APOTH.
Ladies
and gentlemen! What we’re about to witness, none of it is true. It’s all in her
head, and yours, too. We’re going to make it come true, since, you know, that
is the method. That is the process. Shutter Island Cure we call it. Put your
billfolds away! We won’t be needing your credit card numbers just yet. We’ll
fulfill all your fantasies for free. Yo, listen! At the end, you’ll see, you’re
going to come to grips with reality. Anything but the pipe dream, is what they
always say. Allahu Akbar! God is great! What they say as well, always. So don’t
worry. It won’t be graphic, won’t be depressing. On the contrary! It’s going to
be a, a…
FORLORN
Party?
APOTH.
Exactly.
(Pause.)
WESSON
I
could have. I…
APOTH.
Yes.
Go on.
WESSON
…
could have…
APOTH.
Yes.
We got that, thank you. It’s time to move on. Don’t you think?
FORLORN
She
can’t. It’s impossible for her to...
APOTH.
She
can’t.
FORLORN
No.
“Move on.”
APOTH.
Uh
huh. Why not?
WESSON
I,
I, I could have…
FORLORN
(Interrupting)
The issues that drove us, they seemed
so pressing at the time. Take action now! Any kind will do. We were getting old,
what we thought, may God forgive us. They seem so funny now, those urgent
matters of life and death. Sex, drugs, money. God! It strikes me so dreary now,
standing next to these vast salt mines of death. The desert of boredom, bliss of
oblivion. You may forget your name.
WESSON
I
could have been someone!
FORLORN
So
could anyone.
APOTH.
(Sings)
“You
took my dreams from me when I first found you.”
FORLORN
So
what?
APOTH.
(Sings)
“I
kept them with me, babe…”
FORLORN
What
do you mean? Could have been someone, somebody else, or…?
APOTH.
Or
anybody?
FORLORN
Try
to be precise.
APOTH.
Try
being anybody.
FORLORN
Try
it.
APOTH.
Dang!
FORLORN
Tough.
And yet, people do it all the time.
APOTH.
They
do.
FORLORN
That’s
raw ambition for you, dreaming of, being nobody! The common man, as I always
say: he…
(He snaps his fingers.)
Like
the guy, what’s his face? That blinded the one-eyed fella? That is what the
unsung heroes of our time do day in, day out, come hell or high water. Every
goddamn day they give everything they’ve got in order to achieve that. Not
being one-eyed—being nobody. You see.
APOTH.
Hats
off to them! Those about to croak, we salute. Thse about to joke, we just
shoot.
(Touching WESSON’s head)
Back
of the head. There.
FORLORN
Bam!
The urge to be somebody, however…
APOTH.
(Smiling, shaking his head)
Man!
FORLORN
That
is a pipe dream!
APOTH.
Is
what children dream of, I think, if they dream at all.
FORLORN
Plain
silly.
APOTH.
Okay?
Moving on…
FORLORN
To
the present issue, matter at hand.
APOTH.
That
is your future.
(Pause.)
Hey,
the future is yours! Whatever you desire… that. A dream come true.
FORLORN
Going
through your file, have to say I was impressed.
APOTH.
Me,
too.
FORLORN
Your
determination, devotion…
APOTH.
Gee.
FORLORN
You
can say that again.
APOTH.
Gee.
Gee.
(Confused)
A
dream come true!
FORLORN
You
said that already.
APOTH.
Sorry,
boss. I’m sorry. Maybe, if…
FORLORN
Yeah?
APOTH.
If
we slowed down a bit, I could keep up.
FORLORN
(To WESSON)
Sorry
for the interruption. Won’t happen again, I promise. Abu here sniffed too much
glue in his lifetime. And his brain turned into a sponge, real crispy-like. You
might think that it was semen covering his grey matter, but no, you’d be
disappointed. What Abu does, he pours more glue into it, to smooth out the
wrinkles I suppose, only this time he’s calling his glue God, Allah, or
whatever. You see we’re running in circles here. So, fuck him. Fuck Abu! Miss Wesson, compared to you, the girls from
my neighborhood…
(FORLORN kicks APOTH.
in the ass.)
APOTH.
Fuck
them!
FORLORN
I’d
strongly advice against it. The girls from my neighborhood were a bunch of dry
flowers. Like Abu’s brain, as a matter of fact, drenched in come.
You,
Miss Wesson,, on the other hand, you are the flame that devours those hags,
rags, devours us! Think about it. True.
(FORLORN takes a piece of paper from his coat pocket.
He reads.)
“What
hours I lay awake in the night, with his precious sleeping body beside me,
wondering why he wanted so much to escape from reality.
(Pause.)
Wow.
That’s poetry.
(WESSON is crying. She tries to control herself. She
cannot.)
APOTH.
Miss!
FORLORN
Miss,
it’s alright!
APOTH.
Don’t
cry, Miss!
FORLORN
Miss!
What is it? Something I said, Abu said or…?
WESSON
(Furiously)
Don’t
you have a speck of humanity left in your charred-black petty hearts?
(FORLORN and APOTH. look
at each other. They shrug, raise their eyebrows, spread their hands.)
Those
weren’t my words, you sick bastards!
(Pause.)
This
is worse than the Clockwork Orange, even! Torturing me with my beloved Rimbe…. You’re
not humane! Filth! You’re human sewage, you hear?
(WESSON calms down at last.)
FORLORN
“Torturing
you…”
APOTH.
Miss!
FORLORN
You
think this is torture? We haven’t even started.
APOTH.
That’s what you’re
implying, you’re wrong.
FORLORN
So wrong, Frank Lloyd
Wright.
APOTH.
We have your best
interests at heart.
FORLORN
The best, we do.
The thing is, listen to me now. The lesson here is, given proper guidance, you
could get better.
APOTH.
Easy. If you put
your mind to it.
FORLORN
That’s right. Try a
little, I’m not saying tenderness, all I’m asking is try building a teeny weeny
speck of trust. A spark… all right?
WESSON
Spark?
APOTH.
That ignites the
charge hidden inside of every dream.
FORLORN
Either
that, or transorbital lobotomy.
APOTH.
What?
FORLORN
An
icepick through the eye. That was the treatment Kit Marlowe received at the
hands of that ice queen, Elizabeth, and her minions.
APOTH.
(Desperately)
What
for?
FORLORN
For
being a closet Catholic. Don’t worry. Take it easy! The icepick incident happened a long time ago, in
the 16th century, I think. In our time, there’s nothing but peace and prosperity as far as
eye can see. Into all infinity! But there’s a lesson to be learned here for our
time as well. Don’t expect anyone to pay your bills just because you’re such a
genius or whatever. You are not, and they are not what they seem. They have their
own agenda, every fucking time.
(WESSON stands up, takes a step or two. FORLORN doesn’t notice, APOTH.
does.)
That’s
what my Dad told me, at least, when I told him I wanted to study art.
WESSON
And
then he said, “Where’s your spark now?”
FORLORN
I
beg your pardon?
(To APOTH.)
What
did she say? I didn’t hear.... What?!
APOTH.
“Where’s your…”
FORLORN
Yeah?
APOTH.
I don’t know. I didn’t
catch it, either. You know, the full, the scope of it.
FORLORN
(Turning to WESSON)
Well? You open your
mouth, and something falls out, and then, like a cat covering its turd, you’re
all decency all of a sudden. Well, guess what? Fuck you, Miss Decency, and fuck
your brother.
WESSON
You said something
about a spark. I said, “Where’s your spark now?” It is a line from the movie The
Thin Red Line, based on the novel of the same name. I haven’t read it. It’s
second-hand info, I admit. A review or interview, something I read, the piece proposed
that the line in question, the thin red one, is what separates a real person,
human being, such as the boy in the black kippah, whom you so cleverly called my
brother - very funny indeed - from a beast, a sicko like yourself.
(Pause.)
Robert, you sellout!
Where is your spark now?
