Dead Man's Cell Phone

scene three

Hermia and Jean
drinking cosmopolitans.

Give me another. Don’t worry, I can drive home after all, Jean.

If I drive with my face. Haw haw haw! Oh, God, I sound like Gordon.

You must have a lot on your mind. Do you want to talk?

Yes, in fact, I would. Lately I’ve been thinking of the last time I had sex with Gordon. Over the last ten years, when Gordon and I would have sex, I would pretend that I was someone else. I’ve heard that a lot of women, in order to come, pretend that their lover is someone else. Like a robber or Zorba the Greek or a rapist or something like that. Do you ever do that?

But you know what Jean? I pretended that I was someone else, and that Gordon was Gordon, but he was cheating on me with me—I was the other woman. And it would turn me on to know that Gordon’s wife—me—was in the next room, that I—the mistress—had to be quiet, so that I—the wife—wouldn’t hear me. You and I both know that Gordon had affairs.

So the last time I had sex with Gordon I wish I could say that I wasn’t pretending. That he was really in me, and I was really in him. But I was pretending to be a co-worker of Gordon’s. He brought her to dinner once. That night, she was wearing a thong under a white pantsuit. (I never wear a thong. It’s like having a tampon in your asshole, don’t you think?) Anyway, that last time, I imagined myself in this white pantsuit, and his hands under my thong, ripping it off. I pictured what Gordon was seeing—and I picture me, looking back at Gordon. And there is more and more desire, like two mirrors, facing each other—it’s amazing what the mind can do.

After I met you, I was convinced that you and Gordon were having an affair. So after dinner, I was—you know—and I pretended to be you—and it worked. Isn’t that a riot?

That’s—um—

I wouldn’t normally tell you that but I’ve had a lot to drink at this point.

You should know that I didn’t have a sexual relationship with your husband.

Then why do you have his fucking phone?

I was the last one with him.

And why was that, Jean?

Gordon didn’t have coincidences. He had accidents. There’s a difference.

The phone rings.

Give that to me.

She rips the phone out of Jean’s hands.

Oops—missed the call!

Is his picture of the Pope still on it? From a business trip to Rome. Those mobs at the Vatican, waving their cell phones, stealing an image of the Pope’s dead face, and Gordon among them. I can still hear him laughing, I have the Pope in my pocket. There it is. Dead Pope. Oh, I feel sick.

The phone rings again.

I’m going to bury it. Like the Egyptians.

Jean gestures for the phone. The phone keeps ringing.

Yes, in the ground, with Gordon. There was this Belgian man very recently in the news and the undertakers forgot to remove the cell phone from the coffin and it rang during the funeral! Just went on ringing! And the family is suing for negligence Jean—for negligesh—you have to bury it, see—to bury it—very deep so you cannot hear the sound.

The phone stops ringing.

Are you ever in a very quiet room all alone and you feel as though you can hear a cell phone ringing and you look everywhere and you cannot see one but there are so many ringing in the world that you must hear some dim echo. Nothing is really silent anymore—and after a death—an almost silence—you have to bury it bury it very deep.

I’m sorry, Hermia, but I can’t let you do that. Gordon wanted me to have his phone.

Hermia hands Jean the phone.

Do you know what it’s like marrying the wrong man, Jean? And now—now—even if he was the wrong man, still, he was the man—and I should have spent my life trying to love him instead of wishing he were someone else.

What did Charles Dickens say? That we drive alone in our separate carriages never to truly know each other and then the book shuts and then we die? Something like that?

I don’t know what Charles Dickens said.

What good are you, Jean. You don’t even know your ass from your Dickens. Oh, God! Two separate carriages and then you die!

Hermia weeps.

Hermia. There’s something you should know. Gordon wrote you a letter before he died. There were different drafts, on napkins, all crumpled up. The waiter must have thrown them out, after the ambulance came, but I read one of the drafts.

What did it say?

I forget exactly. But I can paraphrase. It said, Dear Hermia. I know we haven’t always connected, every second of the day. Husbands and wives seldom do. The joy between husband and wife is elusive, but it is strong. It endures countless moments of silent betrayal, navigates complicated labyrinths of emotional retreats. I know that sometimes you were somewhere else when we made love. I was, too. But in those moments of climax, when the darkness descended, and our fantasies dissolved into the air under the quickening heat of our desire—then, then, we were in that room together. And that is all that matters. Love, Gordon.

Gordon knew that?

I guess he did.

Well, how about that.

Years of her marriage come back to her with a new light shining on them.

You’ve given me a great gift, Jean.

What can I give you?

You gave me back ten years of my marriage. You see, after I learned that Gordon’s “business trips to Rome” equaled him, trafficking organs, I couldn’t bring myself to—. You know—people never write into Cosmo about how sexual revulsion can be caused by moral revulsion—they just tell you to change positions.

Oh, yes, Gordon and his organs—

that’s funny Gordon rhymes with organs, how is it I’ve never noticed that—

Gordon, organ/organ, Gordon, same letters too!

O, R, G—there’s no D—

and God in the middle—oh! I feel sick.

Gordon—sold organs?

I thought you were in in-coming.

And you didn’t know what was in the packages?

No—I guess I didn’t.

That’s funny! Well, I’m sorry to ruin your illusions about Gordon. I was never supposed to know—I told my friends he was in waste management. I remember one sad case. Gordon convinced a Brazilian man to give his kidney to a woman in Israel. Gordon paid him five thousand dollars cash. Gordon probably made one hundred thousand dollars in the transaction. He bought me a yellow diamond. (I think they look like something you’d find in a candy machine, but they’re very rare.) So the man returned to Brazil, kidney-less. And then his money was stolen from him at the airport in Rio. Can you imagine? He wrote these sad letters to our home. He would draw pictures of his lost kidney. It looked like a broken heart.

The phone rings.
Jean and Hermia look at each other.
Jean chooses to answer it.

She is cut off.
She listens for a while.
Film noir music.
She hangs up.

They said they have a kidney from Brazil. Go to South Africa. To the airport. I’ll be wearing a red raincoat. And hung up.

I have to go to South Africa.

I’ll make up for Gordon’s mistakes.

Too late, Jean. The kidneys, the corneas, the skin—they’re the rings on my fingers and the fixtures in our bathrooms. What’s done is done.

Someone is waiting for a kidney, Hermia!
Tell Dwight I’ll call him from Johannesburg.

What?
Jean! Do you own a gun?

But Jean is out the door.