People and Places. Volume 5.

People and Places: Volume Five

 

 (our view of the room is the single eye of the camera propped on the distant side of the table. the top of the table stretches long and finds her. the camera does not move. she sits at the end, we see from her neck down  to the table. there is a glass almost empty and a cigarette case and a white lighter. there is light coming through the door, or window; the table is cut into slivers by the light.

 

it is quiet. no music. as little sound as possible. A weighted quiet, she is the only thing free of it.

 

her story should be as tired as the light is, and just as true. she needs to match the dusk with tone and knowing; she has to be aware that this story has been told before.

she has to have admitted that this is something she carries.

 

she takes a drink from the glass. sets it back down. her hand holds the glass. thumb rubbing something that isn't there, the glass should have been lifted from where it rested in shadow and be set down in the center of a splinter of the light. her hand strays to the cigarette case and the she opens it slowly, but closes it before removing one. she sets it back down.)

 

(a few moments pass. almost too many.)

 

"He told me....He told me that he found me because of my voice. But later, after that first rain and the laughter, he said that he felt that there was a book hidden between us. Some small thing lodged between a rib or a summer. and He wanted to find it."

 

(She picks up the lighter and absentmindedly rolls it in her hand before setting it back down.)

 

“It seemed that we met while gathering strength and momentum to finally surround and ambush the dream, (She sighs, tired.) We wanted to burn with something that was more than just a waiting.”

 

(a door in the distance opens and shuts. A way into a room, not a way outside.)

 

“Living in Los Angeles was like entering a river willingly and then realizing it swallows you up forever. In the land of dreamers, it can be so difficult to dream. But I was getting better roles than I ever had, and his books were getting noticed by the right people, but not many. We were on that precipice of a life that requires you to leap or spend forever regretting..

 

I remember the first time he came to see me perform. I was in the dressing room; overfilled with flowers and cards. But when I picked up his gift; a small tin of breadcrumbs and a note that said “No one wants to find themselves at 60 wondering ‘what if?’… When I read that, I knew we both had leapt without choosing to. That the heart read the Rorschach of a world and decided to cling to another throe of wonder.”

 

(She picks up the lighter again and sets it down fast. Almost angry, but never loud.)

 

“One night, we found ourselves heart deep in a fever. I had received my worst review yet from a critic who seemed focused on destroying everything, and he was three weeks gone from writers block…We both understood that sometimes life slows, and sometimes it stops, and everytime it would, hand in hand, we would leap into or toward some new tributary. Forcing the circle eight to snap by hunger alone. We got into the car and drove east.

 

We always ran away to find each other…”

(she pauses. Hands are still. Suddenly she leans over and picks up some scrap on the floor. Her face passes through the camera view but just for a moment, it is the only time we see her face. She is close to tears. Her voice and speech pick up an almost frantic momentum.)

 

“There are things I miss and things I never want again, but what I loved about him… love about him, was that everytime the dream would suffer he would try his hardest to overwhelm it, to make it f*****g beat again. He told me he wanted to see how I sounded in the desert, we stopped at dusk and shoved our hands into the still warm sand and he kept saying ‘this is what it’s like, this is what it’s like’ and I could feel it beat, I could feel its surprise at its own depth… (she calms down, breaths, hands go still again.) I fell asleep while he drove without a destination and a trusted him.”

 

(another, or the same door opens in the house, we hear footsteps, we maybe see someone pass by, a pant leg or a sleeve. Or even just the light and sound from a door opening and leading outside, and shutting. She is quiet, calmed. The air is nervous.)

 

“We got to Paducah Kentucky, my family has a house there. We stretched and breathed the new air of a new day. There was a light fog still keeping things secret, yet slowly revealing all. He walked between the tombstones that tell my story and he read each one out loud. We slept all day, he said the southern air made my skin taste like persimmons.”

 

(Quiet again. She can tell the that the story is almost done. Her voice tilts and weaves.)

 

“That night we drank too much. We talked about heaven, and he talked about voices and there was something about this place that broke my heart. My blood is filled with constant yearning and a lifetimes worth of nights filled with fireflies that I’ve never had and maybe it all began as something stolen but I told him that my story led to here and I’ve never played this part, I haven’t even read the lines. But when I stepped out of that car and the wind was curious around me and I looked at him and said ‘this is what it’s like, this is what it’s like.’ “

 

(She is quiet. Maybe crying. It may be hard to tell.)

 

“I told him I had to stay. I told him he wasn’t allowed to stay. That love was not ending, but that I needed this, and trusted him to not withhold it…he understood. He wasn’t going to go home. LA would destroy him alone, I understood. He left the next morning, searching for a city with light that reminded him of me. He would mail me empty envelopes and boxes, I would take them into my closet, shut the door, and quickly open them. A flash of foreign light would fill the room, but only for a moment. I would whisper ‘this is what we’re like, this is what we’re like.’…

 

It may have begun as something stolen; my life is a testament of how brightly life can overtake you; in a closet, or a desert, or in the fragrance of persimmons without a source. I haven’t seen him in three years, but I’ve come close. I read his books, I know when he writes only for me. From time to time I can still find breadcrumbs in the crack of my voice, or in the warm air long after the sun has set…He was right. The wondering ‘what if’….it’s like this.”