Angels in America (24 page)

Scene 2

Same day. Roy in his hospital room; near his bed, there's a mini-fridge with a locked door. He looks worse than before, gaunt, gray. The pain in his gut is now constant and it's getting worse. He's on the phone, a more elaborate model than the one in the previous scene; this phone has buttons
.

ROY
: No records no records what are you deaf I said I have no records for their shitty little committee, it's not how I work I—

(He has a severe abdominal spasm. He holds the phone away, grimaces terribly, curls up into a ball and then uncurls, making no sound, determined that the party on the line won't hear how much pain he's in
.

     
Ethel Rosenberg appears in her hat and coat. Roy sees her enter. He watches her walk to a chair and sit. He resumes his phone call, never taking his eyes off Ethel, who stares at him, silent, unreadable.)

ROY
: Those notes were lost. LOST. In a fire, water damage, I can't do this any—

(Belize enters with a pill tray.)

ROY
(To Belize)
: I threw up fifteen times today! I
COUNTED
.

     
(To Ethel)
What are
you
looking at?

     
(To Belize)
Fifteen times.
(He goes back to the phone)
Yeah?

BELIZE
: Hang up the phone, I have to watch you take these—

ROY
: The LIMO thing? Oh for the love of Christ I was acquitted twice for that, they're trying to kill me dead with this
harassment
, I have done things in my life but I never killed anyone.

     
(To Ethel)
Present company excepted. And you
deserved
it.

     
(To Belize)
Get the fuck outta here.

     
(Back to the phone)
Stall. It can't start tomorrow if we don't show, so don't show, I'll pay the old harridan back. I have to have a—

BELIZE
: Put down the phone.

ROY
: Suck my dick, Mother Teresa, this is life and death.

BELIZE
: Put down the—

(Roy grabs the pill cup off the tray and throws the pills on the floor. Belize reaches for the phone. Roy slams down the receiver and snatches the phone away, protecting it, cradling it.)

ROY
: You touch this phone and I'll bite. And I got rabies.

     
And from now on, I supply my own pills. I already told 'em to push their jujubes to the losers down the hall.

BELIZE
: Your own pills.

ROY
: No double blind. A little bird warned me. The vultures are—

     
(Another severe spasm. This time he makes noise)

     
Jesus God these cramps, now I know why women go beserk once a—AH FUCK!

(He has another spasm. Ethel laughs.)

ROY
: Oh good I made her laugh.

     
(The pain is slightly less. He's a little calmer)

     
I don't trust this hospital. For all I know Lillian fucking
Hellman
is down in the basement switching the pills around. No, wait, she's dead, isn't she? Oh boy, memory, it's—Hey, Ethel, didn't Lillian die, did you see her up there, ugly, ugly broad, nose like a . . . like even a Jew should worry mit a punim like that. You seen somebody fitting that description up there in Red Heaven? Hah?

     
(To Belize)
She won't talk to me. She thinks she's some sort of a deathwatch or something.

BELIZE
: Who are you talking to?

(Roy looks at Ethel, realizing/remembering that Belize can't see her.)

ROY
: I'm self-medicating.

BELIZE
: With what?

ROY
(Trying to remember)
: Acid something.

BELIZE
: Azidothymedine?

ROY
: Gesundheit.

(Roy retrieves a key on a ring from under his pillow and tosses it to Belize.)

BELIZE
: AZT? You got . . .?

(Belize unlocks the ice box; it's full of bottles of pills.)

ROY
: One-hundred-proof elixir vitae.

     
Give me the key.

BELIZE
: You scored.

ROY
: Impressively.

BELIZE
: Lifetime supply.

     
There are maybe thirty people in the whole country who are getting this drug.

ROY
: Now there are thirty-one.

BELIZE
: There are a hundred thousand people who need it.

     
Look at you. The dragon atop the golden horde. It's not fair, is it?

ROY
: No, but as Jimmy Carter said, neither is life. And then we shipped him back to his peanut plantation. Put your brown eyes back in your goddamn head, baby, it's the history of the world, I didn't write it, though I flatter myself I am a footnote. And you are a nurse, so minister and skedaddle.

BELIZE
: If you live fifty more years you won't swallow all these pills.

     
(Pause)

     
I want some.

ROY
: That's illegal.

BELIZE
: Ten bottles.

ROY
: I'm gonna report you.

BELIZE
: There's a nursing shortage. I'm in a union. I'm real scared.

     
I have friends who need them. Bad.

ROY
: Loyalty I admire. But no.

BELIZE
(Amazed, off-guard): Why?

(Pause.)

ROY
: Because you repulse me.
“WHY?”
You'll be begging for it next.
“WHY?
” Because I hate your guts, and your friends' guts, that's
why
. “Gimme!” So goddamned entitled. Such a shock when the bill comes due.

BELIZE
: From what I read you never paid a fucking bill in your life.

ROY
:
No one
has worked harder than me. To end up knocked flat in a—

BELIZE
: Yeah well things are tough all over.

ROY
: And you come
here
looking for
fairness? (To Ethel)
They couldn't
touch
me when I was alive, and now when I'm dying they try this:
(He grabs up all the paperwork in two fists)
Now! When I'm a—
(He can't find the word. Back to Belize)
That's fair? What am I? A dead man!

     
(A terrible spasm, quick and violent; he doubles up. Then, when the pain
'
s subsided:)

     
Fuck! What was I saying Oh God I can't remember any . . . Oh yeah, dead.

     
I'm a goddamn dead man.

BELIZE
: You expect
pity
?

ROY
(A beat, then)
: I expect you to hand over that key and move your nigger ass out of my room.

BELIZE
: What did you say?

ROY
: Move your nigger cunt spade faggot lackey ass out of my room.

BELIZE
(Overlapping, starting on “spade”)
: Shit-for-brains filthy-mouthed selfish motherfucking cowardly cock-sucking cloven-hoofed pig.

ROY
(Overlapping, starting on “cowardly”)
: Mongrel. Dinge. Slave. Ape.

BELIZE
: Kike.

ROY
:
Now
you're talking!

BELIZE
: Greedy kike.

ROY
: Now you can have a bottle. But only one.

(Belize tosses the key at Roy, hard. Roy catches it. Belize takes a bottle of the pills, then another, then a third, and then leaves
.

     
As soon as Belize is out of the room Roy is spasmed with pain he's been holding in.)

ROY
: GOD!
(The pain subsides a little)
I thought he'd never go!
(It subsides a little more. Then to Ethel)
So what? Are you going to sit there all night?

ETHEL
: Till morning.

ROY
: Uh-huh. The cock crows, you go back to the swamp.

ETHEL
: No. I take the 7:05 to Yonkers.

ROY
: What the fuck's in Yonkers?

ETHEL
: The disbarment committee hearings. You been hocking about it all week. I'll have a look-see.

ROY
: They won't let you in the front door. You're a convicted and executed traitor.

ETHEL
: I'll walk through a wall.

(She laughs. He joins her.)

ROY
: Fucking SUCCUBUS!

(They're laughing, enjoying this.)

ROY
: Fucking blood-sucking old bat!

(They continue to laugh as Roy picks up the phone, punches a couple of buttons and then stops dialing, his laughter gone. He stares at the phone, dejectedly, not noticing that Ethel has vanished
.

     
Roy puts the receiver back in its cradle and puts the phone aside. He turns to the empty chair where Ethel had been sitting. He talks to the chair as if she's sitting in it.)

ROY
: The worst thing about being sick in America, Ethel, is you are booted out of the parade. Americans have no use for sick. Look at Reagan: he's so healthy he's hardly human, he's a hundred if he's a day, he takes a slug in his chest and two days later he's out west riding ponies in his PJs. I mean
who does that
? That's America. It's just no country for the infirm.

Scene 3

Same day. The Diorama Room of the Mormon Visitors' Center. The room's a small proscenium theater; the diorama is hidden behind closed red velvet curtains. There are plush red theater seats for the audience, and Harper is slouched in one of them, dressed as she was in her previous scene. Empty potato chip and M&M bags and cans of soda are scattered around her seat. She stares with dull anger at the drawn stage curtains. She's been here a long time
.

Hannah enters with Prior, dressed in his prophet garb
.

HANNAH
: This is the Diorama Room.

     
(To Harper)
I thought we agreed that you weren't—

     
(To Prior)
I'll go see if I can get it started.

(She exits. Prior sits. He removes his scarf and dark glasses. He wipes his face, startlingly pale and clammy with sweat, with the scarf. He breathes in and out, feeling tightness in his lungs
.

     
Harper watches this with a level stare and a flat affect
—
jaded, ironic disaffection she's self-protectively, experimentally assumed
.

     
The lights in the room dim. After a blare of feedback/static, a Voice on tape [the Angel's] intones:)

A VOICE
: Welcome to the Mormon Visitors' Center Diorama Room. In a moment, our show will begin. We hope it will have a special message for you. Please refrain from smoking, and food and drink are not allowed.
(A chiming tone)
Welcome to the Mormon Visitors'—

(The tape lurches into very high speed, then smears into incomprehensibly low speed, then stops, mid-message, with a loud metallic blat, which frightens Prior. The lights remain dim.)

HARPER
: They're having trouble with the machinery.

(She rips open a bag of M&Ms and offers them to Prior.)

PRIOR
: No thanks, I—

     
You're not supposed to eat in the—

HARPER
: I can. I live here. Have we met before?

PRIOR
: No, I don't . . . think so. You
live
here?

HARPER
: There's a dummy family in the diorama, you'll see when the curtain opens. The main dummy, the big daddy dummy, looks like my husband, Joe. When they push the buttons he'll start to talk. You can't believe a word he says but the sound of him is reassuring. It's an
incredible
resemblance.