All in the Timing

by David Ives

  TROTSKY: I bought this skull. I own this skull. So what does that make this?

  (Pause.)

  MRS. TROTSKY AND TROTSKY (together): Trotsky’s skull.

  TROTSKY: If some Spanish-Communist-posing-as-a-gardener wants to bury anything in my skull, be it a (he is about to say “ice pick”) you-know-what or anything else—this will be here as a decoy. He’ll see this skull, recognize it as my skull, bury something in it, and he’ll go his way and I’ll go mine. Is that ingenious?

  MRS. TROTSKY: Up to a point.

  TROTSKY: Fifty more years of Trotsky!

  MRS. TROTSKY: I have some very bad news for you, Leon. (Shows him the entry in the encyclopedia.)

  TROTSKY: A mountain-climber’s axe … ? Ingenious! (TROTSKY dies.)

  (Bell.)

  VARIATION THREE

  TROTSKY: Funny. I always thought it was an ice pick.

  MRS. TROTSKY: A mountain-climber’s axe! A mountain-climber’s axe! CAN’T I GET THAT THROUGH YOUR SKULL?

  (TROTSKY dies.)

  (Bell.)

  VARIATION FOUR

  (TROTSKY begins to pace.)

  TROTSKY: This is very bad news. This is serious.

  MRS. TROTSKY: What is serious, Leon?

  TROTSKY: I have a mountain-climber’s axe buried in my skull!

  MRS. TROTSKY: Smashed, actually. It says Mercader “smashed” the axe into your skull, not “buried”—

  TROTSKY: All right, all right. What am I going to do?

  MRS. TROTSKY: Maybe a hat would cover the handle. You know. One of those cute little Alpine hats, with a point and a feather … ? (Sees the look on his face, and stops.)

  TROTSKY: The encyclopedia says that I die today?

  MRS. TROTSKY: The twenty-first. That’s today.

  TROTSKY: Does it say what time?

  MRS. TROTSKY: No.

  TROTSKY: So much for the usefulness of that encyclopedia. All right, then, I have until midnight at the latest.

  MRS. TROTSKY: What should I tell Cook about supper?

  TROTSKY: Well she can forget the soup course, (TROTSKY falls to the floor and dies.)

  MRS. TROTSKY: Nyet, nyet, nyet!

  (Bell.)

  VARIATION FIVE

  TROTSKY: But this man is a gardener.

  MRS. TROTSKY: Yes.

  TROTSKY: At least he’s been posing as a gardener.

  MRS. TROTSKY: Yes.

  TROTSKY: Doesn’t that make him a member of the proletariat?

  MRS. TROTSKY: I’d say so.

  TROTSKY: Then what’s he doing smashing a mountain-climber’s axe into my skull?

  MRS. TROTSKY: I don’t know. Have you been oppressing him?

  TROTSKY: Why would Ramon have done this to me? (He holds up the skull, Hamlet-like.)

  MRS. TROTSKY: Maybe he’s a literalist.

  TROTSKY: A what?

  MRS. TROTSKY: A literalist. Maybe Ramon ran into Manuel yesterday. You know—Manuel? The head gardener?

  TROTSKY: I know who Manuel is.

  MRS. TROTSKY: I know you know who Manuel is.

  TROTSKY (Ralph Kramden): One of these days, Mrs. Trotsky … Bang! Zoom!

  MRS. TROTSKY: Maybe Ramon asked him, “Will Mr. Trotsky have time to look at the nasturtiums today?” And maybe Manuel said, “I don’t know—axe Mr. Trotsky.” HA HA HA HA HA HA!

  TROTSKY: Very funny.

  MRS. TROTSKY: Or maybe he was just hot-to-trotsky.

  TROTSKY: Oh very, very funny.

  MRS. TROTSKY: Or maybe he just wanted to pick your brain! HOO HOO HEE HEE HAA HAA!

  TROTSKY: Stop it! Stop it! (He dies.)

  MRS. TROTSKY: HA HA HA HA HA HA!

  (Bell.)

  VARIATION SIX

  TROTSKY: Call Ramon in here.

  MRS. TROTSKY: Ramon!

  TROTSKY: You’d better get him quickly. I have a mountain-climber’s axe in my skull.

  MRS. TROTSKY: Ramon! Come quickly!

  (RAMON enters: sombrero, serape, huaraches, and guitar.)

  TROTSKY: Good morning, Ramon.

  RAMON: Good morning, señor. (They shake hands.)

  TROTSKY: Have a seat, please. (To MRS. TROTSKY.) You see? We have very good employer-employee relations here. (To RAMON.) Ramon, did you bury this mountain-climber’s axe in my skull?

  RAMON: I did not bury it, señor. I smashed it into your skull.

  TROTSKY: Excuse me?

  RAMON: You see? You can still see the handle.

  MRS. TROTSKY: It’s true, Leon. The axe is not entirely out of sight.

  RAMON: So we cannot say “buried,” we can only say “smashed,” or perhaps “jammed”—

  TROTSKY: All right, all right. But why did you do this?

  RAMON: I think I read about it in an encyclopedia.

  TROTSKY (to audience): The power of the printed word!

  RAMON: I wanted to use an ice pick, but there weren’t any around the house.

  TROTSKY: But why? Do you realize who I am? Do you realize that you smashed this axe into the skull of a major historical figure? I helped run the Russian Revolution! I fought Stalin! I was a major political theorist! Why did you do this? Was it political disaffection? Anti-counterrevolutionary backlash?

  RAMON: Actually—it was love, señor.

  MRS. TROTSKY: It’s true, Leon. (She and Ramon join hands.) I’m only sorry you had to find out about it this way.

  TROTSKY: No.

  MRS. TROTSKY: Yes.

  TROTSKY: No.

  RAMON: Sí!

  TROTSKY: Oh God! What a fool I’ve been! (He dies.)

  (Bell.)

  VARIATION SEVEN

  TROTSKY: Why did you really do this, Ramon?

  RAMON: You will never know, Señor Trotsky.

  TROTSKY: This is a nightmare!

  RAMON: But luckily for you—your night will soon be over. (TROTSKY dies.)

  (Bell.)

  VARIATION EIGHT

  TROTSKY: All right, Ramon. Thank you. You may go.

  (RAMON starts out. Stops.)

  RAMON: Señor Trotsky—?

  TROTSKY: Yes?

  RAMON: Do you think you will have time to look at the nasturtiums today? They are really very beautiful.

  TROTSKY: I don’t think so, Ramon. But I’ll try.

  RAMON: Thank you, señor. Hasta la vista. Or should I say, buenas noches. (Exits.)

  TROTSKY: Well. All right then. The twenty-first of August 1940. The day I’m going to die. Interesting. And to think that I’ve gone over so many twenty-firsts of August in my life, like a man walking over his own grave.…

  MRS. TROTSKY: It’s been wonderful being married to you, Leon.

  TROTSKY: Thank you, Mrs. Trotsky.

  MRS. TROTSKY: Though it was a burden at times, being married to a major historical figure.

  TROTSKY: I’m sorry I was away from home so often, tending the revolution.

  MRS. TROTSKY: I understand.

  TROTSKY: And I’m sorry I couldn’t have been more in touch with my feelings.

  MRS. TROTSKY (gentle protest): No … please …

  TROTSKY: And that I often had such trouble expressing my emotions.

  MRS. TROTSKY: Oh, I haven’t been everything I should have been.

  TROTSKY: Well it’s a little late for regrets, with a mountain-climber’s axe buried in one’s skull.

  MRS. TROTSKY: Smashed, actually.

  TROTSKY: So it wasn’t old age, or cancer, or even the ice pick that I feared for years. It was an axe wielded by a Spanish Communist posing as a gardener.

  MRS. TROTSKY: You really couldn’t have guessed that, Leon.

  TROTSKY: So even an assassin can make the flowers grow. The gardener was false, and yet the garden that he tended was real. How was I to know he was my killer when I passed him every day? How was I to know that the man tending the nasturtiums would keep me from seeing what the weather will be like tomorrow? How was I to know I’d never get to see Casablanca, which wouldn’t be made until 1942 and which I would have despised anyway? H
ow was I to know I’d never get to know about the bomb, or the eighty thousand dead at Hiroshima? Or rock and roll, or Gorbachev, or the state of Israel? How was I supposed to know I’d be erased from the history books of my own land … ?

  MRS. TROTSKY: But reinstated, at least partially, someday.

  TROTSKY: Sometime, for everyone, there’s a room that you go into, and it’s the room that you never leave. Or else you go out of a room and it’s the last room that you’ll ever leave. (He looks around.) This is my last room.

  MRS. TROTSKY: But you aren’t even here, Leon.

  TROTSKY: This desk, these books, that calendar …

  MRS. TROTSKY: You’re not even here, my love.

  TROTSKY: The sunshine coming through the blinds …

  MRS. TROTSKY: That was yesterday. You’re in a hospital, unconscious.

  TROTSKY: The flowers in the garden. You, standing there …

  MRS. TROTSKY: This is yesterday you’re seeing.

  TROTSKY: What does that entry say? Would you read it again?

  MRS. TROTSKY: “On August 20th, 1940, a Spanish Communist named Ramon Mercader smashed a mountain-climber’s axe into Trotsky’s skull in Coyoacan, a suburb of Mexico City. Trotsky died the next day.”

  TROTSKY: It gives you a little hope about the world, doesn’t it? That a man could have a mountain-climber’s axe smashed into his skull, and yet live on for one whole day … ? Maybe I’ll go look at the nasturtiums.

  (TROTSKY dies. The garden outside the louvered window begins to glow.)

  THE LIGHTS FADE

  THE PHILADELPHIA

  This play is for Greg Pliska

  The Philadelphia premiered at the New Hope Performing Arts Festival (Robin Larsen, executive director) in New Hope, Pennsylvania, in July 1992. It was directed by Jason McConnell Buzas; the set design was by James Wolk; costume design was by Kevin Brainerd; and lighting design was by Paul Mathew Fine. The cast was as follows:

  AL Michael Gaston

  WAITRESS Nancy Opel

  MARK Robert Stanton

  A bar/restaurant. A table, red-checked cloth, two chairs, and a specials board. At lights up, AL is at the restaurant table, with the WAITRESS.

  WAITRESS: Can I help you?

  AL: Do you know you would look fantastic on a wide screen?

  WAITRESS: Uh-huh.

  AL: Seventy millimeters.

  WAITRESS: Look. Do you want to see a menu, or what?

  AL: Let’s negotiate, here. What’s the soup du jour today?

  WAITRESS: Soup of the day, you got a choice of Polish duck blood or cream of kidney.

  AL: Beautiful. Beautiful! Kick me in a kidney.

  WAITRESS (writes it down): You got it.

  AL: Any oyster crackers on your seabed?

  WAITRESS: Nope. All out.

  AL: How about the specials today? Spread out your options.

  WAITRESS: You got your deep-fried gizzards.

  AL: Fabulous.

  WAITRESS: Calves’ brains with okra.

  AL: You are a temptress.

  WAITRESS: And pickled pigs’ feet.

  AL: Pigs’ feet. I love it. Put me down for a quadruped.

  WAITRESS: If you say so.

  AL: Any sprouts to go on those feet?

  WAITRESS: Iceberg.

  AL: So be it.

  (WAITRESS exits, as MARK enters, looking shaken and bedraggled.)

  MARK: Al!

  AL: Hey there, Marcus. What’s up?

  MARK: Jesus!

  AL: What’s going on, buddy?

  MARK: Oh, man …!

  AL: What’s the matter? Sit down.

  MARK: I don’t get it, Al. I don’t understand it.

  AL: You want something? You want a drink? I’ll call the waitress—

  MARK (desperate): No! No! Don’t even try. (Gets a breath.) I don’t know what’s going on today, Al. It’s really weird.

  AL: What, like … ?

  MARK: Right from the time I got up.

  AL: What is it? What’s the story?

  MARK: Well—just for an example. This morning I stopped off at a drugstore to buy some aspirin. This is at a big drugstore, right?

  AL: Yeah …

  MARK: I go up to the counter, the guy says what can I do for you, I say, Give me a bottle of aspirin. The guy gives me this funny look and he says, “Oh we don’t have that, sir.” I said to him, You’re a drugstore and you don’t have any aspirin?

  AL: Did they have Bufferin?

  MARK: Yeah!

  AL: Advil?

  MARK: Yeah!

  AL: Extra-strength Tylenol?

  MARK: Yeah!

  AL: But no aspirin.

  MARK: No!

  AL: Wow …

  MARK: And that’s the kind of weird thing that’s been happening all day. It’s like, I go to a newsstand to buy the Daily News, the guy never even heard of it.

  AL: Could’ve been a misunderstanding.

  MARK: I asked everyplace—nobody had the News! I had to read the Toronto Hairdresser. Or this. I go into a deli at lunchtime to buy a sandwich, the guy tells me they don’t have any pastrami. How can they be a deli if they don’t have pastrami?

  AL: Was this a Korean deli?

  MARK: This was a kosher-from-Jerusalem deli. “Oh we don’t carry that, sir,” he says to me. “Have some tongue.”

  AL: Mmm.

  MARK: I just got into a cab, the guy says he doesn’t go to Fifty-sixth Street! He offers to take me to Newark instead!

  AL: Mm-hm.

  MARK: Looking at me like I’m an alien or something!

  AL: Mark. Settle down.

  MARK: “Oh I don’t go there, sir.”

  AL: Settle down. Take a breath.

  MARK: Do you know what this is?

  AL: Sure.

  MARK: What is it? What’s happening to me?

  AL: Don’t panic. You’re in a Philadelphia.

  MARK: I’m in a what?

  AL: You’re in a Philadelphia. That’s all.

  MARK: But I’m in—

  AL: Yes, physically you’re in New York. But metaphysically you’re in a Philadelphia.

  MARK: I’ve never heard of this!

  AL: You see, inside of what we know as reality there are these pockets, these black holes called Philadelphias. If you fall into one, you run up against exactly the kinda shit that’s been happening to you all day.

  MARK: Why?

  AL: Because in a Philadelphia, no matter what you ask for, you can’t get it. You ask for something, they’re not gonna have it. You want to do something, it ain’t gonna get done. You want to go somewhere, you can’t get there from here.

  MARK: Good God. So this is very serious.

  AL: Just remember, Marcus. This is a condition named for the town that invented the cheese steak. Something that nobody in his right mind would willingly ask for.

  MARK: And I thought I was just having a very bad day.…

  AL: Sure. Millions of people have spent entire lifetimes inside a Philadelphia and never even knew it. Look at the city of Philadelphia itself. Hopelessly trapped forever inside a Philadelphia. And do they know it?

  MARK: Well what can I do? Should I just kill myself now and get it over with?

  AL: You try to kill yourself in a Philadelphia, you’re only gonna get hurt, babe.

  MARK: So what do I do?

  AL: Best thing to do is wait it out. Someday the great cosmic train will whisk you outta the City of Brotherly Love and off to someplace happier.

  MARK: You’re pretty goddamn mellow today.

  AL: Yeah well. Everybody has to be someplace.

  (WAITRESS enters.)

  WAITRESS: Is your name Allen Chase?

  AL: It is indeed.

  WAITRESS: There was a phone call for you. Your boss?

  AL: Okay.

  WAITRESS: He says you’re fired.

  AL: Cool! Thanks, (WAITRESS exits.) So anyway, you have this problem …

  MARK: Did she just say you got fired?

  AL:
Yeah. I wonder what happened to my pigs’ feet.…

  MARK: Al—!? You loved your job!

  AL: Hey. No sweat.

  MARK: How can you be so calm?

  AL: Easy. You’re in a Philadelphia? I woke up in a Los Angeles. And life is beautiful! You know Susie packed up and left me this morning.

  MARK: Susie left you?

  AL: And frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a shit. I say, go and God bless and may your dating pool be Olympic-sized.

  MARK: But your job? The garment district is your life!

  AL: So I’ll turn it into a movie script and sell it to Paramount. Toss in some sex, add a little emotional blah-blah-blah, pitch it to Jack and Dusty, you got a buddy movie with a garment background. Not relevant enough? We’ll throw in the hole in the ozone, make it E.C.

  MARK: E.C?

  AL: Environmentally correct. Have you heard about this hole in the ozone?

  MARK: Sure.

  AL: Marcus, I love this concept. I embrace this ozone. Sure, some people are gonna get hurt in the process. Meantime, everybody else’ll tan a little faster.

  MARK (quiet horror): So this is a Los Angeles …

  AL: Well. Everybody has to be someplace.

  MARK: Wow.

  AL: You want my advice? Enjoy your Philadelphia. Sit back and order yourself a beer and a burger and chill out for a while.

  MARK: But I can’t order anything. Life is great for you out there on the cosmic beach. Whatever I ask for, I’ll get a cheese steak or something.

  AL: No. There’s a very simple rule of thumb in a Philadelphia. Ask for the opposite.

  MARK: What?

  AL: If you can’t get what you ask for, ask for the opposite and you’ll get what you want. You want the Daily News, ask for the Times. You want pastrami, ask for tongue.

  MARK: Oh.

  AL: Works great with women. What is more opposite than the opposite sex?

  MARK: Uh-huh.

  AL: So. Would you like a Bud?

  MARK: I sure could use a—

  AL: No. Stop. (Very deliberately.) Do you want… a Bud?

  MARK (also deliberately): No. I don’t want a Bud.