excerpt from
First Love
from
The Best American Short Plays 1990–2000
LUCY [] When I woke up that morning . . . and you weren’t in the apartment . . . I thought you must have gone down to buy croissants or those delicious cinnamon sweet rolls we used to like, so I decided, while you were gone, to prepare for you the most splendiferous breakfast in the whole wide world. So I put out the eggs and the butter and the bacon. . . . And you have to believe me, Mike, I prepared for you the most extravagant, the most absolutely splendiferous breakfast conceived by the human imagination.
[Melodramatically.]
But . . . what’s going on here? You were nowhere in sight! You were tardy, late, delinquent! The king is lost in the realm! Did you not go to the bakery? I looked in the closet. There were your clothes, the one suit, the one baseball jacket, the sweater, the pairs of pants, one brown, one blue. . . .
[Acting panicky.]
What is going on here? An hour gone by. An hour and ten minutes. An hour and twenty minutes. An hour and . . . what could possibly have happened to that man? Heavens to Betsy, this is a frightening occurrence! I ran out towards the West Side Highway. I ran into the bakery and the stores we shopped at. “Did you, perchance, see my husband? Was my husband in here? You know my husband, don’t you? The dark-haired, handsome man with the eyes that sparkle and a smile that could break your heart? Did you perchance see him. . . ? No, no, we didn’t see him. We know your husband, Mrs. Orkin. He’s the best. He’s the tops. He was in here yesterday and sang for us “Che gelida manina” and he was so funny he had us all in stitches, he had us doubled over with cramps! Oh, we wouldn’t forget it if we saw your husband, Mrs. Orkin. There’s no one like him. “No one . . . in the . . . in the whole . . . wide . . . world.”