Landscape of the Body Page 4

  DONNY Piss on the guy.

  BERT Then I knock on the door next door. Mrs. Pantoni, I tell her, there’s another drunk broke in. He peed on the floor. I spill some wine on him. She calls the cops. The cops come and clear the guy out.

  MARGIE They don’t ever report you?

  BERT You don’t have big ears, but you’re a real dumbo, Margie. I don’t want you hanging around with her, Joanne.

  JOANNE I got to have some friends, Bert.

  BERT You got me.

  JOANNE You swear?

  BERT (With his arm around Joanne) Who they gonna report? Some fairy tries to pick up a fourteen-year-old?

  JOANNE All that ticking. Your arm is so noisy.

  DONNY You have all the fun. I got to stick in the tub. You wait in the tub for a while. You see how much fun it is in a fucking tub.

  BERT Some fairy in a Chevrolet with Jersey plates is gonna pick you up? I want to make some money, not scare ’em away.

  DONNY That’s right. I’d scare ‘em away. (He makes a monster face and waves his wrench)

  JOANNE Let me wind your watches? You read in the papers today about the lady in Forest Hills who died and they couldn’t figure out how she died? She was healthy. Well, you know how she died?

  BERT Donny hit her over the head with his monkey.

  DONNY That’s right. I hit her over the head with my monkey.

  MARGIE Would you let her tell her story?

  BERT (Calls) You burning that bran muffin?

  JOANNE She had this beautiful beehive hairdo that she wore. Really intricate. Curls. Upswept. Spit curls. And she didn’t want to damage it because her hairdo was really a work of art. Hairdo magazine was considering her for a feature. And she kept spraying her hairdo with hair spray so her hairdo wouldn’t get hurt when she went to sleep at night and you know what happened? In Forest Hills, Queens, they traced black widow spiders escaped and hid in her hair. Somehow they ended up in her hair because they like dark places and the hair spray made this shield like Gardol on the toothpaste commercial where the decay can’t get through the toothpaste. And the black widow spiders got trapped within her hairdo in this wall of hair spray and got panicked and couldn’t get out and ate their way through her skull. Bit her in the skull to get out and that’s how she died.

  Bert and Joanne neck.

  DONNY Bert?

  MARGIE Can I have a bite of that bran muffin?

  DONNY Bert? Is your mother at work?

  JOANNE Bran is supposed to be the secret of life.

  BERT You feel like getting another wristwatch?

  MARGIE How’d that woman do her hair?

  Bert and Donny go. Joanne begins demonstrating. The lights come down on the luncheonette and up on Rosalie, by her piano. She prepares herself for the next scene, putting on a brief kimono.

  ROSALIE Flashback. Eighteen months ago. I was still among the living. How my sister and nephew came to New York in the first place.

  Rosalie’s apartment. A sink, a table, a chair, a daybed strewn with clothes, a vanity. Rosalie’s putting on makeup and drinking coffee and snorting a few hits of cocaine to get her day started. Betty and Bert appear. Betty looks different from what we have seen before. Eighteen months ago she was very plain. Very nervous.

  BETTY Rosalie, you got to come home. You’re growing up not knowing your family. Your nephew. Our mother.

  Bert shyly looks out from behind his mother.

  ROSALIE Hiya, kid. Want a snort?

  BETTY Tell her, Bert.

  Bert steps forward, all rehearsed.

  BERT Bangor, Maine, is about the greatest place I know. It’s not like the old days when nothing was there. Bangor, Maine, is the home of one of the world’s busiest airports.

  He holds out a pennant marked BANGOR.

  ROSALIE He’s great.

  BERT Bangor, Maine, is the center of the chartered jet service that takes Americans to all parts of the globe on budget flights.

  ROSALIE You done good, Betty.

  BETTY Rosalie, Bangor is so interesting. You meet people from all over the world who are laying over. Lots of times they’re fogged in and you get to hear about their travels and I sell souvenirs and there’s an opening in the cocktail lounge. You could sing. You’d meet such interesting people. I pray for snow. I pray for fog. All the things that used to make life so dismal in Bangor are now the exact things that make it so interesting.

  ROSALIE Honeybunch, you’re hearing about the world. But hearing about it don’t put no notches on anyone’s pistol. I’m doing. Bert, would you go out onto Christopher Street to the Li-Lac-Chocolate store and request about a pound of kisses?

  She gives Bert money. Bert goes.

  BETTY Bert, you be careful. Is it safe out there?

  ROSALIE Honeybunch, I get this call last week, would I be interested appearing in a film. Sure, why not.

  BETTY He’s never been to a city before.

  ROSALIE I report to a motel on Forty-second Street and Eleventh Avenue. Way west. Take elevator to the sixth floor. Knock. Go in. Floodlights. A camera. Workmen setting up. The real thing! A man said, “You the girl? Get your duds off. Sink into the feathers and go to it.” Holy shit, they’re loading the cameras and I’m naked and nobody’s really paying attention. They say, “You all set?” Sure, why not. Lights. Camera. Action. And a door I thought was a closet opens up and it’s from another room and a gorilla leaps out with a slit in his suit and this enormous erection and the gorilla jumps on me. Honeybunch, there’s no surprises like that in Maine. And we’re going at it and I can’t believe it and after about five minooties, the director yells “Cut!” and the gorilla rolls off me, takes off his gorilla head, and it’s Harry Reems from Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones. What an honor to meet you, sir, I said. Christ! Go back to Bangor, Maine! Honey, you should move in with me. Get yourself unsaddled from Momma and that house and airports.

  BETTY It’s our family.

  Rosalie dresses for work and takes a few snorts.

  ROSALIE Honeybaby, start your own family. I started my own family. I’ve got a family motto. “She Travels Fastest Who Travels Alone.” I live here on Christopher Street. A lovely building. Lovely neighbors. Leave you alone. Nobody knows me. I don’t know anybody. I’m flying high. I’m working for a travel agency. Dawn’s Promising Star Travel Agency. Founder and sponsor of Honeymoon Holidays. No charter jets for me. When I travel, which shall be soon, I’ll be traveling first class not out of Bangor but right out of old JFK. Wait till you meet my boss, Raulito. Take it back. Erase those tapes. You’ll never meet him. I’d show you my life, you’d get so jealous, you’d want to move right in and take me over. You can’t have me. You can have yourself but you can’t have me. Ditch the kid. He comes from a whole other rotten period of your life. Erase those tapes. Get rid of him. I got a pull-out sofa. Move in. We can have some laughs.

  BETTY I’ve got lots of laughs in Bangor. When it isn’t raining, it’s snowing. I meet boys at the airport, but they end up taking planes. Momma sits by the TV singing “Rosalie, My Darling” over and over and over. Aside from that, everything is okay.

  ROSALIE Listen, send the kid back. There’s an extra key.

  BETTY Momma sent me down here to bring you back.

  ROSALIE You just wire a little wire to Momma. Hey, Momma, send me a change-of-address card. I get lonely, Honeybunch. We could have some laughs. I’m proud of my life and I’d like to show it off to you. We’re young.

  Bert enters with a bag of chocolates.

  ROSALIE Hiya, kid. We were just talking about you.

  BERT Kisses!

  The lights go out on Bert and Betty in Rosalie’s apartment. Rosalie steps in time to the very jazzy piano music.

  ROSALIE So I walk out on Christopher, cut down on Bleecker to walk to work, and I’m just jazzing along Hudson Street, and you know where that Ristorante Rigoletto is that the papers gave eighteen tureens to and they got limousines parked out front and I happen to know the chef sprays fresh herbs
on the canned Boyardee, but what the hell, it’s overpriced, out of the way, they treat you like shit, and Uptown loves it.

  A cyclist appears behind her wearing a mask, goggles, helmet, and spandex, holding a bicycle with a broken chain over his head. He advances slowly, threateningly, toward her.

  ROSALIE Well, I’m being so specific because it’s just at that very location that a ten-speed yellow Raleigh bike bears down on me. I apparently splattered up against the window of the Ristorante Rigoletto like a pizza that suddenly appeared on the menu. My last thoughts were of Betty moving down to New York. I won her. Revenge on our Momma. I was feeling very happy.

  The sound of a crash. Rosalie sinks to the ground, slowly caressing the MASKED MAN’s body as she falls. The Masked Man glares at us, never lowering his bicycle.

  MASKED MAN I don’t give a shit if she’s dead. Who’s gonna fix my bike? The chain is off my bike! Who’s gonna pay for that? Give me her bag. She owes me money. Life belongs to the living. I don’t give a shit if she just died. She should’ve looked. I am traveling. I am moving. Who’s gonna pay for my bike? Chocolate? That’s all she’s got in the fucking bag? Chocolate kisses? How am I supposed to fix my bike with chocolate kisses? She deserves to die.

  He stomps her bag of kisses, walks off into the black. Rosalie sits up and sings.

  ROSALIE Was that Mister Right?

  If it was, I’ll let it pass.

  The right Mister Right

  That funky-looking skunk

  Put me kerplunk on my ass

  I thought Mister Right

  Would have a little more couth.

  He’d come on a white charger

  Say hi-de-hi to my charm

  And vo-de-oh to my youth

  The bright music continues under:

  ROSALIE So Betty Yearn, newly arrived from Bangor, Maine, stays in New York to settle my estate along with my hash. She moves into my apartment, she takes over my job. I’m not even cool in the grave yet, and she’s got my job. She moves into my life. Betty Yearn’s first day eighteen months ago in the Dawn’s Promising Star Travel Agency. A division of Honeymoon Holidays.

  The music turns Latin. A travel agency appears: a desk, a telephone, piles of newspapers, lots of telephone books, a cassette recorder that contains tapes of cheering and applause. Betty is dressed in a bland outfit for her first day at work. Raulito wears what happens to be a gold lamé evening gown over his business suit and still looks mucho macho. Raulito is knockout handsome, like a 1940s leading man with a pompadour and diamond rings. He carries an armful of Sunday’s papers.

  RAULITO You take the Daily News. You take the Sunday Times. Not the financial section. Not the sports section.

  BETTY There’s so many sections.

  RAULITO The engagement section.

  BETTY The society page.

  RAULITO You look up the name of the father, the man who is paying for the wedding.

  BETTY Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Culkin of Corona and Point Lookout announce the engagement of their daughter, Lillibet—

  RAULITO Stop right there. You look in the phone book. Not the Manhattan phone book.

  BETTY So I look up Corona in … there are so many phone books. I’ve only been here a few days.

  RAULITO Corona is in Queens.

  BETTY Culkin. B-B-B-B-B-B … Bernard.

  RAULITO Don’t show it to me. Copy the phone number down on the pad.

  BETTY I swear to you, I’m generally very good at writing numbers.

  RAULITO Check the bride-to-be’s name.

  BETTY Lillibet.

  RAULITO See what Lillibet does. Where Lillibet is employed.

  BETTY “Educated at St. John’s University.”

  RAULITO Your sister was like streaks of lightning here.

  BETTY “Is employed as a researcher at Mutual Life.”

  RAULITO So she should be home at five-thirty. Mark down to call her at?

  BETTY Five-forty-five?

  RAULITO Five-thirty-one!

  BETTY Nice to have a few minutes to get your coat off.

  RAULITO Your late and more and more lamented sister would have that phone ringing off the hook the instant Lillibet Culkin Corona Queens stuck her key in the door.

  BETTY Fine.

  RAULITO If I may be so bold, petals on a pool drifting, you want a travel brochure back to Bangor?

  BETTY No! I feel my sister wanted me to have this job.

  RAULITO No hard feelings. We can be friends. If I’m ever in Bangor, God forbid, I’ll look you up. Is the job too hard for you?

  BETTY I can do it.

  RAULITO Then honey through the comb sifting, you must be prepared to play Follow the Leader. Miss Lisa Staminelli to wed law student. Bayside, Queens. Father Frank Staminelli. Presented to society the Gotham Ball. You have the Queens phone book. Zut zut zut zut zut you have the number. You dial it. (He accomplishes this task in a dazzlingly quick stroke.) This is where my Rosalie was brilliant. (He talks into the phone.) Miss Lisa Staminelli. Is she there? Is this she? This is she? The noted debutante? I am talking to her. Ohhhhh, Miss Staminelli, this is Bride’s Magazine calling. Of course I’m breathless. Are you sitting down? Miss Staminelli, you’ve won our lottery. An all-expense-paid honeymoon for two to Paradise Cove. Two weeks! (He clicks on the cassette—cheers and applause—then turns it off.)

  BETTY Two weeks?

  RAULITO Yes! For you and Mr. Right— (He checks the paper.) Bruce Mandrake. How did I know? Darling, we here at Bride’s Magazine know tout! If we didn’t know who was getting married, we wouldn’t know if the world would keep spinning. We need families and families are love and love pulled your number out of the lottery. Fate wanted you and your new husband, Mr. Mandrake—is he the magician?—to have this honeymoon. Do you think it’s possible, God, we know you’re so busy, would it be possible for you and Señor Right to stop down to our office and pick up your honeymoon? Fourteenth Street. 618 West. Ninth floor. The Honeymoon Holidays Building. Could you and Bruce toddle on down here any night after work, say seven? We could finalize arrangements for the honeymoon? Some forms to sign.

  The piano plays a tango.

  RAULITO Then you could have a lovely evening in the Village. Greenwich Village. Chianti. Pasta. Discuss your future. Discuss your honeymoon. It’s all luck and love is luck and you’re the luckiest girl in the world, Lisa. The past shows us the mistakes we made. The future’s the place where we won’t make them again. Dreams are the fuel for reality. A new family is coming into the world! Oh God! Grab the Now! The Now is all quicksilver and mercury. The Now is diamonds. Can I make an appointment for you? Lucky you! I could squeeze you in tomorrow at seven-ten. Oh, Lisa, you’ve made all of us so happy at Bride’s Magazine. (He clicks on the cassette of cheering.) See you tomorrow. (He hangs up and clicks off the cassette.) You’re the bait, baby. You lure them in here. You decorate the hook. I make the sale.

  BETTY Everybody falls for it?

  RAULITO Sometimes a black eye. Every now and then a death threat. But, Sweetness and Light, if I can make one sale a week, that is two trips to the Caribbean, I can make out all right. Besides what is living without a little danger?

  BETTY Do they ever call Bride’s Magazine?

  RAULITO Only the smart ones and they’re not exactly our clientele.

  BETTY Could we be sued?

  RAULITO By who?

  BETTY Bride’s Magazine.

  RAULITO For what?

  BETTY I don’t want to go to jail. My life is beginning. I don’t want to be arrested.

  RAULITO Hey, hey, hey. Evidence obtained by wiretap is illegal. Can’t be introduced into court. What planet are you from anyway, baby?

  BETTY What borough is the moon in?

  RAULITO The moon is the fifty-first state. Hawaii. Alaska. The moon. Did you see the moon last night? Like a little Turkish flag waving in the sky? I saluted.

  BETTY Why do you dress that way?

  RAULITO That is exactly what your sister Rosalie said to me the first t
ime we met. We would curl up on her pull-out sleep sofa, now your pull-out sleep sofa, and I would tell her my dream to one night turn on the TV and hear the late show say, “And tonight our guest is me!”

  Bright show-biz music. He clicks on the cassette of people cheering.

  RAULITO Thank you, Johnny. I’m from Cuba. We lived on the other side of the island. From Havana.

  Then the music turns latin. Raulito sits beside the desk as if he were the guest on the Tonight Show and Betty the host.

  RAULITO Poor. You never saw such poor. We were so poor that. You know those jokes? He was so fat that. She was so dumb that. Well, we were so poor that. When I was wearing rags, I was running around naked! This part of Cuba that we called the country, I think any normal-thinking person would call it the jungle! Occasionally, a magazine would appear in our village and I’d see the pictures of evening gowns and spangles and barrettes in the hair and these high heels. I didn’t know till later that was what women wore. I thought that was rich people. I thought if you were rich and lived in the city or lived in America that was what the average American family hung around in. The revolution came. I saw Che Guevara this close. We left Cuba. We got to Florida. Where I found out that those uniforms with diamonds and lace did not belong to the typical American man. But a few years ago, I was shopping in the Salvation Army for a winter coat and I came upon this real Rita Hayworth special. A beautiful 1940s evening gown for twenty-five cents. I bought it. Why not? The dreams we have as kids, they’re the dreams we never get over. I put it on over my suit. I feel rich. I feel successful.

  Raulito begins to spin. The gold dress flares out. He advances on Betty, now waving his dress like Dracula’s cape, then like a matador’s cape in front of her. Betty is terrified.

  RAULITO I feel I can get out of the jungle and get to America and twirl and twirl. Feeling good outside I start to feel good inside. I start Honeymoon Holidays. I want to start a family. I want to start a life. Betty, your sister went with me. Your sister would let me dance with her first. Then she would let me sleep with her after and dreams would come out of our heads like little Turkish moons. We would salute. Betty?

  BETTY (Getting back to work) It’s about five-thirty. I’d better call Lillibet.