by David Auburn
(He picks up the cash.)
For God’s sake, I was trying to help you!
VERONICA: I don’t want that kind of help.
HOGAN: (Shouts.) And I don’t want your FUCKING SYMPATHY.
(He throws the money at her. It flies everywhere.)
WE’RE NOT FRIENDS. YOU DON’T KNOW ME. I WANT YOU OFF MY PROPERTY.
VERONICA: Oh what, are you gonna pull a gun on me now?
HOGAN: TRY ME.
VERONICA: GODDAMN IT, HOGAN, THEY SAID YOU NEARLY DIED.
(Beat.)
Debbie said—
HOGAN: (Scorn.) Debbie.
VERONICA: When they pulled you out of the lake.
HOGAN: She wasn’t there. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
VERONICA: “Severe hypothermia.” That’s no joke. I’ve seen it.
HOGAN: That’s an exaggeration.
VERONICA: That’s a coma, Hogan. If whoever it was, that neighbor, hadn’t seen you in the ice—
HOGAN: There was hardly any ice, the lake never freezes over anymore.
Look, I’m not saying it was a great situation or that I’m not grateful for the help, but you have to understand Debbie’s agenda here. Bottom line, she would like to have me declared incompetent. You remember all that shit from last summer. Short of my actual death, that would be the best possible outcome for her. That would get her everything she wants.
VERONICA: I only talked to the woman a couple of times but she really didn’t seem that bad, she—
HOGAN: She hates me. There is nothing she wouldn’t say or do. She once ordered me—you are not going to believe this—to “stay the hell away” from her children! What is that? I don’t have my own kid around—I’m missing her for chrissake!—if I offer to take my nieces to the movies or over to Putnam Lanes once in a while— Jesus Christ. This is the woman who accused me of stealing from her—
VERONICA: That was true.
HOGAN: That was a fraction of the money that I would have realized from the sale of this property—from which they were trying to have me vacated, remember? On the way to them taking the whole place for themselves. This is just one more excuse for them to get me out of their way—
VERONICA: How the hell did you end up in the lake, then?
(Beat.)
HOGAN: Well, that—
VERONICA: In January.
HOGAN: It was an accident.
VERONICA: What kind of an accident?
HOGAN: All right. I admit it sounds a little silly now.
I was trying to fix the dock.
VERONICA: In January?
HOGAN: I always felt bad about not fully completing that project. And I was out here …
I went through kind of I guess you’d call it a rough patch after last summer, you know, after you and your family had gone. I didn’t stay here—it didn’t seem wise, with all the tensions with my brother and sister-in-law, so there was a period there when I didn’t have a firm base of operations, I was sort of floating more or less, you know, sleeping in the truck most nights. But I drove over here one day a couple weeks ago, gorgeous morning, just to check the place out, and it was so clear and sunny I just thought—there had been a little light snowfall the night before so even though the lake only had the thinnest skin of ice on the surface it looked thick, with the snow resting on it, it looked like it used to look when we were kids and we could skate after a big freeze.
VERONICA: You didn’t—
HOGAN: What? No. I’m not an idiot. I knew I couldn’t walk on it. I took the canoe. But it was such a gorgeous day—I don’t know what it was like down in the city but up here it was gorgeous—I guess I just felt like this is the kind of day when you can do anything, you know. And maybe I was overambitious before, with the diving platform, but I’ve still got the lumber I bought, I can at least go out and replace some of the bad planks in the deck. It won’t solve the pilings issue but maybe I can get us through another summer or two. I must have just slipped.
(Beat.)
VERONICA: I see.
HOGAN: The whole thing is sort of embarrassing in retrospect.
(Beat. She’s staring at him.)
What?
VERONICA: They said … they found you in the water at night. Not the daytime. At night. And you were stripped down to your underwear, they said.
(Beat.)
HOGAN: (Quietly.) They would say that.
(She takes a step toward him.)
VERONICA: Please. You don’t have to—
He backs away, knocking into a chair. Something snaps. He kicks the chair over. Knocks everything off a table. Smashes a lamp. A brief but destructive rampage. He stops, breathing hard.
He weeps. VERONICA watches. A long beat.
She goes, gets one of the bags. Takes out some napkins. Gives them to him.
Beat.
VERONICA: I’m gonna have one of those coffees before it gets too cold.
(She takes a coffee. She sits. Sips it.)
You sure you don’t want a doughnut?
(Beat.)
HOGAN: What kind?
VERONICA: Glaze or plain.
HOGAN: Glaze.
VERONICA: Good, I like plain.
(They eat. Long beat.)
HOGAN: Who’s with your kids?
VERONICA: What?
HOGAN: Who’s taking care of your children?
VERONICA: Oh. Charles. Mia’s father. My little girl’s friend?
HOGAN: The helmet guy?
VERONICA: Turns out he’s not so bad. I don’t see why a ten-year-old needs to be a vegetarian, but whatever.
HOGAN: He the one helping you?
VERONICA: Yes.
(Beat.)
The board said no. The license board?
HOGAN: Oh yeah. Shit.
VERONICA: But Charles knows someone who places health-care providers with stay-at-home patients. It’s not ideal. It’s not like hospital work. But I can’t be too picky right now. So that might work out, but it hasn’t yet.
HOGAN: You sleeping with him?
VERONICA: What? Shut up.
HOGAN: Are you?
VERONICA: He’s married.
(Beat.)
Separated.
(Beat.)
I don’t know what we’re doing.
HOGAN: Well. Congratulations.
VERONICA: I guess.
(Beat.)
HOGAN: You want to hear something funny?
VERONICA: God, yes.
HOGAN: I wasn’t totally asleep when you drove up. I was kind of dozing. Kind of half asleep, I guess. That’s why I was so confused to see you, I thought I might be dreaming. You know what I was thinking about?
VERONICA: No.
HOGAN: I was thinking about going down to the city sometime.
VERONICA: Yeah?
HOGAN: Yeah, I had this kind of fantasy, I guess you’d call it.
(She looks at him.)
It doesn’t involve you, don’t worry.
VERONICA: I’m not. That’s not what I thought.
HOGAN: My daughter’s at school there now, right? I was thinking about this the other day. What’s to stop me getting in the truck and driving down?
I don’t have her contact information but she’s in one of the dorms someplace. How many dorms could there be? She’s on a soccer scholarship. It shouldn’t be that hard to find the playing fields. Anyway, I could track her down and take her to lunch.
(Smiles.) I’ve got the cash.
We could go someplace really upmarket. White tablecloth kind of thing. Actually, she’s eighteen, she probably wouldn’t want that. What do eighteen-year-olds like? I’d hate for it just to be pizza. Whatever, that doesn’t matter. I picture just surprising her on the street outside her dorm as she’s coming in from practice. Like she turns a corner and I’m standing there and she stops and I just say, Can I buy you lunch?
And maybe it would be a little awkward at first. I mean, of course it would be. Maybe she’d want to bring along a
friend.
That would be fine, if it would make her more comfortable. A couple friends. The more the merrier, long as I’m buying.
You could even come. With your kids. I mean, we’d have to coordinate a little bit, I’m not sure how that fits in with the rest of it, the spontaneous part, but we could get a big round table someplace like a Chinese restaurant, with the dishes in the middle and one of those spinning disks, what are they called?
VERONICA: Lazy Susan.
HOGAN: Right. You can just turn it and everybody can help themselves to whatever they want.
VERONICA: That sounds good.
(Beat.)
HOGAN: I’m not going over there—
VERONICA: Just eat. We don’t have to decide that right now.
HOGAN: Will you let me finish?
I’m not going over there with anybody thinking it wasn’t an accident.
VERONICA: So it was an accident. We all have accidents.
(Beat.)
Okay. I’ll tell you something funny too.
HOGAN: What?
VERONICA: My last night here? Back in August? I was packing up the kids’ stuff, folding their clothes …
HOGAN: Yeah?
VERONICA: We had an okay couple days, you know, toward the end, and I was sitting there alone and it was nice and quiet for once, those damn crickets and frogs had shut up …
HOGAN: They do that when it’s going to rain.
VERONICA: Really?
HOGAN: Yep.
VERONICA: How do they know?
HOGAN: I don’t know. Air pressure maybe?
VERONICA: Huh.
Anyway. You know what I remember thinking? Even after everything that happened that week?
That I wish I could just stay here. In this shitty little cabin.
(Beat. She laughs. He laughs too.)
HOGAN: Well, we can’t.
VERONICA: No.
Curtain.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Auburn was born in Chicago and grew up in Ohio and Arkansas. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters. You can sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY DAVID AUBURN
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Production History
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
A Note About the Author
Also by David Auburn
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2015 by David Auburn
All rights reserved
First edition, 2015
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Auburn, David, 1969–
Lost lake: a play / David Auburn. — First edition.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-0-86547-836-7 (softcover) — ISBN 978-0-374-71414-7 (ebook)
1. Friendship—Drama. 2. Man-woman relationships—Drama. I. Title.
PS3551.U28 L67 2015
812'.54—dc23
2015003936
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