Storefront Church

by John Patrick Shanley

  DONALDO: Yeah.

  CHESTER: Just as you have been sent to me this day. In the same way as that.

  DONALDO: Maybe I’m your wake-up call.

  CHESTER: I’d welcome it. There’s a hole in the ground in front of me, Donaldo. What should I do? Tell me and I’ll do it. I’m standing ready. I can’t hold a service because of the hole. I can’t breathe in the light of day without pain because of the hole. I can’t have a woman or taste my bread or even weep . . . because of this hole that opened up on my path. What should I do?

  DONALDO: I can’t answer that.

  CHESTER: Why not?

  DONALDO: That kind of thing has got to come from you.

  CHESTER: Then it’s like I thought. You’re not my wake-up call. I am awake. I am your wake-up call. You ready for it? Here it comes. Wake up. Now put on your coat and go home.

  DONALDO: It’s been my experience that men and women bring different things to the table. My mother was a practical woman. My father was not a practical man. My father told me about heaven and the devil and he could recite poetry like silver and gold and I looked up to him like you would look up at a mountain. I admired him so. He was a good man, and when he died, even in his casket he spread peace and love to the room around him. As a loving son, I wanted to be just like my daddy. I memorized poetry and thought about good and bad, read the Bible, took classes . . . And one day, I saw my momma was crying, and I asked her why. She said she was exhausted. She had two jobs, raised six kids, had some diabetes. And I realized she had carried my father all his life, and now she was carrying me. Poor woman was half dead. That’s when I gave up the idea of the ministry and decided to help people in THIS world.

  CHESTER: Do you?

  DONALDO: Sometimes. I’m trying to now. This woman upstairs is carrying you, Chester. And it’s breaking her.

  CHESTER: Did your mother doubt your father’s calling?

  DONALDO: She’s never said. But maybe I did.

  CHESTER: It’s a fair question, who’s carrying who in this world.

  DONALDO: But at least my father did his work, and took up the collection. You’re just sitting here.

  CHESTER: Yes.

  DONALDO: You’re just sitting with it.

  CHESTER: That’s right. I’m sitting with it.

  DONALDO: Well, I couldn’t do that and look in the mirror.

  CHESTER: Should anybody do it? Should anybody sit with it? What are you doing? What’s a borough president?

  DONALDO: I drum up business for the borough. It’s a job. If I do well with it, it’s a step. And I have done well with it.

  CHESTER: So you’re stepping.

  DONALDO: Mr. Kimmich, are you going to get off your ass anytime soon?

  CHESTER: Don’t know.

  DONALDO: What took thirty thousand dollars? This place looks like hell.

  CHESTER: The floor was rotted. Money don’t go far.

  DONALDO: And you have nothing put aside?

  CHESTER: As I told you, no.

  DONALDO: I’ll just put it to you then. Get out of here or do your work.

  CHESTER: I’m doing my work. I’ll make a deal with you. If you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone.

  DONALDO: Me? You’re not in my way. You’re not bothering me.

  CHESTER: Is that right? You look bothered.

  DONALDO: You got it wrong. Am I bothering you?

  CHESTER: You’re slowing me down.

  DONALDO: From sitting with it.

  CHESTER: That’s right.

  DONALDO: Oh, this is outrageous, Chester! You’re screwing an innocent woman out of her house and home in the name of nobility, and there ain’t a noble thing about it! You need to face up. She believes in you! She believes you are engaged in a higher purpose. Jessie Cortez works in a hospital. Has all her life. Breaks her ass taking care of sick people. What do you do? Why do you deserve to suck her dry? It’s unjust! Does the idea of justice hold any weight with you?

  CHESTER: I don’t know about justice.

  DONALDO: Why not?

  CHESTER: It’s beyond me.

  DONALDO: Her husband had a heart attack. He’s hoping he’ll die so she gets insurance money. That’s what’s going on upstairs while you’re downstairs sitting on your hands.

  CHESTER: You said if I sat here long enough, the world would come to me. Well, you’re the first one in the door. What’s the world got to say?

  DONALDO: That you should be ashamed! You’re the kind that holds all the good ones back. High-minded thief stealing from kindness.

  CHESTER: Are you one of the good ones?

  DONALDO: Damn right! Some of us are trying to make something of ourselves!

  CHESTER: Not like your dad.

  DONALDO: What did you say?!

  CHESTER: You heard me.

  DONALDO: Don’t even mention my father in the same room as yourself! My father put out his hands to a world of people!

  CHESTER: And yet you doubted him when he put his hand out to you.

  DONALDO: So what?! What son hasn’t doubted his father? May he rest in peace and kindness.

  CHESTER: Maybe he will if you let him. It’s funny though.

  DONALDO: What?

  CHESTER: You say one day you noticed your mother was carrying all the weight and your father had a free pass.

  DONALDO: To some degree.

  CHESTER: Strange something killed your dad and momma’s still with us. For all her troubles.

  DONALDO: He had a stroke.

  CHESTER: Like I said. Justice is beyond me. Beyond the human mind.

  DONALDO: It all depends how you tell the story.

  CHESTER: You told it your way, got the lesson you wanted. Walked away from the life of the spirit. Took up politics.

  DONALDO: That’s right. I’m a politician. And that means I don’t say everything I feel. But just because I don’t say out loud the wellsprings of my conviction doesn’t lessen their power.

  CHESTER: So you have conviction.

  DONALDO: Absolutely.

  CHESTER: I envy you that.

  DONALDO: Don’t you?

  CHESTER: I don’t know. Passion feels good though.

  DONALDO: If I have a fire in my belly today, you put it there.

  CHESTER: And how did I do that?

  DONALDO: By your actions.

  CHESTER: You mean sitting here?

  DONALDO: It’s just the two of us, so I say it right out. I have a disgust and rage at the exploitation of ignorant people by religion.

  CHESTER: Okay.

  DONALDO: Seen it all my life. People afraid of death, can’t face it, so they listen to your lies and platitudes while you pick their pockets.

  CHESTER: But I’m not even taking up a collection.

  DONALDO: There’s more than one way to victimize people! You’re profiting off a naive woman’s trust.

  CHESTER: Isn’t that what the bank did?

  DONALDO: The bank acted in good faith!

  CHESTER: So you’re on the bank’s side.

  DONALDO: I’m here for the woman upstairs!

  CHESTER: But you agree with the bank. You have kids?

  DONALDO: Two boys.

  CHESTER: They look up to you?

  DONALDO: Of course.

  CHESTER: You ever worry what they’re looking up at?

  DONALDO: No.

  CHESTER: Maybe you should worry more.

  DONALDO: Like you? You were sitting in the dark when I walked in.

  CHESTER: There’s honor in the dark.

  DONALDO: Look, I promised Jessie I’d do my best with you . . .

  CHESTER: You do your best with me, the bank will suffer.

  DONALDO: I won’t allow that to happen.

  CHESTER: So you’re protecting the bank, not the woman.

  DONALDO: No.

  CHESTER: I’m from New Orleans. Hadda church. Then Katrina hit. When I went back, my life was gone. Hurricane.

  DONALDO: Sorry to hear that.

  CHESTER: I had a story, b
ut that story was built on a levee and the levee gave out. I came up north, but then this hole opened up. I had to stop. I was afraid but I had to stop anyway.

  DONALDO: But maybe that’s just an evil voice, Chester. A voice to be pushed aside. You heard the call to open a church and does it make sense God would contradict Himself, change His mind? It doesn’t make any sense. God doesn’t change His mind.

  CHESTER: The experience of life is ongoing. Contradictions arise, uncomfortable as that may be.

  DONALDO: God walks in a straight line.

  CHESTER: God rages all over the sky! I’m here to tell you that much.

  DONALDO: The Bronx doesn’t need another church. It needs money.

  CHESTER: Just go.

  DONALDO: You go! You’re the fraud.

  CHESTER: No doubt you’re right.

  DONALDO: And don’t agree with me. Don’t pose as civil! You’re a squatter. Will you leave this place and let Jessie get on with a new tenant?

  CHESTER: No.

  DONALDO: Then come Sunday hold a service! Pass the plate. It’s Christmas. People are generous at this season. Especially poor people.

  CHESTER: Cynical remark.

  DONALDO: You bring it out in me.

  CHESTER: I couldn’t look them in the eye and pass the plate.

  DONALDO: Why not?

  CHESTER: Because my Lord in heaven tells me wait.

  DONALDO: Wait for what? It doesn’t make any sense.

  CHESTER: Nobody wants to sit with it. I don’t know what to do and as long as that is the case, I will stand still!

  DONALDO: If I lived my life like that, I wouldn’t get anything done.

  CHESTER: Do you get anything done?

  DONALDO: Of course. Do you talk to anybody?

  CHESTER: No.

  DONALDO: Jessie?

  CHESTER: She brings me supper. I thank her.

  DONALDO: That woman makes a chocolate cake every day of her life so children will come by. She talks to them about every little thing.

  CHESTER: And you’re her champion.

  DONALDO: I was one of those children.

  CHESTER: And look at you now. I see the jackal in your eye, Donaldo. Politics. You think politics will protect you?

  DONALDO: Politics is an adult activity. Look. Do you think when you said a hole opened in the ground in front of you, do you think I don’t know about that?

  CHESTER: And what do you do?

  DONALDO: I take action.

  CHESTER: How you know what action to take?

  DONALDO: I don’t, but doing something is better than doing nothing. I’m here to tell you. Doing something works.

  CHESTER: You’re like a blind man with a chainsaw.

  DONALDO: And you’re just paralyzed!

  CHESTER: This world is on fire, buying and selling. People yelling, “Action must be taken.” Why? A voice came to me and said, “Chester, make a church for me, a little storefront church, a station of sincerity.” I set about it. I’m here. The chairs are set up. I have a piano there. But then the voice came again. And the voice said, “Look down, Chester.” And I did. And there was a broken place between me and the future. I’m not going to ignore that.

  DONALDO: Well, you think a lot of yourself that God speaks to you. What if nobody gives a damn what you do and it don’t matter that you were born?

  CHESTER: You’re in more trouble than me.

  DONALDO: Nobody cares whether this twelve-chair church opens or not.

  CHESTER: You seem to.

  DONALDO: I got dragged into this.

  CHESTER: By your mother.

  DONALDO: She’s a sucker for religion. I’m not.

  CHESTER: I think you’re yelling in the mirror.

  DONALDO: I might as well be.

  CHESTER: I see a man yelling at his father.

  DONALDO: You see nothing!

  CHESTER: And maybe you’ve wasted every day of your life since you stepped away from him.

  DONALDO: I caught my mother before she hit the ground. That’s what I chose to do and I’d do it again. Shit, I am doing it again. She co-signed the loan on this place.

  CHESTER: Did she?

  DONALDO: Yes. Damn fool.

  CHESTER: What did your father want for you? What do you want for your sons?

  DONALDO: He wanted me to lead an upright life. I lead an upright life!

  CHESTER: Why?

  DONALDO: Because I have a conscience.

  CHESTER: If you let conscience get the upper hand, you’re done.

  DONALDO: Are you done?

  CHESTER: I don’t know. There’s a moral force. It supersedes self-interest and personally terrifies me. But that’s the ministry I seek.

  DONALDO: I’m not ashamed of what I do.

  CHESTER: Lack of shame is not the same as innocence. Ask any prostitute.

  DONALDO: WHAT DID YOU SAY?! You wanna get your face smacked?

  CHESTER: Easy now.

  DONALDO: You can’t just say whatever comes into your head.

  CHESTER: Well, look at that. The politician has left the building.

  DONALDO: Just ’cause I have social skills don’t think you can walk on me.

  CHESTER: Wait!

  DONALDO: What is it?

  CHESTER: Something just moved. You’re affecting me. I’m affected. Would you come to my service?

  DONALDO: What?

  CHESTER: If I had a service, would you come?

  DONALDO: How did we get to that? I have a church I attend.

  CHESTER: So you wouldn’t?

  DONALDO: I didn’t say that.

  CHESTER: Will you come if I have a service?

  DONALDO: I’ll tell you what. All right, you have a service, I’ll come.

  CHESTER: Good.

  DONALDO: But you’d better have the Word, you understand me? You’d better have the news from the Man himself.

  CHESTER: All right.

  DONALDO: Now if you’ll excuse me, I guess, since I’ve made no headway here, I’m going to go talk to Jessie’s banker. Maybe he’s reasonable.

  CHESTER: Maybe. Why not ask him to the service, too?

  DONALDO: Bring the loan officer here?

  CHESTER: Yes.

  DONALDO: What for? A banker is money first. Banker comes, he’ll be interested in the collection.

  CHESTER: Let him look. Next Sunday, ten o’clock. That be all right? Can you do that?

  DONALDO: I can do it. But I can’t speak for anybody else.

  CHESTER: Your best will be good enough.

  DONALDO: All right. Can I ask you?

  CHESTER: What?

  DONALDO: You’ve been sitting here for what, ten months. Why all of a sudden are you willing to have a service?

  CHESTER: I always was willing. Only now I see a step forward. One step.

  DONALDO: I don’t.

  CHESTER: Maybe that hole’s moving over your way.

  (Donaldo goes to the door.)

  DONALDO: Ten o’clock this Sunday?

  CHESTER: That’s right.

  DONALDO: Hope you know what you’re doing.

  CHESTER: I don’t. That’s faith.

  (Donaldo goes.)

  ACT TWO

  Scene 1

  A bank CEO, Mr. Tom Raidenberg, sits in his office. A nice desk and chairs. On the desk is a gift basket holding a foot-high gingerbread house. Donaldo has just walked in.

  TOM: Sit, please sit.

  DONALDO: Thanks.

  TOM: What was that email yesterday?

  DONALDO: Just a thought.

  TOM: Seemed a little cool.

  DONALDO: Not at all. What do we have here?

  TOM: A gingerbread house.

  DONALDO: Takes me back. That’s a cute one.

  TOM: It’s a gift for my son.

  DONALDO: Oh, he’ll like that. My boys would, too.

  TOM: Yes.

  DONALDO: Can I ask where you got it?

  TOM: Full disclosure, my secretary gave it to me to give to him. I wouldn’t give
the boy sweets. Not this much anyway. My wife would kill me. She’s a health nut. Asian.

  DONALDO: Kids love sugar.

  TOM: Yes, they do. Hell, I love sugar. You know, I can’t bring this home. Take a piece.

  DONALDO: No, thanks.

  TOM: You’d be doing my son a favor.

  DONALDO: Not right now.

  TOM: Well then, I guess it falls to me. (He breaks off a piece) So how’s our little project looking, Mr. Calderon?

  DONALDO: Please. Donaldo.

  TOM: Of course, Donaldo. How’s it looking?

  DONALDO: What can I say? The proposal is making its way through the system.

  TOM: The mayor’s behind this one hundred percent.

  DONALDO: I know, Tom. That’s actually been a bit of a stumbling block. The city council doesn’t utterly love the mayor right now. He’s pushed them around a bit.

  TOM: But there is general agreement this would be great for the Bronx?

  DONALDO: There’s some agreement. I wouldn’t call it general.

  TOM: Three hundred million dollars comes into the borough, a huge facility that’s been sitting empty for a decade comes to life, businesses come in, jobs are created. What’s the downside?

  DONALDO: Quality of life.

  TOM: You’re desperate for jobs.

  DONALDO: But these are minimum wage jobs. My constituents are sick of that.

  TOM: They’d rather be unemployed?

  DONALDO: Would that be enough for your son? A minimum wage job?

  TOM: Maybe, starting out.

  DONALDO: What if he weren’t starting out? What if you had to wake up and know this is it. “This is my life. I’m a grown man working for minimum wage.”

  (Tom rips off another piece of the house.)

  TOM: Is this your point of view?

  DONALDO: No, but I’m not just me, if you know what I mean. I have to be a representative voice. I’m gathering information, reactions from my people. Opinions are still coming in.

  TOM: Well, what’s the alternative? What would they do with the building? Let it rot?

  DONALDO: Some groups would rather see it made into a community center than a mall.

  TOM: That would be a pretty big community center.

  DONALDO: Yes, it would. Biggest in the city.

  TOM: I mean, what does that say? Here you have a population, highest unemployment rate in the city, and when given the choice between jobs and, I don’t know what, basketball, they choose basketball?