Fates and Furies (24 page)

OLLIE:
Capiche
.

DEAN:
All right, Oliver. What kind of a name is Oliver anyway? Kind of a dolphin kind of name if you ask me. Pussy name. You a pussy?

OLLIE:
No. But I like them.

DEAN:
Ha! You’re getting it. What did they call you at home?

OLLIE:
Ollie.

DEAN:
Ollie. You see. There we go. Ollie’s a shark name. King shark. Next time someone calls you Bumblefuck Pie, you
get all up in their
faccia
, make them call you Ollie. You hear me?

OLLIE:
Loud and clear.

DEAN:
Do you feel your teeth sharpening? Smell the blood in the water? Do you feel like a shark?

OLLIE:
Maybe. Or like a dolphin with a razor blade on his fin.

DEAN:
It’s a start. Go slay them, slayer.

OLLIE:
Slay. Check.

DEAN:
Not literally, of course, god, could you imagine?
The dean told me to kill them all!
I meant figuratively. Don’t slay anyone. You didn’t hear that from me.

OLLIE:
Of course. Good-bye, sir. [
Exits.
]

DEAN:
[
Alone, takes the gun hurriedly from his drawer, inserts it under the couch.
]

TELEGONY, 2013

“Masks. Magic. Circe and Penelope and Odysseus and patricide and incest. Music and film and dance. You crazy-ass man,” Mathilde said.

“Gesamtkunstwerk,”
Lotto said. “Melding all the forms of art as theater. Now we just have to find someone nuts enough to put it on,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Mathilde said. “Everyone we know is nuts.”

SHIP OF FOOLS, 2014

ACT I, SCENE I

Postnuclear wasteland, whale belly-up in the red tide, two women among the rubble.

PETE:
wiry, small, skinny, furry, a chimp woman

MIRANDA:
enormously fat, three vertical feet of red hair with a scorched bluebird’s nest atop it à la Madame du Barry. Swinging in a hammock between two blackened and skeletal palms

PETE
[
Dragging a dead gator into camp.
]
:
Gator tail for supper this evening, Miranda.

MIRANDA
[
Vaguely.
]
:
Lovely. It’s just that. Well. I was hoping. Well, for some whale steaks? If it were only possible to get whale steaks? I mean, don’t worry too much about it, but it’s the only thing in the world I could possibly digest tonight, but I can get down a little gator. If I must.

PETE
[
Picks up hacksaw, sets off, returns wet, chunk of meat in her arms.
]
:
Gator tail and whale steaks for supper, Miranda.

MIRANDA:
What a surprise! Pete! You can do anything! Speaking of which, while you’re up, mind pouring me another cocktail? It’s five o’clock somewhere!

PETE:
Reckon not. No such thing as time anymore. [
Pours kerosene out of a drum, stirs it with a peppermint stick kept for the purpose, hands it over.
]

MIRANDA:
Wonderful! Now. I think it must be time for my soap?
The Starrs in Your Eyes
?

PETE:
Time’s dead, Miranda mine. Television’s dead. Electricity’s dead. Actors dead, too, I warrant, in that H-bomb
blast over L.A. Or the black-tongue plague after. Or the earthquake. The human experiment done bust.

MIRANDA:
Then just kill me, Petey. Just kill me dead. No use in living. Just take that hacksaw and chop off my head. [
Weeps into her great pale hands.
]

PETE
[
Sighs. Picks up kelp, places it on her head. Sucks in cheeks like Silvia Starr, heroine of the eponymous soap
The Starrs in Your Eyes,
and speaks in a gravelly voice.
]
:
Oh, whatever are we going to do with that dastardly dastard, Burton Bailey . . .

MIRANDA
[
Sinks back, gaping. They are both so entranced, they don’t hear the mechanical whirring that grows until, stage right, a battered boat hull looms into view, and survivors peer at the women from above.
]

Rachel was agitatedly pacing the black-box theater, empty save for her brother, as the opening night reception thudded behind the door. “Cripes, Lotto. I didn’t even know how to watch that,” she said, digging her palms into her eyes.

He went still. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t get me wrong, there’s part of me that kind of savagely delighted in watching Muvva and Sallie duke it out at the end of the world. Sallie scraping and bowing until she finally snaps, you know?” Rachel laughed, then pivoted toward him. “You’re so good at fooling us, aren’t you. You’re so charming you make us forget that you have to be a serial killer on the inside to do what you do to us. Put us in your plays, warts and all, showing us off like we’re some sort of sideshow freaks. The audience out there just kind of laps it up.”

He was shocked cold. Rachel, of all people, turning on him. But no. She wasn’t. She wouldn’t. Now she was standing on her tiptoes to touch his cheek. In such light, his baby sister’s eyes were framed in fine wrinkles. Oh, for the god of love, where did time go? [Clockwise
swirl going nowhere.] “At least you wrote a better version of Antoinette. At least by the end she puts herself in front of the beast for her kids. Praise the lord,” she said, in Sallie’s voice, making twinkle fingers in the air. They laughed.

—

[But in a drawer in Florida, half written, a note.
Darling. I have never seen a play of yours in the flesh, as you know. A great sorrow of my life. But I read them all, I’ve seen the ones on DVDs and online. It goes without saying how proud of you I am. Of course, I’m not surprised. I took such great care from the day you were born to mold you into the artist you are! But how, Lancelot, how dare you
]

THE BATS, 2014

“It’s great,” Mathilde said.

But Lotto detected something in her voice that he wasn’t ready for, and he said, “It hurt my feelings at that symposium when they all implied I was a misogynist. You know I love women.”

“I know,” she said. “You love them almost too much.” Still, the coolness in her voice, the way she was avoiding looking at him. Something was wrong.

“I think Livvie came off pretty well. I hope you don’t mind that I used you as a model for her character.”

“Well. Livvie
is
a murderer,” Mathilde said flatly.

“M., I meant that I just used your personality.”

“A murderer’s personality,” she said. “My husband of more than twenty years says I have a murderer’s personality. Okay!”

“My love,” he said. “Don’t get hysterical.”

“Hysterical. Lotto, please. Do you know the root of that word?
Hystera.
Womb. You basically just called me a sissy, crying because of her pink parts.”

“What is wrong with you? You’re freaking out.”

She spoke to the dog. “He gave my personality to a murderer and he’s asking why I’m freaking out.”

“Hey. Look at me. You’re being ridiculous, and not because you have woman parts. Livvie found herself cornered by two bad dudes and she killed one. If some big mean dog bit God in half, you’d kick its brains out. Who knows you better than I know you? You’re a saint, but even saints have their breaking points. Do I think that you’d ever kill someone? I do not. But if we hypothetically had a kid and some man was hypothetically putting his Mr. Winky somewhere near our hypothetical kid with bad intent, you would, without hesitation, rip his throat out with your fingernails. I would too. It doesn’t mean you’re any less than good.”

“Oh my god. We are discussing the fact you wrote me into a murderer, and out of nowhere, here you are again with the kid nonsense.”

“Nonsense?”

“. . .”

“Mathilde? Why are you breathing like that?”

“. . .”

“Mathilde? Where are you going? Okay, fine, lock yourself in the bathroom. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. Can you please talk to me? I’m just going to sit right here. I’m going to wear you down with my devotion. I’m sorry that we got sidetracked. Can we talk about the play? Other than the fact that I gave your personality to a murderer, what did you think? It feels a little wonky in the fourth act. Like a table with one wobbly leg. Needs some rethinking. Maybe you can try your hand? Oh. A bath? In the middle of the day? Okay. Do whatever you need to do. That feels nice, I bet. All warm. Lavender. Wow, you’re going for it. Can we talk through the door? Overall, the piece
is really solid, I think. Yes? Mathilde, don’t be like this. This is really important to me. Oh, fine. Be that way. I’m going downstairs to watch a movie, and you are welcome to join me if you like.”

ESCHATOLOGY, 2014

Only when they came to a stop in the drive, the bourbon-pickled guests already leaping out, and Lotto saw the skateboard broken on a stump, the clumps of wet kid bathing suits on the grass, God so exhausted she couldn’t pick up her head, did Lotto realize that perhaps he had not thought this through. Oh, dear. Mathilde had been left alone to take care of Rachel’s three children since before breakfast when Lotto went out to fetch milk at the grocery store but then got a call in the aisle that he was wanted immediately in the city for a last-minute hour-long interview on a radio program—the end of his victory lap for
Eschatology
, which even Phoebe Delmar loved, though as he said to Mathilde, “Eh, praise from a hack is worse than a pan.” It was important, so he drove swiftly into the city, sat in his pajama pants being personable for the airwaves, and then set out to drive home with the morning still bright in his eyes, but he ran into Samuel and Arnie laughing together on the sidewalk, and, jeez, it had been so long! Of course, they had lunch together. Of course, lunch extended into drinks, and Samuel saw a man from his club at the bar, who joined them, some radiologist or oncologist or something, and when they grew hungry at dinnertime, Lotto suggested they come home because, as everyone knew, Mathilde cooked like a goddess and he was drunk, but not so drunk he couldn’t drive.

He sniffed the milk that had been rolling around on the floor since morning. Maybe it would still do. He came in to find Samuel Pepé Le Pewing kisses up Mathilde’s arms, Arnie searching through the liquor cabinet for the grand old Armagnac he’d given them for
Christmas, the doctor doing a spoon airplane to deliver peas into Lotto’s younger niece’s mouth, who was wary of airplane spoons. He kissed Mathilde, rescuing her; she smiled tightly. “Where are the twins?” he said. She said, “Passed out in the only place in the house they agreed to sleep. Your studio.” Her smile maybe had some spite in it. And he said, “Mathilde! Nobody’s allowed to go up there but me. It’s my work space!” And she shot him a look so sharp it went all the way through him, and he nodded, contrite, picked the little girl up, helped her with bedtime necessaries in double time, and came back down.

The guests were sitting on the terrace, getting blotto. The moon had risen sharp against the velvety blue. Mathilde was pulsing herbs in the Cuisinart, pasta on boil. “Sorry,” he said into her ear, then he took her lobe between his teeth, oh, delicious, maybe they had time, maybe she’d? But she bumped him back, and he went outside, and presently the four men were in their skivvies, in the pool, floating on their backs, laughing, and Mathilde was coming out to the table, a huge white bowl between her hands, trailing steam.

“This is,” Samuel said through a mouthful of pasta, dripping all over the flagstones, “the most fun I’ve had since I got divorced.” He looked glossy, a little fat at the waist, like an otter. So did Arnie, for that matter, but of course he would now that he was a big-time restaurateur. His sun-ravaged back was spotted darkly; Lotto wanted to warn him about skin cancer, but Arnie had so many girlfriends, surely one of them already had.

“Poor Alicia. What is this, your third divorce?” Mathilde said. “Third Strike Sam. You’re out.”

The other men laughed, and Lotto said, “Better nickname than the one he had in his early twenties. Remember? One Ball Sam.”

Samuel shrugged, imperturbable. That same old self-confidence still spun in him. The doctor looked at him with interest. “One Ball Sam?” he said.

“Testicular cancer,” Samuel said. “Didn’t matter in the end. One ball made four kids.”

“I have two beautiful balls,” Lotto said, “that have made zero.”

Mathilde sat silently while the others gabbed on, then gathered up her plate and went inside. Lotto told a story about the overdose of a very famous actress, all the while smelling some kind of berry cobbler baking; and he waited and waited, but Mathilde didn’t come out. At last he went in to check on his wife.

She was in the kitchen, back turned toward the veranda door, not doing the dishes, listening. Oh, that tiny cocked ear, the white-blond hair brushing her shoulder. The radio was on, comfortingly low. He listened also and heard with a little pulse in the gut a familiar voice, something with the drawn-out vowels of a storyteller, and the pulse turned into a flap of dismay when he understood that the voice was his. It was the radio show from this morning. Which part? He could barely remember. Oh, yes, a story from his lonely Florida childhood. His own broadcast voice went uncomfortably intimate. There’d been a swamp he’d go down to in the middle of a sinkhole. One day, a leech stuck to his leg. And he’d been a boy so terribly hungry for companionship that he left it there to suck his blood, walked home and ate supper, and the whole time took comfort in his companion against his skin. When he turned over in the night and exploded the thing, there was so much blood that he felt as guilty as if he’d murdered a person.