And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens … was first performed by the Shakespeare Theatre on April 22, 2004, at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. It was directed by Michael Kahn; the set design was by Andrew Jackness; the costume design was by Catherine Zuber; the lighting design was by Howell Binkley; the sound design was by Martin Desjardins; and original music was composed by Adam Wernick. The cast, in order of appearance, was as follows:
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CANDY DELANEY |
Cameron Folmar |
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KARL |
Myk Watford |
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ALVIN KRENNING |
Hunter Gilmore |
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JERRY JOHNSON |
Brian McMonagle |
Scene: The beginning of Mardi Gras weekend in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The curtain rises on a living-room lighted by the soft blue dusk of a Southern spring, coming through French doors open upon a patio which is a tiny replica of a Japanese garden: fish-pool, fountain, weeping willow and even a short arched bridge with paper lanterns. The interior is also Japanese, or pseudo-Japanese, with bamboo furniture, very low tables, grass-mats, polished white or pale blue porcelain bowls and vases containing artificial dogwood or cherry blossoms and log silver stems of pussy-willow, everything very delicate and pastel. A curtain of beads or bamboo separates a small bedroom, upstage. A mechanical piano plays “Poor Butterfly,” off-key, till the entrance of Candy, a New Orleans “queen” uncomfortably close to his thirty-fifth birthday with the sort of face that can never look adult, a grace and slimness that will always suggest a girlish young boy. The effeminacy of Candy is too natural, too innate, to require expression in mannerisms or voice: the part should be played without caricature.
Before Candy enters, as the piano expires, we hear a key’s nervous scratch: then Candy’s breathless voice—
CANDY [offstage]: I can never work a door key! No matter how long I occupy an apartment I still have trouble with door keys.
[The door opens. Candy enters followed by a big, young merchant seaman, Karl.]
CANDY: Come in, come on in!
KARL [with suspicion]: What’s this?
CANDY: My apartment.
KARL: It looks like a chop suey joint.
CANDY: I did it all over this Spring in a sort of Japanese style. I want you to take a look at the patio first so I can close the doors and discourage a call from my tenants. I have tenants upstairs, a very nice pair of boys from Alabama. But whenever I entertain they have a way of dropping down uninvited, if you know what I mean. They make themselves a little too much at home here.
KARL: You own this place?
CANDY [fast, excited]: Yes, I own three pieces of property in the Quarter, this one and two others, all in good locations, rental property. The one on Chartres has six rental units including the slave-quarters and the one on Dumaine, four units: entire slave-quarters occupied by one tenant: a real show-place, I’ll show it to you right after Mass tomorrow. Mr. Frazier, the tenant’s in Biloxi, spends every week-end there. [Winks.] Has a friend at the air-base. And then, of course, I have my shop on Saint Charles just a block from Lee Circle, on this side of Lee Circle, a half hour’s walk each way but very good for my figure. [Laughs.] Take a look at my lovely patio, Karl.
KARL: I can see it from here.
CANDY: Well, we’ll slip out later: the air’s such a lovely soft blue, like a—Luna moth’s wing. Just step outside for one moment.
[Karl ambles out.]
CANDY: Don’t talk out loud, just whisper—or my tenants will come flying downstairs, especially if they see you …
KARL: You mentioned a shop? You said you got a shop?
CANDY: Oh, yes.
KARL: What shop?
CANDY: Interior decorating. I told you. You don’t remember?
KARL: No. I forgot.
CANDY: I had a business partner till just lately, a very nice older man who used to be my sponsor. We had a beautiful relationship for seventeen years. He brought me out in Atlanta, that long ago. I’ve had a very protected life till lately. [Darts back in.] Here he is, this is him. [Snatches up a framed photo.] Left his wife for me, sold out his business in Atlanta and we moved here in the war-years when I was eighteen, and he set me up in this shop and made me his partner in it. Well, nothing lasts forever. You dream that it will but it don’t—I’ll shut these doors so my tenants don’t come flying down, now … [He shuts the patio doors.] No, nothing goes on forever. I worshipped Sidney Korngold. I never even noticed that he got heavy …. But Sidney had the aging man’s weakness for youth …. I understood. I didn’t even resent it—oh, I had a nervous collapse when he left but I didn’t reproach him for it, I put no financial obstacles in his way, I made no demands, I said, I said to him: “Sid? Whatever makes you happy is what I want for you, daddy …” [He sets the framed photo down with a lost look.] —If my tenants come down to the door, don’t make a sound till they go.
KARL: Girls?
CANDY: Women? Oh, no, I’d never rent to women again in my life, they’re not only very slow payers, they’re messy and destructive. No. These tenants are a pair of boys from Alabama: young queens, of course. I’d never consider renting to anyone else. Queens make wonderful tenants, take excellent care of the place, sometimes improve it for you. They are great home-lovers and have creative ideas. They set the styles and create the taste for the country. Don’t you know that?
KARL: No.
CANDY: Just imagine this country without queens in it. It would be absolutely barbaric. Look at the homes of normal married couples. No originality: modern mixed with period, everything bunched around a big TV set in the parlor. Mediocrity is the passion among them. Conformity. Convention. Now I know the faults of queens, nobody knows the faults of queens better than I do.
KARL: Queens?
CANDY: What?
KARL: Are you queer?
CANDY: —Baby, are you kidding?!!
KARL: How about answering the question?
CANDY: Oh, now, really!
KARL: Huh?
CANDY: I thought that was understood in the first five minutes’ talk we had in the bar.
KARL: You think I would be here if I’d thought you was a queer?
CANDY: Karl, I like you. I like you and I admire you. But really …
KARL: Really what?
CANDY: You can’t expect me to seriously believe that a man who has been shipping in and out of New Orleans for five years is still not able to recognize a queen in a gay bar.
KARL: I don’t go with queers.
CANDY: I know you don’t. I’ll tell you something. This is not the first time I have seen you. I mean this night. I have been noticing you off and on, here and there, ever since you started shipping out of this city. But up till lately I led a different life. I told you about my husband. When he broke with the normal world and took up with me as my sponsor, eighteen years ago, he changed his name. You wouldn’t think it possible for any man to undergo such a complete transformation, new name, new life, new tastes and habits, even a new appearance. [Turns his attention to the photo again.] I mean he—ha ha!—not an old picture, either. Taken two years ago, slightly less. When he turned fifty. Remarkable? Would you guess it? Doesn’t he look a fast thirty? I gave that man a new lease on life. I swear that when he started going with me in Atlanta, Georgia, he was a nondescript person, already a middle-aged one! Well … I never cheated on him. I’m the monogamous type. He did the cheating. And I was so trustful I didn’t suspect it till after it had been going on for years …— Well, change is the heart of existence. I hold no grudge against him. We broke things off in a very dignified way. We had a joint bank account. I bought out his share of the business with my half of the money and he is now in Houston with his new chick, starting all over again, and I wish him luck with it. However he’s picked a wrong one. But infatuation is even blinder than love. Specially when the victim is at the dangerous age like he is…[Returns photograph to the bureau.] —Well, he’ll wake up soon and realize that he let a good thing go for one that’s basically rotten. Just younger … Are you lookin’ fo’ somethin’?
KARL: Ain’t you got something to drink?
CANDY: I’ve got just about the best-stocked liquor cabinet in the French Quarter, baby.
KARL: Now you’re talkin’.
CANDY: I don’t entertain very often but when I do, it’s done well. You can depend on that. Let’s see, you were drinkin’ blended whiskey.
KARL: Never mind what I was drinkin’. I can switch without effort.
CANDY: Want something exotic?
KARL: Such as what, huh?
CANDY: Well, now, I could make you a Pimm’s Cup number one, with a dash of Pernod, and cucumber slices and all. I could make you a golden dawn which is a pineapple rum drink. I could make you a—
KARL: How ‘bout just pouring me a healthy shot of old Grandad.
CANDY: Now you’re talkin’, that’s the way to talk. In a little while now, when I hear my tenants go out for their nightly cruise, we’ll adjourn to the patio. It will be magical then, blue dusk. I have a Hi-Fi with a speaker in the garden and in the middle of my fishpool is an island with a willow that makes a complete curtain, an absolutely private retreat from the world except for a few little glimpses of sky now and then …
KARL: You sure do go in for fancy talk, Bud.
CANDY [laughing]: Yes, I do, but y’know it’s natural to me. I ornament the language so to speak. I used to write poetry once. Still do sometimes when I’m feeling sentimental.
KARL: Ain’t you drinkin’?
CANDY: No. I never drink.
KARL: Why’s that?
CANDY: Would you guess I have a weight problem?
KARL: You look thin to me.
CANDY: Thank you. I am.
KARL: Then why have you got a weight problem?
CANDY: Because I must starve myself to keep my figure. No calorie goes uncounted.
KARL: Jesus! —You’re a card.
CANDY: The joker in the deck?
KARL: —Naw. —The queen …
CANDY: I like you very much. I feel safe with you.
KARL: That’s a mistake. Nobody’s safe around me when I’m liquored up.
CANDY: I think I would be. I think you like me, too.
KARL: You’re going to be disappointed.
CANDY: I don’t think so.
KARL: You’re not going to get what you’re after.
CANDY: How do you know what I’m after?
KARL: You’re different, but not that different. You want to be laid, and you won’t be, not by me.
CANDY: You see? You’ve misunderstood me, it’s happened already, just as it always does. I’d love to have anything at all between us but I would be just as happy with your true friendship, true and lasting, as with a mutual thing between us in bed. That’s true. I would. I swear it.
KARL: Then you’re different all right.
[During this or his next long speech, Candy goes through the bamboo curtain into the bed area.]
CANDY: Yes, I told you I was. I’m going to tell you something which you may think is a lie. You are only the second man in my life. The first was Mr. Sidney Korngold. He brought me out in Atlanta. When I was a chicken. Just as dumb as they come, knew there was something wrong with me but not I was queer. This man stopped me on Peachtree Street in Atlanta and asked me if I was a girl or a boy. He thought that I was a girl in boy’s clothes. I told him that I was a boy, indignantly. He said, “Come home with me.” However he didn’t take me to his home. Mr. Korngold was a respectable married man with two kiddies. However he had this double life downtown. He took me to a suite in a hotel. Which he kept under a different name. Opened a closet containing girl’s clothes and wigs. Told me to get into something. I did, including the wig. And he seduced me …
KARL: Yeah?
CANDY: What he didn’t know: his wife had put a tail on him, a private dick. She sued him for a divorce, naming me as the correspondent. It was not a public trial, to keep it private he had to sell his business and give this woman everything that he owned. We left Atlanta together. He was my sponsor. He put me up in business, I already had a talent for decorating. I felt obliged to make good, and I did, I made good. This was eighteen years ago. We remained together for seventeen years. Only last year we broke up. I discovered that he’d been cheating on me in spite of the fact that I’d been completely faithful. It broke my heart. I have pride. I bought out his share in the business with my half of our joint bank account and started from scratch on my own. He went to Texas with his new chick. People follow set patterns. Over and over. Haven’t you noticed they do?
KARL: —What’re you doing in there?
CANDY: Changing clothes. And sex. [He emerges in drag.] I am a transvestite. Here I am.
KARL: —Are you crazy?
CANDY: No. Just very abnormal I guess.
KARL: Well, I got to admit—
CANDY: —What?
KARL: You’re as much like a woman as any real one I seen.
CANDY: Thank you. That’s the object.
KARL: Sure you’re not one?
CANDY: Want me to show you?
KARL: No.
CANDY: How is your drink, does it need freshening, yet?
KARL: Yeah. I’m a very heavy drinker.
CANDY: You’ll notice I’m being very feminine now in my talk and my mannerisms as well as appearance. Isn’t that what you want?
KARL: You do this often?
CANDY: Often when I’m alone. In fact usually when I’m alone, when I come in at night, I put on my hair and slip in a fresh negligée. I have ten of them in all the rainbow colors, some of them worth a small fortune. Ha ha, not a small fortune, I mean a hundred or two …
KARL: You must be loaded.
CANDY: Rich? No, just well off. My life expectancy isn’t a long one and I see no reason to put aside much for the so-called rainy day.
KARL: You’re sick?
CANDY: Haven’t you noticed how short-winded I am? I have a congenital heart. I mean a congenital defect of the heart. A leakage that gradually leaks more. It’s just as well. I won’t look pretty much longer, even in ‘drag’…. One of my upstairs tenants, the younger one, is a poet. Let me read you a poem he wrote about queers which I think is lovely, not great, no, but lovely. [Produces and reads lyric.]
I think the strange, the crazed, the queer
will have their holiday this year,
I think, for just a little while,There will be pity for the wild.
I think in places known as gay,
In special little clubs and bars,
Pierrot will serenade pierrotwith frantic drums and sad guitars.
I think for some uncertain reason
mercy will be shown this season
To the lovely and misfit,To the brilliant and deformed.
I think they will be housed and warmed
and fed and comforted a while,
Before, with such a tender smile,
The earth destroys her crooked child.
—That’s it. It’s dedicated to me, just to my initials, it’s going to come out in a little mag soon. He’s the nicer of my upstairs tenants. They occupy the slave quarters. When they go out I will show you their place because it’s one of my best interiors, and very ingenious in the use of small space, only two rooms and a—You look unhappy! Why?
KARL: Do you know any women?
CANDY: Won’t I do?
KARL: No, I don’t go this route.
CANDY: I told you, I just want friendship. I’m terribly lonely. Just to have the company of someone I find so attractive, to entertain him, amuse him, is all that I ask for! Really!
KARL: You’re a new one, but the pitch is familiar.
CANDY: I don’t deny for a moment that if you suddenly sprang up and seized me in your arms! —I wouldn’t resist …
KARL: You’re barking up the wrong tree, in the wrong woods, in the wrong country.
CANDY: I only said if you did. I didn’t imply it was probable that you would. I didn’t even imply that it was—likely … You like some music?
KARL: Yeah, turn on some music.
CANDY: What’s your preference in music, popular or classic or—what do you like?
KARL: —I don’t care, anything …
CANDY [reading an album title]: Waltzing with Wayne King.
KARL: Good.
CANDY [after the music begins]: —I’m told I follow divinely. Shall we dance?
KARL: No.
CANDY: Why? Why not? Come on!
KARL: You look like a girl but I can’t forget you’re not one.
CANDY: You will when you start dancing with me. Are you afraid to?
KARL: Oh, well … [Rises and dances with her.]
CANDY: Oh, oh, oh …
KARL: You sure can follow okay.
CANDY: Doin’ what comes naturally!
KARL [quitting]: I can’t. I just can’t. Ha ha! —It seems too—
CANDY: Too what, honey?
KARL: —unnatural—not right. —I’d better go.
CANDY: OH, NO!—NO!!
KARL: Yeah, I think so.
CANDY: Don’t be so conventional and inhibited, why, what for!? You force me to bring up a matter which is always embarrassing. Are you hard up for money?
KARL: I got a few dollars on me.
CANDY: That’s not enough for a Mardi Gras weekend, baby.
KARL: Oh, I’ll make out. I’ll probably meet some dame over forty or fifty at Pat’s or somewhere. Maybe even a B-girl who’ll take my tab, and—
CANDY: She wouldn’t be pretty as I am.
KARL: She’d be female.
CANDY: But would she offer you all?
KARL: What’s all?
CANDY: All that I’ve got to offer. This lovely place at your disposal now and always. Unlimited credit at every bar in the quarter. Cash, too. A pocketful of it. And more where that pocketful came from. And no strings, Karl. Your freedom.
KARL: I want a woman tonight, having been at sea for six weeks.
CANDY: I can fix that too.
KARL: How?
CANDY: Most of my close friends are women, and all are attractive.
KARL: You mean you can fix me up with a good looking girl?
CANDY: Easy as pie.
KARL: What would you get out of it? What would you want for all this?
CANDY: Just your companionship, later. When you come home.
KARL: My home in this town is a bed at the Salvation Army dormitory on Rampart.
CANDY: This is your home, if you’ll take it.
KARL: I like to pay my own way unless I am giving something. I’m not giving nothing to you.
CANDY: You’d come home drunk. Fall in bed. I would take your shoes off, just your shoes, and blissfully fall asleep with your hand in mine.
KARL: For Christ’s sake.
CANDY: No, for mine!
KARL: You’re crazy. I’m going now.
CANDY: You don’t believe I could fix you up with a girl who would be everything that you dream of?
KARL: It’s all part of a plot. I just want some money from you. You can have what you want, now, for ten dollars. Let’s get it over with, huh?
CANDY: But what I told you I wanted is what I want.
KARL: It’s all you’d get.
CANDY: I know it.
KARL: And it would cost you twenty.
CANDY: Twenty’s nothing. Give me your empty wallet.
[He does. She removes bills from a teapot and puts them in his wallet. She puts the wallet in his pocket. He takes it out and carefully counts the bills. She has given him fifty dollars. He grunts. She has picked up the phone and dialed a number. She gets a response.]
CANDY [into the receiver]: I want to speak to Helene.
KARL: Who’s Helene?
CANDY: Stripper at the Dragon.
KARL: You mean really one of those strip-teasing dolls?
CANDY: Wait and see, I deliver! Helene? Candy! How are you? How about coming over between shows, honey? There’s someone here you’ll adore. Six foot two, eyes of blue, magnificent, young, and loaded! — Sure. — How much? — It’s a deal.
KARL: How much!
CANDY [covering phone]: On me! [Uncovers phone.] How soon? [Turns to Karl.] Nine-thirty. Okay?
KARL: That’s three hours from now.
CANDY: You need to shave and shower and catch forty winks, while I prepare a shrimp curry such as you’ve never tasted. What have you got to lose?
KARL: All right. But just don’t—
CANDY [into phone]: Fine, honey. I’ll expect you. [She hangs up, walks to the shutter doors, and throws them open on the transparent blue dusk of the Japanese patio-garden.] Now is the hour, just now, to go in my garden!
KARL: This is the queerest deal I ever got into. What I want is another shot of that bourbon.
CANDY: Go in the garden. Cross the fishpool on the Japanese bridge. Sit down on the little Eighteenth century bench beneath the willow. Spring has come, this is the first evening of it! I’m going to put on my chiffon! Before you’ve counted to fifty, I’ll bring you a drink.
KARL: Remember that you’ll get nothing.
CANDY: Getting nothing is something I never forget.
[Karl nods and goes out.]
KARL: —Is this thing safe to walk on?
CANDY: Strong as steel! Guaranteed!
KARL: —Well, if it breaks, it won’t be the only thing that breaks around here.
CANDY: Ha ha ha!
KARL [on the bridge]: It’s creaking. [He completes crossing.] Well, I made it. Hurry up with the drink.
CANDY: Start counting. [She has started changing into a long, pale yellow chiffon.] Before you get to fifty I’ll—
[Knock at door.]
CANDY: —Who’s there?
ALVIN’S VOICE AT THE DOOR: Krenning.
CANDY: Go away, Krenning. [Catches her breath.] I’m not alone tonight!
ALVIN [outside the door]: Are you safe?
CANDY: Perfectly.
ALVIN: Sure?
CANDY: Certain!
ALVIN: Jerry saw him come in. He says he’s dirt.
CANDY: Tell that jealous bitch to mind her own little business for a change!
ALVIN: He says he’s the one that broke Tiny Henderson’s jaw which is still wired together.
CANDY: Tell her I appreciate her concern but I am not Henderson and I am not with dirt. You all cruise every night and bring home trick after trick which I put up with despite the chance I’m taking of a terrible scandal. This is the first person I’ve brought into my house since I broke up with my husband! Go away! Go away! —I’m with someone I love!
ALVIN: —Good luck.
CANDY: —Go away! [She pours bourbon and goes out to the garden.]
[The lights dim. A splash is heard, followed by continual cursing and a continual murmur of solicitude. As the lights come back up, Karl comes back inside, dripping wet. There are loud, enquiring cries from a gallery above.]
CANDY [outside, calling back]: Will you all mind your own business fo’ a change?
[Candy goes back inside, shutting and locking the French doors. Then she rushes up to Karl. The enquiring cries have turned to shrill giggles and cackles.]
CANDY: Bitches! Didn’t I tell you?
KARL: You goddam faggots.
CANDY: Oh, now—
KARL: Oh, now what? This is going to cost you, Sister.
CANDY: Don’t be mad at Candy! How did I know it wasn’t built for a man? You take those wet things off and slip into the loveliest Chinese robe you’ve ever laid your blue eyes on!
KARL: Chinese shit.
CANDY: Isn’t it lucky you had on dungarees?
KARL: You ain’t gonna think it’s so lucky before I go. I want you to know I’m takin’ over this place.
CANDY: —That’s just what I want you t’do.
KARL: I bet you’d dance with pleasure if I knocked you around. I’d gladly do it, too. Except you’d enjoy it too much. Where is this robe?
[They have retired behind the bamboo curtain and the wet dungarees, wadded, are hurled through it.]
KARL: And you stay away, way away! —Blondie.
CANDY: My name is not Blondie, it’s Candy.
KARL: —Some candy …
CANDY: Now you just dry you’self off, since you’re so touchy, and slip into this heavenly Chinese robe, while I mix you a violet. Know what a violet is? It’s Pernod and vodka, mixed, on the rocks! —The strongest drink ever made. —That’s why it’s called a violet, I reckon …
KARL: I never been given a knock out that knocked me out before I knocked out the bitch that give it to me. —Keep that in mind! Don’t forget it …
CANDY: Ha ha ha …
KARL: —Shit …
CANDY: I recognized your type the instant I met you. Big rough talking two hundred pounds of lonely, lost little boy.
KARL: —I recognized your type before I met you.
CANDY: I have no secrets! Do I?
KARL: I don’t care what you have besides crabs and cash.
[He comes out in a magnificent Chinese robe. Candy is mixing violets at a bamboo bar in a corner.]
KARL: You got a phone here, ain’t you?
CANDY: Right on the table beside you.
KARL [finding it]: Aw. [Lifts ivory white French phone and dials a number.]
CANDY: Who you callin’, baby?
KARL: Where’s my drink?
CANDY: Here, Sugar.
KARL [into phone, taking drink]: I wanna speak to a lady whose first name is Alice. I can’t remember the last name, a redheaded lady that drives a white ’52 Cadillac with North Carolina plates on it.
CANDY: Oh, I know who that is. Alice “Blue” Jackson, we call her.
KARL [into phone]: Oh. Her last name is Jackson. Yeah, Jackson …[Then to Candy.] Be careful what you say of her in front of me. Huh?
CANDY: I don’t attack people’s character when they’re not present.
KARL: There’s no woman as low as a faggot.
CANDY: You must’ve had some bad experiences with them.
KARL: I’ve had bad experiences with them and they’ve had worse experiences with me.
CANDY: You know, I think your bark is worse than your bite.
KARL: That’s because—Huh?— [Speaking into phone.] Aw …Well, tell her to call this number. [To Candy.] What’s your number?
CANDY: Magnolia 0347.
KARL: Magnolia 0347. —Soon’s she comes in … [He hangs up and drains glass.]
CANDY: A violet ought to be sipped. [Pause.] You’re going to like me. I know that you’re going to like me. You already do. I can tell by your eyes when you look at me.
KARL: When I look at you I’m measuring you for a coffin.
CANDY: You’re going to discover that Candy’s your—
KARL: When did she say she’d get here?
CANDY: Nine-thirty.
KARL: What time’s it now?
CANDY: Seven-fifteen.
KARL: Call me at nine. [He goes to sleep in the next room.]
One week later: a rainy winter Sunday morning in New Orleans. Candy, in drag, is having coffee and Knox gelatin in fruit juice at a daintily set breakfast table on which there is a pale blue Japanese vase of pussy willows. In the next room Karl is sleeping loudly. All of Candy’s motions and actions are muted so as not to disturb the loud sleeper. Presently another queen, Jerry, enters without knocking. This one is still under thirty, is handsome but with a pinched look and a humorous lisp.
JERRY: Good morning and happy birthday to you, Miss Delaney.
CANDY: Quiet, please. [She indicates bedroom with sleeper.] Didn’t I tell you he’d come back before Sunday.
[Jerry starts towards bedroom.]
CANDY: Stay out of the bedroom.
JERRY: I’m just taking a peek. [He thrusts his head through the curtains and whistles softly.]
CANDY: Come back out of the bedroom.
JERRY: I’m not in the bedroom.
CANDY: Everything in my life has been messed up by bitches, and I am sick of it.
JERRY: I was going to give you a birthday present.
CANDY: Please don’t bother. Just don’t mess up the only important thing in my life right now.
JERRY: I hope it lasts, Mother.
CANDY: And don’t use bitch-talk in here. It’s not only common, it’s also very old-fashioned, it places and dates you. My name is Candy Delaney.
JERRY: Miss Delaney to me.
CANDY: Then get out of here, will you? —No. Wait. —Sit down. I want to talk to you seriously a minute. Things have got to change here because I will not have my happiness jeopardized by two bitches under my roof that think to be homosexual means to be cheap and common. And do the bars every night, and only think of new tricks.
JERRY: That’s fine coming from you, the mother of us all, on her thirty-fifth birthday.
CANDY: Yes, I’m not young anymore. The queen-world is full of excitement for young queens only. For me its passé, and finit. I want to have some dignity in my life, and now I have found a person that I can live with on a dignified basis and on a permanent basis, who won’t compromise me in my professional life, my career, and that I can give something to and who can give something to me, so that between us we can create a satisfactory new existence for both.
JERRY: You’ve got the birthday blues.
CANDY: I’ve never been so happy in my life.
JERRY: You’ve had a sad life, Mother.
CANDY: Will you please leave here and go to your own apartment and when your month is up I will appreciate it if you and that faggot you live with will please move out. Why don’t you rent an apartment in the project?
JERRY: And I spent twenty bucks on your birthday present, Candy.
CANDY: Since I won’t receive it it’s safe for you to exaggerate what it cost you.
JERRY: —This is the last time you will ever insult me.
CANDY: I hope so.
[Jerry exits, slamming the door. Karl wakes with a groan and comes stumbling into the kitchen.]
CANDY: Baby, what d’ya want for breakfast?
KARL: You can mix me a violet.
CANDY: Baby, not for breakfast.
KARL: I know what I want for breakfast, don’t try and tell me. Where’s the Pernod bottle?
[Candy rises with a sigh and produces the Pernod.]
KARL: Where’s the vodka?
[Candy brings him the vodka.]
KARL: Get me some ice-cubes in a big glass.
[Candy brings him a glass with ice.]
KARL: All right now. Drink your goddam coffee and leave me alone.
CANDY [almost tearful]: I hate to see you just flying into ruin, baby. You are too wonderful a person, and I love you.
KARL: When I’m at sea I go weeks without liquor.
CANDY: You are a wonderful, wonderful, beautiful person and you know I adore you?!
KARL: You’re a slob.
CANDY: I don’t think you mean that, baby.
KARL: Don’t take any bets on it.
CANDY: Otherwise why would you be here?
[Alvin Krenning silently opens the door and stands in it, ignored by the pair at the table.]
KARL: I run out of money.
CANDY: That’s just an excuse that you make for coming back to me last night.
KARL: If you think so, just try to get out of paying me for last night, and I mean plenty. Plenty!
ALVIN: Candy, I want to speak to you.
CANDY: I told your roommate not to come in this apartment without knocking at the door and that goes the same for you, Alvin.
ALVIN: You have hurt Jerry.
CANDY: I’m glad. If it made some impression.
ALVIN: What’s gotten into you, Candy?
CANDY: I am fed up with bitches and bitch talk and bitch manners. Why do you think I did this apartment over?
[Karl rises and starts toward a door.]
CANDY: Where are you going, baby?
KARL: The head. [He goes into the bathroom.]
CANDY [to Alvin]: Sit down and have some coffee.
ALVIN: You have broke Jerry’s heart.
CANDY: No, I haven’t.
ALVIN: You have.
CANDY: I had to make it plain to him that from now on I want no tenants under my roof anymore that have no respect for what I am trying to do.
ALVIN: What are you trying to do? Ditch your old friends?
CANDY: There’s nobody values old friends more than I do but I will not have them bitching my life up for me when I want to preserve the first true worthwhile relationship I have found since I broke up with Sidney.
ALVIN: If you’re talking about Karl, just let me tell you something.
CANDY: You and Jerry cheat all the time on each other and can’t stand to see me working out something decent.
[Alvin rises with an angry shrug and starts out.]
CANDY [rising] What were you going to tell me? I just want to know!
ALVIN [turning at door]: Karl was shacked up with a woman all last week while you were crying your heart out, and only returned to this place because she threw him out of her house on Saint Charles Street.
CANDY: A lie!
[Alvin starts out.]
CANDY: Who told you this story?
ALVIN: Nobody. I know it. I know the woman, and so do you. Alice Jackson.
CANDY: When Karl comes out of the bathroom I will ask him. Meanwhile I will appreciate it if you and Miss Johnson start packing. I will refund the rest of your rent for this month.
ALVIN: Jerry is packing already. [He goes out, slamming the door.]
CANDY [rushing after him into hall, shouting]: Remember I don’t know you after this! Nowhere! On the street! [She shuts the door. She is visibly shaken.]
[Karl comes out of bathroom with a towel, in damp shorts, and starts to dress.]
KARL: What was that all about?
CANDY: I want to ask you a question. I’ve never lied to you, baby. I want you to tell me the truth. Have you had any connection with a woman this week?
KARL: Huh. What woman?
CANDY: A woman named Alice Jackson?
KARL: The answer is yes. What of it?
CANDY: Come over here and sit down at the table.
KARL: I’m dressing.
CANDY: You can dress later.
KARL: I can but I want to now. Okay?
CANDY: You are risking a wonderful future between us by not treating me with respect which I deserve from you. I have spent over three hundred dollars on you in the past week, at a time when I am just getting established in my own business, after long plans and great efforts! Let me tell you what I plan for us. First of all, I’m throwing out Alvin and Jerry and am redecorating this building to attract the highest class tenants. I own three pieces of property in the quarter and I have my own decorating place on Saint Charles Street. Is it or is it not true that you have been shacking up with this woman while you were not here last week, and lied about it, and told me you’d been to Biloxi with shipmates?
KARL: Can you think of any good reason for me to lie to you, fruitcake?
CANDY: Yes. I can, Butcher boy. You’re not too drunk or hung over to know that I am the one, only me, that offers you a sound future. Just, just let me tell you the plans I’ve made for our future life together! I need a partner in business. You will be it. I’m going, in one year’s time, to be the most high-paid, fashionable decorator in town. Wait! My talent is recognized! I did the TV show for the “Two Americas Fair.”
[Karl crosses to him and starts snapping his fingers.]
CANDY [ignoring Karl’s gesture]: Photographs of my interiors are going to be reproduced in Southern Culture’s next issue, in color!—a full page spread!
[Karl continues snapping his fingers closer to Candy’s face.]
CANDY: Why are you snapping your fingers in my face?
KARL: The loot, give with the loot, I’m going.
CANDY: Where?
KARL: Alice’s. We spent her month’s allowance and that is why I come back here for one night only.
CANDY: You will stay here or get nothing!
KARL: You give the wrong answer, fruitcup.
[Karl knocks her around, first lightly, then more severely. Candy’s sobbing turns to stifled outcries.]
KARL: Where do you keep it, where do you keep your loot, come on before I demolish you and the whole fucking pad!?
CANDY [at last]: Tea—pot, the—silver teapot …
[Karl helps himself to a thick roll of greenbacks in the teapot and starts out.]
KARL: Fill it back up. I might drop in here again the next time I ship in this town. [He exits.]
[Candy has fallen to her knees but she crawls after him with surprising rapidity, shrieking his name over and over and louder and more piercingly each time. Jerry and Alvin burst in just as Candy topples lifelessly forward onto her face with a last strangulated outcry.]
JERRY: Jesus, get her a drink. [Alvin rushes to liquor cabinet as Jerry lifts Candy from floor.] – Alvin? I think she’s dead!
[Alvin freezes with cognac bottle in hand.]
JERRY: Help me get her on the goddam bed for Crissake.
ALVIN: Make it look like she died natural, Jerry.
JERRY: Will you shut up and take her legs, you cunt?
ALVIN [obeying]: We warned her, she wouldn’t listen.
JERRY: She isn’t breathing, she’s gone.
ALVIN: We got to get her out of drag before the cops come, anyhow.
JERRY: Who’s going to call the police? It’s even too late for a priest.
ALVIN: Who do we notify? Korngold?
JERRY: Who is Korngold?
ALVIN: Her husband—separated—the one that left her— He went to Texas—Houston.
JERRY: Alvin? She’s breathing: the brandy!
[They pour brandy down her: she gags and retches. They laugh wildly.]
ALVIN: Pull yourself together on your birthday!
CANDY [sitting up slowly]—Oh, my God. —I’m old! —I’ve gotten old, I’m old …
[Jerry motions Alvin to sit beside her. A pause: it begins to rain.]
JERRY: Now let us sit upon a rumpled bed
And tell sad stories of the deaths of queens …
[Alvin and Jerry giggle. Finally even Candy joins in but her giggle turns to tears, as the scene dims out.]
CURTAIN