Piano music drifts in from the second-story window. We are drawn back to North Philly.
RUBY: I am twenty-five.
(Into: Daphne’s Dive, five years later. The girl’s sneaker has not budged from the bar. The potted aloe thrives. A Heineken poster advertises: THROWBACK NIGHT! Wicked minor-key salsa blasts—think Ray Barretto’s “Indestructible” or Eddie Palmieri’s “Puerto Rico.”)
INEZ: You’re not gonna dance?
DAPHNE: My stomach.
INEZ: Pues, toca el güiro!
(Daphne plays a güiro while seated.)
DAPHNE: Ruby, toca el ron!
(Ruby taps a rum bottle with a spoon.)
RUBY: Pablo, toca el bongo!
(Pablo taps a bongo.)
PABLO: Rey, toca el . . . toca el penny jar!
(Rey grabs the leave-a-penny jar, shaking it.)
ACOSTA: Should we, Mami?
INEZ: Your hernia, viejo.
ACOSTA: It’s our song.
(Acosta and Inez are old-school salsa dancers—smooth and subtle. The song ends triumphantly.)
DAPHNE: Wepa!
ACOSTA: Now do that five hours straight. Man, we used to hit that dance floor!
INEZ: Ancient history.
ACOSTA: This bar is the reason we got together.
INEZ: About one Botox treatment and thirty pounds ago.
ACOSTA: Three Botoxes.
DAPHNE: I have this image of you walking through that door in hot-pink jeans and hoochie-mama stilettos.
ACOSTA: Bait and switch. She started with the orthopedic shoes the day we tied the knot.
RUBY: You guys met here?
INEZ: That was our first dance. Tell her, Papi.
ACOSTA: You never let me finish a story.
INEZ: I was very depressed. I got heavy into the spirit world, the orisha. A santero priest needed help cleaning some sacrificed chickens. So I’m alone, on a Friday night, in a ghetto kitchen defeathering chickens. Which is the dirtiest of the dirty—
REY: Oh I’ve defeathered a chicken or two.
INEZ: So in walks my friend . . . ¿como se llama?
ACOSTA: Gerónima.
PABLO: You did not have a friend named Gerónima.
INEZ: Oh yes.
RUBY: No actual person is named Gerónima.
ACOSTA: It’s the feminine version of Jeronimoooooooo!
INEZ: So she sees me and is like, “Put the chicken down. Put that chicken down!” She took me to her house, handed me some ten-dollar-store clothes and was like, “Where to, comadre?” I was like, “My sister’s new place.” You had been open, what, a month?
ACOSTA: I was sitting at Rey’s table. Wearing my pinstripe Armani.
INEZ: Like he was auditioning for Goodfellas.
ACOSTA: I had just signed the papers for the warehouse on Mascher.
INEZ: Cologne so strong my nose hair singed.
ACOSTA: Inez preferred patchouli back then.
DAPHNE: Hippie!
INEZ: Anyway, we get into a steamy fighting argument about the Equal Rights Amendment.
ACOSTA: I said come down to earth, wake up to life en el barrio.
INEZ: I said the word feminism, he stared at me with this blank look like, Huh?
DAPHNE: Yadda yadda, they get in this big fight. The room parted like the red sea. Feminists on one side, Catholics on the other. Confused people in the middle. I was like, “If one person is packing, there’s gonna be a blood bath.”
INEZ: So she kicked our asses out.
ACOSTA: She didn’t kick us out.
INEZ: Yes, Papi.
DAPHNE: I didn’t kick you out. I put on that song and was like, “Stop ruining my Friday night business.”
ACOSTA: By that time we had no choice, it was like, dance or there’s gonna be a riot. So. (Clave rhythm) Cahn-cahn, cahn-cahn-cahn. We start moving our feet and we discovered each other. I said, “You know what? This makes sense.”
INEZ: And that was the key that opened the floodgate. (Raising a shot glass) Uno, dos, tres—
ALL: Throwback!
(They all do a shot.)
RUBY: Who’s got a story about my girl Jenn?
ACOSTA: No, we’re having a good time!
PABLO (Tapping a glass): “Half a brain.”
ACOSTA: Deep cut!
PABLO: Ruby, do you remember asking, “Where can I buy half a brain? I gotta buy half a brain!”
RUBY: You guys just make stuff up about me.
PABLO: We’re all like, “Half a brain?” But you kept on about it, “Daphne wants half a brain for Christmas. I gotta buy her half a brain!”
DAPHNE: Our first holiday together.
REY: “Hey Rey, how much does half a brain cost?”
ACOSTA: “Lend me money, for half a brain.”
INEZ: “Can you get half a brain at the Cherry Hill Mall?”
DAPHNE: Bendito. Christmas morning, you opened your presents: Barbies, a scooter, Nikes. Everything you wanted. You hid behind the sofa, wouldn’t come out. I was like, “What happened, Ruby, you miss your mom? You miss your brothers and sisters?” You had asked what I wanted for Christmas and I had told you “peace of mind.”
PABLO: A “piece” of mind equals half a brain.
DAPHNE: You were torn up not getting me what I wanted.
PABLO: Uno, dos, tres—
ALL: Throwback!
(They all do a shot. Ruby does two.)
RUBY: Jenn story! Jenn story!
PABLO: No.
INEZ: Guess what I brought . . . Throwback dessert . . .
(She presents a dessert tray.)
DAPHNE: Brownies?
INEZ: Brownies plus.
PABLO: Uh-oh . . .
INEZ: Hydroponic, for the stomach pain. Rey supplied, I baked.
ACOSTA: Negra! You’re a senator’s wife!
PABLO: State senator.
ACOSTA: I wasn’t here. I didn’t see nothing.
DAPHNE: I ain’t eating one until you do.
PABLO: You’re not that important. No one gives a shit what you eat.
REY: Don’t act like you and me never shared a reefer.
DAPHNE: Yeah, back in the day? Puff puff pass.
ACOSTA: Lies, Ruby, all lies.
REY: Remember when Jenn gave Acosta psilocybin?
RUBY: Silo-whaaa?
REY: Ceremonial goodies, foraged in the wild. Not crap made out of batteries like they smoke today. Nonetheless, Acosta had a very bad trip.
ACOSTA: Shet up.
DAPHNE: Cómelo! Cómelo!
ALL: Cómelo! Cómelo!
ACOSTA: When Brownie-gate costs me the next election, and the city falls to shit, you have yourselves to blame. One, two, three—
ALL: Throwback!
(They all eat the brownies.)
INEZ (Singsong, psychedelic): Wooooo-eeeee-ooooo. Groove-ay.
ACOSTA (Confiscating Ruby’s brownie): All right, you had your nibble.
RUBY (Stumbling off to the bathroom): Whoa . . .
DAPHNE: If she makes a mess in there . . .
PABLO: High functioning is the worst kind.
DAPHNE: She’s not that high functioning.
RUBY (Returning with a tissue): Can I blow my nose? Relax.
(Daphne folds—a stomach pang.)
INEZ: Sis?
DAPHNE: One bite of brownie.
INEZ: Tengo papaya pills. Tengo ginger drops.
PABLO: Go to the doctor.
ACOSTA: This is every day.
DAPHNE: Let me breathe, people. (Cutting at the aloe) You’re looking at the only thing that works. This here is my throwback. From Inez’s garden to my bum stomach. Ya’ll knuckleheads need to learn how nasty this tastes. All right people? Prepárense. It tastes like a monkey’s ass but it’s very healing. Slurp it down quick.
(She hands out little bits of aloe.)
ACOSTA: Feels like an eyeball.
REY: No smell.
INEZ: Watch, you’ll be regular all week.
DAPHNE: One, two, three—
ALL: Throwback!
(They swallow the aloe—it’s disgusting.)
DAPHNE: Now ya’ll know!
PABLO: Rey’s turn. Rey! Rey!
DAPHNE, INEZ, ACOSTA AND RUBY: Rey! Rey!
REY: I’m here as a student of life.
DAPHNE: Come on!
REY: Pass. I just want to let the brownie sink in.
RUBY: Holy Innocents graduation. When Jenn stormed the stage!
ACOSTA: Boo! I’m not singing her no swan songs!
PABLO: I’m with Acosta.
DAPHNE: Me three. Rey, you’re up.
RUBY: Ya’ll want a story? A real story? Jonathan, my biological brother. His hips were crooked, he couldn’t walk. When I was still with my birth mom, I heard about this therapy where you bury someone up to the waist and they kick their way out. I took Jonathan to Norris Square. Pushing him in a grocery cart, burying him in the sandbox. I was ten. Other kids throwing rocks at him, yelling “retard, faggot.” But one day he kicked his way out, took a textbook step and punched me in the nose. I was smiling with a nosebleed! My first year with Mom—Daphne, Mom—every day I would beg her. “Track down Jonathan, adopt him, I’ll run away if you don’t, I’ll kill myself if you don’t.” Well, after a year of that, she was so nice about it, she sat me down real gentle and was like, “Ruby I barely have the energy for you, Ruby please stop asking about Jonathan.” I never said his name again. In fifteen years you heard me say it? Jonathan. Jonathan. The end!
I found him last year. Living with cousins in Jersey. I’m living like a queen, he’s in a duct-taped wheelchair that looks like some garbage Pablo would paint. But did I tell you about it? Did I utter the name Jonathan?
DAPHNE: You want a trophy?
(Ruby grabs Rey’s keys from the bar and exits.)
REY: Hey! Those were my keys.
PABLO: She’ll end up in a ditch.
ACOSTA: Vamos. Let’s go get her.
INEZ: Really James Bond? You’re in no shape for a chase scene.
PABLO: I’ll drive.
INEZ: You couldn’t piss in a straight line.
(Pablo runs outside.)
REY: Daphne’s the only one sober.
DAPHNE: I’m working. This is a work night.
ACOSTA: Close the goddamn bar and go get your daughter.
DAPHNE: Who needs a refill?
INEZ (Looking out): The bike is still out there.
PABLO (Reentering with keys): Look what I found.
INEZ: She’s probably walking, sobering up.
DAPHNE: You mean emptying her stomach in an alley?
PABLO: I’m going to Tony’s Place.
DAPHNE: Enjoy his pissy taps. City full of drunks. My lights’ll stay on. Go on, all of you.
REY: The one and only time I saw Acosta cry. We were installing a glass storefront up on Allegheny. Me, Acosta, some workers. And we heard, vrooooooooom. Drag racing. Neon rims, holes in the muffler, the works. Meanwhile, an old man was crossing the street, one car nailed him straight on. He must’ve flown thirty feet through the air, and he came down hard. Seven or eight cars race by, not one of ’em stopped. The guy was losing a lot of blood. Acosta sat him on the curb, sang some Spanish songs and when that old man let out his final breath? Acosta folded like the Sunday paper, saying, “See? That’s what we do to our own.” We came here. I know you remember this. I know you remember, and you. Jenn said, “We’re gonna throw that man a party!” Now Lord knows why, she had a bunch of bandannas. She said let’s hold a vigil.
INEZ: Jenn and Pablo painted all those bandannas.
PABLO: “RIP, Anonymous.”
REY: At sundown we took to the streets, waving those bandannas, Ruby with us. People coming onto their stoops, joining in, we must’ve marched till midnight. And who was at the very front, hand in hand, leading the way?
DAPHNE: Jenn and Acosta.
REY: One, two, three.
(He drinks.)