Part 9

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Allen

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Ruth: You think I'm beautiful now. You're convinced that I'm the kind and consoling woman you need. I'll see a lot of you. You'll be good for business. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I wish you were one of the johns who think they love me. I could use some kindness after last night. Maddie's going to dump me. One night I'll go home and all her clothes will be gone. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) But you've never had anything to give to anybody. I can see it in your face. I could tell you my entire life story without flinching from one word of it and cuddle my body against yours with all the truth I possess and still get the same result. You'd look at me fretfully, but only because you'd be worried about what would happen to you next. And that's all you'd ever do. You'd never listen or hear me. You'd just let me manipulate you so that you wouldn't feel guilty anymore. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I'd like to be somebody's beloved again tonight. I'm tired of men who need to feel nothing or powerful or convinced that they're likeable or that I really want them. I'm tired of being your nurse. I'd like to be with a man who can reach down inside himself and find something there for me. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I've launched my boats over the side more than a thousand times when I've spotted such a man. "Mr. Townsend. Mr. Pembrow," I yell, "Away the ship's boats! He's a mile off the port bow on a northeast course. He'll dive soon and come up a half-mile further out on the same heading. Step lively! An extra ration of rum tonight for the men in the first boat that reaches him." (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) Some have been abandoned or committed some act of violence. Others were made responsible for another life at too young an age or have some bottomless need to submit to me like a woman. And some are just overgrown mama's boys suffering from a religious mania peculiar to men who go to prostitutes. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) Pearson's like that. He secretly thinks he's Jesus fucking Mary Magdalene when he's with me. He'd like to die on the cross with a divine ache in his heart while I suck his dick. I like men like Pearson. They have wonderful manners. They're almost like dainty little girls in their first communion dresses when they come to see me. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) Not that Jesus would be like that himself. He'd fuck me like a carpenter nailing off a roof. Simple and direct. I'd come a lot with Jesus. More than I've ever come in my whole life. I bet he'd be well hung too. God wouldn't let his son walk around with a tiny weenie like yours. If he comes back, I hope Jesus books a session with me. I'd even consider retiring if he made me his woman. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I'm always amazed at how deep some men have to travel within themselves to be able to hear me. The violent and proud ones have to travel the furthest and are always the most shaken. When I have the strength to travel that far with a man down into himself and be shaken as well, such men can suit me. "Mr. Townsend", I order when I'm with a man like that, "This one's dangerous. Steady the boat and hand me the harpoon. Be quick about it! I'm going to sink the iron into this brute's heart with my own hands. I'll go down with this monster and find where he lives! Once he's choking on his own blood, I'll bring him up from his depths! He's got enough oil in him to spread on the waves for a mile around. We'll set the sea itself on fire tonight!" (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I don't know whether I've ever loved any of my johns. I don't need any of them. I certainly don't need to be accepted by any of them. I think I'm only really in love with my gift for submerging myself into men. What I call my whaler's art when I'm by myself and no one is looking. I don't know. Sometimes it almost seems real. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I don't know whether any of my johns have loved me either. They're all so presumptuous and vain. Every last one of them. A man has to be in order to go to a prostitute and expect her to be the woman he wants her to be. They may only be comforting some scared boy inside themselves when they find affection for me. I don't really know. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I'm glad that Liebowitz will be my last john tonight. He doesn't fight his feelings and doesn't question them. He believes in them like a small child believes and treats me like I'm an ordinary woman. I need that tonight. I don't want to ask myself any more questions or think about anything. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) You'll be ready to come soon. I can sense it in your breathing. I know just how you want it to happen. And I'm going to give it to you.

Catherine: I've never felt that I've been alone with a man in the real world while having sex. Only here in these places with Nate. I only felt that I was alone once with Herb. We were dancing one night during the war. ---- Would you be so kind as to humor an old woman by dancing with her?

("Moonlight Serenade" by the Glenn Miller Orchestra begins to play.)

Morgan (addressing Herb): May I dance with your wife?

Herb (addressing Morgan drunkenly): Just when you think you've seen everything, something new comes along. Sure. Go ahead.

Morgan (addressing Catherine): Madam, a Foxtrot?

(Catherine puts down her Christmas cards. Catherine and Morgan stand up, walk towards each other and begin dancing the Foxtrot around and in front of the chair where Bob sits and Ruth kneels. Herb nods, falls asleep in his chair and occasionally snores. Catherine and Morgan continue talking while they dance.)

Catherine: Very nicely done.

Morgan: Thank you.

Catherine: I was just a girl then. Herb was in his Lieutenant's uniform and was shipping out to Europe the next morning. We went to the ballroom at the Hotel New Yorker on Eighth Avenue. It was the summer of 1942. We'd only been married a few weeks. I was scared that he'd die overseas. The whole night he looked into my eyes and held me close. He told me that when the war was over we'd be together again dancing in the same spot. Afterwards, we went to Chinatown for a cheap meal. We were poor in those days.

Morgan: Did you ever go back to the Hotel New Yorker?

Catherine: No. The war changed Herb. Things happened to him that he could never talk about. He forgot that we'd been young and afraid together. After our first child was born, he started going to prostitutes and I started watching him from the crowd. He wasn't any happier with them than he was with me. Only their newness made them interesting to him. ----I sat for 21 years watching Herb until the night Nate saved my life in July of 1970. The night we met, we made love standing up against a wall in the hotel room where Herb had brought me to watch him. Even though we were surrounded by other people, Nate made me feel as if we were the only two people in the world who existed. Nate always knew which women Herb was going to see. He went to see them earlier so that he could be there waiting for me when Herb arrived. We managed to be together that way for 15 years.

Morgan: Those are good memories.

Catherine: Those were the best times of my life. Now every Wednesday night, Herb and I dress up so that we can appear properly attired wherever Bob brings us. It's our most important social event of the week. Herb always gets drunk and insults Bob. I sit searching my mind wondering what I could have done to make Bob less of an emotional cripple than he is. I should have protected him when he was young and vulnerable. Now Bob's old and vulnerable and stupid and will never change. I sit here knowing that I can't undo the damage.

Morgan: Would you like to see Nate again? I can bring him here if you'd like. I've never done it, but he and I are connected in ways that two people rarely become connected.

Catherine: No. Seeing him again would only remind me that I'm what I've allowed myself to become. Even though he wouldn't condemn me, I wouldn't want to see that in his eyes. ---- I feel tired now. I must sit down. Thank you for listening to me. You're a wonderful dancer. (Catherine kisses Morgan on the cheek)

Morgan: You're quite welcome.

(Music stops. Catherine walks to her original chair in the first row to the right of Bob and sits down. Jean puts down her Christmas cards, stands up and walks to Morgan.)

Jean (addressing Morgan): If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to dance with you now. (Addressing Ethel) Could you sing us one of your old songs?

Ethel (addressing Jean): Yes, of course. I love singing. Songs help me make sense out of life.

(Music without vocal tracks for "Then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals begins to play on a continuous loop. Aunt Caroline and Ethel stand up and walk through the chairs to take their place facing the front of the room immediately behind Ruth. Ethel sings the entire song by herself.)

(Morgan and Jean hold each other and dance slowly like a high school couple in the 1960s. They dance around and in front of the chair where Bob sits and Ruth kneels before Ethel and Aunt Caroline. Jean and Morgan continue talking while they dance.)


Ethel: Well, he walked up to me and he asked me if I wanted to dance. He looked kinda nice and so I said I might take a chance.

Jean: So what's your name? What do you do for a living?

Morgan: Morgan. Owen Morgan. I'm an actuary. I study the probability of bad things happening to people. Cancer and heart attacks mostly, but I dabble in hurricanes and tornadoes on occasion. There's an excellent chance we're going to have sex tonight.

Jean: You're so forward. We've just met. Tell me, how do you cope with being murdered in these places all the time? That would unhinge me.

Morgan: It's simple. I know where I'm going when I die. Most people don't have a clue.

Jean: And where's that?

Morgan: Apartment 5B at 2175 Walton Avenue in the Bronx. It's a two bedroom fifth floor walk-up. I'm going to sit in the kitchen with my maternal grandmother. She's going to give me a slice of pound cake. The kitchen is perfectly white with an old-fashioned icebox and a dumbwaiter for hauling up the ice. I can close my eyes any time and see it.

Jean: How can you be so certain.

Morgan: I held my grandmother's hands the night before she died. She knew that I'd have nowhere to go when it was my time and insisted on seeing me. ---- When I sit in her kitchen with her, her apartment will look the same way it looked the day she moved there in 1928. Instead of being a 45 year old woman with three children, though, my grandmother will be a girl of 16 and look the same way she looked in the summer of 1899 on the day she held her grandfather's hands as he lay dying and stood herself between heaven and earth like I did with her. She was a beauty then: tall, slender, fierce blue eyes, dark black hair, with the whitest of skin. Much prettier than any model you see here in America.

Ethel: When he danced he held me tight. And when he walked me home that night, all the stars were shining bright. And then he kissed me.

Jean: I wish I were so certain of something. I'm not certain of anything.

Morgan: It's better sometimes not to be certain.

Jean: You've been awake in these places for a long time. What's the strangest thing you've ever seen?

Morgan: I've seen the First Ones a few times out of the corner of my eye.

Jean: Who are they?

Morgan: They're a man and a woman who lived 60,000 years ago. Everybody who's alive is descended from them. They started coming back to these places when their existence was reported in the scientific journals dealing with genetic research. They thought they'd been forgotten. Now they roam the earth again looking in on how things are going. They've learned how to use the Internet. They're great fans of commercial sex.

Jean: What are they like?

Morgan: They're not quite like you'd expect Adam and Eve to be. In fact, they're not very friendly at all. If anybody gets too close to them, they snatch them up, take them away and make them their slaves.

Jean: Some couples are like that. No one can stand them. They don't get invited to parties all that much.

Morgan: They weren't very happy together when they were alive. The man was the chief of a little clan on the African Savannah. The woman was his oldest wife. When she was 20, he took other younger, prettier wives, and started pimping her out to wandering hunters for scraps of rotting meat. He slaughtered any resulting children. Every night she lay alone under the stars watching her husband have sex with one of his other wives. She cursed him, wept and lusted, but was only allowed to have sex when a wandering hunter paid for her.

Jean: Not quite husband of the year material.

Morgan: It took 57,400 years for their descendants to recover enough to discover the rudiments of abstract logic.

Ethel: Each time I saw him I couldn't wait to see him again. I wanted to let him know that he was more than a friend.

Jean: I'd like to see them even if they're frightening. I need to see something new to shake me. I'm stuck where I am in my life.

Morgan: Are you sure? It'll require an immense amount of passion for the First Ones to appear. That'll mean that Bob will have his best session ever with a prostitute. The passion that happens here in the crowd will affect him. Doesn't that bother you?

Jean: Not at all. These women don't make me jealous. They're all alike: ferocious lesbians providing the girlfriend experience for witless husbands. I couldn't care less. Bob becomes tolerable again afterwards. When he's had a really great session, he can even be pleasant.

(Morgan kisses Jean gently on the lips.)

Ethel: I didn't know what to do. So I whispered I love you. And he said that he loved me too. And then he kissed me.

Jean: I don't know who you are or what you're really like. I feel a little funny about this.

Morgan: I'll tell you something about myself that hardly anyone knows: Every July 4th ever since I was a child, I have a root beer float made with coffee ice cream after I watch the fireworks. That's truly intimate knowledge. You can't get much closer to a man than that.

Jean: You're a traditionalist with solid habits, yet not afraid to take chances and think out of the box. I think I like you. I think I like you a lot. I've never met anybody like you.

Morgan: If I die tonight, would you bring me back to life.

Jean: I don't know if I can. I'd try. ---- But let's not talk about things like that. I want you to kiss me again.

(Morgan kisses Jean with a long passionate open-mouthed kiss. Morgan and Jean stop dancing and walk to the chair where Jean was initially seated in the first row of chairs to the right of Bob. Morgan sits down and Jean sits on his lap facing and leaning towards the front of the room after first hiking her skirt up to allow Morgan access to her body. Herb continues sleeping and occasionally snoring while Catherine sits next to him.)

Catherine (addressing Jean and Morgan): Don't mind me. Been there. Done that.

(Morgan and Jean have vigorous sex. Jean quickly begins coming and making her orgasmic cooing, excited chimpanzee noises at regular intervals. ("Oo Oo Oo"). Bob's and Ruth's dead ancestors and relatives in the back rows mimic Jean's orgasmic cooing, excited chimpanzee noises ("Oo Oo Oo") whenever she makes them and then laugh loudly amongst themselves each time.)
 
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