by John Guare
The two sisters hold each other’s hands. Holahan returns.
HOLAHAN We called the Peach family, honey.
BETTY Don’t call me honey. Okay?
HOLAHAN They told us you were there.
BETTY So I’m free. Alibis.
HOLAHAN Honey, you don’t need alibis for South Carolina. You need alibis for Bleecker Street. That’s the required address of your alibis, honey. You could’ve killed Bert before you left so you wouldn’t miss out on a joy ride to southern climes. Your boy putting cramps deep in your lifestyle. The Peach family of Solomon Ferry don’t tell me nothing. The main event we’re conferring about took place in New York City.
Melodramatic music. The lights go out on Betty and Holahan. Rosalie appears. She speaks urgently, like one of those action-news reporters covering a live event.
ROSALIE Scenes containing information the police would never know. Scenes containing information the mother would never know, never could know.
Bert and Donny appear. Bert is flashing some of Durwood’s money.
BERT Hey, Donny my man.
DONNY Hey Mr. Bert my man.
BERT Want to see what I got? Not so close.
DONNY You want to sneak into Monosodium Glutamate?
BERT What’s your mouth talking, my man?
DONNY M.S.G. That’s what rock musicians call Madison Square Garden. Monosodium Glutamate. You know the stuff they put in Chinese restaurants that makes your face go all measles? You want to sneak in there tonight?
BERT To a Chinese restaurant?
DONNY To Madison Square Garden. They got hockey or a concert or a flower show.
BERT My man, if I go to Monosodium Glutamate, I go walking right in the front door paying my own way. (He takes out a bill.)
DONNY Where’d you get a ten? You pulling jobs yourself? Hey, I’m the man with the monkey. You into money now by yourself? You deal me in. I got the dibs on the monkey.
BERT No jobs by myself.
DONNY You dealing? Coke? Pills? Is that more bills in there? They counterfeit?
BERT No, my man. They are real as a summer’s day.
DONNY Bullshit. Those are counterfeit. That’s play money.
BERT You want to see? We go into the bank.
A bank counter appears. The teller stands behind it.
ROSALIE They go into the bank on Sheridan Square. They wait in line.
BERT (To the teller) My man, is this bill negotiable? What I’m saying is there’s no doubt about the accuracy of this denominational piece of merchandise.
The teller takes the proffered bill and holds it up to the light.
DONNY They got a sign in the A&P saying beware ten-dollar bills being circulated.
The teller smiles and hands the bill back.
BERT It’s real? There’s no doubts? And if I had more with serial numbers right in line, they’d all be real too? Thank you, my man. Here’s a quarter. A tip for your appraisal.
ROSALIE They walk away from the bank clerk. The bank is crowded.
BERT (Bert goes to a glass desk in the bank.) Come here. I want to do something. It’s a funny joke I saw about a bank. You take—anybody looking?— a deposit slip and you write on the back: Hand over all your money or I blow your brains on the wall.
DONNY Where’d you get that money?
BERT Then you put the deposit slip back where it came from.
DONNY Come on. Tell.
BERT Then you wait.
Raulito enters the bank. He takes a deposit slip, fills it out, goes to the teller, who takes the deposit slip. The teller looks around, panicky. He pushes a button. A siren. Gunshots. Raulito looks around, his chest covered with blood. Blood comes out of his mouth.
RAULITO I come into the bank to make deposit number seventeen in the Christmas Club. Time to make deposit number seventeen. Christmas Club.
He falls. His trench coat opens. His blood-spattered evening gown tumbles down. He falls dead. Music. Darkness. Bert and Donny run out.
DONNY Buy me something. Your money’s burning holes in my pockets. Let’s go.
ROSALIE They go.
Joanne has joined Bert and Donny.
DONNY Hey, Joanne, Bert’s crazy. You know what he’s doing? Putting razor blades in Frisbees and then when we see somebody we don’t like from Elizabeth Irwin High School, we toss it at them and say, “Hey, grab!”
JOANNE Papers, I read a German shepherd ate a newborn baby.
BERT Shut up, Joanne.
DONNY Bert’s mother’s been gone two days now. She left him a lot of money.
JOANNE The mother went out and left the baby for a moment and the dog ate the baby.
BERT Shut up, Joanne. You’re a real creep. My mother’s right. You’re a walking exorcism picture. All the time you’re so creepy.
JOANNE Your mother likes me.
BERT She says you give her the creeps.
DONNY Momma’s boy.
BERT I’m not!
JOANNE You are so.
BERT I like my mother being away. I got the apartment to myself. I’m eating good. Boy, my mother’s a rotten cook. I see those commercials: Food like mother used to make. I say, Boy, that’s the worst commercial God ever made.
JOANNE Momma’s boy.
BERT Shut up. There’s the restaurant where the bicycle got my aunt.
DONNY What kind of bicycle?
BERT Ten-speed Raleigh. Yellow.
JOANNE You got the money. You could buy a ten-speed Raleigh yellow. If you weren’t so chintzy.
BERT No way. Money’s got to last me.
DONNY She was a nice lady.
BERT That’s how we came down to New York from Maine. We had her funeral, then we stayed and stayed. Wasn’t for that ten-speed Raleigh whizzing around the corner we’d still be in Maine.
JOANNE Momma’s boy.
DONNY Where’s your father? My mother says how come we never see Bert’s father?
BERT He’s away on secret duty.
JOANNE Oh sure.
BERT He’s on the payroll of foreign governments. He calls me all the time and asks me not to tell where he is because if it got out.
JOANNE Oh sure.
DONNY The CIA?
BERT More secret than the CIA.
JOANNE Nothing is more secret than the CIA.
BERT If it’s such a good secret then how come you know about the CIA? The place my father works for is so secret it don’t have no name or initials or nothing.
JOANNE Or existence.
Margie appears.
JOANNE Hey, Margie? Want to sneak in to what’s playing at the Greenwich? The Waverly? I don’t care.
The two girls go.
BERT What a creep.
DONNY German shepherds are gonna eat her someday.
BERT Suppose one day your money runs out and you don’t know anybody, what do you do?
DONNY You work.
BERT Fourteen you can’t work. They put you in orphanages? You go to the police, they arrest you? What do you do?
DONNY You got all this money.
BERT Suppose it runs out.
DONNY Thousand dollars don’t run out.
BERT Sure it can.
DONNY You sure you got it?
BERT You want to see it?
They run.
Bert’s apartment.
BERT Hello?
DONNY You think there’s anybody here?
BERT Ma?
DONNY Is she here?
BERT I hid the money behind the curtains. I hid the money in the toilet. I hid the money in the freezer. I hid the money under the bed. I hid the money in the oven. I hid the money under the carpet. I hid the money in the shower. I hid the money in our shoes. I hid the money in the pockets of the clothes we don’t wear. I hid the money. (His arms are filled with bills.) How long can it last me? Suppose somebody comes in the window. Suppose they steal the money? Who am I gonna call? It’s not me. It’s a friend. I’m talking about a friend. What if my friend gets locked out? How will h
e get back in? Is there an earthquake? Why is the room shaking? I can’t stop shaking! Hold down the floor! I don’t know where she is! She went away and left me! She went out the door! She left me! She went away! I’m turning to water! My stomach’s coming up! The floor is moving! (He grabs onto Donny.)
DONNY Hey. Don’t you hug me. Hey. You don’t touch me. You hear me? You get your mitts off me. You hear.
BERT I’m going away. Hang on to me.
DONNY You keep your hands to yourself. You keep your hands. It was your idea bringing those guys up here and hitting them. You the one that brought them up. You brought up too many. You got too many watches, Bert. You stay away from me.
BERT Suppose she never comes back?
DONNY (Takes out his monkey wrench) I know what this is. You brought me up here to get my watches, didn’t you? You earned all that money. You brought me up here. You’re doing recruiting for those old guys down at the docks who want kids.
BERT Suppose she don’t ever come back.
Bert clutches Donny around his knees. Donny lifts his monkey wrench over Bert’s head. They freeze. Rosalie appears with Durwood and Raulito and the Dope King and any number of identified people behind her.
ROSALIE And all the dead people, the people who have died, me, Raulito, Durwood, the Dope King of Providence, Mavis Brennan, the man on the ten-speed bike, all the dead people in our lives join together and lead Donny to the wrench and put his hands around the wrench and lead the wrench to Bert’s head and we hold Bert’s head so Donny can bring the wrench down onto Bert’s head with greater ease. Bert falls.
Donny takes the thousand dollars.
ROSALIE And at this time precisely, Betty was being put on a Greyhound bus at Crossroads Corner, South Carolina, and being sent back to New York. Betty turns around in the window and sees the parents of Durwood and Durwood’s wife waving good-bye.
Rosalie and the dead people go.
Donny stands over Bert’s body. Joanne knocks on the door. Donny looks up, terrified.
JOANNE Bert? Donny?
DONNY Go away.
JOANNE You in there?
DONNY Get out of here, Joanne.
JOANNE I’m coming in.
DONNY You stay outside there.
JOANNE I just got a summer job.
DONNY Don’t come in.
JOANNE Checkout girl at the A&P.
Joanne struggles to open the door. Donny holds it shut. Joanne pushes the door in. Donny falls back.
JOANNE You got to be very strong to be a checkout girl at the A&P.
DONNY You tell and I’ll—
Joanne sees Bert and walks around his body.
JOANNE That’s what a dead person looks like?
DONNY He made me do it.
JOANNE All the time you read about dead people and hear about dead people but this is my first. Not embalmed or anything.
DONNY He tried to touch me.
JOANNE Just regular dead.
DONNY He put his hands on me.
JOANNE I’m glad it’s Bert. I’d hate for my first dead person to be a stranger.
DONNY I’m not ever going to not believe in dreams again. I dreamed the other night and the night before that and once about six months ago that a yellow Checker Cab stopped and a man got out and dragged me in and when the cab stopped we were in a quiet warehouse so you could look down and see the river and waiting in a line was all these men with drool coming out of their mouths and my feet were in cement and the old man touched me only he wasn’t old anymore and that dream came true just now. Bert was the old man. My feet were in cement. I am not going to end up my life in any dream. I stopped that dream. Anybody tells you dreams don’t tell the future you send them to me.
JOANNE We’ll say somebody killed him.
DONNY Who killed him?
JOANNE One of those guys you bring up here with the watches.
DONNY I don’t want any part of it. Cops up here. They’ll find fingerprints.
JOANNE Okay. They’ve had all those murders down at the docks. We’ll put Bert in a bag and bring him down the river and leave him there. By the warehouse.
DONNY But those murders. The school-crossing lady told me those bodies—they had no heads. The maniac takes the heads off.
JOANNE You got a saw?
DONNY There’s one out there.
JOANNE You start cutting. Put papers down.
DONNY Is this a crime!
JOANNE He’s already dead. You’re making a mess.
DONNY My uncle saw a dirty movie and he told me Bert’s mother was in it.
They take Bert by the feet and drag him into the dark.
JOANNE Bert wasn’t from here. Bert never belonged here.
They are gone. Betty appears in the light, at a phone. She dials. Rosalie appears.
ROSALIE Betty is now in Washington, D.C. She roams around Washington, D.C., looking at monuments. She buys a dress to calm herself. She calls Bert from a pay phone.
The phone rings. Donny and Joanne come into the room.
JOANNE Don’t get it.
DONNY It might be for me.
JOANNE Don’t get it. I’ll wait for you outside.
Donny and Joanne go.
ROSALIE Betty hangs up. She walks to the Capitol building to look for the Declaration of Independence she saw printed on parchment paper like the original. She will bring it home to Bert for a present.
Betty goes. Donny and Joanne appear in the street. Joanne pushes a shopping cart.
DONNY I’m finished. I put him in a duffel bag.
The two of them drag the bag containing Bert.
JOANNE Here’s a shopping cart.
DONNY We can’t steal that. The A&P arrests you.
JOANNE I’m going to be working there this summer. Employees are allowed to use them.
They load Bert’s body in the bag into the cart. They begin pushing.
DONNY You can smell the river tonight.
Margie comes up.
MARGIE Hi. Joanne, could I talk to you?
JOANNE Go away, Margie.
MARGIE I got to talk to you.
JOANNE Later, Margie.
MARGIE What’s in there?
DONNY Margie, I believe Joanne was talking to you.
MARGIE I want to see what you are pushing.
JOANNE My grandmother’s dog died and we’re going to bury it in the river.
MARGIE Can I walk with you? I don’t want to go home yet. My mother’s watching television. My father’s kicking ass in the living room.
The three of them walk.
MARGIE I went to the Waverly. My girlfriend held open the exit door. They had this movie there. A French picture. Reading the bottom lines in English while they’re all above talking French. This picture was all about children. And a little French baby in the picture falls out of the nine-story window and lands nine stories on the ground and all the grown-ups are scared shitless and the baby—God, I screamed—lands on a bush and jumps up and says, Baby fall boom boom. The audience cheered. And later on this French grown-up says, That’s childhood. They’re protected forever. In a magic circle. Bad things happen to grown-ups but children are magic. I think that’s what it said. I had to read fast and I was crying. I don’t ever want to grow up. I’m afraid of getting out of school. I hate what’s happening to my body. It’s like it’s a sin. I keep going to confession and confessing that things are happening to my body and the priest says, But that’s growing up, and I said, I don’t want to grow up. I mean, I want to grow up so I can leave home and get a job and make some money and get a record player and get married, but I want my body to stop doing what it’s doing. What kind of dog was it?
DONNY I don’t like it down here.
JOANNE Look at the yellow cabs. People are pulling up. Going into those warehouses. People climbing into those trucks.
DONNY It’s like my dream.
The cart tips over. Bert’s head rolls out. Margie screams. Donny puts it back in the bag. Joanne takes Margie’s
hands. She and Donny put Margie’s hands in the bag. Maggie struggles. Her hands are bloddied.
JOANNE You’re part of this forever and ever. You’re part of it.
MARGIE I’m out taking a walk.
DONNY Here’s money. Don’t tell.
JOANNE Shut up, Donny.
MARGIE Where’d you get that money?
JOANNE Don’t give it to her.
DONNY She’ll tell.
JOANNE She won’t.
MARGIE I got to go home!
JOANNE You are part of this.
MARGIE I never saw nothing. My brain is dead. You hear me? I swear. My eyes are blind. I was never out. My ears don’t hear. My brain is dead. I’m just out taking a walk. My brain don’t register nothing. My eyes don’t see. Forever. I’m never seeing nothing. Please. I’ll see you. Later. School. I’ll see you tomorrow. That’s all.
Maggie runs away. Donny and Joanne roll the bag back into the cart, then push the cart into the darkness.
There is a splash.
Rosalie steps forward. music plays “Hey, Stay a While,” very bouncily, cheerily. Rosalie does the stripper’s walk while talking to us.
ROSALIE So Betty returned to New York, called Raulito to make sure her job was still safe with Honeymoon Holidays and to make a wonderful joke about her southern adventure of the past few days and she smiled because she would make it sound funny like a wonderful guest on the Johnny Carson show. Some Cuban relative answered the phone and told her Raulito was dead, shot while trying to hold up the Chase Manhattan Bank. Betty laughed till she realized a truth was being told. She ran home and found the police waiting there and when they told her Bert was dead, her son was dead, for a moment she got Bert and Raulito mixed up in her head. They both couldn’t be dead. She had this picture that her apartment had become a branch of Chase Manhattan and that’s what Raulito was holding up. They took her down to the morgue and she asked why her son was on two tables. One large and one small. She identified his body. She identified his head. The room was identical to the one she had identified her sister in two years ago and somehow that comforted her, that she had been here before. She did not know, Betty, nor would she ever know that two drawers over from her son’s was Raulito’s body. Betty was taken into custody. Betty was questioned for a long time. Betty was released. (The music stops) Months went by. A summer. Joanne and Donny were very nice to her for a while but kids get new friends and kids forget and Betty hardly ever saw Bert’s friends anymore. She draws a circle on a map and sees an island thirty miles off the coast of Massachusetts is the farthest she can get away from New York, from the mainland, with the sixty-odd dollars she has in her account. She gives up the apartment. She takes the bus to Massachusetts. She steps onto the ferry. She looks at the houses of great families on the shore. She talks with a man of quintuplets born many years ago. Talk of family and children. The sea is autumn calm. Seagulls fly above.
