SCENE TWO
A corner of cocktail lounge and of outside gallery of the Royal Palms Hotel. This corresponds in style to the bedroom set: Victorian with Moorish influence. Royal palms are projected on the cyclorama which is deep violet with dusk. There are Moorish arches between gallery and interior: over the single table, inside, is suspended the same lamp, stained glass and ornately wrought metal, that hung in the bedroom. Perhaps on the gallery there is a low stone balustrade that supports, where steps descend into the garden, an electric light standard with five branches and pear-shaped globes of a dim pearly luster. Somewhere out of the sight-lines an entertainer plays a piano or novachord.
The interior table is occupied by two couples that represent society in St. Cloud. They are contemporaries of Chance’s. Behind the bar is Stuff who feels the dignity of his recent advancement from drugstore soda fountain to the Royal Palms cocktail lounge: he has on a white mess jacket, a scarlet cummerbund and light blue trousers, flatteringly close-fitted. Chance Wayne was once barman here: Stuff moves with an indolent male grace that he may have unconsciously remembered admiring in Chance.
Boss Finley’s mistress, Miss Lucy, enters the cocktail lounge dressed in a ball gown elaborately ruffled and very bouffant like an antebellum Southern belle’s. A single blonde curl is arranged to switch girlishly at one side of her sharp little terrier face. She is outraged over something and her glare is concentrated on Stuff who “plays it cool” behind the bar.
STUFF: Ev’nin’, Miss Lucy.
MISS LUCY: I wasn’t allowed to sit at the banquet table. No. I was put at a little side table, with a couple of state legislators an’ wives. [She sweeps behind the bar in a proprietary fashion.] Where’s your Grant’s twelve-year-old? Hey! Do you have a big mouth? I used to remember a kid that jerked sodas at Walgreen’s that had a big mouth. . . . Put some ice in this. . . . Is yours big, huh? I want to tell you something.
STUFF: What’s the matter with your finger?
[She catches him by his scarlet cummerbund.]
MISS LUCY: I’m going to tell you just now. The boss came over to me with a big candy Easter egg for me. The top of the egg unscrewed. He told me to unscrew it. So I unscrewed it. Inside was a little blue velvet jewel box, no not little, a big one, as big as somebody’s mouth, too.
STUFF: Whose mouth?
MISS LUCY: The mouth of somebody who’s not a hundred miles from here.
STUFF [going off at the left]: I got to set my chairs. [Stuff re-enters at once carrying two chairs. Sets them at tables while Miss Lucy talks.]
MISS LUCY: I open the jewel box an’ start to remove the great big diamond clip in it. I just got my fingers on it, and start to remove it and the old son of a bitch slams the lid of the box on my fingers. One fingernail is still blue. And the boss says to me, “Now go downstairs to the cocktail lounge and go in the ladies’ room and describe this diamond clip with lipstick on the ladies’ room mirror down there.” Hanh?—and he put the jewel box in his pocket and slammed the door so hard goin’ out of my suite that a picture fell off the wall.
STUFF [setting the chairs at the table]: Miss Lucy, you are the one that said, “I wish you would see what’s written with lipstick on the ladies’ room mirror” las’ Saturday night.
MISS LUCY: To you! Because I thought I could trust you.
STUFF: Other people were here an’ all of them heard it.
MISS LUCY: Nobody but you at the bar belonged to the Youth for Boss Finley Club.
[Both stop short. They’ve noticed a tall man who has entered the cocktail lounge. He has the length and leanness and luminous pallor of a face that El Greco gave to his saints. He has a small bandage near the hairline. His clothes are country.]
Hey, you.
HECKLER: Evenin’, ma’am.
MISS LUCY: You with the Hillbilly Ramblers? You with the band?
HECKLER: I’m a hillbilly, but I’m not with no band.
[He notices Miss Lucy’s steady, interested stare. Stuff leaves with a tray of drinks.]
MISS LUCY: What do you want here?
HECKLER: I come to hear Boss Finley talk. [His voice is clear but strained. He rubs his large Adam’s apple as he speaks.]
MISS LUCY: You can’t get in the ballroom without a jacket and a tie on. . . . I know who you are. You’re the heckler, aren’t you?
HECKLER: I don’t heckle. I just ask questions, one question or two or three questions, depending on how much time it takes them to grab me and throw me out of the hall.
MISS LUCY: Those questions are loaded questions. You gonna repeat them tonight?
HECKLER: Yes, ma’am, if I can get in the ballroom, and make myself heard.
MISS LUCY: What’s wrong with your voice?
HECKLER: When I shouted my questions in New Bethesda last week I got hit in the Adam’s apple with the butt of a pistol, and that affected my voice. It still ain’t good, but it’s better. [Starts to go.]
MISS LUCY [goes to back of bar, where she gets jacket, the kind kept in places with dress regulations, and throws it to Heckler]: Wait. Here, put this on. The Boss’s talking on a national TV hookup tonight. There’s a tie in the pocket. You sit perfectly still at the bar till the Boss starts speaking. Keep your face back of this Evening Banner. O.K.?
HECKLER [opening the paper in front of his face]: I thank you.
MISS LUCY: I thank you, too, and I wish you more luck than you’re likely to have.
[Stuff re-enters and goes to back of the bar.]
FLY [entering on the gallery]: Paging Chance Wayne. [Auto horn offstage.] Mr. Chance Wayne, please. Paging Chance Wayne. [He leaves.]
MISS LUCY [to Stuff who has re-entered]: Is Chance Wayne back in St. Cloud?
STUFF: You remember Alexandra Del Lago?
MISS LUCY: I guess I do. I was president of her local fan club. Why?
CHANCE [offstage]: Hey, boy, park that car up front and don’t wrinkle them fenders.
STUFF: She and Chance Wayne checked in here last night.
MISS LUCY: Well I’ll be a dawg’s mother. I’m going to look into that. [Lucy exits.]
CHANCE [entering and crossing to the bar]: Hey, Stuff! [He takes a cocktail off the bar and sips it.]
STUFF: Put that down. This ain’t no cocktail party.
CHANCE: Man, don’t you know . . . phew . . . nobody drinks gin martinis with olives. Everybody drinks vodka martinis with lemon twist nowadays, except the squares in St. Cloud. When I had your job, when I was the barman here at the Royal Palms, I created that uniform you’ve got on. . . . I copied it from an outfit Vic Mature wore in a Foreign Legion picture, and I looked better in it than he did, and almost as good in it as you do, ha, ha. . . .
AUNT NONNIE [who has entered at the right]: Chance. Chance . . .
CHANCE: Aunt Nonnie! [to Stuff]: Hey, I want a tablecloth on that table, and a bucket of Champagne . . . Mumm’s Cordon Rouge. . . .
AUNT NONNIE: You come out here.
CHANCE: But, I just ordered Champagne in here. [Suddenly his effusive manner collapses, as she stares at him gravely.]
AUNT NONNIE: I can’t be seen talking to you. . . .
[She leads him to one side of the stage. A light change has occurred which has made it a royal palm grove with a bench. They cross to it solemnly. Stuff busies himself at the bar, which is barely lit. After a moment he exits with a few drinks to main body of the cocktail lounge off left. Bar music. “Quiereme Mucho.”]
CHANCE [following her]: Why?
AUNT NONNIE: I’ve got just one thing to tell you, Chance, get out of St. Cloud.
CHANCE: Why does everybody treat me like a low criminal in the town I was born in?
AUNT NONNIE: Ask yourself that question, ask your conscience that question.
CHANCE: What question?
AUNT NONNIE: You know, and I know you know . . .
CHANCE: Know what?
AUNT NONNIE: I’m not going to talk about it. I just can’t talk about it. Your head and your tongue run wild. You can’t be trusted. We have to live in St. Cloud. . . . Oh, Chance, why have you changed like you’ve changed? Why do you live on nothing but wild dreams now, and have no address where anybody can reach you in time to—reach you?
CHANCE: Wild dreams! Yes. Isn’t life a wild dream? I never heard a better description of it. . . . [He takes a pill and a swallow from a flask.]
AUNT NONNIE: What did you just take, Chance? You took something out of your pocket and washed it down with liquor.
CHANCE: Yes, I took a wild dream and—washed it down with another wild dream, Aunt Nonnie, that’s my life now. . . .
AUNT NONNIE: Why, son?
CHANCE: Oh, Aunt Nonnie, for God’s sake, have you forgotten what was expected of me?
AUNT NONNIE: People that loved you expected just one thing of you—sweetness and honesty and . . .
CHANCE [kneeling at her side]: No, not after the brilliant beginning I made. Why, at seventeen, I put on, directed, and played the leading role in The Valiant, that one-act play that won the state drama contest. Heavenly played in it with me, and have you forgotten? You went with us as the girls’ chaperone to the national contest held in . . .
AUNT NONNIE: Son, of course I remember.
CHANCE: In the parlor car? How we sang together?
AUNT NONNIE: You were in love even then.
CHANCE: God, yes, we were in love! [He sings softly.]
“If you like-a me, like I like-a you,
And we like-a both the same”
TOGETHER:
“I’d like-a say, this very day,
I’d like-a change your name.”
[Chance laughs softly, wildly, in the cool light of the palm grove. Aunt Nonnie rises abruptly. Chance catches her hands.]
AUNT NONNIE: You—do—take unfair advantage. . . .
CHANCE: Aunt Nonnie, we didn’t win that lousy national contest, we just placed second.
AUNT NONNIE: Chance, you didn’t place second. You got honorable mention. Fourth place, except it was just called honorable mention.
CHANCE: Just honorable mention. But in a national contest, honorable mention means something. . . . We would have won it, but I blew my lines. Yes, I that put on and produced the damn thing, couldn’t even hear the damn lines being hissed at me by that fat girl with the book in the wings. [He buries his face in his hands.]
AUNT NONNIE: I loved you for that, son, and so did Heavenly, too.
CHANCE: It was on the way home in the train that she and I. . . .
AUNT NONNIE [with a flurry of feeling]: I know, I— I—
CHANCE [rising]: I bribed the Pullman conductor to let us use for an hour a vacant compartment on that sad, home-going train—
AUNT NONNIE: I know, I— I—
CHANCE: Gave him five dollars, but that wasn’t enough, and so I gave him my wrist watch, and my collar pin and tie clip and signet ring and my suit, that I’d bought on credit to go to the contest. First suit I’d ever put on that cost more than thirty dollars.
AUNT NONNIE: Don’t go back over that.
CHANCE: —To buy the first hour of love that we had together. When she undressed, I saw that her body was just then, barely, beginning to be a woman’s and . . .
AUNT NONNIE: Stop, Chance.
CHANCE: I said, oh, Heavenly, no, but she said yes, and I cried in her arms that night, and didn’t know that what I was crying for was—youth, that would go.
AUNT NONNIE: It was from that time on, you’ve changed.
CHANCE: I swore in my heart that I’d never again come in second in any contest, especially not now that Heavenly was my—Aunt Nonnie, look at this contract. [He snatches out papers and lights lighter.]
AUNT NONNIE: I don’t want to see false papers.
CHANCE: These are genuine papers. Look at the notary’s seal and the signatures of the three witnesses on them. Aunt Nonnie, do you know who I’m with? I’m with Alexandra Del Lago, the Princess Kosmonopolis is my—
AUNT NONNIE: Is your what?
CHANCE: Patroness! Agent! Producer! She hasn’t been seen much lately, but still has influence, power, and money—money that can open all doors. That I’ve knocked at all these years till my knuckles are bloody.
AUNT NONNIE: Chance, even now, if you came back here simply saying, “I couldn’t remember the lines, I lost the contest, I—failed,” but you’ve come back here again with—
CHANCE: Will you just listen one minute more? Aunt Nonnie, here is the plan. A local-contest-of-Beauty.
AUNT NONNIE: Oh, Chance.
CHANCE: A local contest of talent that she will win.
AUNT NONNIE: Who?
CHANCE: Heavenly.
AUNT NONNIE: No, Chance. She’s not young now, she’s faded, she’s . . .
CHANCE: Nothing goes that quick, not even youth.
AUNT NONNIE: Yes, it does.
CHANCE: It will come back like magic. Soon as I . . .
AUNT NONNIE: For what? For a fake contest?
CHANCE: For love. The moment I hold her.
AUNT NONNIE: Chance.
CHANCE: It’s not going to be a local thing, Aunt Nonnie. It’s going to get national coverage. The Princess Kosmonopolis’s best friend is that sob sister, Sally Powers. Even you know Sally Powers. Most powerful movie columnist in the world. Whose name is law in the motion . . .
AUNT NONNIE: Chance, lower your voice.
CHANCE: I want people to hear me.
AUNT NONNIE: No, you don’t, no you don’t. Because if your voice gets to Boss Finley, you’ll be in great danger, Chance.
CHANCE: I go back to Heavenly, or I don’t. I live or die. There’s nothing in between for me.
AUNT NONNIE: What you want to go back to is your clean, unashamed youth. And you can’t.
CHANCE: You still don’t believe me, Aunt Nonnie?
AUNT NONNIE: No, I don’t. Please go. Go away from here, Chance.
CHANCE: Please.
AUNT NONNIE: No, no, go away!
CHANCE: Where to? Where can I go? This is the home of my heart. Don’t make me homeless.
AUNT NONNIE: Oh, Chance.
CHANCE: Aunt Nonnie. Please.
AUNT NONNIE [rises and starts to go]: I’ll write to you. Send me an address. I’ll write to you.
[She exits through bar. Stuff enters and moves to bar.]
CHANCE: Aunt Nonnie . . .
[She’s gone]
[Chance removes a pint bottle of vodka from his pocket and something else which he washes down with the vodka. He stands back as two couples come up the steps and cross the gallery into the bar: they sit at a table. Chance takes a deep breath. Fly enters lighted area inside, singing out “Paging Mr. Chance Wayne, Mr. Chance Wayne, pagin’ Mr. Chance Wayne.”—Turns about smartly and goes back out through lobby. The name has stirred a commotion at the bar and table visible inside.]
EDNA: Did you hear that? Is Chance Wayne back in St. Cloud?
[Chance draws a deep breath. Then, he stalks back into the main part of the cocktail lounge like a matador entering a bull ring.]
VIOLET: My God, yes—there he is.
[Chance reads Fly’s message.]
CHANCE [to Fly]: Not now, later, later.
[The entertainer off left begins to play a piano . . . The “evening” in the cocktail lounge is just beginning.]
Well! Same old place, same old gang. Time doesn’t pass in St. Cloud. [To Bud and Scotty] Hi!
BUD: How are you . . .
CHANCE [shouting offstage]: Hey, Jackie . . . [Fly enters and stands on terrace. Piano stops. Chance crosses over to the table that holds the foursome.] . . . remember my song? Do you—remember my song? . . . You see, he remembers my song. [The entertainer swings into “It’s a Big Wide Wonderful World.’’] Now I feel at home. In my home town . . . Come on, everybody—sing!
[This token of apparent acceptance reassures him. The foursome at the table on stage studiously ignore him. He sings:]
“When you’re in love you’re a master
Of all you survey, you’re a gay Santa Claus.
There’s a great big star-spangled sky up above you,
When you’re in love you’re a hero . . .”
Come on! Sing, ev’rybody!
[In the old days they did; now they don’t. He goes on, singing a bit; then his voice dies out on a note of embarrassment. Somebody at the bar whispers something and another laughs. Chance chuckles uneasily and says:]
What’s wrong here? The place is dead.
STUFF: You been away too long, Chance.
CHANCE: Is that the trouble?
STUFF: That’s all. . . .
[Jackie, off, finishes with an arpeggio. The piano slams. There is a curious hush in the bar. Chance looks at the table. Violet whispers something to Bud. Both girls rise abruptly and cross out of the bar.]
BUD [yelling at Stuff]: Check, Stuff.
CHANCE [with exaggerated surprise]: Well, Bud and Scotty. I didn’t see you at all. Wasn’t that Violet and Edna at your table? [He sits at the table between Bud and Scotty.]
SCOTTY: I guess they didn’t recognize you, Chance.
BUD: Violet did.
SCOTTY: Did Violet?
BUD: She said, “My God, Chance Wayne.”
SCOTTY: That’s recognition and profanity, too.
CHANCE: I don’t mind. I’ve been snubbed by experts, and I’ve done some snubbing myself. . . . Hey! [Miss Lucy has entered at left. Chance sees her and goes toward her.] —Is that Miss Lucy or is that Scarlett O’Hara?
MISS LUCY: Hello there, Chance Wayne. Somebody said that you were back in St. Cloud, but I didn’t believe them. I said I’d have to see it with my own eyes before . . . Usually there’s an item in the paper, in Gwen Phillips’s column saying “St. Cloud youth home on visit is slated to play featured role in important new picture,” and me being a movie fan I’m always thrilled by it. . . . [She ruffles his hair.]
CHANCE: Never do that to a man with thinning hair. [Chance’s smile is unflinching; it gets harder and brighter.]
MISS LUCY: Is your hair thinning, baby? Maybe that’s the difference I noticed in your appearance. Don’t go ’way till I get back with my drink. . . .
[She goes to back of bar to mix herself a drink. Meanwhile, Chance combs his hair.]
SCOTTY [to Chance]: Don’t throw away those golden hairs you combed out, Chance. Save ’em and send ’em each in letters to your fan clubs.
BUD: Does Chance Wayne have a fan club?
SCOTTY: The most patient one in the world. They’ve been waiting years for him to show up on the screen for more than five seconds in a crowd scene.
MISS LUCY [returning to the table]: Y’know this boy Chance Wayne used to be so attractive I couldn’t stand it. But now I can, almost stand it. Every Sunday in summer I used to drive out to the municipal beach and watch him dive off the high tower. I’d take binoculars with me when he put on those free divin’ exhibitions. You still dive, Chance? Or have you given that up?
CHANCE [uneasily]: I did some diving last Sunday.
MISS LUCY: Good, as ever?
CHANCE: I was a little off form, but the crowd didn’t notice. I can still get away with a double back somersault and a—
MISS LUCY: Where was this, in Palm Beach, Florida, Chance?
[Hatcher enters.]
CHANCE [stiffening]: Why Palm Beach? Why there?
MISS LUCY: Who was it said they seen you last month in Palm Beach? Oh yes, Hatcher—that you had a job as a beach-boy at some big hotel there?
HATCHER [stops at steps of the terrace, then leaves across the gallery]: Yeah, that’s what I heard.
CHANCE: Had a job—as a beach-boy?
STUFF: Rubbing oil into big fat millionaires.
CHANCE: What joker thought up that one? [His laugh is a little too loud.]
SCOTTY: You ought to get their names and sue them for slander.
CHANCE: I long ago gave up tracking down sources of rumors about me. Of course, it’s flattering, it’s gratifying to know that you’re still being talked about in your old home town, even if what they say is completely fantastic. Hahaha.
[Entertainer returns, sweeps into “Quiereme Mucho.”]
MISS LUCY: Baby, you’ve changed in some way, but I can’t put my finger on it. You all see a change in him, or has he just gotten older? [She sits down next to Chance.]
CHANCE [quickly]: To change is to live, Miss Lucy, to live is to change, and not to change is to die. You know that, don’t you? It used to scare me sometimes. I’m not scared of it now. Are you scared of it, Miss Lucy? Does it scare you?
[Behind Chance’s back one of the girls has appeared and signaled the boys to join them outside. Scotty nods and holds up two fingers to mean they’ll come in a couple of minutes. The girl goes back out with an angry head-toss.]
SCOTTY: Chance, did you know Boss Finley was holding a Youth for Tom Finley rally upstairs tonight?
CHANCE: I saw the announcements of it all over town.
BUD: He’s going to state his position on that emasculation business that’s stirred up such a mess in the state. Had you heard about that?
CHANCE: No.
SCOTTY: He must have been up in some earth satellite if he hasn’t heard about that.
CHANCE: No, just out of St. Cloud.
SCOTTY: Well, they picked out a nigger at random and castrated the bastard to show they mean business about white women’s protection in this state.
BUD: Some people think they went too far about it. There’s been a whole lot of Northern agitation all over the country.
SCOTTY: The Boss is going to state his own position about that thing before the Youth for Boss Finley rally upstairs in the Crystal Ballroom.
CHANCE: Aw. Tonight?
STUFF: Yeah, t’night.
BUD: They say that Heavenly Finley and Tom Junior are going to be Standing on the platform with him.
PAGEBOY [entering]: Paging Chance Wayne. Paging . . .
[He is stopped short by Edna.]
CHANCE: I doubt that story, somehow I doubt that story.
STUFF: You doubt they cut that nigger?
CHANCE: Oh, no, that I don’t doubt. You know what that is, don’t you? Sex-envy is what that is, and the revenge for sex-envy which is a widespread disease that I have run into personally too often for me to doubt its existence or any manifestation. [The group push back their chairs, snubbing him. Chance takes the message from the Pageboy, reads it and throws it on the floor.] Hey, Stuff!—What d’ya have to do, stand on your head to get a drink around here?—Later, tell her.—Miss Lucy, can you get that Walgreen’s soda jerk to give me a shot of vodka on the rocks? [She snaps her fingers at Stuff. He shrugs and sloshes some vodka onto ice.]
MISS LUCY: Chance? You’re too loud, baby.
CHANCE: Not loud enough, Miss Lucy. No. What I meant that I doubt is that Heavenly Finley, that only I know in St. Cloud, would stoop to stand on a platform next to her father while he explains and excuses on TV this random emasculation of a young Nigra caught on a street after midnight. [Chance is speaking with an almost incoherent excitement, one knee resting on the seat of his chair, swaying the chair back and forth. The Heckler lowers his newspaper from his face; a slow fierce smile spreads over his face as he leans forward with tensed throat muscles to catch Chance’s burst of oratory.] No! That’s what I do not believe. If I believed it, oh, I’d give you a diving exhibition. I’d dive off municipal pier and swim straight out to Diamond Key and past it, and keep on swimming till sharks and barracuda took me for live bait, brother. [His chair topples over backward, and he sprawls to the floor. The Heckler springs up to catch him. Miss Lucy springs up too, and sweeps between Chance and the Heckler, pushing the Heckler back with a quick, warning look or gesture. Nobody notices the Heckler. Chance scrambles back to his feet, flushed, laughing. Bud and Scotty outlaugh him. Chance picks up his chair and continues. The laughter stops.] Because I have come back to St. Cloud to take her out of St. Cloud. Where I’ll take her is not to a place anywhere except to her place in my heart. [He has removed a pink capsule from his pocket, quickly and furtively, and drunk it down with his vodka.]
BUD: Chance, what did you swallow just now?
CHANCE: Some hundred-proof vodka.
BUD: You washed something down with it that you took out of your pocket.
SCOTTY: It looked like a little pink pill.
CHANCE: Oh, ha ha. Yes, I washed down a goof-ball. You want one? I got a bunch of them. I always carry them with me. When you’re not having fun, it makes you have it. When you’re having fun, it makes you have more of it. Have one and see.
SCOTTY: Don’t that damage the brain?
CHANCE: No, the contrary. It stimulates the brain cells.
SCOTTY: Don’t it make your eyes look different, Chance?
MISS LUCY: Maybe that’s what I noticed, [as if wishing to change the subject] Chance, I wish you’d settle an argument for me.
CHANCE: What argument, Miss Lucy?
MISS LUCY: About who you’re traveling with. I heard you checked in here with a famous old movie star.
[They all stare at him. . . . In a way he now has what he wants. He’s the center of attraction: everybody is looking at him, even though with hostility, suspicion and a cruel sense of sport.]
CHANCE: Miss Lucy I’m traveling with the vice-president and major stockholder of the film studio which just signed me.
MISS LUCY: Wasn’t she once in the movies and very well known?
CHANCE: She was and still is and never will cease to be an important, a legendary figure in the picture industry, here and all over the world, and I am now under personal contract to her.
MISS LUCY: What’s her name, Chance?
CHANCE: She doesn’t want her name known. Like all great figures, world-known, she doesn’t want or need and refuses to have the wrong type of attention. Privacy is a luxury to great stars. Don’t ask me her name. I respect her too much to speak her name at this table. I’m obligated to her because she has shown faith in me. It took a long hard time to find that sort of faith in my talent that this woman has shown me. And I refuse to betray it at this table. [His voice rises; he is already “high.”]
MISS LUCY: Baby, why are you sweating and your hands shaking so? You’re not sick, are you?
CHANCE: Sick? Who’s sick? I’m the least sick one you know.
MISS LUCY: Well, baby, you know you oughtn’t to stay in St. Cloud. Y’know that, don’t you? I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard you were back here. [to the two boys] Could you all believe he was back here?
SCOTTY: What did you come back for?
CHANCE: I wish you would give me one reason why I shouldn’t come back to visit the grave of my mother and pick out a monument for her, and share my happiness with a girl that I’ve loved many years. It’s her, Heavenly Finley, that I’ve fought my way up for, and now that I’ve made it, the glory will be hers, too. And I’ve just about persuaded the powers to be to let her appear with me in a picture I’m signed for. Because I . . .
BUD: What is the name of this picture?
CHANCE: . . . Name of it? “Youth!”
BUD: Just “Youth?”
CHANCE: Isn’t that a great title for a picture introducing young talent? You all look doubtful. If you don’t believe me, well, look. Look at this contract. [Removes it from his pocket.]
SCOTTY: You carry the contract with you?
CHANCE: I happen to have it in this jacket pocket.
MISS LUCY: Leaving, Scotty? [Scotty has risen from the table.]
SCOTTY: It’s getting too deep at this table.
BUD: The girls are waiting.
CHANCE [quickly]: Gee, Bud, that’s a clean set of rags you’re wearing, but let me give you a tip for your tailor. A guy of medium stature looks better with natural shoulders, the padding cuts down your height, it broadens your figure and gives you a sort of squat look.
BUD: Thanks, Chance.
SCOTTY: You got any helpful hints for my tailor, Chance?
CHANCE: Scotty, there’s no tailor on earth that can disguise a sedentary occupation.
MISS LUCY: Chance, baby . . .
CHANCE: You still work down at the bank? You sit on your can all day countin’ century notes and once every week they let you slip one in your pockets? That’s a fine setup, Scotty, if you’re satisfied with it but it’s starting to give you a little pot and a can.
VIOLET [appears in the door, angry]: Bud! Scotty! Come on.
SCOTTY: I don’t get by on my looks, but I drive my own car. It isn’t a Caddy, but it’s my own car. And if my own mother died, I’d bury her myself; I wouldn’t let a church take up a collection to do it.
VIOLET [impatiently]: Scotty, if you all don’t come now I’m going home in a taxi.
[The two boys follow her into the Palm Garden. There they can be seen giving their wives cab money, and indicating they are staying.]
CHANCE: The squares have left us, Miss Lucy.
MISS LUCY: Yeah.
CHANCE: Well . . . I didn’t come back here to fight with old friends of mine. . . . Well, it’s quarter past seven.
MISS LUCY: Is it?
[There are a number of men, now, sitting around in the darker corners of the bar, looking at him. They are not ominous in their attitudes. They are simply waiting for something, for the meeting to start upstairs, for something. . . . Miss Lucy stares at Chance and the men, then again at Chance, nearsightedly, her head cocked like a puzzled terrier’s. Chance is discomfited.]
CHANCE: Yep . . . How is that Hickory Hollow for steaks? Is it still the best place in town for a steak?
STUFF [answering the phone at the bar]: Yeah, it’s him. He’s here. [Looks at Chance ever so briefly, hangs up.]
MISS LUCY: Baby, I’ll go to the checkroom and pick up my wrap and call for my car and I’ll drive you out to the airport. They’ve got an air-taxi out there, a whirly-bird taxi, a helicopter, you know, that’ll hop you to New Orleans in fifteen minutes.
CHANCE: I’m not leaving St. Cloud. What did I say to make you think I was?
MISS LUCY: I thought you had sense enough to know that you’d better.
CHANCE: Miss Lucy, you’ve been drinking, it’s gone to your sweet little head.
MISS LUCY: Think it over while I’m getting my wrap. You still got a friend in St. Cloud.
CHANCE: I still have a girl in St. Cloud, and I’m not leaving without her.
PAGEBOY [offstage]: Paging Chance Wayne, Mr. Chance Wayne, please.
PRINCESS [entering with Pageboy]: Louder, young man, louder . . . Oh, never mind, here he is!
[But Chance has already rushed out onto the gallery. The Princess looks as if she had thrown on her clothes to escape a building on fire. Her blue-sequined gown is unzipped, or partially zipped, her hair is disheveled, her eyes have a dazed, drugged brightness; she is holding up the eyeglasses with the broken lens, shakily, hanging onto her mink stole with the other band; her movements are unsteady.]
MISS LUCY: I know who you are. Alexandra Del Lago.
[Loud whispering. A pause.]
PRINCESS [on the step to the gallery]: What? Chance!
MISS LUCY: Honey, let me fix that zipper for you. Hold still just a second. Honey, let me take you upstairs. You mustn’t be seen down here in this condition. . . .
[Chance suddenly rushes in from the gallery: he conducts the Princess outside: she is on the verge of panic. The Princess rushes half down the steps to the palm garden: leans panting on the stone balustrade under the ornamental light standard with its five great pearls of light. The interior is dimmed as Chance comes out behind her.)
PRINCESS: Chance! Chance! Chance! Chance!
CHANCE [softly]: If you’d stayed upstairs that wouldn’t have happened to you.
PRINCESS: I did, I stayed.
CHANCE: I told you to wait.
PRINCESS: I waited.
CHANCE: Didn’t I tell you to wait till I got back?
PRINCESS: I did, I waited forever, I waited forever for you. Then finally I heard those long sad silver trumpets blowing through the Palm Garden and then—Chance, the most wonderful thing has happened to me. Will you listen to me? Will you let me tell you?
MISS LUCY [to the group at the bar]: Shhh!
PRINCESS: Chance, when I saw you driving under the window with your head held high, with that terrible stiff-necked pride of the defeated which I know so well; I knew that your comeback had been a failure like mine. And I felt something in my heart for you. That’s a miracle, Chance. That’s the wonderful thing that happened to me. I felt something for someone besides myself. That means my heart’s still alive, at least some part of it is, not all of my heart is dead yet. Part’s alive still. . . . Chance, please listen to me. I’m ashamed of this morning. I’ll never degrade you again, I’ll never degrade myself, you and me, again by—I wasn’t always this monster. Once I wasn’t this monster. And what I felt in my heart when I saw you returning, defeated, to this palm garden, Chance, gave me hope that I could stop being a monster. Chance, you’ve got to help me stop being the monster that I was this morning, and you can do it, can help me. I won’t be ungrateful for it. I almost died this morning, suffocated in a panic. But even through my panic, I saw your kindness. I saw a true kindness in you that you have almost destroyed, but that’s still there, a little. . . .
CHANCE: What kind thing did I do?
PRINCESS: You gave my oxygen to me.
CHANCE: Anyone would do that.
PRINCESS: It could have taken you longer to give it to me.
CHANCE: I’m not that kind of monster.
PRINCESS: You’re no kind of monster. You’re just—
CHANCE: What?
PRINCESS: Lost in the beanstalk country, the ogre’s country at the top of the beanstalk, the country of the flesh-hungry, blood-thirsty ogre—
[Suddenly a voice is heard front off.]
VOICE: Wayne?
[The call is distinct but not loud. Chance hears it, but doesn’t turn toward it; he freezes momentarily, like a stag scenting hunters. Among the people gathered inside in the cocktail lounge we see the speaker, Dan Hatcher. In appearance, dress and manner he is the apotheosis of the assistant hotel manager, about Chance’s age, thin, blond-haired, trim blond mustache, suave, boyish, betraying an instinct for murder only by the ruby-glass studs in his matching cuff links and tie clip.]
HATCHER: Wayne!
[He steps forward a little and at the same instant Tom Junior and Scotty appear behind him, just in view. Scotty strikes a match for Tom Junior’s cigarette as they wait there. Chance suddenly gives the Princess his complete and tender attention, putting an arm around her and turning her toward the Moorish arch to the bar entrance.]
CHANCE [loudly]: I’ll get you a drink, and then I’ll take you upstairs. You’re not well enough to stay down here.
HATCHER [crossing quickly to the foot of the stairs]: Wayne!
[The call is too loud to ignore: Chance half turns and calls back.]
CHANCE: Who’s that?
HATCHER: Step down here a minute!
CHANCE: Oh, Hatcher! I’ll be right with you.
PRINCESS: Chance, don’t leave me alone.
[At this moment the arrival of Boss Finley is heralded by the sirens of several squad cars. The forestage is suddenly brightened from off left, presumably the floodlights of the cars arriving at the entrance to the hotel. This is the signal the men at the bar have been waiting for. Everybody rushes off left. In the hot light all alone on stage is Chance; behind him, is the Princess. And the Heckler is at the bar. The entertainer plays a feverish tango. Now, off left, Boss Finley can be heard, his public personality very much “on. ” Amid the flash of flash bulbs we hear off:]
BOSS [off]: Hahaha! Little Bit, smile! Go on, smile for the birdie! Ain’t she Heavenly, ain’t that the right name for her!
HEAVENLY [off]: Papa, I want to go in!
[At this instant she runs in—to face Chance. . . . The Heckler rises. For a long instant, Chance and Heavenly stand there: he on the steps leading to the Palm Garden and gallery; she in the cocktail lounge. They simply look at each other. . . the Heckler between them. Then the Boss comes in and seizes her by the arm. . . . And there he is facing the Heckler and Chance both. . . . For a split second he faces them, half lifts his cane to strike at them, but doesn’t strike . . . then pulls Heavenly back off left stage . . . where the photographing and interviews proceed during what follows. Chance has seen that Heavenly is going to go on the platform with her father. . . . He stands there stunned. . . .]
PRINCESS: Chance! Chance? [He turns to her blindly] Call the car and let’s go. Everything’s packed, even the . . . tape recorder with my shameless voice on it. . . .
[The Heckler has returned to his position at the bar. Now Hatcher and Scotty and a couple of other of the boys have come out. . . . The Princess sees them and is silent. . . . She’s never been in anything like this before. . . .]
HATCHER: Wayne, step down here, will you.
CHANCE: What for, what do you want?
HATCHER: Come down here, I’ll tell you.
CHANCE: You come up here and tell me.
TOM JUNIOR: Come on, you chicken-gut bastard.
CHANCE: Why, hello, Tom Junior. Why are you hiding down there?
TOM JUNIOR: You’re hiding, not me, chicken-gut.
CHANCE: You’re in the dark, not me.
HATCHER: Tom Junior wants to talk to you privately down here.
CHANCE: He can talk to me privately up here.
TOM JUNIOR: Hatcher, tell him I’ll talk to him in the washroom on the mezzanine floor.
CHANCE: I don’t hold conversations with people in washrooms. . . .
[Tom Junior infuriated, starts to rush forward. Men restrain him.]
What is all this anyhow? It’s fantastic. You all having a little conference there? I used to leave places when I was told to. Not now. That time’s over. Now I leave when I’m ready. Hear that, Tom Junior? Give your father that message. This is my town. I was born in St. Cloud, not him. He was just called here. He was just called down from the hills to preach hate. I was born here to make love. Tell him about that difference between him and me, and ask him which he thinks has more right to stay here. . . . [He gets no answer from the huddled little group which is restraining Tom Junior from perpetrating murder right there in the cocktail lounge. After all, that would be a bad incident to precede the Boss’s all-South-wide TV appearance . . . and they all know it. Chance, at the same time, continues to taunt them.] Tom, Tom Junior! What do you want me for? To pay me back for the ball game and picture show money I gave you when you were cutting your father’s yard grass for a dollar on Saturday? Thank me for the times I gave you my motorcycle and got you a girl to ride the buddy seat with you? Come here! I'll give you the keys to my Caddy. I’ll give you the price of any whore in St. Cloud. You still got credit with me because you’re Heavenly’s brother.
TOM JUNIOR [almost bursting free]: Don’t say the name of my sister!
CHANCE: I said the name of my girl!
TOM JUNIOR [breaking away from the group]: I’m all right, I’m all right. Leave us alone, will you. I don’t want Chance to feel that he’s outnumbered. [He herds them out.] O.K.? Come on down here.
PRINCESS [trying to restrain Chance]: No, Chance, don’t.
TOM JUNIOR: Excuse yourself from the lady and come on down here. Don’t be scared to. I just want to talk to you quietly. Just talk. Quiet talk.
CHANCE: Tom Junior, I know that since the last time I was here something has happened to Heavenly and I—
TOM JUNIOR: Don’t—speak the name of my sister. Just leave her name off your tongue—
CHANCE: Just tell me what happened to her.
TOM JUNIOR: Keep your ruttin’ voice down.
CHANCE: I know I’ve done many wrong things in my life, many more than I can name or number, but I swear I never hurt Heavenly in my life.
TOM JUNIOR: You mean to say my sister was had by somebody else—diseased by somebody else the last time you were in St. Cloud? . . . I know, it’s possible, it’s barely possible that you didn’t know what you done to my little sister the last time you come to St. Cloud. You remember that time when you came home broke? My sister had to pick up your tabs in restaurants and bars, and had to cover bad checks you wrote on banks where you had no accounts. Until you met this rich bitch, Minnie, the Texas one with the yacht, and started spending week ends on her yacht, and coming back Mondays with money from Minnie to go on with my sister. I mean, you’d sleep with Minnie, that slept with any goddam gigolo bastard she could pick up on Bourbon Street or the docks, and then you would go on sleeping again with my sister. And sometime, during that time, you got something besides your gigolo fee from Minnie and passed it onto my sister, my little sister that had hardly even heard of a thing like that, and didn’t know what it was till it had gone on too long and—
CHANCE: I left town before I found out I—
[“The Lamentation” is heard.]
TOM JUNIOR: You found out! Did you tell my little sister?
CHANCE: I thought if something was wrong she’d write me or call me—
TOM JUNIOR: How could she write you or call you, there’re no addresses, no phone numbers in gutters. I’m itching to kill you—here, on this spot! . . . My little sister, Heavenly, didn’t know about the diseases and operations of whores, till she had to be cleaned and cured—I mean spayed like a dawg by Dr. George Scudder’s knife. That’s right— by the knife! . . . And tonight—if you stay here tonight, if you’re here after this rally, you’re gonna get the knife, too. You know? The knife? That’s all. Now go on back to the lady, I’m going back to my father. [Tom Junior exits.]
PRINCESS [as Chance returns to her]: Chance, for God’s sake, let’s go now . . .
[“The Lament” is in the air. It blends with the wind-blown sound of the palms.]
All day I’ve kept hearing a sort of lament that drifts through the air of this place. It says, “Lost, lost, never to be found again.” Palm gardens by the sea and olive groves on Mediterranean islands all have that lament drifting through them. “Lost, lost”. . . . The isle of Cyprus, Monte Carlo, San Remo, Torremolenas, Tangiers. They’re all places of exile from whatever we loved. Dark glasses, wide-brimmed hats and whispers, “Is that her?” Shocked whispers. . . . Oh, Chance, believe me, after failure comes flight. Nothing ever comes after failure but flight. Face it. Call the car, have them bring down the luggage and let’s go on along the Old Spanish Trail. [She tries to hold him.]
CHANCE: Keep your grabbing hands off me.
[Marchers offstage start to sing “Bonnie Blue Flag.”]
PRINCESS: There’s no one but me to hold you back from destruction in this place.
CHANCE: I don’t want to be held.
PRINCESS: Don’t leave me. If you do I’ll turn into the monster again. I’ll be the first lady of the Beanstalk Country.
CHANCE: Go back to the room.
PRINCESS: I’m going nowhere alone. I can’t.
CHANCE [in desperation]: Wheel chair! [Marchers enter from the left, Tom Junior and Boss with them.] Wheel chair! Stuff, get the lady a wheel chair! She’s having another attack!
[Stuff and a Bellboy catch at her . . . but she pushes Chance away and stares at him reproachfully. . . . The Bellboy takes her by the arm. She accepts this anonymous arm and exits. Chance and the Heckler are alone on stage.]
CHANCE [as if reassuring, comforting somebody besides himself]: It’s all right, I’m alone now, nobody’s hanging onto me.
[He is panting. Loosens his tie and collar. Band in the Crystal Ballroom, muted, strikes up a lively but lyrically distorted variation of some such popular tune as the “Liechtensteiner Polka.” Chance turns toward the sound. Then, from left stage, comes a drum majorette, bearing a gold and purple silk banner inscribed, “Youth For Tom Finley,” prancing and followed by Boss Finley, Heavenly and Tom Junior, with a tight grip on her arm, as if he were conducting her to a death chamber.]
TOM JUNIOR: Papa? Papa! Will you tell Sister to march?
BOSS FINLEY: Little Bit, you hold your haid up high when we march into that ballroom. [Music up high . . . They march up the steps and onto the gallery in the rear . . . then start across it. The Boss calling out:] Now march! [And they disappear up the stairs.]
VOICE [offstage]: Now let us pray. [There is a prayer mumbled by many voices.]
MISS LUCY [who has remained behind]: You still want to try it?
HECKLER: I’m going to take a shot at it. How’s my voice?
MISS LUCY: Better.
HECKLER: I better wait here till he starts talkin’, huh?
MISS LUCY: Wait till they turn down the chandeliers in the ballroom. . . . Why don’t you switch to a question that won’t hurt his daughter?
HECKLER: I don’t want to hurt his daughter. But he’s going to hold her up as the fair white virgin exposed to black lust in the South, and that’s his build-up, his lead into his Voice of God speech.
MISS LUCY: He honestly believes it.
HECKLER: I don’t believe it. I believe that the silence of God, the absolute speechlessness of Him is a long, long and awful thing that the whole world is lost because of. I think it’s yet to be broken to any man, living or any yet lived on earth—no exceptions, and least of all Boss Finley.
[Stuff enters, goes to table, starts to wipe it. The chandelier lights go down.]
MISS LUCY [with admiration]: It takes a hillbilly to cut down a hillbilly. . . . [to Stuff] Turn on the television, baby.
VOICE [offstage]: I give you the beloved Thomas J. Finley.
[Stuff makes a gesture as if to turn on the TV, which we play in the fourth wall. A wavering beam of light, flickering, narrow, intense, comes from the balcony rail. Stuff moves his head so that he’s in it, looking into it. . . . Chance walks slowly downstage, his head also in the narrow flickering beam of light. As he walks downstage, there suddenly appears on the big TV screen, which is the whole back wall of the stage, the image of Boss Finley. His arm is around Heavenly and he is speaking. . . . When Chance sees the Boss’s arm around Heavenly, he makes a noise in his throat like a hard fist hit him low. . . . Now the sound, which always follows the picture by an instant, comes on . . . loud.]
BOSS [on TV screen]: Thank you, my friends, neighbors, kinfolk, fellow Americans. . . . I have told you before, but I will tell you again. I got a mission that I hold sacred to perform in the Southland. . . . When I was fifteen I came down barefooted out of the red clay hills. . . . Why? Because the Voice of God called me to execute this mission.
MISS LUCY [to Stuff]: He’s too loud.
HECKLER: Listen!
BOSS: And what is this mission? I have told you before but I will tell you again. To shield from pollution a blood that I think is not only sacred to me, but sacred to Him.
[Upstage we see the Heckler step up the last steps and make a gesture as if he were throwing doors open. . . . He advances into the hall, out of our sight.]
MISS LUCY: Turn it down, Stuff.
STUFF [motioning to her]: Shh!
BOSS: Who is the colored man’s best friend in the South? That’s right . . .
MISS LUCY: Stuff, turn down the volume.
BOSS: It’s me, Tom Finley. So recognized by both races.
STUFF [shouting]: He’s speaking the word. Pour it on!
BOSS: However—I can’t and will not accept, tolerate, condone this threat of a blood pollution.
[Miss Lucy turns down the volume of the TV set.]
BOSS: As you all know I had no part in a certain operation on a young black gentleman. I call that incident a deplorable thing. That is the one thing about which I am in total agreement with the Northern radical press. It was a de-plorable thing. However . . . I understand the emotions that lay behind it. The passion to protect by this violent emotion something that we hold sacred: our purity of our own blood! But I had no part in, and I did not condone the operation performed on the unfortunate colored gentleman caught prowling the midnight streets of our Capitol City. . . .
[as Boss Finley speaks]:
CHANCE: Christ! What lies. What a liar!
MISS LUCY: Wait! . . . Chance, you can still go. I can still help you, baby.
CHANCE [putting hands on Miss Lucy’s shoulders]: Thanks, but no thank you, Miss Lucy. Tonight, God help me, somehow, I don’t know how, but somehow I’ll take her out of St. Cloud. I’ll wake her up in my arms, and I’ll give her life back to her. Yes, somehow, God help me, somehow!
[Stuff turns up volume of TV set.]
HECKLER [as voice on the TV]: Hey, Boss Finley! [The TV camera swings to show him at the back of the hall.] How about your daughter’s operation? How about that operation your daughter had done on her at the Thomas J. Finley hospital here in St. Cloud? Did she put on black in mourning for her appendix? . . .
[We hear a gasp, as if the Heckler had been hit. Picture: Heavenly horrifed. Sounds of a disturbance. Then the doors at the top stairs up left burst open and the Heckler tumbles down. . . . The picture changes to Boss Finley. He is trying to dominate the disturbance in the hall.]
BOSS: Will you repeat that question. Have that man step forward. I will answer his question. Where is he? Have that man step forward, I will answer his question. . . . Last Friday . . . Last Friday, Good Friday. I said last Friday, Good Friday . . . Quiet, may I have your attention please. . . . Last Friday, Good Friday, I seen a horrible thing on the campus of our great State University, which I built for the state. A hideous straw-stuffed effigy of myself, Tom Finley, was hung and set fire to in the main quadrangle of the College. This outrage was inspired . . . inspired by the Northern radical press. However, that was Good Friday. Today is Easter. I saw that was Good Friday. Today is Easter Sunday and I am in St. Cloud.
[During this a gruesome, not-lighted, silent struggle has been going on. The Heckler defended himself, but finally has been overwhelmed and rather systematically beaten. . . . The tight intense follow spot beam stayed on Chance. If he had any impulse to go to the Heckler’s aid, he’d be discouraged by Stuff and another man who stand behind him, watching him. . . . At the height of the beating, there are bursts of great applause. . . . At a point during it, Heavenly is suddenly escorted down the stairs, sobbing, and collapses. . . .]
CURTAIN