The Most of Nora Ephron

by Nora Ephron

  When Mark finally came home, I was completely prepared. I had rehearsed a speech about how I loved him and he loved me and we had to work at our marriage and we had a baby and we were about to have another—really the perfect speech for the situation except that I had misapprehended the situation. “I am in love with Thelma Rice,” he said when he arrived home. That was the situation. He then told me that although he was in love with Thelma Rice, they were not having an affair. (Apparently he thought I could handle the fact that he was in love with her but not the fact that he was having sex with her.) “That is a lie,” I said to him, “but if it’s true”—you see, there was a part of me that wanted to think it was true even though I knew it wasn’t: the man is capable of having sex with a venetian blind—“if it’s true, you might as well be having an affair with her, because it’s free.” Some time later, after going on saying all these lovey-dovey things about Thelma, and after saying he wouldn’t give her up, and after saying that I was a shrew and a bitch and a nag and a kvetch and a grouse and that I hated Washington (the last charge was undeniably true), he said that he nonetheless expected me to stay with him. At that moment, it crossed my mind that he might be crazy. I sat there on the couch with tears rolling down my face and my fat belly resting on my thighs, I screwed up my courage, and when Mark finished his sixteenth speech about how wonderful Thelma Rice was compared to me, I said to him, “You’re crazy.” It took every ounce of self-confidence I had.

  “You’re wrong,” he said.

  He’s right, I thought. I’m wrong.

  Well, we went around in circles. And then he asked me if I wanted to be alone for a while. I guess he wanted to drive over to Thelma’s to tell her he had held fast to their love. It didn’t matter. He drove off and I scooped up Sam and a suitcase full of Pampers, called a taxi, and left for the airport.

  The Playwright

  Lucky Guy

  A Play in Two Acts

  CHARACTERS

  MIKE McALARY, a columnist

  JOHN COTTER, an editor

  MICHAEL DALY, a columnist

  JIM DWYER, a columnist

  HAP HAIRSTON, an editor

  EDDIE HAYES, a lawyer

  ALICE McALARY, a housewife

  LOUISE IMERMAN, a reporter

  DEBBY KRENEK, an editor

  BOB DRURY, a reporter

  JERRY NACHMAN, an editor

  STANLEY JOYCE, an editor

  JOHN MILLER, deputy commissioner for public information, NYPD

  ABNER LOUIMA, a security guard

  The ensemble also plays other parts: JIMMY BRESLIN, DINO

  TORTORICI, BRIAN O’REGAN, miscellaneous REPORTERS, a DOCTOR.

  ON STAGE RIGHT, THE MAKINGS OF

  A bar—sometimes the bar is Elaine’s, sometimes it’s Ryan’s, sometimes it’s McGuire’s, or the Lion’s Head, sometimes it’s just a bar. A neon sign indicates which bar it is. A couple of chairs, a table or two, the bar itself, possibly a couple of bar stools. A small TV over the bar.

  ON STAGE LEFT, THE MAKINGS OF

  A newsroom—sometimes the newsroom is Newsday, sometimes the New York Daily News, sometimes the New York Post. A projection of the logo on the back wall tells us which newsroom. A few chairs, desks, tables, computer terminals, just enough to indicate where we are. A small TV on the editor’s desk. A big NO SMOKING sign.

  LATER IN THE PLAY WE’LL NEED:

  A bedroom—sometimes in Brooklyn, sometimes in Bellport. The beds become more well-appointed as the play progresses.

  A kitchen—first in Brooklyn with an old table and chairs and an old refrigerator, then in Bellport with a new table, chairs, and a sub-zero refrigerator.

  A diner.

  A white porch in Bellport.

  A podium.

  Various offices—a doctor’s, a police department official’s.

  A hospital room.

  The sets are minimal. A lot of black and white.

  In some abstract way, the play should feel like an homage to an old newspaper movie like Deadline–U.S.A. Stagehands move the set dressing in and out during the action, which is continuous. The play should be lit like a noir movie, with sharp contrast, overhead spots, etc.

  ACT I

  A Bar

  An ensemble of about eight men at the bar. They will play the male parts. Among them are the journalists MIKE McALARY, JIM DWYER, HAP HAIRSTON, MICHAEL DALY, JERRY NACHMAN, BOB DRURY, and JOHN COTTER. HAIRSTON is black. They sing an Irish song:

  THE ENSEMBLE: (Sings.)

  I’ve been a wild rover for many’s the year,

  I’ve spent all me money on whiskey and beer,

  But now I’m returning with gold in great store,

  And I never will play the wild rover no more.

  And it’s no, nay, never,

  No nay never no more,

  Will I play the wild rover,

  No never no more.

  I went to an alehouse I used to frequent

  And I told the landlady me money was spent.

  I asked her for credit she answered me ‘Nay’

  Such custom as you I can have any day

  And it’s no, nay, never,

  No nay never no more,

  Will I play the wild rover,

  No never no more.

  JIM DWYER: So the question is, where to begin?

  BOB DRURY: Always hard to know where the story begins.

  MICHAEL DALY: Although we know how it ends.

  JIM DWYER: This is a true story—

  HAP HAIRSTON: To the extent that any story is true—

  JERRY NACHMAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  HAP HAIRSTON: It begins before. Before he became—

  JIM DWYER: —famous—

  BOB DRURY: —a columnist—

  JERRY NACHMAN: —reckless—

  HAP HAIRSTON: —bad—

  MICHAEL DALY: —before he became Mike McAlary—

  JERRY NACHMAN: —with his picture on the side of the truck.

  JIM DWYER: But even before, we all talked about him when he wasn’t there, way more than we ever talked about anybody else—

  MICHAEL DALY: Because we all knew it was going to be a fucking mess someday.

  HAP HAIRSTON: Messy, messy story, nothing neat about this story. So it starts in 1985. New York City is totally polarized. Rich, poor. Black, white. The crack epidemic is just beginning. The murder rate is rising. The city is a shithole. It was a grand and glorious time to be in the tabloid business. (Holds up a copy of the New York Times.) This is the New York Times. This is a serious newspaper. Fuck it. (HAIRSTON holds up a copy of the Daily News, by way of illustration.) This is a tabloid. Small paper. Big headline. High energy. Blood, guts, dirt, fires, floods. Champion of da people. (Beat.) New York City is a tabloid town—lots of newsstands, a working class that rides the subway—and in 1985 it had two scrappy tabloids, the Post and the News. But in 1985, Newsday, out on Long Island, decided to move into the city and start a third tabloid. They lost a hundred million bucks in the process but that took five years. (Beat.)

  Stagehands and actors carry in desks, computers, a very small television set, transforming the space into the—

  Newsday Newsroom

  HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) Meanwhile we were hiring people left and right. (Identifying himself.) Hap Hairston, city editor.

  JIM DWYER: Jim Dwyer. I was writing a column.

  JOHN COTTER: John Cotter. Managing editor—

  HAP HAIRSTON: Cotter is drunk.

  JOHN COTTER: We’re rocking.

  JIM DWYER: He was drunk twenty-four hours a day.

  JOHN COTTER: Where’s my nun-rape? Who’s got the subway slasher? I need the red meat. More red meat.

  JERRY NACHMAN: If you held the guy up to the light, you could see the olive.

  JOHN COTTER: (Singling out a reporter’s story.) Ahhh, Red Meat!

  HAP HAIRSTON: (To the rest of the ensemble.) The rest of you can stay at the bar. We got good cops, bad cops, reporters, columnists, criminals—r />
  We see MIKE McALARY now. A tall, handsome guy with a mustache.

  McALARY: What about me?

  HAP HAIRSTON: We’re working up to you.

  McALARY: McAlary. It’s my story. McAlary. Mike McAlary. Zealous, hard-working, true-blue. Police reporter.

  HAP HAIRSTON: I’m setting it up, okay?

  McALARY: All I ever wanted to be was a reporter in New York City. You get to be at the center of everything that’s happening that day. A plane crash on Bergen Street in Brooklyn. You see it. The Stones arrive, you’re there. Whatever’s happening, you go out, you get it, and write it, and millions of people read it. And then you get to go sit in the bar and tell everyone the stuff that the lawyers didn’t let you put in the paper. And, most important of all, the next day you get to go out and do it all over again, except everything is new.

  HAP HAIRSTON: McAlary—

  McALARY: —you are God’s fucking messenger—

  HAP HAIRSTON: Relax.

  McALARY: It’s New York City, who can relax? Are you relaxed?—

  HAP HAIRSTON: Just let me set the fucking thing up. Louise.

  McALARY: Why do you need Louise?

  HAP HAIRSTON: In my story, Louise is a character.

  LOUISE IMERMAN enters, but just barely.

  LOUISE IMERMAN: McAlary’s right. You don’t really need me. (To audience.) This is a story about guys, guys with cops, cops with guys. It’s a very guy thing. (To HAP and the ensemble.) The reason they were all hung up on McAlary is he made them think they could go back to the days when there were no women around, none, just Irish guys at the bar all night long. You don’t need me at all.

  HAP HAIRSTON: (Prompting her.) So—

  LOUISE IMERMAN: (With feeling.) —Kiss my ass.

  HAP HAIRSTON: And—

  LOUISE IMERMAN: (With feeling.) —Fuck you.

  HAP HAIRSTON: That’s it. (To audience.) That’s Louise.

  She sits down at a desk.

  Smoke.

  Everyone lights cigarettes and picks up the phones.

  More smoke.

  A stagehand brings in a smoke machine and turns it on.

  A cacophony of phones ringing, editors and reporters shouting back and forth as McALARY leaves the bar and works his way into the newsroom.

  Reporters and editors overlapping:

  JOHN COTTER: Who’s at City Hall?

  JIM DWYER: Koch is meeting with the Lubavitchers in Williamsburg.

  HAP HAIRSTON: Dwyer, Vinnie’s on three. He’s got a jumper at Twenty-ninth and Park.

  REPORTER #1: Donald Trump is opening his hotel.

  HALF THE REPORTERS: Fuck him.

  THE OTHER HALF: Who cares!

  JOHN COTTER: Got two dead in a bodega robbery—HAP HAIRSTON: I’m sending Tommy.

  JOHN COTTER: —and a riot at Rikers.

  MIKE McALARY reaches HAP at the City Desk, stands there. HAP is on the phone.

  McALARY: Did you see my piece?

  HAP HAIRSTON: (To McALARY.) I don’t have time for you. (Shouting over to LOUISE.) Louise, what are you doing?

  LOUISE IMERMAN: (Shouting back.) Who the fuck wants to know?

  McALARY: About the hospital in Flushing. Did you read it?

  HAP HAIRSTON: (To McALARY.) You’re lurking. Stop lurking.

  McALARY: (To HAIRSTON.) Could you even find it on page forty-eight, next to the Word Jumble? I deserve better.

  JIM DWYER: (To audience.) Mac was good. He was hungry. He’d been a sportswriter at the New York Post, spent a couple of years covering the Yankees, driving George Steinbrenner crazy.

  McALARY: I drove him nuts. I may have shortened his life.

  JIM DWYER: (To audience.) They thought maybe he would make a police reporter. And they brought in Bob Drury—

  McALARY: We’d both covered sports at the Post.

  BOB DRURY, a tall, good-looking reporter, at his computer.

  BOB DRURY: (To audience.) We both took pay cuts to come here.

  McALARY: Anything to get out of sports.

  BOB DRURY: Anything to keep from spending our lives wearing plaid jackets interviewing a bunch of fucking morons.

  JIM DWYER: (To audience.) McAlary was a rookie, so they sent him out to Queens—

  BOB DRURY: To the middle of nowhere, to be a neighborhood reporter.

  JIM DWYER: (To audience.) He was miserable out there—

  McALARY: (To audience.) —covering the borough president’s office and school board demonstrations and tertiary sewage treatment facilities. (To HAP.) I do not belong in the outer boroughs. I belong here!

  JIM DWYER: At five o’clock on Fridays, he’d come in from Rego Park and do this thing we called “Desk Hawking.”

  McALARY pops up into HAP HAIRSTON’s eye line, index fingers pointing toward himself.

  McALARY: Hey, Hap.

  HAP HAIRSTON: (Not looking at him.) I see you, McAlary. (To a reporter in the newsroom.) When am I getting that gas explosion?

  BOB DRURY: In ten—

  HAP HAIRSTON: (to DRURY) Is this a weekly?

  McALARY: I am here. Just want to say that—

  HAP HAIRSTON: I need it. I need it now—

  BOB DRURY: All right—

  McALARY: —Just in case something comes up I am right here, doing nothing. Ready to go to work—

  HAP HAIRSTON: McAlary, go sit down or I’ll send you to cover the Board of Estimates.

  McALARY: I don’t have a desk.

  HAP HAIRSTON: You have a desk. You have a desk in Queens.

  McALARY: (Hamming.) Please, Mr. Hairston, don’t send me back to Queens.

  HAP HAIRSTON: Sit down somewhere. Find a chair as far away from me as possible and sit in it.

  McALARY sits down at someone else’s desk. His leg jiggles. He tries to catch HAIRSTON’s eye. HAIRSTON won’t look at him. McALARY stands up.

  Sit down, you dickhead.

  McALARY sits down. Starts jiggling.

  (To audience.) Late one Friday night, people all over the country started dropping dead from cyanide in poisoned Tylenol. Including some nineteen-year-old girl in Yonkers, which made it local.

  McALARY: Which made it local.

  HAP HAIRSTON: I wanted to send someone to see the family. I asked three or four of the solid prima donna types, but they were all giving birth to kids, or their mothers had just died, every excuse you could think of not to end up on something that might kill the weekend.

  LOUISE IMERMAN: Fuck you, kiss my fucking ass, I have plans. It’s Friday. Did you ever fucking hear of Friday?

  HAP looks around.

  McALARY is standing, pointing to himself with both index fingers.

  HAP HAIRSTON: Okay, go. (To audience.) He raced up there and managed to get an interview with the boyfriend of the victim, which nobody else got because they all went home. McAlary sat in front of the guy’s house until two in the morning and got him to talk.

  The Stoop

  McALARY talking to a young man, DINO TORTORICI. McALARY has his notebook out, as he does during all interviews.

  McALARY: Dino, Mike McAlary, Newsday. I don’t want to bother you. I just want to check what I’ve got against what really happened so it’s accurate. (To the audience, by way of explanation.) I didn’t really have anything, but you always pretend you do, that you’re going to write it whether they talk to you or not—(Back to the interview.) You probably spent the day answering questions with the cops—(To audience.) What you’re saying is, you’re not a cop, you’re a friend, you feel for them … which you do, most of the time. (Back to the interview.) You’re exhausted and upset, I get that. But you’re going to want all of this to be right. Otherwise the wrong stuff gets printed and it’s there forever. (To audience.) See, the guy has no control whatsoever over whatever fucking nightmare just happened, but you’re saying if you work with me, you can have some control—(Back to the interview.) Okay?

  TORTORICI nods.

  (To audience.) Finally you ask a question, a harmless, easy question—(Back to th
e interview.) She was your girlfriend?

  DINO TORTORICI: Since seventh grade.

  McALARY: (To audience.) They talk to you. You learn that early. Bad things happen, and you think, nobody’s going to want to talk about it, but they do.

  TORTORICI: I gave her the pills. I opened the bottle. She had a headache, and I said, I’ll get you some Tylenol, and I went downstairs and got it out of my mother’s bathroom. It was brand-new. I had to open it with my teeth.

  HAP HAIRSTON: It was a great story.

  Headline on Newsday: INSIDE THE TYLENOL CASE by Mike McAlary.

  Mac talked to everyone up in Yonkers and we kicked ass for four or five days.

  Newsday Newsroom

  McALARY walks into the newsroom. High fives. “Great story.” Walks over to HAIRSTON.

  HAP HAIRSTON: There’s your desk. You’re not going back to Queens.

  McALARY: But they said I had to be in Queens for six months—

  HAP HAIRSTON: Fuck that.

  McALARY, elated, lifts his hands in the air.

  (To audience.) So that’s the beginning of the story, as I tell it.

  JIM DWYER: (To audience.) He was a very generous guy—

  BOB DRURY: You could not help liking him. He checked in every morning—

  JIM DWYER: Twice a day—

  BOB DRURY: Five times a day—

  McALARY: Hey, Drury, last night I ran into a detective I know on that Sheepshead Bay drug case. He said to give him a a call. Who wants soup? Louise, you are looking stunning.

  LOUISE IMERMAN: Fuck you.

  McALARY: Hey, Dwyer, is today your birthday? Everybody, it’s Dwyer’s birthday—

  McALARY whips out a cake with a candle on it, puts it in front of DWYER, lights the candle with his Bic lighter. DWYER blows it out. Everyone claps.

  JIM DWYER: He knew your mother’s name—

  BOB DRURY: —if you were mustard or mayo—

  JIM DWYER: —Yankees or Mets—

  HAP HAIRSTON: —beer or Bourbon—

  McALARY: (To the other reporters.) Put your money away. I’m buying. I am buying.

  McFadden’s Bar