About a year later.
Split scene: Left, hospital waiting room. Right, hospital room.
Lights up stage right:
Hospital room. Early summer morning. Dark but for the light of the monitors, and a bit of dawn.
SIMON lies in bed, a silhouette.
SIMON: I have kissed your prayers kissed your prayers
Roller coaster rollin’ through the rain
The oceanic shoulders of the throng
Undulating slowly breakfastward
Mobile tit!
NURSE has entered. She opens the window.
NURSE: A lovely one is coming!
Lovely! I’ll just crack the jamb before
The hot of the day, so’s you can breathe the morning.
…O, Lordy God, it smells so sweet and green
It almost nearly stinks.
SIMON: Soft fuck-me music
Plays the little baby radio
Bare room shaken by a passing train
NURSE: The little baby radio. That’s cute.
She turns on radio. While she fluffs his pillows, records his vitals, etc.:
JIMMY BOGGS [sings on radio]:
All your promises
The things you said
NURSE: That Jimmy Boggs is just untalented.
JIMMY BOGGS [sings on radio]:
Using grand words
Like eternity and love
NURSE: A singing voice like garbage cans turned over.
She cuts the radio.
SIMON: Your holy pussy your precious cunt
There’s never been a sweeter ride to Hell
NURSE: How quiet and delicious is the air.
Like anything can happen in the world.
What an atmosphere…Ah, God. Ah, God…
They mow the lawns, it drags me back to Dallas…
I wish they had the ice-cream trucks again…Meanwhile,
WILL BLAINE has entered in medical smock.
WILL: You wish they had the ice-cream trucks again.
SIMON: The generous wide feet of pachyderms
NURSE: We’re almost done here, Doc.
WILL: I’m not a doctor.
Just a tech.
NURSE: Blood?
WILL: In a sense.
NURSE: Let’s see—
SIMON: Geezing bugspray in the slimy night
NURSE:—Do you have orders? I don’t seem to have—
WILL: Uh—no. I’m not your colleague. Actually,
Simon is my brother.
NURSE: Simon’s brother!
But it’s a little early, don’t you think?
Official hours—
WILL: I drove down from work.
Been floating on that road since midnight, after
the post-injection wrap-up drinks at Mursky’s
Bar and Grill but definitely mostly Bar,
Drifting through the general emptiness
From Huntsville: Seven hours in the rain
and more than slightly drunk, and I saw never
A single car. Or house. Or tree. Or star.
NURSE: O well, that’s Texas! It’s a long old ways
Between and not a whole lot when you get there…
My niece got married to a Huntsville man.
WILL: I’m over at the Unit. At the Walls.
NURSE: The Walls?
WILL: The prison?
NURSE: O. The prison? O!
They executed someone there last night!—
Some crazy feller killed his wife and all
His little children…Well, my niece’s husband
Thomas Hill works at the Walls. I guess
He goes around confusing people, too,
Looking like the uniform of something else.
…Well now, since you’re a tech, you’re probably…
There’s things to do the family might not…
We like to avoid unsightly sights—
WILL: The bag.
NURSE: I’m gonna change the bag, and such.
WILL: OK.
NURSE: His little children! God Himself can’t tell you
Why that feller killed them. Well, he did,
And now it’s eye for eye and tooth for tooth.
They strapped him to the slab and—life for life.
WILL: I’d say that’s pretty much it, in a nutshell,
That’s what we do.
NURSE: You do? You do? Do you?
WILL: With his last breath he proclaimed his innocence.
SIMON: A whitetail deer goes walking past in the rain
A dream of volcanoes rides past on a train
A spider crouched alive betwixt her lungs
NURSE: I’m sorry; but it stops him—
WILL: When you yank
His crotch a couple yanks, it shuts him up?
NURSE: Manipulation of the scrotal—well—
I know! The whole world’s highly entertained!
He’s quite a favorite hereabouts. A team
From Dallas, on the first of every month,
Descends upon us, specialists from Dallas—
WILL: How about that!—lining up to plunk
The magic twanger of my brother’s scrotum!
My helpless brother’s balls! Nurse…Vandermere:
I’m not here visiting the vegetable.
This thing they’re gonna do—I’m here for that.
NURSE: What—thing?
WILL: Wal now I don’ perzackly know.
I would assume the staff would know.
NURSE: The staff?
WILL: The personnel employed here. Such as you.
NURSE: I don’t know anything about a thing.
WILL: A medical procedure, I presume,
At which, for reasons they have not explained,
They want the whole damn family to assemble.
NURSE: But…nothing’s scheduled…
WILL: Nothing.
NURSE: Not a thing.
WILL: The vegetable’s entire day is free.
NURSE: What you don’t seem to realize is a coma
Doesn’t make them deaf. They hear us talk,
They understand, and Simon knows what’s what.
WILL: You claim the calabash is cognizant.
NURSE: If I was being visited by you,
And I was in a coma—I would die!
WILL: I think—Is that my sister-in-law out there?
NURSE: I’d slip on out to sea and sail away.
WILL: It is. Ah, God!—the other one! Her sister!
What’s this all about?
SIMON: Who owns the rain
NURSE: It doesn’t take a death grip!
WILL: Like he cares!
He didn’t even blink. He kinda sorta
Rolls his eyes around though, doesn’t he.
A six-foot-long Señor Potato-Head…
And not one blister, huh? Not one hair singed.
That’s what ya git fer smokin’!—might as well
Be ashes, huh?
NURSE: He got like this from smoking?
WILL: Not exactly smoking—breathing smoke,
Smoke inhalation. Very bad for you.
SIMON: I would kiss you even if it killed me
Meanwhile, JAN and STACY have entered.
JAN: Let him a-lone!
WILL: It shuts him up, or so
I’m told—and as we’ve just been demonstrating.
SIMON: Even if it killed me I would kiss you
JAN: Simon, hon?…I think he’s glad to see me!
STACY: Simon? Can he hear? His voice is all—
SIMON: Kuala Lumpur Kuala Lumpur Kuala Lumpur
JAN: See! He knows Ko-ala Lumpur!
STACY: All those voices, all those different—Jan,
I never heard those voices before.
Did you ever hear those voices before?
NURSE: Visiting hours haven’t really started—
STACY: He’s like a boombox on a merry-go-round!
WILL: This is Simon’s wife, my sister-in-law—
JAN: Jan.
NURSE: I’m pleased to meet you.
JAN: This is Stacy,
Simon’s sister-in-law, which is because
I’m Simon’s wife, and she’s my sister—Calling
Koala Lumpur! Simon!
STACY: Can he hear?
JAN: Are you receiving, Simon?
WILL: No. He’s not.
STACY: He talked right to us!—He was buying gold
In Koala Lumpur when the fire struck
That shopping mall and pumped it full of smoke
And choked him till he got like this! Now, Simon,
Form your thoughts, take all the time you want,
Visiting hours haven’t even started—
WILL: He isn’t “forming” any “thoughts.” All right:
You’re here; he’s here; everybody’s here.
Now how about a little explanation?
JAN: Well! The lights came on!
NURSE: It’s eight a.m.
It’s still a half an hour till official—
WILL: And not “Koala.” K-U-A-L-A—
JAN: He was buying gold, he was investing—
Tragedy strikes us anytime it wants,
Even in places like Koala Lumpur—
STACY: Kua-la Lumpur, Kua-la Lumpur, Jan—
JAN:—No matter what you try to call yourself!
You can’t escape life even by pretending!
Meanwhile, the DOCTOR has entered.
DOC: So, Simon draws a crowd!
NURSE: They jumped the gun
A couple minutes, Doc—
DOC: Good morning, all!
SIMON: I have a dog who is a lilac bush
JAN: We have a dog who is a lilac bush!
SIMON: Kuala Lumpur Kuala…Kuala…Kuala…
STACY: Lumpur—Lumpur—Lumpur, Simon, Lumpur!
JAN: But, see, our dog is buried by the lilac!
We always say he’s turned into the lilac!
So, Doctor, when he says I have a dog,
He’s talking about our actual universe,
And an actual dog, also an actual lilac.
And even if we don’t have a koala bear,
There actually are koala bears in China,
Or over there where Kuala Lumpur is.
DOC:…Mind is the only actuality.
Breakfast chimes sound.
STACY: O, Doctor…Nasum? That is so…pro-found.
Like what if this life isn’t really real?
DOC: And what if we’re like Simon, in a realm
We can’t imagine, in a spastic coma—
STACY: A hospital in some enchanted dream,
A magic hospital…A “spastic coma”?
DOC: What life we truly live we’ll never know.
The only hope we have is to assume
That what we see is where we are…
STACY: Doctor,
Why does Simon jabber like a zoo?
DOC: The human brain, the…May I know your name?
STACY: Forgive me: Stacy Daley Morgan Blaine.
But I should drop the Blaine, as I’m divorced—
Again! But then, I didn’t drop the Morgan—
DOC: Now, isn’t “Blaine”—? Now, Simon, you’re a Blaine—
STACY: Well, I was married to him, first. He gets around.
DOC: In rather a tiny circle!
WILL: He’s a sucker:
Snoring in the kingdom of the vegetables
He ain’t a whole lot dumber than he was.
DOC: I see, and, Stacy, that makes you the patient’s—?
STACY: Former wife and current sister-in-law.
I’m sure you know my sister, Jan—
DOC: Of course.
A real Penelope!—
STACY: And Will, our brother-in-law—
Jan’s former brother-in-law, but now her current,
And currently my former brother-in-law.
DOC: Pleased to meet you, Will. And, Stacy: charmed
And very pleased.
STACY: The feeling’s…mutual…
SIMON: I sound like I’m shrinking
STACY: —And! A “spastic coma”?
DOC: The injury to Simon’s synapses,
The anaerobic outrage to his brain,
The shock of oxygen starvation on
A mystery so frail as the electric
Pilgrimage an impulse undertakes
Along a route of stimulated nerves
Has induced in Simon Blaine a wild condition,
A hyperactive, vegetative state,
A chronic, spastic, comatose condition
Marked by baffling random episodes
Apparently the property of the dark
And chiefly somnolent prefrontal lobes:
Pseudo-verbal, faux-autistic, splashed
With flowery jets and startling and bright
Ejaculations with aphasic overtones.
STACY: Overtones…and episodes…I see…
DOC: He reads out almost epileptic when
We hook him to the EEG. And so…
STACY: He has these fits.
DOC: And so he has these fits.
—A rare and baffling form of coma.
JAN: Rare?
There’s never been another coma like it!
STACY: And nothing can be done?
DOC: A case like this,
We offer consolation. Never hope.
JAN: But you’re not God.
DOC: And I don’t claim to be.
JAN: But he’s right there! Right here!—Simon!
Wife to Simon! What are you thinking, Simon—
I wish I could join him there. I struggle to get there.
But how do you struggle? I struggle with my heart,
My soul. I make an effort in my chest.
With my love, my force of love.—It’s bullshit!
He’s there and I’m here. What are you thinking?…
TELL ME! TELL ME! RE-TARD! WRETCH! TELL ME!
DOC: Nurse!
NURSE: Ma’am! No!
WILL: Jan, stop it!
STACY: Stop it, Jan!
[A brief struggle.]
Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it! STOP!
…There are comas and there are comas, Jan.
This is one of those. The kind the very
Wisest doctors cannot comprehend.
So let’s stop beating around the bush, OK?
Your husband isn’t ever coming home.
This spastic coma person isn’t Simon,
’Cause Simon’s off in Coma-Simon-Land
Married to a Spastic Coma Girl.
He doesn’t hear a single word we say.
He doesn’t, and he didn’t, and he won’t.
So no more sex. Just learn to masturbate.
—O, well! I’m sorry! I don’t make the rules!
WILL: Will someone give this stupid bitch a shot
And put us all out of our misery?
STACY: You wish you had your little death machine?
WILL: You bet your plastic boobs.
DOC: Now—now—now—now—
STACY: You’re the reason I divorced him, Will—
When we were living in North Houston, Will—
I don’t forget who introduced him to
Sylvester’s Big-As-Texas Topless Lounge—
JAN: I wouldn’t be caught dead inside that place!
STACY: You’ve always been a rotten influence—
JAN: In there it’s all black light and fuzzy dice!
DOC: Ah, me!—it’s difficult to make a point
In these surroundings. Why don’t we adjourn—
WILL: No. What procedure have you scheduled here?
DOC: Excuse me. Was there something scheduled?
WILL: Yes!
I drove all night from Huntsville to attend—
To what were you referring, Jan? You claimed
Some bold experiment was taking place—
DOC: Have we experiments on the agenda, Nurse?
NURSE: Not from now till three p.m.—No, sir!
JAN: ’Cause all you know to do is grab his pecker!
Experiments won’t save him! He needs faith!
You saw the pictures on TV, you watched
The faces of those red-hot, burning people—
Like faces in a painting, witnessing
Their resurrection in a revelation,
Riding escalators toward the flames
Like souls ascending toward Atomic Heaven—
STACY: Or Hell! Pockets of Hell! Of Hell!—I mean,
Subterranean shopping center fires
Are breaking out all over God’s green earth.
It’s punishment for something—you know what:
Divorce, and dope, and gambling; lesbians,
Teenage sexpot prostitution rings,
Child-molester grandmas, Mardi Gras—
WILL: What the hell full name is Stacy short for?
STACY: It’s not. I’m only Stacy, ma chérie!
WILL: And now what? What are these fools up to
Out the window here? Will someone promise me
My family is not a party to
This further nonsense in the parking lot?
Here we have a maniac with a cross,
I mean it’s big, this sucker’s big enough
To mount a dolphin on, he’s standing there
Beside it like he’s posing for a photo—
Looking stupid, I don’t have to add—
And, am I psychic? Why am I so sure
That these two other maniacs are coming here?
JAN: That’s William Jennings Bryan Jenks, the healer.
WILL: A heeler. What is that? A person?
JAN: Yes,
A healer is a person.
WILL: There are dogs
Called blue heelers—fact my neighbor has one.
Had one, I should say. It’s dead. It drowned.
MASHA and BILL JENKS enter, both in quite conservative garb,
MASHA in gray, BJ in black. BJ’s hair has grown out; he wears it swept back in a shining pompadour.
BILL JENKS: Where’s this drowning victim?
…This is the man who drowned?
STACY: Nobody drowned him. He was in a fire.
BILL JENKS: Is this a burn unit?
NURSE: Perpetual Care.
He wasn’t burned.
BILL JENKS: The fire didn’t burn him?
STACY: More like he suffocated in the smoke,
Which you could almost say the fire drowned him—
WILL: Coincidence, here—I was telling how
My neighbor’s dog got drowned last Sunday morning.
Nobody home, he went and jumped right in
The swimming pool and couldn’t clamber out.
Hung on—hung on—hung on till noon, almost—
Gave up; went under; drowned.
BILL JENKS: How do they know?
WILL: They don’t. I do. I let it drown. I watched,
Sipping a Bloody Mary on a Sunday morn.
The rest of God’s creation was at church.
Sunday morning; drinking alone: I love it.
I don’t like heelers.
WILL and BJ stand, each facing the other, as in a mirror.
BILL JENKS: Are you copying me?
WILL: Are you copying me?
BILL JENKS: Cut it out.
WILL: Cut it out.
BILL JENKS: All I have to do is remain silent.
…Well, aren’t you going to copy that?
WILL: Aren’t you going to copy that?
BILL JENKS: You win.
WILL: You lose.
MASHA: Brother, we’re in danger.
WILL: Will Blaine…
BILL JENKS: Bill Jenks.
STACY: Well! Bill and Will! Could be
You guys are twins! Twins torn apart at birth—
SIMON: Watch me jack off with my solar flare
STACY: Simon Blaine, hush! You’ve got company!
MASHA: The lesser demons bow to something here.
Satan’s pouring honey down my spine.
BILL JENKS: Satan can’t be everywhere at once,
And right now he’s in Hollywood or Vegas.
WILL: Who publishes the diabolical
Itinerary? There a cable channel?
BILL JENKS: He gravitates toward Sodom and Gomorrah.
WILL: Really.
BILL JENKS: Sure. The old boy craves a little
Action same as everybody else.
WILL: Was it Twenty-Twenty? Or Sixty Minutes?
I thought they made a worldwide fool of you.
—OK, it’s rude of me to say so, sorry—
What’d you call your outfit there in Dallas,
Church of the Holy Sacred Bank Account?
Ripped of your congregation, shot a guy,
Landed up in Huntsville, where I work:
I bet I’ve seen you, out there in the fields
Hacking with a hoe (—excuse me, ma’am!),
Slaving away with black-eyed Susans winkin’
And stinkin’ like a Dallas trollop (—’scuse me!);
Suspected dealer, quantity cocaine—
BILL JENKS: O yeah, I shot a man. He didn’t die.
I get the chance again—who knows?
WILL: You’d think a guy would sense his status!—Yeah,
They had you on with Ron the Levitator
And that frog-voice freak transvestite with a lisp
Driving his spangled automatic wheelchair,
Jimmy—
NURSE: Boggs! “The Singer of the South”!
You oughta heal his singing!
BILL JENKS: There are limits.
WILL: I have to say, he does look like he’s healed.
Healed by whom, by use of which powers,
I couldn’t guess. Or even healed of what.
But, anyway, he’s acting different now.
BILL JENKS: That’s right. He ran a marathon last month.
WILL: That’s right. He came in way behind the pack.
BILL JENKS: That’s right, and running on two legs. His spangled
Wheelchair graces our museum now.
WILL: They mentioned that—You have your own museum!
BILL JENKS: Most of one. Construction’s under way.
WILL: Construction’s stalled, according to Sixty Minutes,
Stalled while the IRS and FTC
Shine a light on your money.
BILL JENKS: Let it shine,
There ain’t a lot to see.
WILL: You claim you’re clean.
BILL JENKS: Nope. I just claim there isn’t any money.
SIMON: THERE’S NEVER BEEN A SWEETER RIDE TO HELL
BILL JENKS: This one’s getting agitated now.
STACY: I take it you’re a husband-and-wife team?
BILL JENKS: We are as siblings.
WILL: Ooh, you two are juicy.
SIMON: I’ll climb back up your cunt and suck your mind
The way we used to do when we were lovers
JAN: Simon! Shame on you!
STACY: Well, talk about a mouth!
BILL JENKS: You recognize him, don’t you? Yes. You do.
MASHA: It’s him. It’s him.
STACY: Do you eat with that mouth?
DOC: Actually, he’s nourished through this tube.
MASHA: I’m free of you! You hear? Leave me alone!
WILL: Just grab his scrotum there to shut him up.
Just reach on out—go on—and shake the hand
Of the old banana, with a manly grip.
NURSE: Doctor Nasum, please, this doesn’t seem—
WILL: Take hold! There can’t be any harm in it,
Right? Big deal, as far as he’s concerned…
I used to get him down and drool a strand—
Now this’ll git ’im, if he’s there a-tall—
And slurp it back—
NURSE: Now, what on earth!—
WILL: Aha!
STACY: You can’t spit in a coma person’s face!
WILL: You get a pain response? Huh, buddy? There!
NURSE: For goodness’ sakes alive, he’s hurting him!
They restrain him, DOC and NURSE taking either arm.
WILL: The point is that I’m not. He doesn’t hurt.
But everybody else—this family,
Our parents, this man’s wife, his wife’s relations—
Het up by this fireball of faith,
Yinked and yanked by hope in God like gobs
Of spit he dangles from his fat, red mouth—
His doctor shouldn’t let them play these games.
I want this sucker ceremony canceled!
Who is actually in attendance here?
NURSE: It’s Dr. Cassady. He makes his rounds
Just after lunch on weekdays, Sir.
WILL: Then page old Hopalong immediately.
Come on!—He doesn’t want to see his patient
Used like bait to fish for dollars, does he?
SIMON: LET IT THUNDER FARTS AND RAIN DOWN VOMIT
JAN: STACY!
STACY [grabbing SIMON’s crotch]: Hon, it’s simple courtesy.
MASHA: He’s wild for me. The demon’s wild for me.
WILL: Jesus Christ, Morticia—lighten up!
BILL JENKS: I’d like to be alone with Simon now.
WILL: Go right ahead. Remember—manly grip!
DOC and NURSE begin dragging WILL out.
BILL JENKS: No—Let him stay. I want him here. Let go.
DOC: If I were Simon’s primary physician—
BILL JENKS: Go on, the rest of you. Leave us alone.
[To MASHA] You especially. We can’t have you here.
All exit. BJ alone with WILL and SIMON. WILL collects himself, goes to window.
WILL: What’s he saying?…(Jesus. What a morning…)
Sights…heights…Keep your eyes—the prize—
BILL JENKS: Keep your sights
On the heights
Keep your eyes
WILL: On the prize. The guy’s a public nuisance.
BILL JENKS: He’s with me.
WILL: He would be, wouldn’t he?
…I’m calmer now.
BILL JENKS: No need to apologize.
WILL: I feel no need. I’m not apologizing.
My position hasn’t altered; I’m just calmer.
Simon, too.
BILL JENKS: I don’t expect you like this
Invasion of your realm—
WILL: It ain’t my realm.
I’m not a doctor. I’m just Simon’s brother.
BILL JENKS: I thought you were a medical man.
WILL: I am.
BILL JENKS: Then please don’t be so hostile. I don’t go
So far as to suggest you look on us
As colleagues, but I think we share a goal.
WILL: I’m a technician of a very special kind.
I don’t fix people. Quite the opposite.
I supervise the termination teams.
BILL JENKS: Sounds like you’re in the personnel division.
WILL: No.—The tie-down team, the I-V team…
BILL JENKS: I see.
WILL: Next to me, boys, Lucifer never fell.
BILL JENKS: You execute the folks.
WILL: That’s not quite true.
We execute the sentence, not the person.
BILL JENKS: And who, exactly, executes the person?
WILL: “To execute” means “to carry out.”
Well, I guess in the end we carry them out.
…So you do the opposite of what I do.
BILL JENKS: I’ve never raised the dead.
WILL: But—in a sense.
BILL JENKS: I’ve never raised the dead.
WILL: Why don’t you try?
Go where the dead go. Haunt the mortuaries.
Give ’em the razzle-dazzle of your gift
And see if anybody cheats the grave…
—What’s the matter with him now? My God!
BILL JENKS: The demon’s agitated. SETTLE DOWN!
…I wonder where you know my assistant from?
WILL: Morticia? Man, I’ve seen that honey shake
Her titties! You a preacher, or a pimp?
BILL JENKS: The line between the two is faint. I think
It moves. I’ve found myself on either side.
WILL: You didn’t move yourself?
BILL JENKS: Not to my knowledge…
Maybe…If I moved, I didn’t feel it…
Well, I just had to ask. Not my affair,
But I was curious. Now you can leave.
WILL: You think you’re safe alone? I mean, he’s strong—
He may be out of it, but—
BILL JENKS: I’ll be fine.
WILL: The Lord protects you.
BILL JENKS: I believe he does.
WILL: You trust in the Lord.
BILL JENKS: I find him predictable…
We’ve got three this week. Uh. Tuesday, Wednesday,
I think Thursday…Thursday?
WILL: So do we.
BILL JENKS: Yes, three…Three executions in three days?
WILL: Hey, I don’t make the reservations, boys.
I just fly the plane.
BILL JENKS: Here and yonder,
Even in prison, I’ve met up with good
And decent people. But…How do you say this?…
I’ve never met one in the mirror.
WILL: …Yeah…
O well, that’s life, huh?
BILL JENKS: That’s life on Death Row.
WILL: I don’t get you. Do you believe, or not?
Do you really heal? And cleanse these souls
Of maladies and spirits? Do you care?
BILL JENKS: The gift is real, but I just turn a buck.
I turn a buck, he executes his vague
Intentions on a baffled universe:
Win-win…Of course, he screws with me.
That’s his style—the gift, and then the gag.
And in return I fail to reverence him,
Fail in gratitude. I fail to love him.
WILL: Wow! You are an existentialist.
It’s a little hard to see that message landing
Anywhere. It’s no surprise you’re bankrupt.
BILL JENKS: Aah, they’re just watching television, man.
I tell it like I see it, but I doubt
There’s anybody listening. Faith is scary.
Faith affords its consolations, sure—
By opening the maw to the dark depths
Where going blind and getting lost and hurt
Seem understandable and natural,
And all night long two graces fall like rain:
A tragic sense of life, and hope of Heaven.
WILL: Are grace and Heaven all you’ve got to offer?
Man, I’ve watched one hundred twenty people
Die because I killed them with a button.
I’ve seen them breathe their last—the air
Goes out, and out, and then they kind of shiver
And there’s this second where you know it’s over
And it ain’t never gonna start again.
…On summer evenings I sit on my porch
And listen to this train that comes along.
I listen to the wheels bang on the tracks,
I listen to the whistle drag the air
And fill the world, and fade, and leave it empty,
And I am gonna tell you: Heaven never
Dreamt of anything as sweet as that:
To listen to a train and not be dead.
VOICE ON RADIO: Insects are often the only witnesses
To a crime.
BILL JENKS [to SIMON]: Did you turn that thing on?
WILL: It wasn’t me.
BILL JENKS: Well turn the damn thing off.
VOICE ON RADIO: The president’s order has been disobeyed.
Soft music on radio…
BILL JENKS: All right. It’s time you left us, please.
WILL: Don’t heal, or even touch, or even think
About—Don’t—don’t…Don’t hurt him. He’s my brother.
BILL JENKS:…No. I wouldn’t hurt him, Mr. Blaine.
WILL exits.
BILL JENKS falls and weeps.
VOICE ON RADIO laughs hysterically—SIMON joins in.
BILL JENKS quells them with a laying on of hands.
SIMON: HEALER!…HEALER, NOLI MI TANGERE!
BILL JENKS: All right. They’re gone. I’m here. Who are you, demon?
SIMON: Et cetera non sequitur mon cher
BILL JENKS: Is it you? Are you the same one?
SIMON: E pluribus non sequitur tyrannis
BILL JENKS: I saw this movie. Everybody saw it.
Are you the demon who prophesies, or not?
SIMON: O. This. Yes. That.
Jack
Sprat
Begat Jehosephat.
BILL JENKS: Cut it out. Get serious. You know
I coulda had your ass in Huntsville—
Coulda sent you to the Pit. You owe me.
SIMON: Coulda shoulda woulda hadda oughta.
BILL JENKS: God! There’s something wrong with me or something.
There’s something wrong with me or something wrong
With money. Anyhow, we tangle wrong,
Me and the dollar…What a mess, what…All
Those people on the money—can’t they see me?
SIMON: I love you. Love you with a love that burns.
BILL JENKS: If I’da lived a hundred years ago,
I’d be riding circuit, I’d be praising God
And healing hearts and saving souls
And money’d never touch me long enough
To suck itself inside me like it has.
SIMON: I love you with a love that burns and smokes.
BILL JENKS: OK, OK, you’re probably aware
We’ve got a hearing set for Wednesday next
To go and file for Chapter—I don’t know—
Eleven, Thirteen, Twenty-one—they make
The whole thing sound like Vegas, don’t they?
They tap you out as quick as Vegas, too.
But you know me: I’ll bet my shorts and socks
And get back in the game, or hitchhike home
As naked as my mama made me. Anyhow,
The institute is broke, but the foundation
Holds several thousand shares of Motorola.
Here’s the thing: This Freddie Spendersnap,
The NASCAR racer, wants to make a swap,
My Motorola for a razor-thin
Controlling interest in his hot-dog thing,
His vending franchise thing. It sounds superb,
It’s very liquid, totally set up—
I mean, you figure hot dogs are forever—
But Motorola’s flirting with Verizon,
The big fat cell-phone company; O, yeah,
Verizon makes my Motorola pretty—
But if the feds resolve to yank tobacco
Sponsorship of NASCAR, man, the brokest
Sucker in the South is gonna be
The guy with fifteen hundred red-and-white
Stripèd hats and fifteen hundred hot-dog carts.
But. Cell phones give you cancer. They could tank.
SIMON: “Spendersnap.” I think you made that up.
BILL JENKS:…Why can’t I be like simple John and stand
My cross in a melting Texas parking lot—
What did he have to endure to get like that?
Remove from me these bonds of self…Release…
Shit. Am I praying to you? Praying to a demon?
SIMON: Jenks, I reject your terminology.
Demon is a term whose definition
Seems to shift its shape as much as we do.
Call me a teenymeanymotherfucker.
BILL JENKS:…So…am I Motorola, or Freddie’s Franks?
BLACKOUT
Lights up stage left:
Hospital waiting room. MASHA at the window.
WILL enters. Comes up close behind her.
WILL: Look at this guy. Just can’t wait to give
His life away. He’s chomping at the bit.
He’s straining at the traces. Giddyap,
Ol’ hoss. Drag that contraption into
The third millennium. You get farther and farther
From Calvary all the time. Farther and farther
From the place of skulls. Farther from Golgotha.
…An overpowering scent of blossoms on
The air today. Inebriating.
MASHA: Just about a stench.
WILL: Or is it your perfume?
MASHA: I wear no scent.
WILL: But I can smell you. You smell womanly.
My my, you give a man an appetite.
You’re womanly. Dazzlingly. Deeply.
MASHA: I don’t hear such talk. It strikes me deaf.
WILL: I know you from Sylvester’s. I know you
From head to toe three nights a week stark naked,
No matter how you cover up in gray.
I don’t forget the times I watched you dance.
First time, I said to my buddies, Hey now, there’s
The type I crave, a dancing contradiction:
I crave my women simultaneously
Loose and tight.
MASHA: You’re talking to the walls.
You’re talking to the moon. Nobody hears you.
WILL: You cast one glance and liquefied my bones
And alla that. Sweet Jesus, what a rack.
What a set of pins.
MASHA: Would you not swear?
WILL: “A set of pins”?
MASHA: You took the Lord in vain.
WILL: I’ll take him any way that I can get him,
Honey baby lover fucker-doll.
MASHA:…Who’s the ones with everything stripped off?
Who’s the peep show? Is it really me?
I strut along and toss down feed to you.
You hunch there with your glass of screw-top wine
And all the feelings naked in your face.
You gobble me down with your eyes, but you don’t see me.
You see the act, you see your fantasy
And not the person working at a job.
You see me panting for you, but I’m bored,
My ankles hurt, my car got repossessed,
I’d like to move because my rickety
Apartment’s on the building’s sunny side—
The prancing slut is prancing in your head.
You got me backwards. I’m not undercover.
I never was so hidden as when I was naked.
…And plus fact is I ain’t no Norma Jean.
I’m sort of regular, with decent legs.
Dim light, I’m gorgeous.
WILL: Dancing decent legs.
Decent legs made for indecent dancing.
MASHA: I think I wish to stop this conversation.
WILL: Dim light, spilt liquor, dancing decent legs.
…Where does he keep you stashed?
MASHA: In Hawk Hills. Outside Fort Worth. Way outside.
WILL: I think you need to get to Houston.
MASHA: No.
WILL: But not downtown. Just out there by the lake.
I’d put you by the golf course. Weekend nights
We head downtown, see what the action’s like.
MASHA: I don’t like the city. I never did.
It smells. It stinks. I mean it reeks.
WILL: The smells and lights and noise and all the tense
Faces and the cries of the lunatics.
You’ve gotta get out of Hawk Hills, swoop down
To Second Street and put the world before you.
Downtown. In the night. That’s where you hide.
Do you know what this is?
MASHA: Money, yeah. So what?
WILL: Two dollars.
MASHA: Stick it up your ass!
WILL: Come on.
You never took a little nap for money?
MASHA: You can go to Hell!
WILL: I’ll take you with me!
…All I did was watch. Not like the others.
Everybody knows what goes on there.
“They dance till two and then they screw.” That’s right.
Sylvester pimped you as a nightly thing.
You sucked and blew and bent and spread and squirmed
For college jocks and gap-tooth farmer boys
And fat-ass salesmen in their Cadillacs.
You gave each other phony names and fucked,
And they were all your dirty little husbands,
And Jesus Christ can strike me down and turn
My guts to pus if I’ve said one false thing.
Look me in the face and tell me Jesus
Jack is gonna cancel who you are.
…Baby…You are suckin’ my cock with your eyes.
MASHA: Don’t. Don’t. I’m bad luck. It’s just gonna hurt you.
WILL: I would kiss you even if it killed me.
…Jesus won’t protect you. Hell with him.
You wanna hide? You wanna leave yourself?
You need a stack of credit cards, a beauty parlor,
Stocks and bonds and money in the bank,
A little sports car and a big suburban wagon,
Air-conditioned condo by the golf course,
Fifty inches on your television.
Jesus isn’t gonna give you that.
I’m the one who’s gonna give you that.
My fingerprints on your velour.
MASHA: O, stop.
WILL: I’m gonna lift your skirt.
MASHA: You can lift it a little bit.
WILL: I’m gonna lift it higher.
MASHA: You can lift it a little higher.
WILL: I’m gonna lift it all the way up. Do you want me to?
MASHA: You can. OK. You can if you want to.
WILL: I’m gonna do whatever I want.
MASHA: I know you are. OK. I know you are.
BLACKOUT
Lights up stage right:
BJ and SIMON as before.
SIMON: I love this guy. You’re such a baby loser!
You shit yer pants while pissing on yer shoes.
BILL JENKS: You owe me, bud. I left you free to wander.
Didn’t I leave you free for fun and travel?
Haven’t you had some share of fun and travel?
SIMON: Of course I have!—This year or so, since Huntsville,
I’ve circuited the earth a dozen times,
Entering any soul who offered entrance.
From sin to sin I’ve wafted like a spore.
I’ve bent the gambler to his knee,
I’ve dragged the junkie through the grime,
I’ve parked the harlot on her corner,
I’ve sent the rapist on his round.
I’ve given reasons to the traitor,
Glossy varnish to the liar,
Piety to hypocrites—
And left them hobbled and alone,
Waiting like dogs for any scent of me.
And next, who knows? Some other galaxy.
Prepare for takeoff! Five, four, three, two, one…
In whose name do you cast out spirits, Healer?
BILL JENKS: I’m not casting anybody out.
We’re talking here. We’re making simple average
Conversation as we grope toward
An understanding.
SIMON: Or you cast me out.
BILL JENKS: I could. I could. So why not demonstrate
A modicum of flexibility—
On both our parts? I let you play with Simon;
You hand me out my standard three predictions.
SIMON: You’ve had your three. And one just now came true.
Today you met your mirror, as I’m sure
You gather. Sometime soon you’ll touch a corpse’s
Clay and set it throbbing on the slab,
And when, one day, as all men must, you die,
That day an innocent shall be killed.
BILL JENKS: Unless today’s the day, there’s bigger fish
To get the griddle under. Bankruptcy
For one.
SIMON: It’s coming sooner than you think.
BILL JENKS: What’s coming sooner? Bankruptcy? Or death?
SIMON: You get no more prognosticating, Jenks.
Now, do your worst. I’m all strapped in.
In whose name do you cast out spirits, Healer?
BILL JENKS: What do you mean? The usual. JC
SIMON: LIAR!
BILL JENKS: I don’t name names. I’ve got the gift.
I cast out demons in my own damn name.
—Is that what you wanted to hear? Stand back.
I’ve got the gift. It’s mine from my conception.
The powers picked me out, and since the womb
I stand above humanity and spit.
I cast out demons in my own damn name.
SIMON: I FLEE!
BILL JENKS: Don’t flee! Don’t flee! Nobody said to flee!
Come on! Have you got a message for me?
Prophesy! Gimme a tip on the market!
SIMON: JAN? JAN? DARLIN’?
BILL JENKS: Wait a minute, wait—
SIMON: Where’s Jan?
BILL JENKS: Excuse me, I was talking to—
JAN enters; DOC and STACY close behind.
SIMON: Jan? I’m cold. I’m—
JAN: Simon? Simon?
SIMON: I FLEE.
BILL JENKS: NO!
JAN: SIMON!
SIMON: JAN? I LOVE YOU—
BILL JENKS: Demon!
Come back!
SIMON: Back where?
BILL JENKS: Not yet!
JAN: Simon!
DOC: Simon?
BILL JENKS: I’m talking to the goddamn demon, Jack!
—Just a general sense of—up or down?
Buy or sell? Telephones or hot dogs?
SIMON: Jan, I’m tired. I’m thirsty. I love you, Jan.
JAN: I’m here. Simon?
SIMON: Jan. I’m cold. I’m cold.
BILL JENKS: I got a conversation going here!
STACY: Doctor? Is it Simon?
DOC: Yes, it’s Simon.
BILL JENKS: Just—back off—
DOC: It always has been Simon—
But this is Simon after a miracle.
STACY: But cool, but neat, but so je ne sais quoi!
SIMON: Stacy? Jan—? Jan—
JAN: Simon…Simon…
BILL JENKS: Everybody: Take a minute here—
JAN: Simon, have you been cold…all this time?
BILL JENKS: DEMON, DEMON, GIMME SOMETHING HOT!
BLACKOUT