Dead Man's Cell Phone (7 page)

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Authors: Sarah Ruhl

BOOK: Dead Man's Cell Phone
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STRANGER
Hang up the phone. I'm coming over.
They hang up their phones.
The stranger approaches.
There are numbers stored on that phone. I need them.
 
JEAN
You can't have it.
 
STRANGER
I advise you to hand it over quietly.
 
JEAN
No, I won't. I won't!
 
STRANGER
Hand over the phone or I will kill you.
 
JEAN
That's absurd. You can't have it.
The stranger pulls out a gun.
STRANGER
You know nothing of Gordon's work, do you? It's big business. You're in over your head.
 
JEAN
No—I'm afraid you're in over
your
head.
Jean kicks the gun out of the stranger's hand.
Jean kicks the stranger on a special part of her leg so that she crumples to the ground.
(Surprised at her own daring)
Whoa!
A struggle for the gun.
The stranger grabs it.
She points it at Jean.
STRANGER
I didn't want to have to do this, Jean, but you are forcing my hand—
The stranger hits Jean on the head with the gun.
Jean falls to the ground.
The lamp falls and breaks.
A flash of light.
scene five
Jean and Gordon sitting at a café.
As if we are at the top of the play.
You might imagine taking gestures from the very first scene and repeating them in the following as though Jean and Gordon are doomed to repeat their first encounter over and over again for eternity.
Jean, sitting in front of a bowl of empty soup.
A silence.
 
JEAN
Do they have lobster bisque in heaven?
Jean looks up at Gordon.
GORDON
We're not in heaven. We're in a hell reserved for people who sell organs on the black market and the people who loved them.
 
JEAN
Gordon?
 
GORDON
That's right. When you die, you go straight to the person you most loved, right back to the very moment, the very place, you decided you loved them. There's a spiritual pipeline, you might say. In life we are often separated from what we love best—errors of timing, of geography—but there are no errors in the afterlife. You loved me most, Jean, so you came to me.
 
JEAN
What if the person you loved most didn't love you most?
 
GORDON
Don't try to work it out. It's too complex. Mathematical hoopla. If they need three of
Jean the beloved
why they make you into three Jeans. For the very few it's a neat transaction—totally reciprocal.
A
loves
B
,
B
loves
A
. However: some mothers loved their children best, those children loved their father best, and the father loved the family dog. Some end up with gardens. The very best parents loved all their children equally but that is rare, rare.
 
JEAN
How about people who loved God best?
 
GORDON
Don't know. Never met 'em. They go to a different laundromat.
 
JEAN
Laundromat?
 
GORDON
See you only have one costume here. Whatever you died in. So you go to the laundromat once a week. Only you have to wash your clothes naked. It's weird—hundreds of naked people washing their socks.
 
JEAN
Who did you love best?
 
GORDON
I loved myself best of all. There's a special holding pen for us. Waiting to see if someone else will join us. Like you joined me, Jean. You're my good luck.
 
JEAN
But I'm not dead.
You're lying.
You lie all the live long day.
 
GORDON
No,
you
lie all the live long day.
All those nice lies you made up for me?
Now why did you do that, Jean?
 
JEAN
I saw you die. I saw your face. I wanted for you to be good.
 
GORDON
Aw, Jean.
 
JEAN
Oh, Gordon.
 
GORDON
You and I—we're alike. We both told lies to help other people. You decided to help a dead man because only a dead person can be one hundred percent good. When you're alive, the goodness rubs off you if you so much as leave the house. Life is essentially a very large brillo pad.
 
But I digress. The point is, Jean, we're two peas in the proverbial pod. In-coming calls, out-going organs, we're all just floating receptacles—waiting to be filled—with meaning—which you and I provide. It's a talent, and I admire you.
 
JEAN
No—we're not alike. You made people into
parts
, into things. Don't you feel bad about that?
 
GORDON
I feel done with it—that's all. Money and organs and trade—up here—it's just road kill of the mind. I'm done with organs. Didn't even donate mine. They're all intact. I never signed that little thingy on my driver's license. Felt like a suicide note to sign it . . . and now . . .
 
JEAN
You don't need them.
 
GORDON
No.
 
JEAN
Take them out.
 
GORDON
What?
 
JEAN
Take them out. Put them on a cloud and lower them into South America for all the sad people who sold their own.
 
GORDON
Would that make you feel better, Jean? Would it?
 
JEAN
Yes, I think it would.
 
GORDON
All right, Jean.
Gordon puts his hand under his shirt.
He tries to remove his kidney.
He tries a couple of ways.
He turns his back to the audience.
I can't get it out, Jean. I can't get it out.
Oh, I've almost got it Jean!
I can feel it coming out!
Help me get it out! It won't come out!
The skin is so tough! Uuuuugh!
He turns back around.
His organs are still in place.
Couldn't do it.
 
JEAN
Oh God, how did I end up in your pipeline? Why am I not here with Dwight? In a stationery store. I loved Dwight, didn't I? I don't even know you.
 
GORDON
You love me because I'm charismatic. I'm more charismatic than Dwight. Even dead, apparently. I spent about two seconds feeling guilty about that when I was a child, then I just went on being me. Sorry, Jean. You have to be very careful who you fall in love with, and where. A nondescript café for all time? Couldn't you have chosen better wall hangings? Or better weather? An overcast day, for all time?
 
JEAN
I liked it when you couldn't talk. Could you—pretend to be dead again? Just for a moment?
 
GORDON
Whatever turns you on, Jean.
He pretends to be dead.
She looks at him.
She holds his hand.
She tries to feel her old love for him.
She looks in his eyes.
JEAN
What were you looking at before you died?
 
GORDON
You.
 
JEAN
Me.
 
GORDON
Yes, you were eating the last bite of my soup. But I wanted you to have it. That's why my eyes looked so nice—I was giving you my last bite. They say love goes right through the eyes—bam. I saw you before I died; you didn't see me. You saw me after I died; I couldn't see you. We had star-crossed eyes. Now we can gaze and gaze for all time . . .
They kiss a strange kiss.
We don't really kiss with our mouths up here. Just letting you get the hang of it.
 
JEAN
What do you kiss with?
 
GORDON
Our hair.
 
JEAN
Oh, God!
I am dead, aren't I?
 
GORDON
Yes.
 
JEAN
I suddenly feel very lonely.
 
GORDON
You can still listen to the others, you know. Invisible conversation. They're still in the air—listen:
A recording of Jean:
Should I stay with him?
There seems to be no one working at this café.
JEAN
(To Gordon)
You can hear cell phones here?
 
GORDON
Oh, yes. The only communication device God didn't invent was gossip, and that's the most advanced technology to date. It's what they call the music of the spheres—listen—
A cell phone ballet.
Beautiful music.
People moving through the rain with umbrellas, talking into their cell phones, fragments of lost conversations float up.
Jean listens.
 
Then, Mrs. Gottlieb enters.
MRS. GOTTLIEB
Of course he has my phone number, he's my son, I'm his mother. Who is this? Gordon?
Mrs. Gottlieb exits.
JEAN
I heard her voice. On your phone. I thought—what can you tell a mother—about her dead son. I said: have a good day. And then I kept on lying to her, to make up for it.
 
GORDON
Ah, mother.
She was never so comforting in life as she was in death. If mother did not approve, then mother did not appear to love. Funny. I never knew whether or not my own mother loved me.
 
JEAN
Oh, she loved you. Your mother is beside herself with grief.
 
GORDON
No lies, Jean.
 
JEAN
No lies. Not that you deserve it.
Your mother said: I see it as my job to mourn him until the day I die.
 
GORDON
She did?
Jean nods.
How about that. My mother loved me after all.
Gordon's face, aglow from loving his mother best.
JEAN
Gordon—your face is different.
 
GORDON
How?
 
JEAN
You look well-loved.
 
Gordon?
 
GORDON
Mother?
Gordon disappears.
He is sucked into a cosmic pipeline attached to his mother's hell.
JEAN
Gordon? Gordon!
A silence.
Jean, alone in the afterlife, an Edward Hopper painting.
It's so quiet.
I'll just call Dwight.
 
Turn on. Turn on.
Stupid, stupid phone.
It won't go on.
I'll just pretend it's working.
Hello, Dwight, if you get this message,
I am alone on my own planet and I might be here for all time because I didn't tell you I love you in the closet in the dark of the stationery store because I got scared and then the phone rang and when something rings you have to answer it.
Don't you?
STUPID STUPID PHONE!
She throws the phone down.
She bangs it on the ground until she destroys it.
It is the first time in a long time she has let herself cry.
Z.
Z!
She disappears.
Jean reappears on some lost luggage in the airport.
Dwight appears.
DWIGHT
Jean!
 
JEAN
Oh, Dwight! You have no idea what I've been through!
 
DWIGHT
Jean! I told you! You should never have gone off with those bad people! I forbidded you.
 
JEAN
You were right, Dwight! Dwight you were right! Did you get my message? I called you from my planet. It was so cold. And the air, oh it remembers, it all stays, like an Irish whistle they hear us. Did you hear me? Z!
 
DWIGHT
Oh, Jean!
 
JEAN
Can we go home? Do I have my kidneys? Does knowing someone help to love them best or does it all happen in one millisecond? I let your brother go. No phone. Oh, Dwight—call me darling.
She collapses in his arms.
DWIGHT
Oh, Jean, oh darling.
scene six
Dwight carries Jean to his mother's home.
Mrs. Gottlieb, holding a glass of bourbon.
 
DWIGHT
Mother! Jean passed out in Johannesburg.
Dwight tends to her.
Jean looks at Mrs. Gottlieb.
JEAN
Hello? Who are you? Put down your weapon! Oh, Dwight!
 
DWIGHT
Here, have some bourbon, upside down.

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