like an insistent conscience makes us know no matter how hard we distract with daily life of hecticness and ambition to keep conscience denied. But then, that resurgence takes a conscience the drugging of remorse hasn't cut off dead like a hemisphere lobotomized.

CAB What? What is this? I've paid. At least as best as I could understand the lawyergobble you write your instructions in. And I can prove it. I been paying regular and to rule and I got my records -- at least for recent years anyway I can prove it. I brought them so let's look. I've been paying, and I've been paying all the law says I got to pay, which is a lot more than I ought to owe if everybody paid according to what they got.

AMANDA Big deal you've been paying. Where you're in deficit and in debt's got nothing to do with money. You think that's all you owe, to feed and shelter in a guilded cage? What happened to all that goes with to have and hold?

CAB I don't have that much. I work for a living. Barely.

AMANDA Spare me, Bill. Spare me. Sit down, make yourself at home why don't you? Your freaked-out hippie act is making me sick. If you're not at home in what you own, you're better off without it, right? You get seen right through for all the insecurities that made you want it oh so bad. Or maybe you've reached some stratosphere where what's to envy's that you don't even care about it? Sure, you've bought her everything she wanted and then some -- so what is this these old bags hassling me about responsible commitment and emotional obligation? Right? Big deal you paid, you little slithersnake...... Seeing through you I'm reminded of the importance of good manners.

CAB Yeah, let's sublimate that hostile, maybe

AMANDA You know Bill, not long ago I saw a great window display at a jewelry house -- they had these stuffed iguanas and other reptiles all decked out in pendants and brooches -- bathed in soft shades of acid light -- glinting eyes, diamonds, rubies, earings and chronographs -- wouldn't just want to wear a watch if you're a cold-blooded reptile counting every second of time-is money right? Reminded me of you that's all..even after all these..these years. Also reminded me high- concept art-advertising never sold any jewelry or anything else. Big deal you paid. And for the whole ten yards of this lux life. I know it inside out. I sell it. And I'm not impressed.

CAB I've met every obligation I've had as best as I've been able to -- every legal obligation cause that's all it is. Maybe onetime when self-government was real there was patriotism and emotion rightly involved, but nuhhh-uh -- not the way things are now -- like now you got your super-leader deadbeat leading the parade.

AMANDA Patriotism? Bill... Ahhoohh... Putting on a nut act is useless. "I was so distraught she left I didn't understand what was happening and..." And then who knows what you'll have your lawyers come after me for. Come on, I'm hip to you. You could start rolling around on the floor in an ecstasy of brain disease twitching and it wouldn't fool me.

CAB These mind games you think you've got the right to lay on people -- you don't! You forget with your arrogance who the government's for and who it's supposed to make sense to. Now let's get down and look if you've got a beef with me cause like I say I got my records here and I can prove. And doing it in this place like some secret location is doubly outrageous. You're afraid what the press'll do if they find out what you've been spending to decorate the office. You're not like some kind of embassy alright, like made out for cookie pushers in striped suits to peddle pontifications about the big picture, you're supposed to be serious government -- you're entrusted with collecting the public purse. Look at this place. I'm not real sophisticated 'bout federal office buildings, but this..this is useless weapons system -- bomber toilet seat -- extravagant! You're supposed to be like working for the people in society not like leeching them to pass all the bucks and the breaks to the corporate big boys puppeteering behind their lobbyists, alright? So

AMANDA Hey! Get back! Keep it to the laid-back, lost looney act, alright. Despite my instincts I've had to learn to bellow with the big boys since that's what it takes. So you know what? I'm not going to be intimidated by you -- specially by the likes of you. One more big boy on the business block so used to getting the last shove and making it stick you don't even have to bother that often. And all the other boys shift on their feet and show love-eating-your-shit grim respect -- and the women -- just grab them by the cunt that's all they're good for -- and you don't even when notice, don't even notice them as mansworld, real competitors. Well, I'm a woman tired, tired of that bigboy outlook that doesn't change. I'm leaving before I lose my temper.

Amanda goes off.

CAB You're so beautiful. And I'm so lost. What's your world that you're so free with pow'r 'n' anger 'n' so easy in your beauty? Even if, you're in the roleplay of your job? And me? I'm in the roleplay of my nowhere life? Here, like some kind of museum place where those that walk these halls and grace these rooms aren't living seedy and disordered -- look at me -- but dreamlike, playing perfectly timed and turned the soft gestured, full spoken, riches of their roles, displayed like on a stage. So with this train of strange happenstance I'll just tag along since to lose, I got..what? -- till something'll like up and wake me from this trance of suddenly in lap of luxury and all that rot. Where'd the money come from set a place up like this? Somewhere I never got any. Cause I wasn't suited? Cause I didn't dare to run that race? Funny, how'r destiny winds up one, though'r options once were many. How all that's here bespeaks the bustling of lives so self-assured, full of things to do, in their web of expectation and commitments hustling to stay sealed up with no reminders getting through. "Bury it. I'm too busy." Like that be all it'd take, cancel that last appointment ev'ry one of us'll make. Oh Woofie, how I so wish you was here walking with me through this dreamscape that somehow... What a dump,huh? Like so perfect for storing all the stuff only money can buy. ... And how'd I miss getting in on any of it?...decades now of the whole world -- wars or no wars -- making big money...like I'm satisfied...satisfied?...with getting by -- living my little version of beachcomber Romantic... glances at photos And this guy even looks like me, 'cept in hipless toad mode, but...it's all his...so what's the IRS doing here? Who knows...who cares...she...she's here. Beauty to my eyes like music like after a long trip through the wilderness suffused in the balm of Nature's silence you're suddenly back, jangling in the city and like colors in an acid trip there's music in your ears again. That's how strong her karma hit me and I ain't been hit that way since illusions expected love to be like that. So I'm asking me no questions, so I'll not be telling me no lies -- just stick around, see how the punches roll this stone. ... And that's where all my time went I didn't spend making money? And how's it going to go in the end? Whoa! I'm going to be the only sadsucker out there who's going to die wishing he had spent more time at the office. Shshs..she's coming. Oh, man... And for all my worries, at minutes of meeting, my mind's already raced her to naked, arching, sighing, moan and quivering so calmly happy in my love and arms? Shshsh... I hear her steps, the whisper of her clothes -- and this tax biz at hand's the last thing I could care about now.

Amanda comes on.

AMANDA And any ideas you might have I'm leaving, are non-starters.

CAB Me? Ideas? Oh I have no idea -- and I don't care.

AMANDA Oh Bill, what's your angle now? I know that you're the kind that always has one -- so suspicious, always, of one and all -- and masked, intent on piercing every weakness' chink. Like the barest scrim behind the eyes that lets pass, hiding unhidden, the light behind the eyes, hucksters are best when they make you feel they feel your own emotions reflected in their eyes until you see how you've been taken in and then, that skrim's seen like a blind that blocks out lies. So don't bother trying to fool me with that stupid long lost needy sad-eyed dog look.

CAB Woof! If there's deception here, it's on me.

AMANDA There's none, at least that I know of. Unless, of course, it's you that's playing around -- like taking up behind her back with all the needy babes your eminence on the money heap pretty much must blind to your pathetic self.

CAB I'm telling you, I've met every obligation. AMANDA And so have nothing more to answer for than the legal and the monetary? And both as norrowly defined as only lawyers can. It gets to be a habit, to get away with it. You guys start out -- more times 'n I care to count -- staying in bounds, playing by the rules and working hard, but soon success comes gorge the fool with pride and there's "this once" -- and 'sides I deserve it I won't get caught anyway. And pretty soon -- trangression's thrill -- it's every chance you get, as each time whets the app'tite for the next. Though it's always new possessions same tired thrill. And pretty soon -- privilige enflates that way -- you feel no rules at all rightly apply to you. And you know it's not the silly sex -- your sourstink oldster's spasmic groans -- no -- what gets me mad your base disregard for how nobly she's stayed true to you.

CAB Lady, what are you talking about?

AMANDA Of course, of course, lest we forget fierce denial to the very last's a strategic must -- so the rightious who accuse the guilty then can themselves become the guilty ones, the vile, abusive fake news false accusers -- hah! So I'm going to make you listen anyway. Your lying faithlessnes and cruel selfishness, that'u'd just be one of so many things -- that drop by drop for years 'n' years day by day she took, figuring she'd stand it for her love for you til one day her heart, heavy with angry bitterness, burst consumed by the contusioning outrage of your cold abuse. That's why she's gone. And that's why I'm now here in her place.

CAB Far gone... AMANDA But estrangements can be overcome, at least by those who'll humble 'emselves to others' love.

CAB Love..? And taxes? Death and taxes -- now that I've heard.

AMANDA So too bad avoidance or evasion of one is never as successful as that of the other.

CAB And that's what you think I'm doing. I'm not. I can prove it.

AMANDA Oh right. Selfishness' fearful evasion of love. Now proved by your lying and denial.

CAB I'm sorry. I don't get it.

AMANDA You wouldn't. Or this wouldn't have happened to you.

CAB You know, I'll have a cigarette too. I mean I don't really smoke anymore -- but I haven't actually quit. I've like refused to quit -- but still don't smoke, in case -- you know, it's a matter of principal -- even though I've pretty much really stopped. Except in like circumstances that're like exceptions. I mean like where there's a little bit of stress as to totally mystified as to what's going on to you. I can't afford it really, and I don't just mean that illness without coverage can be like avoidably fatal.

AMANDA Here. And may it kill you quickly.

CAB Thanks. Got a light?

AMANDA Use this. CAB You have such graceful hands.

AMANDA What's with this soulful look and touching up my hand? For God's sake, Bill, that's worse than some Monte Carlo gigolo in hustle mode -- worse, like some cool guy from the ancient age of singles bars. It's impressive, your innocent-but-suave, sweet guy act. Even got the shlockster clothes to go with it.

CAB These are my dress-up clothes.

AMANDA And you look like a relic from like Woodstock paleozoic. You know, there're some people, when they get rich, they get cheap; and as they get older it gets worse like they just can't shake the respect, the fear and respect they had for daddy money from the time of their family's modest, working youth.

CAB You know, I'm not a real sophisticted guy

AMANDA No. But you are cunning. And that's so much more valuable, at least in this world of making it at near any cost.

CAB You always had it -- that ease being yourself, didn't you?

AMANDA Well, yes...and no.

CAB What do you mean, "and no"?

AMANDA Stop it, Bill.

CAB Bill? Just like that from the start? They like teach you that to reach in to people by skipping all the customer service stuff? Like what happened to "Sir" or "Mr. Menaechmi"? Or even basic, businesslike behavior?

AMANDA Forget it. I don't need this. I know you through and through -- Mister Made It Big, and now you want me to call you "Sir"? And while I'm at it, I'm also going to fix you dinner tongiht? Order out something for us to eat, okay Mr. Big? And don't be cheap like you're too cheap to hire somebody to help your wife out around here.

CAB I'm not married.

AMANDA And in time, saying and saying it makes it so? Yeah, ours is an age of self-made image where our personal propaganda counts for more than the substance of our real selves. Day is night, guilty blameless, incompetent able -- say it, say it with fierce insistence, with wronged and hurt conviction that won't let go, and pretty soon the whole world believes it since what's past is never on the screen right now so might as well not be at all. "I'm not married" you say? Like the affirmation of your own reality, required, justified by whims of somesaid, true self could lock out all others and the world and be the truth you believe is right? Arrgh! Contempt's too weak a word for the falseness of your little game that is -- sick'ning me -- maybe sincere.

CAB I'm not married. I'm not.

AMANDA Right. I've got to go before...

Amanda goes off.

CAB Shuhzam... Yes, Ma'am. I might've almost been married. But I ain't married now. ... Man, must be some buried desire get into some real life with a real woman, cause I'm grabbed and taken, slammed and shaken. ... Shuhzam, she's a trip... And how I got here tripped out this far..with her? ... I'm having a flashback!? Used to be in the hipmess of my youth I'd so often wind up -- and not just falling in and hanging out with strangers -- where I'd so pride myself of going with the flow I'd always be the last to lose that easy trust where cause you're strangers intimacy's got no cost and I'd stay in there no matter how mismatched and wierd it got.. til some other trip'u'd come by and take me up. Lady says order some dinner, order some dinner -- where's my phone? What!? Pizza? Yeugh, no! Need something... Man, like I need a lifestyle advisor. Man, like they got the UN of food going in this town, every country you can think of and every nationalist group without one, like they all brought their cooking with them too -- one more mmmm good thing about immigration, huh?. How about... Like I need something..that's the latest, but like authentic, like being the latest was the last thing you were thinking of... Like make her see me like I'm suayve..suahve?..suahve?.. suayve?... Ever since high school I haven't been sure which it is. Maybe that's the reason why..better stick to being authentic..and latest... Hipness is, as hipness does. That's it! Must be, it's cuisine and I can't pronounce it. ... Hello? Yeah, hi, I'm looking here and it says you provide the total enchanted, Romantic...can't pronounce it...dinner for two...at home alone -- and I'd...yes, I'll hold...always something gets in the way.

♦ ♦

§ § § §

II 4: background is street; characters are NYB, Nancy Littlesteps and Big Jim Marion. NYB comes on -- can be from parked car -- groggy from effects of knock-out fluid.

NYB Arrghoo..arrghoo..arrghoo... Where am I?... Ughgh..I remember..I remember, that's what they all say when they don't know. ... I can't remember...Ohrghgh... Help..I'm..I'm... Arrghgh... I'm reaching..I'm reaching for it..but I can't reach it... Like I'm..like I'm... Orghgh..lost, man, lost... Aieieieee... It's all faded, faded past my reach...

Mugger(s) come on and roll NYB, taking his shoes and coat and watch.

Fuckers! Fuckers! Fuckers!

MUGGER Shut up!

Mugger(s) come back and hit NYB who collapses. Mugger(s) go off. Nancy Littlesteps comes on.

NANCY LITTLESTEPS Yyrgh! Yyrgh! Hee hah! Here what got? Hooo-wheee! Heeyaargh! Blinkety winkety, what do I see? Jiminy shiminy, don't believe it can be. Hah! You better bet your bottom sodom lollipop you can. Ropple down like a rag doll, splanked on the street -- like life grew up forgot you, left you for pillage for mice to make bedding, up in the attic right under the rafters..in the darkness at the top of the stairs..hiding from the hits and the slobber..in the dark sparked with hurts bright as traffic at night. Oh ho, hee heee... Slippery whippery, dippery pippery -- haven't seen you, haven't seen you, oh no! No coat, no shoes -- and too old to look so young and clean. Not from this sidewalk house, oh no, oh no..but soon you'll see, you'll see -- just like any other day. And it'll be all yours! Hah! You hear me!?

NYB Orghrghrghhg...

NANCY LITTLESTEPS Oh no, oh no, I'm not interested. Lairdy whirdy hurdy wurdy -- I don't caredy. Can't hear you calling, just sounds like noise falling. Yee-hee... Feeling pretty when you're ugly -- only one way and that's fly way away! Waaawww...

NYB Ohohohoh... NANCY LITTLESTEPS Some life left in the soggybag human trash? Some life left! Hah! Sit up, sit up, take a big peek! Hoop, whoop, what them peepers weepers think they're keepers? Keep it all! Nuh nuh nuh nuh, nuh nuh nuh nuhhh...

NYB Ohohoh... Where...?

NANCY Where what? Peek it up! Whoop! Whoop! Right here and there. Hah! Like where am I? Like that's what they all say.

NYB I got to..to... Try and remember...

NANCY Oh, I remember, I always remember..everything inside always buzzzzzzuh, buzzzzzzuh every which way up there like bees in a bottle. Full time working at forget, full time pain time's all it gets.

NYB I need..I need...

NANCY I'd say you need some shoes.

NYB What happened to my shoes!?

NANCY I don't know. But once you skip thes hoes. That's it -- dipity-dit. Might as well start sniffing glues.

NYB I was..I was...it's coming back to me.

NANCY Better get some shoes. What if it takes a while? What if it never comes back? What if just sack-a-while a while til it's all over? No shoes and all! Hah! What if gets cold out here? NYB How do I get some shoes?

NANCY And what if it comes back? Won't do you any good to remember now. Hah! Shoes at the mission. Where else? Hand them right out.

NYB Listen witch, those weren't just shoes, they were... They were..important somehow..something that made me want them..I saw them in the magazine -- and I wanted them so I'd be..seen like..it's all out of reach... Orghrghrgh... It's like I got the pictures, but without the sense; like I got the memories, but they got no pictures. ... Wait! I need help!

NANCY Fat lot of good that's going to do you. Hah!

NYB Sourpuss hag! What did I do that I should fall in with people like you? Wait! Where's the mission?

NANCY Hyahaah... Right this way.

Big Jim Marion comes on.

BIG JIM MARION Well, I'll be..if it's not her, it's her dead ringer..Nancy Littlesteps..I haven't seen you...

NANCY Big Jim..oh, Big Jim..bet you're six gun ready to stagger-wagger right down from some technicolor dream. Pow! Pow! Hah!

BIG JIM MARION You're never ready when the shooting starts.

NANCY Oh Jim..oh Jim..go ahead kiss and cuss me one

BIG JIM MARION like I hadn't see a girl... NANCY You want a drink?

JIM Oh, I don't know. I could use one though.

NANCY Heeyarghgh!

JIM Whuooorgh! Like that Chinee firewater..yeah..got a rememberance of that -- those perfumes..of the river and the jungle..those little lights in the dark so deep..like they tossed some dying embers in the tree line up the bank, and that's what they called a good-sized town..not like it smells like here in this concrete fumes kettle... You got a smoke?

NANCY Here you go..pull up your burden to the hitching post, and we'll go singing to the river, we'll arailsing inbetween, we'll meet...Heeyah! Scurfy-whum, saddle bum! Peek, peek, Jim! Whoop, whoop!

JIM Oh Nancy, you always were one to laugh people down.

NYB Can I interrupt for a minute? Just..where's the mission?

JIM Mission's right here, son; always with you. Where you got to do..what you got to do.

NYB Ughhh... I got to get some shoes, alright?

JIM Well, so that's what we got here..a tenderfoot.

NYB No, a mafia hit man! A high-powered..a high...orghorgh...

NANCY We'll drink to that, we'll think to that, while we make alat, living on fat...

JIM Stay in there, son. Be resolute. The darkest hour is 'fore the dawn of hope; come daylight, you'll see you have a fighting chance.

NYB What do you...!!! The claptrap! Bromide brain! Like you're just huffpuffing air in and out your squawkbox larynx like some kind of airventical for bloody nonsense. What did you used to be before you hit skid row? I know, some image master who trained politicians -- and they must've all lost!

NANCY Ruckuh muckuh, polly whuckuh, have a sip and take a trip. Heeya!!

NYB So..are you going to help me find some shoes, or what?

JIM What's your beef, mister? You need some shoes? You can just go right down to the mission..hand them right out.

NYB Look, I'll make it worth your while. Money's no object.

JIM So why do you need some shoes?

NYB Cause I'm... I'm... My feet are cold.

JIM Well, that's a pretty good reason.

NANCY I'd lose nerves too, facing this -- like I'd someplace else to be.

JIM And what did you do, before you skid home here?

NYB Um...Um... I... Argh! what are we waiting for? NANCY We're waiting for that higher call, waiting for that other shoe to fall. Ruckuh muckuh, polly whuckuh, have a sip and take a trip. Heeya!!

JIM You want a drink?

NYB No. Hey...

JIM You know, I bet you used to be a real go-getter.

NYB I didn't used to be, I... I...

NANCY C'mon; we'll show you.

NYB Ouch! I already know it. I'm not going to make it like this.

JIM The important thing son's, we all make it.

NANCY Heeheeyahyahyah-arghooweee... We'll slanger to the mission, we'll labster by the sea; we'll see ranger labodacious, we'll be free and carkooday...

♦ ♦

§ § § § §

II 5: apartment of NY Bill; characters are Amanda and CA Bill.

AMANDA Oh! Oh, you didn't... NYB See, I told you it was ready.

AMANDA Bill...Oh, flowers too...

NYB See, I found all the dishware and silver and all I mean, you got all this stuff, I'm surprised you don't also have a maid.

AMANDA Stop it, Bill.

NYB I guess government regulations draw the line at maids, cause that'u'd be really over the top.

AMANDA What?

NYB Never mind. Tonight... I don't understand; but, I'm doing it... Hey, and you go with it too... Cause you..you... Please..on me...

AMANDA What do you think I expected, under the circumstances?

NYB I don't know. How 'bout what I expected? But, here.. ... Lucky I found the candles. But why a whole cupboard of them, hidded 'way up?

AMANDA How 'bout to mark all the times you weren't there to do this with her?

NYB What?

AMANDA Let me tell you then; yes, let me tell you, and why not with no expression of anger over this meal with all the packaging that we'd so gladly, daily, consume if we but had the time for civ'lization's pleasures ('n' if you don't have time, so what good's the money? but that's another story -- one we both know well, but haven't really learned, right?) so let's, yeah let's... And not pretend, since this is..it is the one reality we trust -- image made near perfect -- like all this was some ad for something for the dreamers without time to wish for, then purchase, like buying it would bring them in to living here like this and cancel out the way they feel their job is chewing up their life, for nothing but..but the money... But then you're lucky; you never had much life to leave behind to go completely live the deals.

CAB How would you know? I

AMANDA Cause she's my sister! And I'm telling you! That life she would've died to give you, you slammed the door in her loving eyes so you and your little self could stay in there at the office forever going for more.

CAB (Going far..far gone... But then I'm gone too, cause now I'm on this trip.)

AMANDA Go ahead and say it. Like I'm the driven clothes horse hag that never even managed to keep a man to slam that door on? That's what you were muttering?

CAB You're not married?

AMANDA No. ... And you wouldn't know..or care. Would you?

CAB No. ... I mean... Look, we're here... You're... I'll... AMANDA Oh... That's how far out of orbit you are keeping up with the basic family news.

CAB Huh? Look, hey, how 'bout a little...this bubbly-wubbly?

AMANDA It's Prosecco.

CAB Oh... Of course.

AMANDA And we'll drink to her health and good fortune? Sure. Now that we're here. Here..where she did a good job -- like ready for the architecture and interiors glossies -- like she built a set waiting for a life with meaning to put into it...and where were you? How often have you done this?

CAB Me? Never.

AMANDA So why with me now?

CAB Destiny?

AMANDA Destiny... Destiny..to find the role we worked so intent on for so long no longer fits the person changing in our skin. And what could be a better place for that than this? Not a home, grown, but a location, assembled where to fashion the image of life desired, but not lived. And oh boy, does this place engender that desire and close the sale -- the mighty overview of these charcoal towers like sailed in sheets of sparkling lights, the power of this wide eyre as glitteringly below the trains of cars in silent traffic ravel and untangle their pearling strings of red and brighter white. As here so softly mirrored your candle flames in the plates of glass against the dark confirm how far we're glad to be from the rabbling toiling chaos massed below. See, this is what I always wanted. Didn't you? ... Got a light?

CAB Here. Use a candle. And it's not what I always wanted..I never gave it enough thought to want...but looking at it now... Well, I always figured you could either own the world, or see it -- not both.

AMANDA Uh-huh?

CAB And I've seen it..at least a mighty bit of it. So I don't understand what you think you've got on me -- all I've worked for's just to grab my latest money, shut down the house, park the dog with the neighbors, and hop the best deal on the next flight to somewhere..and hit that hard travelling til I got just enough to catch it back. Not too many places you want to get stranded, not on this planet.

AMANDA We're all always travelling, and that's not what we've worked for -- no matter how you want to pretend to romanticize it. Ah! International travel! It's been decades since I've had it with shopping mall airports and cattle car airplanes.

CAB I'm not romanticizing it, not a bit. Again and again I've gone, and stayed gone -- long as I could afford to anyway -- til then no matter where I am it hits, I'm here, and deeply happy from this place. Started out it was the highway, now it's the globe that is my home. So just people-move me down them airport chutes, sort out and select like on a conveying machine, pull the plane past the gate and tumble in, packed up, like perishable produce shipped in sep'rate seats -- climate controlled and vacuum sealed -- and all so tiny in a fuselage-sheet cigar. Then shoot it over somewhere, slipping high within, our shrink-wrap thin atmosphere of life. And then you're there. Somewhere. Soon ages past the world of the web of airports that nets this globe, and home in her diff'rent lands, deep in lives and languages, sights and ways -- feeling so joyful you were born to rove! Oh I, 'way down south of the border where the clouds wrap down to mist the Mayan hills, did hear, inert inside the numb and sway down there of some garish schoolbus on a gutted road lost in jungle rills, the muffled crack of rifles at civil action work -- soldiers killing Indians -- with that same hard rage of us or them as settler conquistadors. And in that fitfulness and dangle of chickens, urchins, Indian girls and diesel fumes and dust, I dreamt I learned the sound of leaking bodies lunging to the ground. Oh I, framed so small within the window of a train where tracks slash through the Riviera's shore at play, did see, like plastic seagulls strewn amain the baubled yachts of riches' princes seeming to say: our beauty and expense they stand as symbols of the way this sea, this world, your lives and all that can produce here by right do liege and sway to the pow'r and grace of our economic state. All on the self-same sea that saw the shipwreck of Ulysses -- and a blind man's poem that for the first time made from the loss and fight to claim rights usurped individuality, all alone, and conscious of itself. Oh I, dot at the railing of a ferry blurred in rain of warm monsoon that lashed the Ganges' sheen to wool, did breathe, the air thick with the smell and pain of the crowd sulked twittering on the deck below -- and I closed my eyes and thought on the breath of Eden's air whence I'd just come East down the river from the crystal stasis of the light of Godhead's hills. That night I drank the water of that threading, trellised sea, that's still so big it swallows up the horde of corpses like they were a single, candled bier snuffed into the stream. And then I slept a sleep so deep my dreams were one with the bliss of grinning, gangling gods that so serene and wild still blank and buckle in guilt-and-deathless primal time. Til I was 'wakened by a decked out, painted urchin numbly set up to sell her sex for money. And I gave her dollars, and made her take my bed, and left to spend the night on deck, and all alone -- my sheets the moonlight on that rippling, distant sheer.

AMANDA (Now I know what they mean when they say careers on Wall Street make people lose touch with reality.)

CAB So, this must be the...where'd that..that came with the menu...I mean, not that I don't know what I'm eating...the..the exact pronunciation, that's all, slipped my mind. So, great that they like send the menu with the bill, sort of like a reference work..if you need it. Of course, you and I..well, superfluous, no?

AMANDA I see in your rise in the world, you've managed to find time to affect a taste for northern Italian cuisine?

CAB Oh, well..just like everybody else, I've been eating pizza all my life.

AMANDA You know Bill, I don't remember you as having had a sense of humor. Sohere's to you, and what maybe changes.

* III -- That Night

♦ ♦ ♦

§

III 1: background is street; characters are NYB, Nancy Littlesteps and Big Jim Marion.

JIM Fit pretty good, huh?

NYB Uhuhrh...

NANCY Squoosh whoosh, moosh loosh; steppah leppah, reppah rep; just like a soldier, never get older... Yarrgh, sucker! Cause all you get is just like a soldier pushing up clover.

JIM Oh Nancy, there you go. ... Now, how'd they fit? Good, huh? Gave you the regular just like executive model, huh?

NYB No. Argh! No. These don't fit right.

JIM Well, all depends what you're used to, pops. Something else how people peg what was yours quick like from first impression. NANCY What you're used to, you get newed to. What you're new to, you get used to. Get used up, get newed down, cause you're end ups coming round inside out and upside down.

NYB Yeah..uhoh... So..well..what time it is it? I'm..I'm late..I..I..but...

JIM You got a watch? Tell you the time. So you can know when you got to get somewhere.

NYB Where's my watch?

NANCY Heerph! Fat lot of good that's going to do you. You can tell the time all day, all night but that'll never tell how many daynights you got left. Hah! Yarph! Peep peep, keep keep, look look look looking at it, maybe daynights'll come out of it! Hah! Just like a soldier, pushing up clover. Oh, young like soldier! Home is the hero! Wrapped in glory root toot toots! Loving need no have no fear oh! Hargh! Here's your pair of empty boots!

NYB I remember that watch... It's back there... Arghieieohoh, arghieieohoh...I remember... I wanted it..I didn't want it..I wanted it, I bought it. Only..only twelve in existence... I bought it I remember and walking out I.. it hit me this watch cost more than you could buy a house for when I was growing up.

JIM Where'd you grow up?

NYB I... I can't remember.

JIM Well, I grew up down on the low end of low rent myself. Never let it hold me back though.

NANCY So here you are with me! on the street and fancy free!

NYB That watch..that watch was a timeless watch. Came in hand-rubbed special edition case with an engraved certification, I got..packaging and advertising's a crock I never drink, but this..this time, almost nobody else could have one, so I..I wanted it.

NANCY So you bought it, Bought it, got it. So good...Hargh! Just like you thought it. So good, so good like you knew it would. So you can hold it, hold it, like you knew you could. Treasure pleasure without measure. Tick tock the time of happiness. Down to the last dime of cold stone distress.

JIM Nancy, stop making fun of the man. Don't you see he's hurting here?

NANCY Aw Jim, Jim Hurting? Hurting here? State we're in, why would that be, dear? All the fun we're having here?

JIM You won't hear me complaining. And I got no mind to explain.

NANCY Carry carry, carry on, just like a soldier fancy free -- nothing, never worry on, guilty guilty, guilty's me 'cause I can't help my stupidity! Hah!

JIM So what time is it?

NANCY Watch out. Too dark see any watch anyway! Heeee...

JIM Can't see if there's no light.

NYB Okay, can't see if there's no light, poopyhead. That's not the point. If those stupids hadn't stole it, I'd still have it.

JIM So if the law finds it they can restitute it -- cause it's still yours.

NANCY So you might as well still have it! Heeee.... Even if you can't see it anyway, cause there's no light.

JIM Your timepiece didn't have a light so you can see it in the dark?

NANCY That's what makes it timeless! Heeee...

JIM No! It was a timeless masterpiece of the watchmakers art. Back then they didn't have lights! Ohhh, I don't feel well at all...time was so important to me -- I could sense it passing, mentally count it as it slipped away in working's background -- I always knew exactly waht time it was and how much of it was passing -- but now...now, orghghgh...

NANCY So whay'd you need a watch? Heeeee....

JIM Are you alright? NANCY Time's to find a place time's to hide your face time's to not a peep time's to close out -- sleep. Yurhrhrhrh... Blinkety winkety, jerkin and nod sleepity twerpity, dreaming to God!

JIM There you go, Nancy..I told you..tearing down, and tearing down. Nancy, God's good for you.

NYB Yhargh...I need help..I need...

JIM Maybe you need some restitution revival?

NYB I don't think so.

JIM Well alright, but underground they got all kind of revivals restituting and renewing. We can take you if you think..you know, they're like cults that're renegade. They'll remake you right over, right off -- that's what they're doing alright, just like they was some kind of like, you know, like wierdo devotionals.

NYB No. No..but... Arghieieohoh, arghieieohoh...

JIM You sure you're alright?

NYB No!

JIM Never did have much truck with them much, but some folks they're just whooping right to it if they find the right one. Cause you need something, brother, Amen! NANCY We'll go farting to perdition, We'll go laughing all the way. We'll go sinking in remission, We'll haroofing drink astray!

♦ ♦ ♦

§ §

III 2: NYB's apartment. CAB and Amanda are on.

CAB So, how 'bout some more of that..that whatever. Good huh?

AMANDA Go ahead, finish it.

CAB Roof!

AMANDA What?

CAB Oh, just thinking, when dogs eat dog food do they enjoy as much when humans eat good food...in eye-to-eye conversation? Please, some more wine?

AMANDA I don't think so... In fact there's a whole theory about relaxed, intent conversation... No!

CAB What -- just sets off that big-el chem thing? Can't nobody help itself?

AMANDA No! CAB ... Um..so..so, seen any good movies lately?

AMANDA What do you want to know for?

CAB I don't know, just to get to know you, find out what you like to do.

AMANDA Or cause a good meal without conversation is like a good friend without a smile?

CAB And life without a friend is like...?

AMANDA Funny, how once you eat with somebody, it softens you -- and it's harder to keep any hardheartedness in place.

CAB Yeah. But I'm not asking just to talk. It's 'cause I really want to know.

AMANDA Mh... I don't go to the movies much. I never liked comic books.

CAB I do. Always did.

AMANDA Really? So what've you seen great lately?

CAB Have you seen "Invasion"?

AMANDA "Invasion"? No...

CAB "Invasion of the Giant Roaches". It's the latest, the greatest! AMANDA Oh, yeah...?

CAB Most greatest, latest latest in that mighty line of megamonster, slambang gatebusters that got that magic to make a raving mass of today's fragmented, jaded public. When it happens, I love being a part of it. The first week.

AMANDA "Invasion of the Giant Roaches"?

CAB Yeah, starts out one morning in Spring there's this tractor trailer jackknifes, and the tank it's pulling breaks open upstate from New York -- there's a chemical spill and it's right by a reservoir and starts leaching in. And there's a conscientious water supply worker that worries but her superiors figure since it has no known effect on humans there's no point in alarming people and it's better not to make a deal of it. But it goes into the water and starts reaching through the city. Main characters are this scitech kid and her friends from a High School of Science, and she's doing this experiment about DNA and genetics with roaches. And she's the first one to notice and start wondering why -- the city's roaches are getting bigger...like there's something slowly messing up the hereditary instructions.

AMANDA This is a movie?

CAB What else could it be?

AMANDA For adults of course?

CAB Yeah. It was great! There's this artist comes home to his loft at dawn, and he's going to sleep with his girlfriend on their futon right there on the floor with all the paint all over, and man, these roaches she thinks must've been eating the paint or something cause they're getting big. And she's terrified like she'd ingested too much of some kind of new kind little helper at the clubland they just came from, and she's just giggling with fear and he's mashing them and mashing them, and man, they're making giant splinter-splats and he just can't keep up.

AMANDA And then he arrays them on canvas, laquers them and -- presto! Arte!

CAB What?

AMANDA Great contemporary art.

CAB No, this is a real movie.

AMANDA Okay, go on.

CAB And life goes on in the city, but they're getting bigger and people are beginning to fear, and sense that fear could set off crowds and crowds of them in wildly self-destructive panic if social self-control is snapped. But they keep getting bigger; couple reproduction cycles later, they're not fitting behind the baseboards any more. And there's these cafeteria workers come in early to open up -- flip the neons on, and they're all over, big as mice! Arrghgh! And the mayor, police chief and anchorpersons they're all acting like they're on top of it with the experts, but they don't have a clue, they're all just acting. Meanwhile the water system tech's hooked up with her nephew who goes to the High School of Science and knows the biology girl who's doing the experiment. And with their gang of friends and a teacher they start figuring out what's going on -- every couple generation cycles what got in the water doubles the size of the roaches but half of them die out. But the problem is that at the limit to growth when there's only one hemongous roach left, it's got to be stopped from laying its eggs cause then ther'd be thousands of giant roaches ready to reproduce and dominate the planet and humans might well be extinct. And these kids know this, but they're just kids so who's going to listen to them? And the water tech and the guy's who's the science teacher they're struggling hard not to fall in love cause they're from such different backgrounds but it's stronger than they are cause of the stress of their common purpose and love's stronger than culture anyway.

AMANDA Obvious. It's a movie right?

CAB Yeah. That's why you got to see it. Here... Some more? And there's this socialite in her apartment like right around here like brushing her hair in front of her mirror before getting her beauty sleep and oh...suddenly therein the mirror by the perfume bottles on her dressing table ARRGH! it's a roach as big as a cat! It curled me up in my seat just like everybody else it was so...

AMANDA Frightening! Yecch!

CAB It was. That's why I loved it.

AMANDA Okay. So what happens in the end?

CAB It takes heroic teamwork work to keep panic at bay, but they evacuate Manhattan with few casualties and call out the National Guard and there's tank and helicopter battles in Central Park and in the streets against these terrified roaches the size of locomotives. And they block the tunnels and drop the bridges and seal off the abandoned island. But nobody believes these kids that they've got to stop the last roach from laying its eggs or there'll be thousands of giants and the fear'll be to much to handle and that'll be it for capitalist civilization. So they got to disobey the law and sneak across the river into the quarantine zone and lay a trap for the last roach at the limits to growth. And they evade the guards and patrols and they sneak up the Empire State building all in the dark cause the power's all out and they lay out these roach pheromones from her experiment with a chemical multiplier the nephew devised on the observation platform.

AMANDA On the observation platform? CAB Yeah. No, that was before -- it was like from their science project and experiment. And with them they got this old Sanitation guy they recruited who used to be a combat engineer he's ready on a floor part way down with all the C4 he and the rest could carry. And that last, limit giant emerges, but the wind's blowing the wrong way, and the Air Force is cranking up to attack Manhattan and spread the eggs all over the place, and the're these kids on top of the Empire State building sweating that the wind'll change and this roach is so big dragging this giant egg case it can only use the avenues cause it's too big to turn into the cross streets -- like it's some kind of giant roachcrane. You know, I've never been to New York until now, but cause of like the movies -- it's like I've lived here all my life. Anyhow, it gets past midtown and senses the pheromones and silhouetted in the moonlight there's this giant roach bigger than King Kong climbing up the Empire State building silouettted in the moonlight and POW! they make it to the right side of the building and denonate that C4 through a window right into the thorax of the beast. And that's how these high school kids save the city and the relief the roachthreat's gone like opens everyone's heart for a rebirth of self-government, tolerance, civilization and democracy.

AMANDA Yeah. It's a movie.

CAB And toppled backwards helpless, intact and huge -- the Men In Green can come and sanitize the eggs.

AMANDA The Men In Green?

CAB Yeah. Sanitation workers. Cause sanitation workers, they know about roaches.

AMANDA I got to see this movie.

CAB You do. Well..until next Summer's... AMANDA I'm going to go.

CAB You really don't go to the movies? What do you like to do in your spare time?

AMANDA I like to go to the opera.

CAB I've never been to the opera.

AMANDA I figured. But you should go. I do..every chance I get..every place I go.

CAB What do you mean?

AMANDA Some people when they travel go most of all for food, for shopping, or to see the sights or for bragging that they've gone, but me, if there there's an op'ra house, I go.. I go, and it's not to listen or to see -- it's both together and it's just one, see? And La Scala in Milan is my fav'rite one of all.

CAB Huh..

AMANDA I walk, taking my time, and in my eyes I hold the building to my mind; I'm dressed not somber nor severe, but well as money buys -- it's like, I guess, folks their Sabbath wear Sunday best. Inside, the red, the gold, the small but mighty room somehow keeps us individu'l though we're still a crowd. The house goes dark, the music spells its loom and recast for you's a composers mind rewove aloud. The stage shines up, and for all the world, if all works well, the whole thing brings the joy of beauty as your mind's calm's upswirled and singing acted touches human, deepest things. What wells slakes thirst for whence art first sprung cause life's deepest mysteries are always sung.

CAB Well..some dessert maybe? No..I mean, maybe someday we can go?

AMANDA Bill, let's not forget what's going on.

CAB What's going on?

♦ ♦ ♦

§ § §

III 3: abandoned tunnels and galleries beneath the city; NYB, Nancy and Big Jim come on. Devotional of Che Guevarists is on with hierarch(s) and devotees.

JIM There yonder...

NYB What? What is this? Whe're you taking me?

JIM By my reckoning, some kind of awakening, cause that here's what memory needs.

NYB Like a hole in the head.

NANCY Empty head that needs a trashful. JIM Got 'em all over down here -- got to be one suited just to you.

NANCY No need to be bashful. Got a need, go! Got 'em itches all over. Pick 'em, stick 'em, mush 'em, shuck 'em, sick 'em, lick 'em, whack 'em, live 'em. Once you got 'em; then they gothcha! Heeee...

NYB Ohhho...

JIM They got devotions down here underground lined up like stores on a mall. There's got to be one, fix you right up -- get back your memory.

NYB Huh?

JIM Shsh...

NANCY Shsh... Got to hear the rattleheads, prattle cattle appleheads, cuttle up 'n' struttleheads wuddle-buddle uttleheads. Mmmmmhhhh... Shsh...

HEIRARCH(S) La memoria, la memoria

DEVOTEES Of the justice that he dreamed.

HEIRARCH(S) La promessa, la promessa DEVOTEES of the poor's need to be freed.

HEIRARCH(S) El respeto, el respeto

DEVOTEES that all humans need to live!

HEIRARCH(S) La lucha del communista

DEVOTEES humano y idealista!

HEIRARCH(S) La memoria que aclara!

DEVOTEES Comandante Che Guevara!

NYB I don't need this.

NANCY Dignity, schmigdity who need this fakery? Heeee...

JIM Hope's where you find it. Freedom's when you've lost it all.

NYB Claptrap!

NANCY Happity hap, rappity rap, it's the fluoride from the tap. Hah!

HEIRARCH(S) Here we hold the hard remem'brance of the dream he lived for to the last, as in that last camp in the jungle he held his last companions to the task: keep on, keep on in the fight for justice for the masses that can't rest til the hope, the hope of rising

DEVOTEES is strong as dawn that starts the working day. L'esperanza, l'esperanza

HEIRARCH(S) del verdadero communista

DEVOTEES humano y idealista!

HEIRARCH(S) AND DEVOTEES La memoria que aclara! Comandante Che Guevara!

NYB What is this? So poor people are poor. They're not happy. They feel systemically dissed. Well, it's their own fault. They don't like it, they can get rich. I did. What is this tired-ass revolution crap? We're all free already. I remember.

JIM You did, huh? No doubt about that. Just sometimes luck would have it; just sometimes luck would wouldn't.

NANCY Heerhg! Oh, Big Jim, it's been a long time since I had a truly long tall one -- quench my thirst, my thirst...

HEIRARCH(S) As to the last he hewed to truth -- as on that last day in the jungle at the gunning of the ambush there they captured then they shot him putting bullets through his skin til the blood flowed out and emptied and the true, strong heart stopped cold, and they laid him out for the cameras to see. DEVOTEES Soldadito! Soldatito!

HEIRARCH(S) What do your children say now of the paper of your pay -- the dollars, dirty in the guilty fist

DEVOTEES that sold you to the capitalist imperialist?

HEIRARCH(S) Puppets of the money makers you who rule the world today, you shot dead

DEVOTEES the precious life

HEIRARCH(S) of challenge and defiance,

DEVOTEES he who came up from the people

HEIRARCH(S) to bring dignity and power

DEVOTEES to all who have so little

HEIRARCH(S) and give to us

DEVOTEES our revolutionary destiny!

NYB Please. Spare me this shit.

JIM Come on. That's alright; we'll find another one if this one brand's not right for you. But like, it jogged you -- like you got your reactionary back -- get your reactions back, next time like be your memory, right?

NYB Huh?

JIM Aw, for sure, they got all kinds of devotionals down here underground.

NANCY Rip a whip; give me a sip; take that trip! Hah! Forget...regret..respect..reject -- I vote for let's keep drinking, completely. It all goes back to the fam'ly tree 'n' goin' back fur's the eye can see when all that's there is poverty your only real destiny sure as hell ain't revolutionary! Yah, suckers!

JIM Aw, Nancy you got no faith; you got no faith in people and you got no faith in progress.

NANCY Nope. But I got faith in this. Yarrgh! This li'l renewal fuel that'll beam you right up where beninety reigns. We'll go furshing feeliwapah We'll...

HEIRARCH(S) Ours is the hearthfocus where we keep alive the flame the hope to fuse the separations that make the contradictions of capitalist democracy -- separation of our spiritual life from the nation's power, separation of our human life from our working to produce, separation of our cultural community from representation in the state. Ours is the hearthfocus where we keep alive the flame that fuses hard facts and freedom into life lived in dignity. The freedom to disbelieve all the facts that claim to put an end to truth of a better, shared life for all. And that's the truth they killed him for! La memoria y esperanza

DEVOTEES del verdadero communista humano y idealista.

HEIRARCH(S) We will keep alive the memory

DEVOTEES that lights to dawn the darkness of our night.

HEIRARCH(S) L'esperanza que aclara

DEVOTEES Comandante Che Guevara.

HEIRARCH(S) A la lucha! A la lucha!

DEVOTEES A la lucha! A la lucha! We will fight for our oppression's end!

HEIRARCH(S) When shall

DEVOTEES the revolution be at hand! There then there will be time and time and time -- for working and for loving, rest and play, a time for life's every purpose, with heaven here below. HEIRARCH(S) La memoria, l'esperanza --

DEVOTEES when equity there at last will be,

HEIRARCH(S) when against the overlords of globality

DEVOTEES all resist clearly with new loyalty.

HEIRARCH(S) And we

DEVOTEES will all at last live wholly free!

HEIRARCH(S) La memoria y esperanza

DEVOTEES del verdadero communista humano y idealista.

HEIRARCH(S) La memoria que aclara

DEVOTEES Comandante Che Guevara.

HEIRARCH(S) La memoria que aclara

DEVOTEES Comandante Che Guevara.

♦ ♦ ♦

§ § § §

III 4: NYB's apartment. CAB and Amanda are on.

CAB I tell you..thanks to you, you know..I mean I never knew getting into tax trouble could be..could be such an experience of sweet richness.

AMANDA You've got tax problems? Well..what a surprise... But, make enough of a contribution, and I'm sure those in power'll find some sort of arrangement for you in their "reforms" -- might even send you somewhere to be ambassador so you can can live like this at government expense.

CAB Yeah, uh-huh? Well... But it doesn't matter..cost what it costs it can't be more than I have, so let's get it square and...and I don't have no problems now, now that there's your presence in the present of my life.

AMANDA Bill... I'll admit it -- it has been a lovely dinner..and that's hardly what I'd planned on from you.

CAB But why? How would you know? And anyway can't we know best when we know least, when we're free, and rev'rent before resplendent beauty, at one with life's deepest power, sure of nothing save the sureness of attraction?

AMANDA Have you lost your mind? No, you haven't -- merely lost ev'ry shred of shame -- and long ago. The cold and quick indugence of whatever comes to mind in sex and power, simply to be done directly from the deadest spring for action with no selfhuman check of reason, guilt or honor. Just a man, in all the usual moral splendor -- so come to think of it, I'm not surprised not surprised at all by you. CAB You think a destiny as strange as this comes topsy-turvy up a life like ev'ry day and flip a man from one galaxy of social space 'way into a different other, and..so what? Like one day I'm living in the stress and heat of desert valley, and on the next I'm resting in the orchard's coolness on the big rockcandy mountain. And there's this..you, here -- real as can be -- a splendor of woman-perfumed glory in this person behind the eyes that light your face, and look into -- right through -- mine.

AMANDA You're not at all like Alice said you were.

CAB No. And you know what? Some men -- a few -- stay just themselves all through and through.

AMANDA That, for the most fleeting instant I should have never ever doubted.

CAB So riding this moment don't doubt for a moment how somehow this city's swirl of multitudes has tossed together this me and you this way bound by a spell cast as strong, as silent is desire. Just hold a hand to start -- and feeling right, go on to kiss, and hold a man in honest loving

AMANDA and write me a song why don't you? Even better, make a sale -- that's all it is since that's the only model of relations left? I'm gone -- and you can clear and wash the dishes since you're too cheap to have someone in to help. Goodnight Bill, sleep tight. There'll be business to get to come tomorrow.

Amanda goes off. CAB Wait! ... Don't wait. Go like in a swirl of regal anger.. that fits so movingly cause of its righteousness -- but not its sense. Some dream? If that this could be -- but it ain't. So how'd I get here? Just like I did. But in the swells, you miss one wave, then take the next. And ride... I guess this place makes sense for her -- more than for me... And where am I supposed to sleep? Figure that for after, cause now I got the kitchen call. Cops like when they do a crime scene in a home, first place they look for clues of a suspect's deeper life's the kitchen, not the bedroom -- and they find 'em. How you neat and clean, uptight or free -- or not -- you cook's one good give-away of your feelings for yourself. And the set's up here's not right for her. More like here somebody took silent rage and distilled smoldering resentment into precision perfect housekeeping -- so there's no way I'm going to get this cleaned up right. But better try. For her..who's now..who's her..my..love.

♦ ♦ ♦

§ § § § §

III 5: abandoned tunnels and galleries beneath the city. NYB, Nancy and Big Jim come on. Devotional of ToonFunsters is on with hierarch(s) and devotees.

JIM There yonder...

NYB Huuuh... What is this? Toystore windows come alive or something... I remember windows then..with my mom -- what did she mean, looking in the widow snorting, "glad I can hardly afford one -- 'cause I should be buying two!" Like those walks with her on on hard earned weekends when there were moments free of stress and worry and responsibilty and we were like in that special -- suffuses everything -- broken family love, and free...

ND Oh, a happy memory and now you're going for one again I see. Believe you me, just wait and see and wait and wait and wait in vain -- yeah! here we go again. Hah!

JIM Stow it, Nance. This here's for forgetting daily cares. That might be just what you need, right pops? Just in reverse -- so what goes around, comes around.

NYB Stop calling me pops. I'm not that old.

ND Never fear you will be living here heeee....

JIM How old are you?

NYB I'm...I'm...Orghgh... I..I have work to do... I know, I know..I'll get to it, I'll get to it -- I always do... Why am I..am I always alone -- I was always the only one anybody could depend on -- including me. That's it! That's it! My phone, my phone, where's my phone ringing? Where's my phone?

JIM Same place your shoes are I reckon. Listen to me, son. A man's got to know how to take orders, 'fore he can give them. So a man's got to know how to forget, 'fore he can remember.

ND Big Jim, Oh, Big Jim -- just one more toke from this thing -- aww, got to love your bullshit thing -- 'fore a poor girl just can't resist him. NYB Forget about it. I'm not going to spend my time on this..this suckershlock! Like spend my money, where's my money now?

JIM Fun is free, son -- but it doesn't have to be. Like all good things in life. See, fun works for everybody. That's why it's democratic. That's why you can believe in it. So, every time you got a little extra money, you can give yourself a little fun, take away that..that...

NYB So what? I've got..I've got... Uhuhuhohohoh...

HEIRARCH(S) Come one, come all. It's here for you! The time of your life is always new! We've got

DEVOTEES Hoooo-ooh...hoooo-ooh...hoooo-ooh...

HEIRARCH(S) Come on, come on. Fun is all one. The time of your life, it's just begun! We've got

DEVOTEES Huhhh-uh...huhh-uh...huhh-uh...

HEIRARCH(S) Fun fun, fun fun; come come; come come; take it, take it, take it away!

DEVOTEES Hubba hubba, hubba hubba doobay!

HEIRARCH(S) Gonna livuh livah, livuh livuh live it our way!

DEVOTEES Come on in. Come on in. HEIRARCH(S) It's been so long now. In the swing,

DEVOTEES it feels so strong now. Got that fun thing

ALL that makes it Spring now.

HEIRARCH(S) Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! And here's!

DEVOTEES Tricksie rode, tricksie rode.

HEIRARCH(S) Go for it, Catsters. Go for it! We got. We got. Blithe spirits of the funsterland! Toonies of our promiseland! Li'l munchkin lep'erchuans, sprites incantantory, gods of yore, cutsie tricksters of our fun lore -- forever young, forever fun! Saints neotony of our litany come fill the heart with the prathood of our good good, good good wholesome ol'some childhood goldsome.

DEVOTEES We got money bear and raffish ruck, we got foofy and bucks mcluck! We got ronnie donnie goldenlocks he's a meanie but we feel he rocks!

HEIRARCH(S) Come on in. Where've you been? Girls and boys, boys and girls, in the fellowland of funstering!

DEVOTEES We got buster peacock and dolly bee, we got stu bodacious and rugsly bug, ronald canoli -- the one and only -- and here's the whole gang from funster high!

HEIRARCH(S) Wheeee! Girls and boys, boys and girls, All together, and all one having fun so pure so simple Uhuuh-huh! We are the secret-sharers in our club of life.

DEVOTEES Happy trails so golden, that we've so fortunately chosen.

HEIRARCH(S) Nobody else knows what it's to be all we are as you and me and us, all together, all as one having, having, having fun!

DEVOTEES Happy trails so golden, that we've so fortunately chosen.

HEIRARCH(S) The toonster sprites flaunting enrapture the funster gods haunting enchants us. Making life alive and great Ev'ry where's an animate. Ev'ry one's embodiment ev'ry one's astonishment. That's the spirit that they bring to our song that we all sing.

DEVOTEES Oh say can you see our toons dancing in air all so different and free and so joyfully there! Through their gags and their glee we can still laugh, cry and care, so we're sure that we're free 'cause our childhood's still there. Oh say does that magic starred kingdom still live in the heart of the child that still lights up within?

HEIRARCH(S) And the answer is?

DEVOTEES Yeah! And now it's time to bless the day that made our company: M-I-S, T-E-R, Y-oh why, oh why? Because we love you America.

HEIRARCH(S) And with just your credit card number and expiration date... Well, you know all that. So Catsters, let's just honor our kingdom's comers with our litany of celebrityhood praise:

DEVOTEES & HEIRARCH(S) (alternately) Oh ideator of the funster toons, inspire us to just let go. Oh glorious gargoyles of the pixel screen, trip the light that helps us know. Oh all ye crashed and crushed contortions, give us humble, belly laughter, Oh all ye snide and chortling trickters, vouchsafe the fun we're always after. Oh cutsie-wootsies and rootsies-tootsies, give us sappiness silly and irony clever. Oh pantheon of spirits whaky, sock it to us, now and forever. And now it's time to bless the day that made our company: M-I-S, T-E-R, Y-oh why, oh why? Because we love having fun.

HEIRARCH(S) Innocent, disinterested fun, together, with each other, in the self-forgetting of happy children hard at play -- that's the mystery of toontertainment, you just do it, effortlessly, viewing away -- technomagic we sing hosannas to today.

DEVOTEES Galore, galore! Galore, galore! Free and joyful let's enjoy!

HEIRARCH(S) But remember, let's be sure to be sure to always express our joy and our love ev'ryday with the gift that keeps on giving. Don't forget with your..it's not about moeny, but..well, you know all that. Don't ever forget. Keep current, and your privileges of fun will never, ever end.

DEVOTEES Galore, galore! Galore, galore! Free and joyful let's enjoy! We got merkle werkle, and tootsie wee. We got moosie, and ratsy bird. We got fudgestock, and orie girl. We got bubba, and prudie dee. We got, donny, taisy, raffy, riley, linney, binnie, jom and terry, reety, sillie, greegoose, laploose, herky, panny, venus, munkchip, iklylytt, rebora, ninou, tinrin, corky, ember, shotgun sal and stormy pony, rushily, wushily, tox and vera, wile and crafty, eeny, meeny, guggy ritzy, dale and ronny, trixie rode and hoody woody, all all all and all and all until the gang's all here! Whee!

Hierarch(s) and devotees go off.

JIM So, that help?

NYB Hurgmmmm...

JIM That help? Or not? Hey, wake up pops, we got

NYB No! Mommy, no! I'm not, I'm not, I'm not! Just one more! No! Everybody else does. One more show, just one more? Please... Arharhargh!

JIM Jumping Jehosuphat, what's got into you? You're remembering? That's what I figured -- that helped?

NANCY Yah-huh-heeheeree -- helped me alright. Any light up looks terrific -- forgot it all in trance aweriffic -- when you're running slick and lovely, 'fore you're fearing you're heading back to feeling sick. Huhrgh!

JIM Nance, Nance... Not now, alright?

NANCY Order me again Jim -- oh, Big Jim -- order me around, c'mon. I love it. Oh, Daddy -- you know what you can do with yourself.

JIM Nancy, I got no dog in your fight. You know that. But I'm here to help you, always ready, if need be.

NYB Where'd they go? It was..right there. I can see it, feel it -- how bad I wanted -- to stay up in the glow, the creatures, stories and not the dark of my empty room. Mom..mom, you there? Aw...

JIM So it helped?

NYB What? Huh? No! It didn't help.

JIM Well, we'll try one else then? They got all kinds down here -- so there's got to be one -- one that fits you just right, like a flak jacket you been wearing too long.

NYB Noooo... I don't think so... I...

JIM Yeah, futher down, there's the gazmist bodgods -- but them's tough to take if you're not used to, cause they're all there naked and decorated, you know...and they're...they're...

NANCY They're..they're? Yeah, they are -- you bet! Fucking! Fucking! Fucking! Like they'll never die and stop -- you pathetic -- honest modest oh Big Jim down there peepy-weepy watching but just got to hide it. Hah!

JIM Nancy! You stop that on me, you hear?

NANCY Horgh-oooh... Make me shake, big boy.

NYB Ooooo... Like...like...I remember that...wouldn't want Alice to catch me...Alice! Ohhh... JIM Who's Alice?

NYB I'm not sure...but I'm remembering...I'm remembering something...Ohhhhnooooo...

JIM Naw, I don't want go see them gazmists, not now, no... So let's go, let's go...maybe like the cybersomes..I've forgotten what they're called. Nancy. Oh, Nancy.

NANCY Leave me alone. I'm busy.

NYB What's she doing?

JIM Minding her own business. Son, other people's, when it's theirs, it's their own business. Your own peoples..when..when it's yours..there's your own business. Nancy I'm not going to carry you out of here when you're all passed out. Well, maybe I am -- and you can help me.

NYB Me? No!

NANCY So leave me, sucker! Leave me! Cause you got no business! Yargh!

NYB Ahahrghrgh... Like I'm thinking, and thinking...like I've never wanted anything so bad, like it's right there...like behind this bright sun shining in my mind but I can't get the memories all in sight cause of the glare.

NANCY Glare it up, glare it up -- there you go, in the sun, warm me up in your darknesss glow -- go baby, call it fun.

NYB I can't stand it! It's burning me out like I'm blanking banking balking and I'm losing it all...

JIM Stay in there, Son. Cause when the tough get going, the tough gets...the tough gets...gets...yeah...

NYB It's all right there -- behind the glare! I...I... acting like he was back in the office Toong katter retsfap, drak rollum. Taratak schlork dopf! Ek deeleer alamak -- tragtook tragtook -- colsturfrobush hiilishag drup? Keekee hubernitspee drok loosh sammarpiik tralalatrakpat. Verpoomunuppav ti, brok, skop, krattar ghrsnawahr lapaper. Elsmrop ooroostond. Tirilak? Konflub, shrikonflub, ferf koolis, hoolsh koolis -- kralapap tig rashok poolpoosh? Ark rihirkmil toostum pense ti, merwep konflub rik konflub; tik rik tirik, pish? Rhool lammar tik meerwip, rhool tik? Rhelewerp dorsh. Rhelewep tanglapper dorsh! Moormoor linon zebrun shloop, zebrap keekoo det yedspleds? Ralak mak! Terooree lar mar. Lar mar, kemekem ukib hihi. Rbabakak. Kak! Kak! Kak!

NANCY Whee! Huh-huh... Ho, something crazy, baby, I'm in that wave taking on my rave I'm your slave to this pain pain, I'm calling pleasure. Kak! Kak! Kak! Hah! Hah!

NYB Kak! Kak Kak! Ralak mak!

NANCY Oh's terrific ooze me wiffic. NYB Dorfproobster, shammee ruofull koolis, koolis! Huhuhhuhhuh!

NANCY Kak! Kak! Kak! Ralak mak! That's my happy trail to you. Whee!

NYB I'm stomp pomper, gerfishing dealwheerer, I... Ohohoh!

JIM Pull yourself together! Dolgarn it, son, you want to live for... Now..now, move it out, all of you!

NANCY Ooooh... We'll go living boladacious we'll go

JIM Go! On a mission now, you hear me?

NYB I'll do them all better! More! More, that's what... Just got..ralak wak koolis! Koolis!

JIM If it's the first thing I do, I'm going to shape out this up fit..I'm going..yeah.. I said get off your belly and quit aching! Now move it out, you hear me?

♦ ♦ ♦

§ § § § § §

III 6: NYB's apartment; Amanda is on in her room, brushing her hair in front of a mirror. AMANDA Oh, like sit here look out for that catroach come catch itself momentary in the mirror scutttle up on the table, knock down my perfume bottles -- and laugh that it's no worse than my skull's holes soon laced by hordes of kissing worms? Was this the face that launched a thousand dreams -- no, ten thousand and more, covergirl agaze so godlike young from the newsstand rack in mass media's ancient age of fabrication of silly dreams to sell common wares? And if, if it could still be that face today in social media's new age -- that so tiresomely wears on -- I'm going to ditch this phone and live -- I am -- who knows how many countless more instant, momentary dreamsnaps -- like life -- flicked and gone -- and that'u'd still mean nothing more? This was the face, that's mine, that but for time is still the same my mother lovingly did brush its frame of curls in nightly pantomime -- as now I, I remember then near cryingly. If I cry, it's for I was so deeply loved? A happy childhood's like the pow'r of beauty that in our youth gets us by just fine, til shoved into the hard and cold of this world's time and cruelty. To brittle strands and dried out lines the soundlessness of rushing time does part the past from present and imperceptibly consigns to wid'ning wisdom the advancing heart. What was our beauty now's our passing sorrow like that we were loved lasts to our last tomorrow. If all the mirrors that I've looked me in did freeze my image and I had them all to run like on some clipapp that'u'd like tease the years and change to a vid of a minute's fun, it'u'd only show me what I know already: that what I was I'm still but deadly changed, in mind and mem'ry strong and running steady, in possibility and body sadly re- and disarranged. Aging's irony's not really getting older, it's feeling and believing in the youth inside. I'm burning up in flesh and bone that's getting colder, 'cause will to love and live afire's my truth inside. What good it does left locked up unshared is none at all 'cause I'm alone and it's lived undared. knock on door

AMANDA

Yes? Who is it?

CAB Who do you think is? The maid?

AMANDA What do you want?

CAB I want to talk with you.

AMANDA Please. Go away.

CAB Please. Let me in.

AMANDA as CAB comes in It's open, Bill. (After all it's your house.) You can't be serious.

CAB I'm not. I mean, like a serious person, I'm, you know, a comedy person.

AMANDA So what do you want, Mister Comedyman?

CAB You. Now. Or later. But now. We don't have to do anything -- just be together. I mean.

AMANDA No way. Never. CAB I don't know what I'm doing. I'm in love with you.

AMANDA Well, I do. And if you weren't so ridiculously absurd, I'd be outraged. Even speechless.

CAB Why? 'Cause you make me feel like a teen-ager?

AMANDA How convenient. Since only youth can sin without vice.

CAB But you and I'u'd know exactly what we're doing. And accept our actions without guilt.

AMANDA What? Exactly.

CAB This. A man. Old but willing. A hand to hold in yours. A body to rest next to, like a sea along a coast. A soul and mind to meet on such a night as this one, so truecrazy, made that way by unexpected circumstance so like blindluck -- but conscious seizing the amazingness of chance.

AMANDA More like seizing self-contempt in just another cheap betrayal.

CAB More like free acceptance of human facts between us -- taking talent for living, and making this moment itself and another one so ordinary, just our daily life, the other, so twinly, the same but other like transfigured by true human warmth and heartfelt, honest love in me and you.

AMANDA Just leave, okay? Or stay -- for all the difference it makes. CAB Look, I'm asking. Politically correct, okay. Gently, honest, and at ease -- save for the turmoil of desire that makes me almost weep to breathe...to be alive beside you.

AMANDA Bullshit. And the answer is no, no and no. Oh! I should be ashamed, just to countenance such proposal -- taking it so easy and indifferent, like I've no capacity for anger left at something so base -- but that's our no-fault, guiltless, non-judgemental preferred way to stay off the hook? And I haven't it in me even to despise you with real passion.

CAB I don't get you.

AMANDA My sister!

CAB Look at me.

AMANDA I am. I am.

CAB And you see?

AMANDA You. You. In all your... Oh, just get out. Now!

CAB Okay. Okay. But only my mind believes it and makes me do it. I feel..since this strangeness that my taxes, man have brought me to that I'm like in some sci-fi movie -- if life weren't stranger and as real as this, this flesh I'm in and this confusion like I'm trying to kiss a girl for the first time and ev'ry look and breath beside you leaves me reeling from your presence that like wonder fills a child lifted inside out with yearning.

AMANDA I bet. CAB It does. It does. So look, just look, and look again and trust your eyes and all the power of attraction that makes the mind go blank and certain and

AMANDA and and and blah blah blah and out of here! All the world's words will never change the facts of what's right and what's wrong. Out! And leave me alone.

CAB Okay, okay. But..how all this happened -- it's so right I know, I know... I'm going, I'm going -- against what's best and daring in myself, and hurting like a child rejected by unjust anger, but hoping that tomorrow seeing you, the sun of love like hope requited will shine bright day happily on you and me.

AMANDA Goodnight!

CAB And sleep the sleep of troubled rustling that wishes for the peace of lovers side by side?

AMANDA Out of here! Now!

♦ ♦ ♦

§ § § § § § §

III 7: abandoned tunnels and galleries beneath the city. NYB, Nancy and Big Jim come on. Devotional of Tantricmantics is on with hierarch(s) and devotees. JIM There yonder....

HEIRARCH(S) To this most present, here and now intent on work, alert, aware and recollected

DEVOTEES be welcome.

HEIRARCH(S) To this minding of community, prudent, daring and great-hearted

DEVOTEES be welcome.

HEIRARCH(S) To reason's arduous, vast-vista'd way of motherly feeling and godlike enlightenment

ALL come as equals, free to lead.

HEIRARCH(S) Free to lead

DEVOTEES your truest self upon an endless quest with us to greatness unique your own.

HEIRARCH(S) Lead on, so long as I am willing.

DEVOTEES With openess, restraint and dedication gallantry and forebearance --

HEIRARCH(S) measured and determined --

DEVOTEES with passion and self-knowledge -- HEIRARCH(S) prudent and clear-minded --

ALL we stay the course of reason's rule. If I, I can, for me

HEIRARCH(S) with you,

DEVOTEES then can

ALL we hold as power here what's best in all we are -- the human ones -- for me and you and all of us who are this planet's sprawling, teeming personhood.

NYB What is this?

JIM This is the last shot you get, pops; soon, it's time to find some breakfast, so if this tantricmantic reasoners don't do it, there's nothing left that'll fix you up.

NYB Yahghuhh... Yeah, yeah. I can feel it; like something. I know, I've got to call the office -- yeah...yeah.

NANCY Fix me up with all the fixin's, trick me down like you see vixens, what I'd use to, man, money'd be like the last thing I'd be needing, see? Fireworks behind the eyes so hard and sweet tumble down the years to sleeping in the street. Hiyah! And now they're going to sell me reason I'm proud of it. Hey, sport? You been here before? And so have I!

JIM Aw Nance, come on now. There you go again, backsliding. You don't want to understand. Don't you see, they're escapees from all..all...

NANCY Not for long. They all slide back.

HEIRARCH(S) For seekers of wisdom, you have come to us to learn to stand like in the line of shields and grappling spears in the clang and hurl, the shout and wounding, 'cross the sand that blots the blood down the shore from the line of ships beached up from the sea? To learn to fight so fierce and resolute that at the height of battle you can step back and cry out the defiant glory of life's momentary spark? That's what brought you here? -- to learn to live with that same bright power of the will but in quest of wisdom's glory and not war's? To learn the way of passionate reason's rule and array all aspects of what's human to that end? That's why you've come -- seeking to become?

NYB Get a life.

JIM Nah, I'm done with death and fighting -- thought I had to, but now no more for me. See, we thought some one or other devotional here might bring the partner here back his memory that's all.

NANCY Huh, you think reason's going to help me for all there's a thousand and no reason for to live in drive-you-crazy crave this way? Like life's like you're going stir-crazed in an airplane taht just won't ever, never land -- time to skyjump, honey, but ain't no chute.

HEIRARCH(S) Can you stay a course despite storms and distraction?

NANCY We can't stay straight cause that is distraction. HEIRARCH(S) Can you keep silent -- know your mind yet know when not to speak it?

JIM No, we don't mind at all; go right ahead.

HEIRARCH(S) Can you tell vanity from self-respect and live free of seething envy yet in generous admiration?

NANCY What it looks like's what it is; what it feels like's all there is.

HEIRARCH(S) Can you live for being alive's sweet richness;,br /> free to die having lived a life of honest work?

NYB Harough... Yeah... Yeah... Something, something like that. Yeah! I've always...

HEIRARCH(S) Then why you've come to us? For what you know you've always wanted?

NYB Yeah... Yeah... Yeah! I've always wanted to be rich.

JIM See, it's working. I told you there'd be something for you here.

NYB Orrgh... Ahghghiiir... It's coming all right back. Like sudden discov'ry and emotion rushing in like sunlight spills flooding past scudding clouds that blocked it, like shame or guilt that suddenly pierces through into self-perception? Huh... Yeah... Yeah... Yeah! I've always wanted to be rich. Always, like since I was a kid and didn't understand, but felt the way that some were seen, so real so strong -- but most dismissed for having nothing to command the world -- that awesome mystery, power from the money that they overseered. I wanted to be seen with that respect and stature that my parents didn't have. And then I had it all. Still do, goddamn it! It's all coming back! What the hell am I doing here? I got to get back to the real world.

JIM See, see. I told you.

NYB Who are you? I don't owe you anything.

JIM No, but...like if you smapre some change...for breakfast -- honest.

NANCY All you're good for's what they can use you for. All you're in for's what they got in for you. Give the least and get the most Be sure you're paid, 'fore you're left for toast.

HEIRARCH(S) Go then, go, leave us apart a happy few and blind find your own destiny in peace, for seeking it with ours would only be a burden to you on your hapless way.

NYB Fuck you! I'm doing it my way.

DEVOTEES Reason's a mastery of the light within that's as much within you as in those that share the daring of its brightness 'gainst the dark. It's actions known to all, but by most ignored: brave, when you don't have to be, loyal, when betrayal serves ambition more, excellent, when no one's there to see, generous, when there's no interest at stake, and faithful, 'spite the bitter fear of death. HEIRARCH(S) Go then, go so freely, leaving us to this hard destiny we just as freely choose.

NYB I choose! My way -- the real world way. Get me out of here now! Where's my... Where'd these stupid shoes come from? Who... How do I get out of here?

JIM Hey, okay... No hard feelings now. Right this way.

NANCY Ruckchuss, chuck us mess and fuss us fuck the ruckus ain't no point in choosing us.

JIM We'll get you there. Partners son, are for riding with you to the end. Just like we got you through to getting back

NYB Forget partners! What deal is this? I've never seen you before in my life. I've got..I've got..where's the way out? And now! Let's go! Where's my phone? Where's my watch -- I'm losing money!

NYB, Nancy and Jim go off.

DEVOTEES And now once more into the dawn so grey -- the world of work and action close above -- to live our shared, stern silent quest.

HEIRARCH(S) To this most present, here and now. atuned to others, playfully intent -- staying focused on your work,,br /> alert, aware and recollected

DEVOTEES stay in there strongly. HEIRARCH(S) In this minding of community, prudent, daring and great-hearted

DEVOTEES show by acting.

HEIRARCH(S) To reason's arduous, vast-vista'd way of motherly feeling and godlike enlightenment

ALL come as equals, free to lead.

* IV -- The Morning After

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

§

IV 1: apartment of NY Bill; Amanda and CAB are on.

CAB Good coffee, huh?

AMANDA Alright. Yeah, it is good.

CAB Yeah! Crude oil thick and jet fuel potent -- that's what I always say. You know what they say about a man who makes good coffee -- every time?

AMANDA Never at a loss for a tired cliche -- and always completely enthusiastic and sincere about it.

CAB I ground the beans myself -- brought them with me. Always do. Along with my travelling machine. It can be a lifesaver. Someplaces you go, it's like they haven't reached that state of civilization yet -- you can't get a really decent shot to save your life.

AMANDA Hm, could be a Victorian American talking about whiskey...

CAB What?

AMANDA Just musing -- that rare morning moment, with no day of hectic choices looming like a scuttling through a maze like you're going to be blown up again and again in a video game teenagers play -- so busy doing what must be done, you never get to what should most be done til you've scheduled yourself to slaving for success at the expense of your own happiness -- time for others that you love...

CAB You don't know how many people out there wish they could get the chance.

AMANDA What?

CAB Yeah, maybe like me -- who chose self-development and ideals for happiness, and now are looking at financial anxiety for our time's long and many aging years. You'd think I was just looking for a rich girlfriend, right? But.. Amanda

AMANDA Bill! Orghh, how can you? You know, I'm surprised by this -- that you travel with this miracle micromaker of exquisite espresso -- wouldn't think you'd have that kind of time for attention to detail, wouldn't think you'd ever leave the office and the dealmaking in case you'd miss making more money? But I'm not surprised at all by..orghh!

CAB Last night...look...I... Look, this is my greatest invention -- had it built by a guy who built equipment for spy satellies at a national lab -- dual voltage/battery-packed and built to space flight robust and replicates in miniature the conditions of a truly Milanese...like we were made for risking a run at the serendipitous happiness of a strange complimentarity

AMANDA Don't, please...

CAB and as you can see it fits in a lunchbox.

AMANDA I can see that. And where'd you get the lunchbox? CAB This was my first lunchbox -- 'zact same -- stumbled on it in a yard sale -- like linked up deep with what was in my childhood...

AMANDA Like some your own rosebud?

CAB What? ... My dad, he maybe failed at everything he tried -- sounded like anyway -- but one thing he did get right -- like I knew secure, lockbox for sure -- lunch he packed in here was mmmm solid good, and always all my favorite...

AMANDA I can see that.

CAB And I can see that ... let me make another cup for you

AMANDA I'm letting you...

CAB Somehow I got into the habit of taking it everywhere I go -- even tax audits, though... Hey, here... Now how'd you say quay siray, siray, but like in past? Like what could've been -- could still be...

AMANDA You married my sister. Oh, so...right. So that now we'd be avoiding looking at each other, chuckling like oafish twenty-somethings, muttering "Like, whoa, did we have too much to drink last night, or what?" But we wouldn't even have that lame excuse.

CAB Wouldn't need it. Wouldn't need it now either. What use are excuses where there's no guilt to extenuate?

AMANDA Ohh!

CAB You know, it's the misunderstood that understand best what it is to understand another -- risk admitting that what you thought you knew you didn't, like when the one you knew for sure was guilty -- something makes the scales drop from the eyes and then there you see them, naked blameless.

AMANDA Don't...Bill...Please...I...

CAB I'll tell you a story -- a story that's all -- that I always think of when grinding my beans always abstracted, always by hand. Once in China, long ago it's said there was a judge most learned and passing wise. This judge would always hear accusers and accused hid behind a screen so he'd not see the faces as there he'd listen to the pleadings while he'd grind his tea leaves in a trance alert so still to all inside of him and out. And once a student looked at him and asked, "Oh judge most learned and passing wise, why do you when you hear the pleadings sit like blind and silent, sequestered by a screen grinding leaves and making sure to never see the form and faces of accuser and accused, their witnesses and counsels?" And the judge replied, "My son, our eyes tied to the mind and its frailty for beauty are our most dire deceivers. Learn hard how wrongly can marked for guilt the poor and ugly seem, and the lovely and high-standing -- like angels blessed with all the grace of empowering speech -- can wrap the truth in lies to seem the so unjustly wronged. And knowing that I hide from me the sight of all of them to weigh in coldest mind the greys of fact and counterfact to find the truth that's only seen by reason's light."

AMANDA So I'm supposed to question what I know, that I've known all my life, that you CAB What do you know? More than what this instant tells? Put yourself here by me and in silence hear my heart -- and let our breaths commingle unbroken smooth like water at the lip of a rock cliff from on high that falls -- that tumbling down so strongly braids in roar of helpless surging, down in gravity's embrace.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

§ §

IV 2: IRS offices -- Molly, Dan and Clifton are on.

MOLLY Welcome back -- and how was your shutdown?

DAN Didn't even miss work -- and didn't nobody miss us doing any work either. Save maybe what's-his-name Munkaymi?

CLIFTON Menaechmi cause it made us miss our appointment

DAN with our quarry in hideout, hah!

MOLLY Reassuring isn't it, when the government shuts down and nobody misses it -- nobody rich anyway.

DAN Must mean it's safe to go ahead and starve the beast of the government that serves

CLIFTON trading it in for what's sure to be left beneath and re-inforced, the deep, hydra-tentacled state that rules, MOLLY and in the name of God-fearing good government at that.

CLIFTON But the taxpayers are happy God's in charge -- cause the all-wise couldn't possibly be wasting their money. Still, you'd think they'd want us to work, with all the money they got to borrow.

MOLLY They? Us. We pay taxes too

DAN not just collect them. How do people explain that to their children? I mean, if they should have children -- "Dad, what did you do in the war? Well, son, I was a tax collector -- so we could pay for the part"

MOLLY "The part we didn't pay for with borrowed money -- so you and your little sister could pay for it. Thank you Mom, thank you Dad."

DAN "You're welcome, little princess. That's why we got rid of inheritance taxes for you"

MOLLY "so you could focus your taxpaying on the debt we left you."

DAN "We should all be so lucky to have such responsible parents. How can we ever repay you for all you've given us? Thank you Mom, thank you Dad -- specially for selling all those treasury bonds to all those kind and friendly foreigners who only want to help us out -- it's okay, we understand, you weren't rich enough to pay for it yourself, so you had to borrow money for all you wanted."

MOLLY "So most of all, thank you for teaching us to be responsible, like adults have to be...I mean...like repayment is its own reward -- no, we really mean it -- if it hadn't been for you we wouldn't have the enobling experience of struggling against the dishonor of default. Thank you Mom, thank you Dad." CLIFTON Oh, and thanks for the days off without pay. That'll be the day, when the taxpayers realize all they're getting that they're not paying for -- yet. I mean come on, reason we just had this government shutdown isn't we ran out of credit with foreign lenders and lost the advantage of printing the world's reserve currency, it's Congress couldn't agree on feeding or not feeding the megabeast of unfunded liabilites of social solidarity needs -- and still can't. So now we got the reprieve of a continuing resolution that doesn't really resolve anything -- so we're back at work.

MOLLY Right, we're back at work -- but waiting for retirement?

CLIFTON Yeah. Yeah. After a long career of honorable service -- retirement. What else? And there's an entitlement you actually earned -- if you're lucky enough to have retirement, and it's funded. You can call a swamp a wetlands all you want, it's still got water in it, so if you've got to drain the liabilities...well..well, that wouldn't be fiscally ecological. You know what's going to happen after those clowns finish draining the wetlands of Washington DC?

DAN No, what?

CLIFTON Bone dry now -- like a cracked draught desert, sown with bitter gall of partisan faction -- so won't nothing good grow there now -- nothing.

DAN That's how the big boys want it -- and that's how they're going to get it. I'm going to say to hell with. I don't care, and give up.

CLIFTON No you're not. And, fact is, shutdown also made us miss our scheduled counseling session -- and as your supervisor I feel I've got to touch

DAN Aww, ouch! Gently... CLIFTON your attitude problem -- no more give up from you, son -- make you one them stay-in-there-forever, self-chosen ones.

DAN Aye aye sir.

MOLLY So what are we going to do?

CLIFTON I don't know maybe we ought to just show up -- head for his apartment right now -- maybe he'll be there

MOLLY Or his double.

DAN What?

MOLLY Nothing. Just thinking.

CLIFTON So what're we waiting for? How 'bout it? Let's go.

MOLLY I'm waiting for...I'm waiting for...I'm waiting the facts of my life to catch up with my ideals for my life -- or the other way around?

DAN Yeah? And like what ideals can you have like for staying in there, with the facts the way they are now?

MOLLY That keep the possibility of better, keep falling farther behind? Like when you can feel catching up, as a possible, start to slip away? Like you're a swimmer in a race you thought you could win, and you start to glimse through the turbulence that in the other lane some other girl is pulling away a reach too far for the time's that left -- and how does it impose itself the knowledge victory won't be yours? Like when you're going under anaesthesia -- in that stretch of time you know you're going out and there's nothing you can do about it. So in the end there's the times it's so close you hit the wall and have to twist out to check the times, and the times you don't, cause you know you're nowhere close. And which it'll be for me as that famous clock drills inexorably down, we'll see.

DAN That's not my question -- we got to live somehow -- so what it'u'd be your ideal?

MOLLY Oh, I don't know, could be anything -- living a quiet life, married- with-children -- no politics, let them have it their way -- like driving the girls to swim practice...wondering why I gave up a life to live in a car...

DAN A car you could bring the kids home in, wait for Dad to come home from work.

MOLLY I think I'll stay in there -- keep working.

CLIFTON Ehh...that way you can both have retirement. In case things don't work out.

MOLLY And in case they do, we can wait to be grandparents, and could be, on the way, outdoing in the flesh, all the passion two might dream.

DAN In me you know there's someone keen to learn oh Molly of mine, the secret share of such a life so quiet and strongly led together free to choose and faithfully remain so true to all that two might dream and dare to truly live.

MOLLY So counsel me again, again, again, and if you ever stop then rue the ruin of what your words -- oh words -- and not an act of instinct from deep within, led me to give myself to you and you to me. If love was just a question of judgement a relationship undertaken like a gambit move in a career, then all abandon to love's sweet fury'd be quelled and ended, supressed just by dancing to the tune of common sense. Could life by policymaker's art be led, what in strategy's cold forging seemed sound, in action's heat would then not deform. Life's not war, but both are wove in fogs of errant choices and for better or for worse made by own consequence more than our intent: the selfish lust for righteous glory, the collaterally killed, the martyred youths in the flag-draped coffins of our solemn ritual all swear are unintended -- but they're always there. Oh how, our simple dreams for simple lives are so strangely like war's quick victories -- all righteous purpose aimed at happiness and peace -- so often kindling endless struggle and strife.

DAN Save when there's trust to see intention through to the consequence intended and committed to.

MOLLY For any cost?

DAN For honor's cause of staying in there.

MOLLY So I'm to commit to trusting you?

DAN As until death do us part I'd commit to you.

MOLLY Enough with death, better so long as life keeps us living

CLIFTON and paying taxes. What are you waiting for? Get on with doing your part, building tomorrow's workforce -- wouldn't want to depend on new immigrants to pay off the debt and pay for your retirement, right? And the sooner you get started, the sooner you benefit from all those family values deductions.

DAN Or from that way of fam'ly life that saves by making us of service to all others in our life -- and I got the new car all picked out for your driving the girls.

MOLLY Save for ourselves and our ambitions of our own. So living by the light of many-splendored joys -- loving husband, children nicely growing up -- so the lucky ones -- eyes wide open, shutting out the light of justice' quest, I'd've settled down, settling for less, to live dreaming of more for all -- all in the car you've already got picked out for me given your preconceptions of the wife for you.

DAN So teach me to be the husband you would want to have.

MOLLY We'll have to be married a long time. phone rings.

CLIFTON It's for you. And it's your boss.

MOLLY [Hello. Yessir. No sir] Spin it up, guys! [Absolutely sir.]

CLIFTON You mean the Menaechmi case?

MOLLY Yes. [Oh yessir, we're here.]

DAN Yeah, and if it hadn't been for that shutdown, we'd have him apprehended today -- in time for you to palnt that distraction on the evening news. MOLLY [Sir, we're not just working. In this office, under my leadership, we're a PPM organization -- totally dedicated to our permanent productivity mission -- and you can take that to the bank.]

CLIFTON Right up to the teller window, cause we're rolling 'em right up, right Dan -- like ducks sitting in a bathtub -- pretty soon there won't be any deadbeats left, rate we're going.

DAN 'Cept for that smartypants Menaechmi -- I can't believe it, that rich and hasn't paid his fair share for years.

MOLLY What can't you believe? And anyway, if you had that kind of money you'd have a different idea of fair share.

MOLLY [Yessir, that's correct. The case I briefed you on last week. Menaechmi. As a matter of fact, we're working on it now. No sir, it was scheduled for yesterday. Pre-empt the story on wholesale evasion in tomorrow's papers. That's all you care about? Yessir, I know.] I should be proud to get fired. [Yessir. that's why we're going over there now. Yessir. Thank you sir.] Yeah, now!

CLIFTON And I tought I had a whole quiet day at work planned -- one day closer to retirement.

DAN It's times like this I wish tax enforcement was real enforcement -- you know, like we'd be checking our ammo, before holstering up and heading out.

CLIFTON Yeah, like an IRS SWAT team for taking down the non-copliant -- her, I can see it; you, me...like a series for streaming...

DAN That's how I always projected myself. That I'd be both a lawyer and a shooter. CLIFTON Sort of like a husband a lover?

DAN Yeah.

MOLLY [That's right, I'll report up the chain as soon as we get back. Yessir. Bye.] And that gentlemen, is what's called in the management trade participatory leadership in an environment chartacterized by trust and mutual confidence -- you can only do what the boss knows you're doing exactly when and how they want you to do it -- or else... Let's go. We got work to do.

DAN Yes ma'am.

CLIFTON ("Yes ma'am". Practice that -- and you'll be happily married forever.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

§ § §

IV 3: Central Park, possily with bench. Alice is on.

ALICE C'mon, c'mon. There's nothing to be afraid of -- and how would you know that, right? Go ahead, have a nut -- imported from somewhere I've never heard of probably. And bounce so lightly over with all the grace of that soft, nose-warming tail pluming behind. C'mon my little squirrel, fat and sleek like my little chickadee but of some rodent kind -- and why would you even want a nut if you've got that endless stream of new garbage to feed from? C'mon, I'm not going to hurt you. Go ahead, take it. Yes! Thank you. And who says there's no such thing as a free lunch? And what do they know about life? You can make your way in this world paved with free lunches and never know the price you're paying -- like all you got to do is live in the maximum security of this predator-free park and look cute bouncing that tail. How cute you look..how cute we look..or looked..to the passers-by..so no matter what we are, how cute we look's what we are. Like a woman without a husband -- a woman without a man -- that's what they see first -- they pretend they don't, but that's how they see it behing thier eyes -- yeah, and no matter how right and justified she is, all who know that, see her and note that first. Another sad, single lifer. Note it then -- or is it worse -- notice nothing at all as time goes by -- just another old crone -- alone -- as you pass by -- even if she's married -- just a woman walking in the park and who's to see the loss and life inside big as an expanse of sea and sky? A life invested in another who betrays the hope you had for what you'd live together when finally accepted as a loss still stays an insistent questioning within of whether you should've known -- oh you should've -- long ago (of course I should've and I guess I did -- so what was it in me wouldn't let me let go like to give up hope's something heaven's forbid?) or -- there it is -- I should've stayed in there guilty -- yeah, like it was all my fault I didn't have it in me to make him change for me. So our disfunctional'ty was just my same old self victimating me? Now if it's over, all there is is stock to take -- and taking it I'll feel so like him, oh so fake. Now alone to add up how a life adds up to failure, I see how denial and self-deception add up to make a blank confusion deadening but sure as I feel now the self I gave up for my marriage' sake. But still I won't stop thinking what's become of him so he'll still hold me, though on he'll go with that life of money wars that are the sum of him -- why he'd never let me share that life, I'll never know. Other women they're now much younger and more lovely -- so good luck buying a gold-digging hussy who'll feel no guilt taking you only for your money -- though God knows none do love you as much as me. Outside, so normal, you see a woman walking in the park; inside, so normal, you don't see rage and sorrow burying life's spark. Alice goes off. Effie and Crewfer come on.

EFFIE Ohohohoh... I got the aches; I got the pains; I got the cricks and sores all through from sleeping out this way. Ohohohoh...

CREWFER What's the matter; you don't like a park bench for a bedroom -- put in one of them new habits, you can mind transform like you like it.

EFFIE What did you do anyway? You sure he fired us? what we do anyway? We had them habits! Everyday, all day, right? So like where'd he get some right

CREWFER Did what I had to do.

EFFIE So what did you do?

CREWFER I don't know. We had some words. It happened -- had it coming.

EFFIE And what? "You're both fired?" What did I do? What else did you do?

CREWFER I don't know. But yeah, we're fired.

EFFIE Yeah? Had it coming -- all that time, all that, you know, dedicated to keeping the boss happy, working for organizational goals and like snap! -- shut down time for you now. Like he's got some natural right -- whoops! got to terminally restructure the relationship due to downsize pressures in our economic, operational environment -- and you and me could as been not even in some relationship.

CREWFER Yeah, terminal relationship. EFFIE What?

CREWFER Nothing. Just he fired us, just like that.

EFFIE So now we just get used to it? Out on the street. Sleeping in the park with sore down to the bones. There ought to be a law.

CREWFER Yeah. ... Maybe there is.

EFFIE Yeah, so we got rights too. I mean, you know, we have stakehold -- just cause we're con artists doesn't mean we're not members of society.

CREWFER Steak. Yeah. Make mine with eggs over easy with a side of hashbrowns.

EFFIE No, serious...I mean there's crime...and there's crime -- everybody's got the right to get rich.

CREWFER Rich? I just want to eat. And now you sound like the Cashman now like all that jive like you can just talk it up and transform the way it is to the way you want it. And what we get for that? You got any money?

EFFIE No.

CREWFER So get up on the street and shake some down or

EFFIE No.

CREWFER "No?" So what are we going to do? Pull a cup from the trash so's you can wag around mister cheerful, "Pardon me, sir, but how 'bout some spare change for a cup of coffee this fine morning?" Hah! I'm not going that way!

EFFIE So we got to go on our own -- like the Cashman would've done -- go be all you can go for -- find the unseen opportunity and apply

CREWFER and you know why can't anybody see it? -- cause maybe it ain't there. You got any money?

EFFIE No. I wouldn't hold back on you.

CREWFER Yeah? Listen, you're cute, smart, you could

EFFIE Smart? Nobody smart hang with you. Man, you got to believe, opportunities are everywhere -- all you got to do is identify them in an achievable way.

CREWFER Yeah. Like maybe a foreign tourist -- with a snipersize bigshot camera and that colorbook money.

EFFIE You mean like identify a hold-up opportunity?

CREWFER No, I mean we're just going to live all day long with no money? What else are we going to do? Get a job? So we find a place where there's nobody there, and we identify the opportunity, and we take them down behind the knees, and we swag and break.

EFFIE What if they get hurt?

CREWFER What if we stay with no money all day? EFFIE Man, we got to do better than that. This is America. We got to do like more innovational -- so we know nobody gets hurt.

CREWFER Hah! Like how, Mistergirl Moneyhabit?

EFFIE making like she's having heart attack/collapse etc. Like this. Help! Arghghggh! Help me please...

CREWFER What's the matter with you?

EFFIE Help! Arghghggh! Help me please... I can't breathe.

CREWFER Hey! What's the matter with you? You think I got time for a sick running pea? There's no time for that. I can't be dragged down -- not now when we got no money.

EFFIE Help! Arghghggh! Help me please... Come closer; I can't breathe; just reach down in my purse here help find my medication -- please! Or I'll be dying.

CREWFER as he leans over her and she pickpockets his wallet I didn't know. Alright. Yeah.

EFFIE No, it's there -- keep looking please.

CREWFER Who needs you, you're going to be sick?

EFFIE pulling money from wallet So fire me for it. Yah! See, I knew it! You double-cross two-time, lying holdout!

CREWFER Give me that back. That's mine! EFFIE Hwauh! Hey! I've seen this wallet! What did you do?

CREWFER Shut up!

EFFIE Hawwwah?

CREWFER Give me that back. That's mine!

EFFIE What's yours about it? You earn it? Huh, I earned it too.

CREWFER It's mine. I stole it. So it's mine now. Shut up!

EFFIE Don't talk to me like that. I got goods on you now.

CREWFER So give me my money back.

EFFIE No, I'm taking my share back that you just lowlife appropriated.

CREWFER You can't do that. It's mine. I took it -- not you.

EFFIE Yeah, I know.

CREWFER So you give it back.

EFFIE No. Why? I got it now.

CREWFER Aw, there ought to be a law. Huh... And you know, and I thought you were dying on me -- I was so worried about you for a minute, like you really got me, man. I was breaking up. EFFIE Yeah? So my acting worked?

CREWFER Oh yeah. Worked great.

EFFIE Huh. SO I'm good huh? Like I could earn the opportunity with it?

CREWFER No. It's mine. You're going to give it back.

EFFIE Maybe.

CREWFER No maybe to it.

EFFIE So maybe we can make a deal?

CREWFER Uh-huh?

EFFIE So we find a opportunity, and you lift when they first-aid me, and we split it all fifty-fifty and you get your money back and then some.

CREWFER All of it fifty-fifty? Uh... Okay, but we got to find some loaded opportunity.

EFFIE Yeah. But I know people. How they are you know? But I got to keep your money, like it's mine, til we get back together and we split cause the opportunity's money's going to be with you, and if there's one thing we can't do is trust you.

CREWFER Why not? Okay, so you safekeep the money -- but you give me back my wallet and ID's. You know, maybe somebody wants to know who I am. EFFIE Why would you want anybody to know that? What we do, we need to be nobody.

Effie and Crewfer go off. NYB comes on.

NYB I know this park -- maybe even like seen that squirrel. I don't know. I got to shake this off. I got to. I got to get it all back where all the pieces reconnect and all the dimly recognized like deja vu always all over again track back to definitely recalled. I've been here walking in this park before. Right now awareness floods me, certainty's distinct, but all is such a jumbled foreground, perception without memory, with no concatenating story to explain the why and how that make it all seem so familiar, so somehow connected to the experience that makes it me and mine. I'm like a man who grown returns to see his boyhood home and streets where he once played, but in the hyper-real of apprehended sight he finds the memories he gropes for burn away -- so strongly shadowed there, but not there at all, like the cold remains of buildings struck by fire, the skeletons so stark, and all they held so gone. This too has got to be somebody's old neighborhood -- the streets, where young, they played, made friends, and lived the fear and triumph of that first kiss. In time, with pals moving away, development, the way things go, all learned the steel-hard rule of change -- and hardened the heart, to stay ahead of change, unhurt. And I'm going to find...I'm going to find...I'm going to find...I'm going to get it back, somehow, I know, I know...

NYB goes off. Effie and Crewfer come on, along with Alice -- separately.

EFFIE Chill, Chill! I see one. That's it. CREWFER Uh-huh?

EFFIE When opportunity knocks -- don't just swing it open, kock the door down -- be cool, be cool -- we're just two...coolsters -- so rich we don't even have to be at work -- walking in the park.

CREWFER That old bag? She doesn't look rich.

EFFIE Look at that bag -- designer. Big. Worn down, packed, like she never lets it go. Man, I know, you know, people's secret style -- she's got credit cards, extra jewelry, special pictures, superphone, bigfat emergency bankroll -- she's got her whole life in that bag, man, I know. Like so rich, trying to pass for icognito like in between -- huh, like ever see a poor person trying to look rich?

CREWFER Oh, just like we're so neat too -- so cool -- don't even have to go works -- like spend all day walking in the park? So yeah, what do we do? I'm tensing up.

EFFIE No, man -- that's not us. Nobody gets hurt. Minute she starts helping me, puts down that bag,you grab and go. And you wait for me to cash out, or you don't get your money back.

CREWFER Got it.

Effie makes like she's having heart attack/collapse etc. as Alice sees her.

EFFIE Help! Arghghggh! Help me please...

ALICE What's the matter with you?

EFFIE Help! Arghghggh! Help me please... I can't breathe. I'm having an attack.

ALICE Oh you poor girl.

EFFIE Help! Arghghggh! Help me please... Come closer; I can't breathe; in my purse, my medication's there -- or I'm going to die. Please!

ALICE No! You can't do that, not to me, not when I'm all alone with you here...What would I do? Ohohoh...

EFFIE No, it's there -- keep looking please.

ALICE I'm looking. I'm looking.

Alice sets her bag down beside Effie; Crewfer scoops it up and runs off with it, and crashes into NYB coming on. They knock each other down/are dazed etc. Alice does not yet see what's happening; Effie does.

CREWFER Orghgh!

NYB Hwuh!

CREWFER Muh...Muh...Munkaymi...Oh shit...

NYB going after Cfewfer You! Arrghgh! I got it! I got it! It's all coming back to me! You..you! I remember everything now! Argh!

CREWFER Oh, no! Mister, Sir; you don't understand; it wasn't personal; nobody got hurt; we're like reall really sorry and all -- don't get upset!

NYB You kidnapped me and stole my money! CREWFER handing him Alice's bag, as he sees her looking around Ohhh... You can have it back. Here. Take this one -- like a replacement -- it's full of money.

ALICE We need to get help.

EFFIE No! Keep looking. In the purse. Please. You can save me.

ALICE d There's nothing there. Except for this wallet full of money.

NYB It is? Who's money is it?

CREWFER Aw, it's your money. Yessir. I mean, it's not like the exact same cash, but it's like we just cashed your checks, and stopped by the cash machine here and... You know, actually we were looking for you to give it all back, cause we were just feeling, you know, so much remorse taking your money.

EFFIE taking the money out of the wallet and leaving the empty wallet Ohhh...Muhcnayme... Lady, you saved my life. I feel ready to jump up and run!

NYB Hey! Hey! That's my wallet. It's my money!

ALICE Oh, it was nothing. Here, let me help you stand up.

NYB taking the wallet and clutching the bag Oh God, great God in Heaven so worthy of all praise on my knees in humble joy before you here I recognize you exhalting me above all men -- so serendipitously, so rightly as is the mighty justice of your ways oh Lord -- returning, so joyfully, all my money to me! To me! CREWFER Oh yessir! Mister McKaymi, Sir!

ALICE lunging at NYB, taking the bag from him and beating him with it Arghghgh! My purse, where's my purse? Aieie!Help! Somebody stole my purse. You!

CREWFER Got to go.

EFFIE Bye.

Effie and Crewfer go off.

NYB Ouch! Ow! Lady, stop!

ALICE No! No! No!

NYB Lady, what have I done to you?

ALICE Don't lie to me you slithering worm. And while I was helping a poor girl who was dying no less! Little thief! I'm going to beat you back down to your hypocrite knees! It's people like you make it intolerable to live this way. And I'm not going to live this way cause of people like you and I just can't take it cause I've got rage, rage against how I've wasted myself like some kind of frightened squirrel living in a security preserve and now and now the likes of you comes victimize me like some kind of predator going to snatch my purse, well, at last, at last I'm not taking it, I'm not taking it anymore and that's all there is to it and take this and this cause yes! I've got angry, angry at what you tried to do to me like you had some right just to take it away like it was yours and not mine!

NYB Lady, you're hysterical. ALICE recognizing him You're a lousy little thief and you're calling me hysterical? Ahahahieieie! Bill, is that you?

NYB Alice! Alice! Oh, Alice! I can't believe it. You're here.

ALICE Don't touch me. And where've you been, and what happened to your clothes? I said don't touch me.

NYB Alice, I'm your husband.

ALICE I'm intensely, angrily aware of that, believe you me.

NYB What? Alice, you don't know what I've been through.

ALICE Oh, I don't know what you've been through? Why should I know? You never talk to me. Do you have any idea what I've been through these last...how many has it been? I bet you don't even have a preliminary clue.

NYB What? Alice, not now, okay? Alice, I've been through an unrepeatably harrowing experience. Suddenly, it's all came back to me, and oh,I'm glad I'm back. C'mon, let's go home. Our top priority now is to get back to normal.

ALICE No. Absolutely not.

NYB What do you mean no? Whatever you're doing, it's not important. Alice, we're right around the corner from our apartment -- oh, I can't believe I found my way back here -- you don't know what I've been through -- horrible -- owowowch -- and I wasn't trying to take it from you, I didn't even know it was you... And what've got in that purse anyway? Aie! Let me see that purse! He looks in the bag and in the wallet.

ALICE Nothing but a bunch of smashed up make-up and who knows what else odds and ends of life -- all might as well be worn out, smashed up hopes in there now.

NYB There's nothing in there! They took all the money! Fucking trickster poor people! They should all be redlined out of existence!

ALICE Bill, even you can't afford that.

NYB Oh God, how could you do this to me? Me!

ALICE The mighty justice of your ways, oh Lord.

NYB handing her back the bag Here. You can have it back.

ALICE No.

NYB It's yours. Take it.

ALICE I don't want it anymore. And yes there is some change in it, and you can take it back now.

NYB Alice, what's gotten into you? You should be glad to see me. You don't realize what I've been through. Now we got to go.

ALICE I'm not going.

NYB Alice, this is a public place. They're people gathered here, looking at us. C'mon. Let's go home. We'll deal with it later -- maybe. ALICE Maybe when you get back from the office, dear?

NYB Did they call? Okay, okay... Alice, like we can't deal with our marriage problems now here with everybody listening.

ALICE Oh yeah? Go ahead. Listen all you want. I don't care Bill! And no we won't deal with it later -- fat chance -- we'll deal it with now! We'll deal with it now, right now -- when it's too late, when hope's all fin'lly broken, given way to hopeless I-don't-care that can't even hate, and left to do is only having that last say so at least you'll know, you'll know how much -- no -- not know -- just hear, cause otherwise you would have noticed on your own your hurting me but such awareness could you get it wouldn't do us any good. Cause it's too late. Cause now I'm tired, tired and broken. And you don't care! Well I don't care at all now either, so there.

NYB Whew... I do care...I mean... C'mon, get over it. I've been busy. I've had a lot of things on my mind. I know we haven't had much time together.

ALICE We haven't had any time together for years, Bill. You're not present in my life Bill. Bill, I'm leaving you.

NYB Alice, you can't do this to me. Not now. Not here -- in a public park. What will people think? We're not that kind of people live our lives like were homeless living in the park.

ALICE What kind of people are we live our lives as husband and wife and never really talk to each other?

NYB Okay. I can fix the problem. We'll take some money off -- I mean time. ALICE No. Bill, it's not about fixing a problem -- and you can just throw some money at it and it goes away.

NYB Why not? It works. I promise.

ALICE Bill, you've got to change.

NYB Spare me that. Please.

ALICEbeating him again The change is in the bag!

NYB Ahahahowww... I get it. I get it. Alice, how can you do this to me after all I've been through? Let me tell you about what I've been through.

ALICE I'm letting you. I'm letting you.

NYB Ahahahowowow... Alice stop! I'm not guilty.

ALICE Yeah, and neither are any of those other husbands out there of emotional neglect.

NYB Ahahahowww... Alice, you're going to break my bones.

NYB So long as I don't break your silly bank, what do you care?

NYB Ahahahowww... Alice, I beg you. Have pity on me. Take me back and give me one more chance. This time I'll change. I promise that I will. Alice, you're only person really knows the truth about me and so that I can trust -- can't even trust God anymore after what he just did to me -- Alice, you're all I have in my life that's really real -- in this financial -- I mean existential! -- wasteland of tinsel vanity and human folly. And this time -- this time I'm going to change for real. You'll see, from now on, I'll be different, different completely. Now let's go home. Please. And we can talk about all late, okay?

ALICE You know what's wrong with later, it's never now, and always later.

NYB Alice, what are you doing? Has what I said had no effect on you?

ALICE I'm debating.

NYB Alice, we can't just all sit around waiting for you to make up your mind. We got to get this thing over with. So come home with me now. Please. I beg of you.

ALICE I should know better. I do know better. But...but I don't know... Bill, I have to tell you...... Amanda's there now -- she's maight be staying with us for a while.

NYB What? That spendthrift rag donkey? She's probably going to charge her household expenses to us while she's staying there. Alice, we've got to put a stop to that immediately. That woman spends money like it wasn't worth the bitbytes it's been virtualed to -- which of course, it isn't. And if you loaned her one of our credit cards, I'm going to divorce you.

ALICE Feel free. Bill, I'm not going.

NYB Alice, that was just a joke. Please... I promise. For everything you hoped for for our marriage. And this time I'm going to change -- I promise, completely and really and forever. ALICE Sounds familiar?

NYB Alice, all I'm asking for is one more chance.

ALICE One more chance?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

§ § § §

IV 4: background is apartment of NYB, Amanda and CAB are on.

AMANDA What've we done?

CAB Same thing all the human primates do when siezed by dark desire's rush to light for coupling's fleeting instant's much ado, and by the billion times per day and night. My love, yes, my love, that's how I see you now, there's less to wonder at, at what we've done than at what emotion you and I can bring as each a person, to doing it again.

AMANDA No! Please. How can you? I want to cry. What possessed me that I lost all shame and guilt and lived like I was all alone in life, and base and filthily betrayed my most beloved...ohohoh...

CAB C'mon, c'mon don't cry. Hey, it's alright. No, no it's not, so clearly, clearly not. So why, despite the unconsolable insist in conforting what maybe not even time and human warmth can heal? Go on, cry in my arms. Remorse hits hard and sharp -- cuts so keen like a baby's hunger cry that just to silence it will stand up the exhausted from deepest sleep.

AMANDA Let me go..no..ohohoh...Leave me, leave me to my..ohohoh...

CAB I'm troubled and chagrined, a lover helpless here beside you, with nothing but a tumblewind of wafty words to try and make a diff'rence that's real in the weather of your heart. Like a suDANen storm, what hurts your heart, so dark and monstrous, like squalling bursts and turns what was the shimmery sea so bright beneath the sun to gloom, and pond'rous swells, and windlash rain, as quick as crys of joy can turn to wails of pain.

AMANDA Let me go. Please. Don't -- so undeserving! -- hold me close. In my own hands, not crying on your shoulder, I'll hang my head in shame. The heart assailed by guilt alone understands that there's always only yourself to blame.

CAB All we did, we did together, and I'll be there with you seeing it to any end that it may take us, if you'll have me, so gladly there beside you to the end.

AMANDA Ohohoh... No! How can you? Ohohoh...

ALICE from off Yoo-hoo! Anybody home?

AMANDA Oh no, no, no, no. No, please not now! Move! She can't find me here like this with you! Hurry up! I'm hiding and you find a way! Amanda hides, and in such a way that she cannot see if it's CAB or NYB who's talking etc.

CAB You can count on me, babe. I'll do my best. But that's most often better fully dressed.

CAB goes off. Alice and NYB come on.

ALICE from off Amanda? Yoo-hoo, Amanda, you here? Funny, I could've swore I heard her when we came in.

NYB Well, she's certainly been here. What a mess! I always thought that woman's middle name should be messmaker.

AMANDA (Like the mess I've made with you of all our lives. Ohohoh... And ugh how quick he turns and drops his dime on me -- or is he just pretending to protect her>

NYB Probably had her goofy fashion friends over for a psychobabbly veggiebreakfast after a club-night morning-lighter. How can people live like that, dedicated to insubstantial, fleeting pleasure with no hard ambition for their lives -- that in an instant, swept up in crime or accident can be tumbled inside out, even could be, cut to an untimely end? I'm telling you, Alice..what I've been through...I'm more aware...we got to become more aware, Alice of what's in the world around us.

ALICE More aware, more aware... As in as of others and their hopes in life -- we certainly wouldn't want to overtax ourselves in that department, would we, Bill?

AMANDA (C'mon, not so half-hidden -- just a little more confident assertiveness can go a long way.)

NYB Don't talk to me about taxes. You know how I feel about taxes. Money is my meaning in life and I'm not going to freely surrender one precious word of that to any living soul.

ALICE So why don't you just go ahead and die rich, Bill? So finally relievedly, easily forgotten?

AMANDA (That's my girl. Pow!)

NYB Alice, how can you say that about me. I've been a good husband. I have!

ALICE What if that's not enough?!

NYB So how much do you want?

ALICE Bill, I want your loving presence -- I want your time, your converstation and companionship, your consolation and collusion with me playing together in this our lives' only song.

NYB Alice, you know I can't afford that. I got to keep going to work so I can keep making more money.

ALICE Oh!

NYB Alice, you don't understand. I'm surrounded by people -- like I'm some kind of adoration tree -- and they're all trying to shake me down, make me let go all my money leaves and die! -- and they all look at me like I'm more real than real 'cause I'm so really rich -- like I awe them, all those other men -- to cringing envy, oh fearful something powerful at the kingly money-mantle their eyes enthrone 'round me. And actually, that's the way I like it. But that's why I love you Alice, you're the only on that sees right through me. AMANDA (Oh! Talk about great acting. You love me!)

ALICE No you don't. You just love your money -- and the human totempole you are it lets you hide behind. I think I've seen it Bill. This time it's the end.

NYB Alice, no! Please. I don't exist without you. You can't leave me! Anyway we've had this conversation.

ALICE And this'll be the last time. I'm not, not, not going to go on living married like this!

AMANDA (Yeah! ... No... Oh...)

NYB Like what? And why not? What's wrong with it? Alice, we've been married this way like all our lives. Alice, can imagine yourself married to somebody else?

ALICE Don't tempt me.

NYB Alice, you don't understand, I've changed. Ther're experiences in life that make so clear how fragile is the hold on this we call our lives. I'm trying to tell you but I can't. What I've been through it's like I almost lost everything I've ever worked for just like that...pftt!

ALICE And what you haven't?

NYB Like what?

AMANDA (Ogh, brazen bastard -- and acting just like they all do -- oh, no-clue-what-you're-talking-about -- so naturally presenting the whole vague obliviousness like it's all so foregone no-real-change-happening-here preemption make sure no hard questions interfere with the me-myself-and-I like that's the way it is and going to stay. Ohhhh, and I just, with you...)

ALICE Alice, please stop crying -- we're safe at home -- together -- don't you see how lucky we are? -- and after all that horrible experience.

ALICE Oh yeah -- and isn't that exactly right how some experiences well make you see what you, you should've always seen and known? And yeah, you're right -- how can we live like that in insubstantial, ever luring happiness? Like picture perfect prosperity and a love who's always absent, even when he's there? Yeah Bill, since you're so clearly forgetting, already thinking about something else, that's what I've had it with with you. And now, after all these years, I'm getting me a new ambition that doesn't depend in any way on you.

AMANDA (Yeah! Go girl, take it to him! That unseeing, unappreciative, selfish little fat cat son of a bitch...that I'm...ohohoh...)

NYB Alice, what's got into you? Here I am like breaking down with some kind of PTSD and you're like threatening to leave me -- now we're safe at home after...I can't begin to tell you...

ALICE And so you won't -- like everything else!

NYB Alice... No, I'll tell you later. I got things to do now. And why now anyway? You can clean this up while I take a shower. And make some coffee will you?

NYB goes off.

ALICE I'm not going to clean it up, I'm not. I'm tired of cleaning up after them big male messmakers. It can just sit there forever and rot. Til the scouts of some roach colony find it -- and infiltrating slowly, surreptiously at first flood in and take...take the whole building for all I care like it's the abandoned ruins of like abandonded factories along railroad tracks, vestiges of some lost civilization's might. Over now, and all the happiness I'd hoped for in it --all that should've happened here and didn't.

AMANDA (And all that did, and shouldn't have -- but still, never surrender valuable real estate.)

ALICE Oogh! What were they doing here to make this mess? But I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. The old, neurotic habits have to die! I'll stand it, facing off against the strength of one whole lifetime's dependence entropy. The hours I've spent achieving spick and span perfection here like I could sweep under the rug of my obsessive effort to keep, keep trying, the daily dose of disappointment that adds up into a hardly hiDANen dust heap of unhappiness. I'm through with picking up a single cup.

AMANDA (That's my beloved sister!)

ALICE Looking around I have to see my artistry that I deployed in this place' decoration as witness to a me I'll freely leave and build on moving on from -- I have no possesiveness about the art I made arranging and choosing what I bought with all his money. For art known or unknown lives or dies on its own and the things are just things like the bones in our graves.

AMANDA (Dried up, picked clean of all our guilts and sins as are the shreds of embalmed remains that shroud them -- the skin and veins that held our flesh and blood -- now free, so lastingly, of all desires and joys and pain that nature's artistry deployed, now sealed in silent darkness underground. Yet certain of that end we still so often fail to not betray, not love our loved ones while we can 'fore it's too late to sieze the time that ever permanently comes to end. How could I have betrayed my own dear sister so?)

CAB comes on.

CAB So what happened?

ALICE I decided I wasn't going to clean it up.

CAB That's okay, I'll clean it up.

ALICE What?

AMANDA (You can't -- no one can now it's too late.)

CAB Sure, no problem -- I got plenty of experience cleaning up. But where'd they go?

ALICE Who? CAB Them. Whoever it was. That came in.

ALICE Bill, what are you talking about? What's happened to you that you were going to tell me about?

CAB I don't know anymore. It's all so overwhelming, but I'm not questioning a thing. You're here, that's all that matters now. Anyway, them. Whoever it was that was just here.

ALICE Nobody here but us, Bill.

AMANDA (Well, sort of. Until I can escape like I was never here.)

CAB Like you have such a different look, and look at me so strangely -- but... that's how they say it is falling in love you really hardly know the person and can be like always so surprised.

ALICE You're not kidding.

CAB It's like I've been upended -- don't know what I've been through.

ALICE What're you talking about about that?

CAB It's like what people dream about and then -- so unsuspected, unexpected whamshazam it happens -- and you're beamed, beamed up clear out of your life into some other and like all the biochems in your brain are chorusing anew full throttle in -- it's still you -- but it's a song of such so bright like brand new, new awareness. I guess that's just the way it is falling in love. And that -- so lucky -- like what's happened to us?

AMANDA (Yes...wait...)

ALICE Bill, what's happened is I've seen all what I've known so well but kept so unadmitted.

CAB Yes, that love at first sight so strangely happens even to the old and tiring and springs them, heartspry once again like twenty-something lovers so filled with wonder at the presence and the breathing closeness of the other's beauty there beside them held so close and warm.

ALICE What are you doing? Come off it Bill, you're either nuts or even crueler than I thought.

CAB I'm nuts alright, with all that I've been through. It's more than I with any clarity can express the way some strange enchantment's taken me since yesterday into this world so far from mine, and the pow'r and splendor of your lips and arms. That's love. And we should take it while we can.

ALICE Bill...

CAB You sure they're gone?

ALICE Who? Uuuuh... What are doing?

CAB Getting ready to kiss you and again and again, and with more care this time, before this all slips away as serendipitously as it came, every one of all the cells of your body's skin.

AMANDA (Wait minute, acting the part may be acting the part but this is going too far. I'm going to jump out and -- no, then she'll know we...Ohohoh...)

ALICE Bill, you haven't..for years it feels like. Ohohoh... I can't believe I'm...we're... Doing this?

CAB If I can, you can. It's all as strange -- and right -- isn't that how it feels?

ALICE Ohohoh... buzzer rings

CAB Damn it! It's like somebody timed it to happen like this! What's it now?

ALICE Oh, the intercom buzzer -- maybe a delivery downstairs, I...

AMANDA (Like maybe you ordered a new vacuum cleaner?)

CAB Oh I'll get it -- and get rid of them.

CAB goes off

ALICE I should know so much better that to hope again but this -- so unexpected -- so let go anyway? What surging alchemy is this that floods the addled brain and drowns our common sense? It's like it felt it wasn't him at all and yet I've known him all my, lonely-with-him?, life. Oh whirlwind of shock and awe cut loose seething through the mind and heart when hope -