ACT TWO
Seven A.M. Lights up on Gabriela’s kitchen. Refrigerator, sink, stove, kitchen table and chairs.
Benito, Gabriela’s husband, a Latino sergeant of twenty-nine, in full desert camouflage uniform, including web gear, stands surrounded by duffel bags.
Gabriela wears a short skirt, tank top and no shoes.
She and Benito haven’t seen each other in two months.
BENITO: Where were you?
GABRIELA: Backyard.
BENITO: What’s in the backyard?
GABRIELA: Slept there.
BENITO: Bed on fire?
GABRIELA: Just did, that’s all.
(They kiss briefly.)
BENITO: Huh. What’s the coffee situation?
GABRIELA: As you wish, master.
BENITO: Call me master a lot, I really like it.
(Gabriela makes coffee.)
GABRIELA: Lost a shitload of weight, soldier.
BENITO: God bless them MREs.
GABRIELA: And nice circles under the eyes.
BENITO: Ain’t slept in forty-eight.
GABRIELA: When are them fuckers gonna stop abusing my pretty, old man, huh?
BENITO: New deodorant? You smell weird . . .
GABRIELA: At least I don’t smell like tank fuel.
BENITO (Looking at her hair): You didn’t mention the thing, the ’do, the nest . . .
GABRIELA: I was bored. You hate it.
BENITO: Ages you—but just a little—hardly nothing!—five or six years, max!
GABRIELA (Can’t help laughing): Here’s your stupid gun.
(Gabriela hands Benito his .9-millimeter.)
BENITO: Not gun, weapon. Your gun hangs between your legs.
GABRIELA: Nothing hangs between my legs, sergeant.
(Benito eyes her up and down with great male appreciation.)
BENITO: ’Cept me. Gabby. Oh, squeezable, eatable, good to the last drop . . .
GABRIELA: Before you get all worked up, I got a question. It’s gonna sound, like, stupid, but fucking laugh, I’ll kick your ass back to Fort Irwin. Did you see the moon last night?
BENITO (Still on Gabby’s body): . . . better’n pogey bait . . .
GABRIELA: Did you see the moon last night? I really gotta know this, Benito . . .
(Gabriela looks at him like his answer will decide everything.)
BENITO: The moon? Why on earth is a working man looking at the moon for?
GABRIELA (Disappointed): ’Cause it was fucking huge, ’cause you used to . . .
BENITO: The moon wearing a dress? Jerking itself off?
(Gabriela ignores him and opens the refrigerator.)
GABRIELA: We’re outta milk.
BENITO (Thinking about it): Like maybe that’s why they call it the Milky Way. The moon whacks off and comes all over the sky and that’s how the Milky Way was born.
GABRIELA: Matter-of-fact, wiseass, that ain’t how it happened—
BENITO: No, no, please, not a lecture on . . .
GABRIELA: Fact is, the Milky Way was born outta, you know, little fluctuation thingies in space-time at the moment of the Big Bang.
BENITO: I like the way you say, “Big Bang.”
GABRIELA (Starting to leave): I’m going out, pick up some milk.
BENITO: Now?
GABRIELA: Cigarettes too, master?
BENITO: Stop calling me master, wench!
GABRIELA: Well, if you don’t wanna come into the milk container and pour that in your cof—
BENITO: What is your God-given problem? And how come there’s no milk?
GABRIELA: Christ, I’m going . . .
BENITO: What’re you doing all day? It’s the first. I’m back today. It’s been today since like forever.
GABRIELA: I use milk. It runs out. I didn’t go shopping. Why? I don’t know.
BENITO: Too busy with the lesbian hair?—
GABRIELA: Too busy boning that cute Mexican boy lives next—
BENITO: Coño, girl, you are like . . . I don’t know what . . .
GABRIELA: Yeah, well, welcome home.
BENITO: Feel welcomed too. It’s been forever since I got kissed serious or groped around here—and the first thing you want is, you see my face, you’re out the door!
(Benito goes to the refrigerator and opens it.)
An empty fridge! That’s like apocalyptic even! Ice cube trays full of sand. Not even a beer.
GABRIELA: Don’t check the cabinets.
(Benito checks the cabinets. They’re full of:)
BENITO: Catfood. Catfood. Catfood. What? You mad at me or something? Mad at little old Benito for something he ain’t got clue one what he done?
GABRIELA: Not exactly mad and learn English, please.
BENITO: “Not exactly mad”? Now that strikes terror. Oye.
We’re starting over. Restarting the clock back.
(Benito exits the kitchen and reenters.)
BENITO: Hi, honey, I’m home! Back from the field. From two hundred cancer-making degrees. From boredom so perfect and rare it lacks a name. From nothing good to look at but the backsides of doorknobs with their thumb up their ass. Farm boys so interbred they can’t tell a M-16 from the gun between their legs.
GABRIELA (Can’t help laughing): Why are soldiers such children?
BENITO: Better haul that face over here, coño!
(Benito grabs Gabriela and kisses her. This kiss evolves rapidly and they’re all over each other.
Benito tries to unzip her skirt and take off his clothes during the following.)
GABRIELA: For a guy who ain’t slept in forty-eight hours—
BENITO (Taking off his shirt): Missed you like a sad broken son of a bitch.
GABRIELA (Kissing him): You taste so good, damn you, Negro . . . and I’m sorry I’m the dragon lady from hell, but I got—Benito—when I’m sleeping, I get these—what are you doing?
BENITO (Stripping fast): Thought since you ain’t seen a man in two months, you’d like to see what a man looks like.
GABRIELA: I think I’m getting my period.
BENITO: Hey, I’m liberal. Anyway, you think I’m afraid of a little blood?
GABRIELA: Like living with the author of the Song of Songs, I swear.
BENITO (Working her zipper): You call Costco . . . ?
GABRIELA: Just give me a minute to catch my breath . . .
BENITO (Working her zipper): . . . tell ’em you’re out sick today? . . .
GABRIELA: Maybe let’s get to know each other first?
BENITO (Working her zipper): Why?
GABRIELA: Pull that zipper any lower and I’m yelling rape.
BENITO (Thinks it’s a joke): You’re so funny.
GABRIELA: Benito I’m fuckin’ not fucking with you!
(Gabriela pulls away, pulling up her zipper, shaking, fighting for control.
Benito looks at her for a cold, long moment.)
BENITO: I walked into some other dude’s nightmare, hija, ’cause you ain’t you.
(Benito collects his gear and starts to leave.)
GABRIELA: You know the cat’s missing?
(Benito stops, turns to her.)
BENITO: When I’m home from the field we leave words and other debris at the door, then close the motherfucking door.
GABRIELA: Did you hear what I said about the cat?
BENITO: Ain’t the pussy I’m interested in right now . . .
GABRIELA: Ay, Dios, man, God, shit: go play with yourself!
BENITO: Is it my fault you got the Ass of Heaven?
GABRIELA: How many ways I gotta tell you I’m not some strip-artist whore-bitch you picked up in some German night club?—
BENITO: Then don’t wear that skirt!
GABRIELA: Clawing at me like I’m a piece of twenty-five-dollar street trash—
BENITO: You know where I can get it for twenty-five? Damn, point the way, girl!
GABRIELA: And it’s hot. I wear this ’cause we live in Barstow and it’s July?
BENITO: Okay, nena, that was a joke, I will not claw you, I will respect you, ’cause you are the farthest thing on earth from a twenty-five-dollar-German-whore-bitch-street-bitch-German-thing, really, I tell you the God’s honest.
GABRIELA: You know you get crazy-insane when you’re impatient?
BENITO: I’m human and male—so fuck me.
GABRIELA: You wanna hear about the cat or not?
BENITO: Bet half the company’s in bed with their old ladies.
GABRIELA: Their old ladies are sex slaves and I’m not.
BENITO: My bad luck!
(Gabriela cleans obsessively: washing dishes, wiping down countertops, etc.)
GABRIELA: I got home last night in a great mood. Had a great class. The kind that makes your mind go fucking ballistic. You wanna know why?
BENITO: No, no, please don’t tell me about your . . .
GABRIELA: We watch the night sky, what do we see? Billions of galaxies right? But now we think all those galaxies don’t really exist . . .
BENITO: We do?
GABRIELA: ’Cause in space, light gets twisted... ’cause gravity bends it all up . . . so looking at space is like looking through thousands of mirrors reflecting the same handful of galaxies over and over and over and over. That fucking wild or what? The universe is an optical illusion. And it’s lonelier than we ever thought.
BENITO: This kitchen’s proof of that . . .
GABRIELA: So anyway, I got home from school, I call her, nothing. Then all night I’m hearing coyotes setting up camp under my window, whole posses, like, I don’t know, like, like . . .
BENITO: How come with you everything’s gotta be like something else? Why can’t shit just be what it is with you?
GABRIELA (Ignoring him): . . . like they opened up an asylum full of coyotes and they all parked their crazy asses in my backyard—howling like they’re getting stabbed by the moonlight.
BENITO: Oh, that’s clear, thank you.
GABRIELA: I think they ate my cat. One you gave me for my birthday?
BENITO: Maybe I’ll get that milk—
GABRIELA: The cat’s devoured. Mind’s all like—Christ no!—thinking of her maimed to death by wild animals chewing her flesh. And I think it’s gotta mean something, Benito. Like the Buddha says: there’s no coincidences.
BENITO: The Buddha?
GABRIELA: I decided that life is fulla signals that teach you shit. And I’ve been blind like I didn’t wanna know. So I’m thinking that something like this doesn’t happen for no reason, the cat, and I’m pondering: what other signs of important things have I been missing lately? You know. About us. And shit that’s going on.
BENITO (Making a shopping list): Beer, milk, bullshit remover, strap-ons—oops, scratch the—
GABRIELA: Benito—for crying—sometimes I think you work overtime not to hear me! Unlike you, for months I got no one to share shit with—and now, without the cat, it’s even lonelier here . . .
BENITO: Loneliness is your choice, nena.
GABRIELA: No one sane chooses this.
BENITO: If you didn’t look down on all my buds and their wives who tried hard to make friends with you and found it impossible.
GABRIELA: Those Barbie dolls your buddies are saddled with? Those wooden pieces of perpetual blow-job machines?
BENITO: This language is offensive. Period.
GABRIELA: I tried making friends. But it’s a scientific fact: the brain can only gossip ’bout soap operas for so long before it starts to puke on itself. Or else we’re in prayer meetings trashing queers and blacks or we’re sitting around with cucumbers in our mouths, practicing blow jobs.
BENITO: You were getting a valuable lesson!
GABRIELA: ¡Coño! Everything’s a joke to you! You don’t listen ! Meanwhile, I’m the one stuck in the desert and it’s like, like . . .
BENITO: Wait, I’ll do it. It’s like . . . a nuclear beast ate up the whole world with all its flaming teeth, and left nothing but the deep-fried leftovers in the Tupperware of Human Shit.
GABRIELA: Not even close. You don’t see it like a civilian does. Like I do—all fulla scars and bomb craters. Fucking ugly cactus closing in on you. I’m a tropical woman, Benny, I’m not used to this.
BENITO: Grand Concourse ain’t tropical.
GABRIELA: This stupid desert fools you. You think it’s safe. Think you can lie on the ground and stare at the moon.
BENITO: Ay, this moon crap again. All the moon is is future landfill, Gab.
GABRIELA: Shakespeare didn’t think so. He called it inconstant.
BENITO: And I care!
GABRIELA: Stupid you: you go out in the desert and coyotes jump your ass and eat you. The sun bakes you. The night-cold freezes blood. The bigness of it scares your heart and makes it stop. Okay—so then you don’t go outside. You’re stuck inside—over at the friggin’ Costco or the commissary on post or a sorry-ass movie in Victorville with the Barbie dolls. But strangers in the dark air-conditioning make you feel small and stupid. Couples with their fancy fingers all inside each other’s pants remind you your old man’s not around. On the movie screen is life all full of big blood and sex and people making perfect funny jokes every time. Like to remind you nobody really laughs in your world when you’re alone. And that’s what my life has been like, Benito, okay? And you know what? It really sucks! It’s really a shitty thing to do to a person! BE
NITO: So what are you telling me? Tell me what you’re telling me and stop telling me the other shit you’re not telling me.
GABRIELA: They stick you in a war. I don’t see you for a year. I finally get you home minutes, it feels like, not enough time to take your temperature, get used to your smell or know why you cry in your sleep—boom!—we’re shipped to the desert and you’re off to the field again!
BENITO: This is my job we’re talking about, right? What are you saying about my job?
GABRIELA: I’m saying fuck your job, okay?
BENITO: That’s telling me something. I’m telling you—not to worry about the desert, in a year it’s Germany.
GABRIELA: Oh, that’s a step up. That’s the highway to self-respect.
BENITO: Well, what am I supposed to do?! Will you tell me that?! Dammit to fucking hell on earth, Gabriela!
GABRIELA: Don’t yell at—
BENITO: I am in the—what? Let’s read aloud the little tag here on my . . . sez—ARMY! I am in the army. In the army you travel. That’s what the army is, homegirl! A great motherfucker of a travel agency. And they don’t recommend all nice and sweat-free: they order you! One year it’s Germany where the whole country is full of Germans, and I’m sorry but we tried to get rid of the Germans, but dammit, the Germans didn’t want to go! Then the next year it’s the desert. Oh, the desert’s hot! It’s boring! Full o’ vermin! The army wives never finished preschool. I hate the blow-job lessons! But in case you didn’t notice, your car runs on oil and there’s this place where oil comes from and everybody wants a piece of that sucker but if you want anything on God’s goofy earth you gotta display the size of your cojones, and oh my God, the Middle East is in a desert!
GABRIELA: I know where the damn—
BENITO (On a roll): We train soldiers in the art of desert warfare—where? —in the desert! ¡Ay Dios mio! I go out to the field for months at a time—why?—’cause they pay my ass! I don’t like it. I don’t want it. But I didn’t feel like cutting pineapple the rest of my life in some Puerto Rican Plantation of Death. I told you I’m staying in the army twenty years and retiring at the ripe old age of thirty-eight, pocket a full pension and never for a second sweat the money shit for as long as I have life, as long as we have life, never. Told you that our first date, running out of that bar with skinheads chasing us. I got nine years left on the meter, Gabby. More than half the way there. So the next nine years, nena, is Germany or the desert, Germany or the desert, snow or sand, Nazis or knuckleheads, back and forth like that assuming war don’t break out and I’m not protecting goatherders in Somalia! That’s the trip you signed on to take. Are there any questions, private?
GABRIELA: No sir, master, sir.
(Gabriela pours all the coffee she made down the sink.)
BENITO: You gotta stop acting like you know more than everybody. Like the Buddha says: it’s a turn off.
GABRIELA: Oh, fuck it—now we’re just talking in and out of the same three sentences—as if, like, more words means more communicating. Ain’t that a joke? I’m going for that milk.
(Gabriela goes for her car keys.)
BENITO: You think you’re the only one. You got no clue of my life’s insanity out there—’cause I make this army shit look easy. Look graceful. That’s why you don’t know jack how fucked it is for me.
GABRIELA: Christ, the man can’t stop yapping . . .
BENITO: The last month in the field, for me, I got my ass stuck in Star Wars, Gabby, okay? That’s where I was. Inside. Behind a desk. In front of a computer screen watching the grunts and gun bunnies go through their mock battles and combat simulations. I went outta my mind. I’m going to the captain, going, sir, if I’m gonna play GI Joe I wanna be in an M1A1 or jumping out of a chopper or blowing expensive stuff up, not in a goddamn building with air-conditioning. But no. Captain rules. So I’m doing Star Wars now.
GABRIELA: That’s cause for bitching? You’re sitting in air-conditioning! It’s the middle of the Mojave!
BENITO: Gabriela, I don’t wanna sit. Sitting is for officers. For points. A man does not sit when he works.
GABRIELA: Yeah, but, think—you could—maybe there’s training here you can pick up, you know, learn a, you know...
BENITO: Skill? That I can use in the “real world”?
GABRIELA: It saves on your body, you don’t gotta wreck yourself . . .
BENITO: Just waste away like some puke college professor—
GABRIELA: I just think you could be better than some common foot soldier—
BENITO: I am no common anything, okay?
GABRIELA: But maybe the captain—
BENITO: What? Wants to get his prep school lips around my joint? He pulled me out of a line of men. This has nothing to do with me at all.
GABRIELA: So what are you afraid of?
BENITO: Go shoot yourself.
GABRIELA: No, I’m asking you something—
BENITO: No, no, no, no. I know how the mind is working now, it’s so obvious, Gabby, c’mon: “Benito hates to use his brain. Benito don’t know a good thing when it’s staring straight into his baboon face!” You know what I turned into out there? A man watching other men work. Then I had to write a “narrative description” of all the things the men did while they worked. So I’m in front of a half-billion dollars of pure high-tech and with two little chopstick fingers I take a half-hour to type out three sentences and I can’t spell half the words I have to write. That’s my job.
GABRIELA: But nobody shot at you, did they?
(Benito throws his arms in the air and sits at a kitchen chair, his back to Gabriela.)
BENITO: What did I do? What did I do? Huh? I just want you to take your top off!
GABRIELA (Sarcastic): Stop, you’re getting me so horny.
BENITO: Damn, I’m, like, out there, in no-man’s-land, pretending to have war except all the hardware is more real than me, but the conflict is a game, it’s fiction, and that’s my job, and I come home to you, all beautiful, like what you see after death and the angels greet you in the morning, and you hope, you know, God allows sex with the angels in Heaven maybe once in a while if you’re extra good around Christmas, but everything between us is real war, honey, and it’s getting old real fast, baby, I’m telling you.
(Benito closes his eyes.)
GABRIELA: Tell you what I don’t get, Negro. How, like, a feeling, which is made of nothing, can burn a hole in your stomach . . . or make a lump in your throat heavy as a man. A lump you wake up with . . . and stays with you until you go to bed . . .
BENITO (Eyes closed): Enough. I just got back from the field. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. It’s your usual freak-out when I come home.
GABRIELA: But it’s the first time you were in the field since the war and I’m like all outta practice being your wife . . .
BENITO (Eyes still closed, sleepy): . . . we’ll get over it, like we always . . .
GABRIELA: . . . and I’m having dreams every single night and all of them want me to test you . . .
BENITO (About to fall asleep): Stop. Just stop with that. Don’t tell me no more about dreams . . .
(Silence. Benito falls asleep in the chair. Gabriela takes off his boots.)
GABRIELA: Jesus, I forget how much space you take up. Soon you’ll be leaving pubes on the tile. And, like, if I think things now—am I gonna know which thoughts are mine’cause they’re mine, or they’re mine ’cause you put them there . . .
(Martín enters holding a large cardboard box.)
MARTÍN: Where’s my reward, woman?
(Gabriela sees her cat inside the box.)
GABRIELA (To Cat): I was ready to call the fucking morgues for you!
MARTÍN: Found her surrounded by coyotes all salivating and doing the humpy motion with their torsos. She was next to a cat skeleton. We think it’s the remains of Pinky Garcia.
GABRIELA (To Cat): Better not catch no rabies, you!
MARTÍN: Looks like she got some animal-on-animal last night.
GABRIELA (To Cat): Good thing you’re fixed. I don’t feel like raising a bunch of mutant coyote-cats.
MARTÍN (Motioning toward Benito): No one’s worried about the noise level?
GABRIELA: He’ll sleep for seven straight, I swear, days.
(Gabriela puts the Cat in another room.)
MARTÍN: I’m going to the store, you want anything?
(Gabriela gives Martín money.)
GABRIELA: Ten for the cat rescue. Now go.
MARTÍN: You saying you don’t want me around no more?
GABRIELA: I’m saying my old man’s back from the field and has a limited sense of humor when it comes to who he thinks wants to fuck me.
MARTÍN: Wow, that sounds so sexual.
GABRIELA: How do you even know concepts of the human body?
MARTÍN: I’m only saying I know you want babies. I’m old enough to get you pregnant.
GABRIELA: In your fantasy world.
MARTÍN: In biology world, mujer.
GABRIELA: Just hope your dick’s not a small as your brain!
MARTÍN: That’s so mean!
GABRIELA: Look, fine, we had some fun, playing touch football, whatever. But recess time is over, the bell rang, junior, time to get on the school bus and go home.
MARTÍN: I’m growing pecs.
GABRIELA: My man is back and he’s got rules and regulations.
MARTÍN: I wouldn’t ask you to serve me. I can wash my own ropa. I would bring you hot huevos in the morning. Read the periodico to you. Put your pelo up in bobby pins. Keep your piso waxed. Your cocina full of canned creamy soup and Cocoa Puffs. Okay, nena?
GABRIELA: Out, please.
MARTÍN: I don’t need to be big and strong. I can handle your nightmares if you tell them to me. I love a house full of singing and fresh desert air. I’ll even tolerate your cat. Don’t answer right away, Gabby. But think about it.
GABRIELA: You’re fourteen.
MARTÍN: Can I see it?
GABRIELA: No.
(She pushes him out the door.)
MARTÍN:I saw you sleeping in the backyard again. I know this isn’t paradise, Gabby. Hey—wasn’t that a great fucking moon last night?
(Martín gives Gabriela a kiss on the cheek and goes.
Gabriela looks at Benito for a long moment, watching him sleep. She sits cross-legged on the floor, facing him. She takes off her top, exposing herself to Benito, who continues to sleep.)
BENITO(In his sleep): Gabby’s having dreams...
GABRIELA: ... her dreams are full of broken moonlight, Benito . . . her dreams are full of moist sex and the dirty smell of sweat . . . her dreams level civilizations and make them grateful for chaos and heavy breathing and whirlwinds . . .
BENITO: . . . Gabby’s having awful dreams . . .
(Gabriela holds herself, trying hard to keep from crying, as Benito sleeps. The lights fade to black.)