Jennifer O’Grady
Dramatic
DANITA, early 20s
DANITA is doing some sort of penance and has been assigned by a Catholic priest to help out JOSH, a sculptor, whose wife is dying of cancer.
DANITA
[To audience.]
I never understood the expression “heavenly bodies.” Because a) they’re not bodies. And b) they’re not in Heaven. Heaven is a place we can’t see. Until we get there. If we get there. If it even exists. Planets aren’t bodies, how could they be? They don’t breathe. They don’t sleep.
[Casting a glance at JOSH.]
They don’t snore. [Beat.] They don’t move in violent, unpredictable patterns. They’re sitting ducks, just waiting for some meteor to strike and shatter them. But they’re not bodies. Bodies have hands, and hands are for . . . Do you know what I keep seeing? I keep seeing his hands. I couldn’t look at him, so I focused on the hands. And the nails, they were . . . They had red stuff underneath. Like dried blood. Not clay, it couldn’t have been clay. Clay is for making things. Not tearing them down. [Pause.] I read there are things out in space called quasars. Nobody really knows what they are. I hadn’t heard of them, so I looked it up, and it said: “An extremely remote celestial object, emitting exceptionally large amounts of energy.” They look like stars. Scientists think they have black holes inside them, but that maybe they’re the beginnings of new galaxies. Imagine, a whole new galaxy in the process of being born. There’s hope in that, isn’t there? I think that’s hope.