Three One-Act Plays Read online

  CONTENTS

  1. RIVERSIDE DRIVE

  2. OLD SAYBROOK

  3. CENTRAL PARK WEST

  WRITER'S BLOCK

  RIVERSIDE DRIVE

  Curtain rises on a gray day in New York. There might even be some hint of fog. The setting suggests a secluded spot by the embankment of the Hudson River where one can lean over the rail, watch the boats and see the New Jersey shoreline. Probably the West Seventies or Eighties.

  Jim Swain, a writer, somewhere between forty and fifty, is waiting nervously, checking his watch, pacing, trying a number on his cellular phone to no response. He's obviously waiting to meet someone.

  He rubs his hands together, checks for some drizzle and perhaps pulls his jacket up a bit as he feels at least a damp mist.

  Presently, a large, homeless man, unshaven, a street dweller of approximately Jim's age, drifts on with a kind of eye on Jim. His name is Fred.

  Fred eventually drifts closer to Jim, who has become increasingly aware of his presence and, while not exactly afraid, is wary of being in a desolate area with a large, unsavory type. Add to this that Jim wants his rendezvous with whomever he is waiting for to be very private. Finally, Fred engages him.

  FRED

  Rainy day.

  (Jim nods, agreeing but not wanting to encourage conversation.)

  A drizzle.

  (Jim nods with a wan smile.)

  Or should I say mizzle—mist and drizzle.

  JIM

  Um.

  FRED

  (pause)

  Look at how fast the current's moving. You throw your cap into the river it'll be out in the open sea in twenty minutes.

  JIM

  (begrudging but polite)

  Uh-huh …

  FRED

  (pause)

  The Hudson River travels three hundred and fifteen miles beginning in the Adirondacks and emptying finally into the vast Atlantic Ocean.

  JIM

  Interesting.

  FRED

  No it's not. Ever wonder what it'd be like if the current ran in the opposite direction?

  JIM

  I haven't actually.

  FRED

  Chaos—the world would be out of sync. You throw your cap in it'd get carried up to Poughkeepsie rather than out to sea.

  JIM

  Yes … well …

  FRED

  Ever been to Poughkeepsie?

  JIM

  What?

  FRED

  Ever been to Poughkeepsie?

  JIM

  Me?

  FRED

  (looks around; they're alone)

  Who else?

  JIM

  Why do you ask?

  FRED

  It's a simple question.

  JIM

  If I was in Poughkeepsie?

  FRED

  Were you?

  JIM

  (considers the question, decides he'll answer)

  No, I haven't. OK?

  FRED

  So if you haven't, why are you so guilty?

  JIM

  Look, I'm a little preoccupied.

  FRED

  You don't come here often, do you?

  JIM

  Why?

  FRED

  Interesting.

  JIM

  What do you want? Are you going to hit me up for a touch? Here, here's a buck.

  FRED

  Hey—I only asked if you came here often.

  JIM

  (getting impatient)

  No. I'm meeting someone. I have a lot on my mind.

  FRED

  What a day you picked.

  JIM

  I didn't know it would be this nasty.

  FRED

  Don't you watch the weather on TV? Christ, it seems that all they talk about is the goddamn weather. You really care on Riverside Drive if there are gusty winds in the Appalachian Valley? I mean, Jesus, gimme a break.

  JIM

  Well, it was nice talking to you.

  FRED

  Look—you can hardly see Jersey—there's such a fog.

  JIM

  It's OK. It's a blessing …

  FRED

  Right. I don't like it any better than you do.

  JIM

  Actually I'm joking—I'm being—

  FRED

  Frivolous? … Flippant?

  JIM

  Mildly sarcastic.

  FRED

  It's understandable.

  JIM

  It is?

  FRED

  Knowing how I feel about Montclair.

  JIM

  How would I know how you feel about Montclair?

  FRED

  I won't even bother to comment on that.

  JIM

  Er—yeah—well—I'd like to get back to my thoughts.

  (Looks at watch.)

  FRED

  What time you expect her?

  JIM

  What are you talking about? Please leave me alone.

  FRED

  It's a free country. I can stay here and stare at New Jersey if I want.

  JIM

  Fine. But don't talk to me.

  FRED

  Don't answer.

  JIM

  (takes out cell phone)

  Hey look, do you want me to call the police?

  FRED

  And tell them what?

  JIM

  That you're harassing me—aggressive panhandling.

  FRED

  Suppose I took that cell phone and tossed it right into the river. Twenty minutes it'd be carried off into the Atlantic. Of course, if the current ran the other way it'd wind up in Poughkeepsie. Do I mean Poughkeepsie or Tarrytown?

  JIM

  (a bit scared and angry)

  I've been to Tarrytown in case you were going to ask me that next.

  FRED

  Where'd you stay there?

  JIM

  Pocantico Hills. I used to live there. Is that OK with you?

  FRED

  Now they call it Sleepy Hollow—sounds better for the tourists.

  JIM

  Uh-huh.

  FRED

  Cash in on all that Ichabod Crane crap. Rip Van Winkle. It's all packaging.

  JIM

  Look—I was deep in thought—

  FRED

  Hey—we're talking literature. You're a writer.

  JIM

  How do you know that?

  FRED

  C'mon—it's me.

  JIM

  Are you going to tell me you can tell because of my costume?

  FRED

  You're in costume?

  JIM

  It's the tweed jacket and the corduroys, right?

  FRED

  Jean-Paul Sartre said that after the age of thirty a man is responsible for his own face.

  JIM

  Camus said that.

  FRED

  Sartre.

  JIM

  Camus. Sartre said a man assumes the traits of his occupation— a waiter will gradually walk like a waiter—a bank clerk gestures like one—because they want to become things.

  FRED

  But you're not a thing.

  JIM

  I try not to be.

  FRED

  Because it's safe to be a thing—because things don't perish. Like The Wall —the men being executed want to become one with the wall they're put up in front of—to lose themselves in the stone—to become solid, permanent, to endure, in other words, to live, to be alive.

  JIM

  (considers him—then)

  I'd love to discuss this with you another time.

  FRED

  Good, when?

  JIM

&nbs
p; Right now I'm a little busy …

  FRED

  Well, when? You want to have lunch, I'm free all week.

  JIM

  I don't really know.

  FRED

  I wrote a funny thing based on Irving.

  JIM

  Irving who?

  FRED

  Washington Irving—remember? We had talked about Ichabod Crane.

  JIM

  I didn't know we were back on that.

  FRED

  The headless horseman is doomed to ride the countryside, holding his head under his arm. He was a German soldier killed in the war.

  JIM

  A Hessian.

  FRED

  So he rides right into an all-night drugstore and the head says—I have a terrible headache—and the druggist says, here, take these two Extra Strength Excedrin—and the body pays for them and helps the head take two. And then we cut to them later in the night, riding over a bridge, and the head says, I feel great—the headache is gone—I'm a new man—and then the body begins to get sad and thinks how unlucky he is because if he gets a backache, he can't find relief, not being attached to the head—

  JIM

  How can the body think anything?

  FRED

  Nobody's going to ask that question.

  JIM

  Why not? It's obvious.

  FRED

  That's why. That's why you're good at construction and dialogue but you lack inspiration. That's why you have to rely on me. Although it was a pretty sleazy thing to do.

  JIM

  Do what? What are you talking about?

  FRED

  I'm talking about money—some kind of payment and a credit of some sort.

  JIM

  Look, I'm meeting someone.

  FRED

  I know, I know, she's late.

  JIM

  You don't know and mind your own business.

  FRED

  All right—you're meeting a broad—you want to be alone? Let's get the business end of it out of the way and I'm off.

  JIM

  What business?

  FRED

  In a minute you're gonna tell me this whole thing is Kafkaesque.

  JIM

  It's worse than Kafkaesque.

  FRED

  Really? Is it—postmodern?

  JIM

  What do you want?

  FRED

  A percentage and a credit on your movie. I realize it's too late for a credit on the prints that are already in distribution, but I should have a royalty on those and a cut and my name on all subsequent prints. Not fifty percent but something fair.

  JIM

  Are you nuts? Why should I give you anything?

  FRED

  Because I gave you the idea.

  JIM

  You gave me?

  FRED

  Well—you took it from me—

  JIM

  I took your idea?

  FRED

  And you sold your first film script—and the movie seems like a success and I want what's due me.

  JIM

  I didn't take your idea.

  FRED

  Jim, let's not play games.

  JIM

  Let's not you play games and don't call me Jim.

  FRED

  OK—James. Written by James L. Swain—but everyone calls you Jim.

  JIM

  How do you know what everyone calls me?

  FRED

  I see it, I hear it.

  JIM

  Where? What are you talking about?

  FRED

  Jim Swain—Central Park West and Seventy-eighth—BMW— license plate JIMBO ONE—talk about vanity plates … Jimmy Connors is Jimbo One, not you—and I've seen you trying to hit a tennis ball so don't try and con me.

  JIM

  Have you been following me?

  FRED

  That mousey brunette—that's Lola?

  JIM

  My wife's hardly mousey!

  FRED

  OK, “mousey” was the wrong word—she's—not rodentine exactly—

  JIM

  She's a beautiful woman.

  FRED

  It's all very subjective.

  JIM

  Who the hell do you think you are?

  FRED

  I'd never say it to her face.

  JIM

  I'm her husband and I love her.

  FRED

  Then why are you cheating?

  JIM

  What?

  FRED

  I think I know what the other one looks like. She's a little on the cheap side, no?

  JIM

  There is no other one.

  FRED

  Then who are you meeting?

  JIM

  None of your goddamn business, and if you don't get out of here I'm going to call the police.

  FRED

  That's the last thing you want if you're having a clandestine rendezvous.

  JIM

  How did you know my wife's name is Lola?

  FRED

  I've heard you call her Lola.

  JIM

  Have you been stalking me?

  FRED

  Do I look like a stalker?

  JIM

  Yes.

  FRED

  I'm a writer. At least I was years ago. Till my visions overtook me.

  JIM

  Well, your imagination is too creative for me.

  FRED

  I know. That's why you ripped me off.

  JIM

  I didn't steal your idea.

  FRED

  Not just my idea. It was autobiographical. So in a way you stole my life.

  JIM

  If there were any similarities between my film and your life, I assure you, they're coincidental.

  FRED

  I'm not the kind of guy who sues. Some people are litigationprone.

  (with some suggestion of menace)

  I like to settle between the parties.

  JIM

  How did I take your idea?

  FRED

  You overheard me tell the plot.

  JIM

  To who? Where?

  FRED

  Central Park.

  JIM

  I heard you in Central Park?

  FRED

  That's right.

  JIM

  To who? When?

  FRED

  To John.

  JIM

  Who?

  FRED

  John.

  JIM

  John who?

  FRED

  Big John.

  JIM

  Who?

  FRED

  Big John.

  JIM

  Who the hell is Big John?

  FRED

  I don't know—he's a homeless guy. Was. I heard he got his throat cut in a shelter.

  JIM

  You told some tale to a homeless man and you're saying I overheard you?

  FRED

  And used it.

  JIM

  I never saw you in my life.

  FRED

  Christ, I've been stalking you for months.

  JIM

  Stalking me?

  FRED

  And I know everything about you but you never even noticed me. And I'm not a little guy. I'm big. I could probably snap your neck in half with one hand.

  JIM

  (nervous)

  Look—whoever you are, I promise—

  FRED

  The name's Fred. Fred Savage. Good name for a writer, isn't it? For Best Original Screenplay, the envelope please—and the winners are Frederick R. Savage and James L. Swain for The Journey.

  JIM

  I wrote The Journey. And it was my idea.

  FRED

  Jim, you overheard me telling it to John Kelly. Poor John. He was walking on York Avenue and they were hoisting a piano and the rope came undone—God, it was awful …

&n
bsp; JIM

  You said he was knifed at a shelter.

  FRED

  Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

  JIM

  Look, Fred—I never stole anybody's idea. First, I don't need to because I have my own ideas, and second, I wouldn't even if I ran dry, OK?

  FRED

  But the story's all there. My breakdown, the straitjacket, my last-minute panic—the rubber between my teeth, then the electric shocks—my God—of course I was violent—

  JIM

  You're violent?

  FRED

  In and out.

  JIM

  Look, I'm starting to get a little alarmed.

  FRED

  Don't worry, she'll be here.

  JIM

  Over you, not her. OK—if you think you're a writer—

  FRED

  I said years ago—before my collapse—before all that unpleasantness occurred—I wrote for an agency.

  JIM

  Unpleasantness?

  FRED

  It's morbid, I don't want to relive it.

  JIM

  What kind of an agency?

  FRED

  An ad agency. I wrote commercials. Like that idea for the Extra Strength Excedrin one. It didn't fly. We ran it up the flagpole but it just didn't fly. Too Cartesian.

  JIM

  And you became—unhinged.

  FRED

  Not over that. Who cares that they reject my idea? Those gray flannel philistines. No, my problem arose from other sources.

  JIM

  Like what?

  FRED

  Like small cadres of men who had banded together to form a conspiratorial network—a network dedicated to my undoing, to my humiliation, to my defeat both physical and mental. A network so vast and complex that to this day it employs undercover agents in organizations as diverse as the CIA and the Cuban underground. Forces so malevolent that they cost me my job, my marriage, and what little bank account I had left. They trailed me, tapped my phone, and communicated in code with my psychiatrist by sending electrical signals from the top of the Empire State Building, through my inner ear, directly to his rubber raft at Martha's Vineyard. So don't give me your goddamn sob stories and deal with me like a mensch!

  JIM

  I'm frightened, Fred—I gotta level with you. I want to do the right thing by you—

  FRED

  Then do it. There's no need to be scared. I haven't been off my medicine long enough to lose control—at least I don't think I have—

  JIM

  What do you take?

  FRED

  A number of antipsychotic mixtures.

  JIM

  A cocktail.

  FRED

  Except I don't drink it out of a stemmed glass.

  JIM

  But you can't just go off those things—

  FRED

  I'm fine, I'm fine. Don't start accusing me like the others.

  JIM

  No, I'm not—

  FRED

  Let's talk turkey.

  JIM

  I had intended to prove to you logically I couldn't have taken your idea—

  FRED

  My life, my life—you stole my life.

  JIM