by John Guare
Soon, Billy. Soon. Soon. He hangs up.
BUNNY dances and sings:
The day that the Pope came to New York
The day that the Pope came to New York,
It really was comical,
The Pope wore a yarmulke
The day that the Pope came to New York.
ARTIE, stunned: Did you hear me!
BUNNY: You made me sound like the Moon Coming Over the Mountain! So fat!
ARTIE: He said to say hello to you, Bananas.
BANANAS: Hello …
ARTIE, to Bunny: Get the copy of Life magazine with the story on his house …
BUNNY gets the magazine off the top of the piano.
BUNNY, thrilled: You made me sound so fat! So Kate Smith!
ARTIE, taking the magazine and opening it: Look at his house—on the highest part of all Los Angeles—
BUNNY, devouring the pictures: It’s Bel Air! I know Bel Air! I mean, I don’t know Bel Air, but I mean, I know Bel Air!
ARTIE and BUNNY flop on the sofa. BANANAS, in the kitchen behind them, throws rice at them.
BUNNY: Let’s get out of here. She gives me the weeping willies.
BANANAS: Oh, no, I’m all right. I was just thinking how lucky we all are. You going off to California and me going off to the loony bin—
ARTIE, correcting her: It’s a rest place—
BANANAS: With beautiful blue trees, huh?
ARTIE: Birds—waiting to go to Florida or California—
BANANAS: Maybe it was a flock of insane bluebirds that got committed—
ARTIE, to Bunny: I’m gonna take a shower. My shirt’s all damp from the telephone call.
BUNNY, putting her coat on: Artie, I’ll be at the corner of Forty-sixth Street near the cemetery by the TV repair store…. Hello, John the Baptist. That’s who you are. John the Baptist. You called Billy and prepared the way—the way for yourself. Oh, Christ, the dinners I’m gonna cook for you. She sings:
It really was comical,
The Pope wore a yarmulke
The day that the Pope came to New York.
She blows a kiss and exits.
ARTIE yelps triumphantly. He comes downstage.
ARTIE: Hello, Billy. I’m here. I got all my music. He sings:
I’m here with bells on,
Ringing out how I feel.
I’ll ring,
I’ll roar,
I’ll sing
Encore!
I’m here with bells on.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
BANANAS, very depressed: The people downstairs … they’ll be pumping broomsticks on the ceiling …
ARTIE, jubilant: For once the people downstairs is Bunny! He sings:
For once the people downstairs is Bunny!
He speaks now, jumping up and down on the floor: Whenever the conversation gets around to something you don’t like, you start ringing bells of concern for the people downstairs. For once in my life, the people downstairs is Bunny and I am a free man! He bangs all over the keys of the piano. And that’s a symphony for the people upstairs!
BANANAS: There’s just the roof upstairs …
ARTIE: Yeah, and you know roofs well. I give up six months of my life taking care of you and one morning I wake up and you’re gone and all you got on is a nightgown and your bare feet—the corns of your bare feet for slippers. And it’s snowing out, snowing a blizzard, and you’re out in it. Twenty-four hours you’re gone and the police are up here and long since gone and you’re being broadcasted for in thirteen states all covered with snow—and I look out that window and I see a gray smudge in a nightgown standing on the edge of the roof over there—in a snow-bank and I’m praying to God and I run out of this place, across the street. And I grab you down and you’re so cold, your nightgown cuts into me like glass breaking and I carried you back here and you didn’t even catch a cold—not even a sniffle. If you had just a sniffle, I could’ve forgiven you.… You just look at me with that dead look you got right now…. You stay out twenty-four hours in a blizzard hopping from roof to roof without even a pair of drawers on—and I get the pneumonia.
BANANAS: Can I have my song?
ARTIE: You’re tone-deaf. He hits two bad notes on the piano. Like that.
BANANAS: So I won’t sing it…. My troubles all began a year ago—two years ago today—two days ago today? Today.
ARTIE plays “The Anniversary Waltz.”
BANANAS: We used to have a beautiful old green Buick. The Green Latrine! … I’m not allowed to drive it any more … but when I could drive it … the last time I drove it, I drove into Manhattan.
ARTIE plays “In My Merry Oldsmobile.”
BANANAS: And I drive down Broadway—to the Crossroads of the World.
ARTIE plays “Forty-second Street.”
BANANAS: I see a scene that you wouldn’t see in your wildest dreams. Forty-second Street. Broadway. Four corners. Four people. One on each corner. All waving for taxis. Cardinal Spellman. Jackie Kennedy. Bob Hope. President Johnson. All carrying suitcases. Taxi! Taxi! I stop in the middle of the street—the middle of Broadway—and I get out of my Green Latrine and yell, “Get in. I’m a gypsy. A gypsy cab. Get in. I’ll take you where you want to go. Don’t you all know each other? Get in! Get in!”
They keep waving for cabs. I run over to President Johnson and grab him by the arm. “Get in.” And pull Jackie Kennedy into my car and John-John, who I didn’t see, starts crying and Jackie hits me and I hit her and I grab Bob Hope and push Cardinal Spellman into the back seat, crying and laughing, “I’ll take you where you want to go. Get in! Give me your suitcases”—and the suitcases spill open and Jackie Kennedy’s wigs blow down Forty-Second Street and Cardinal Spellman hits me and Johnson screams and I hit him. I hit them all. And then the Green Latrine blew four flat tires and sinks and I run to protect the car and four cabs appear and all my friends run into four different cabs. And cars are honking at me to move.
I push the car over the bridge back to Queens. You’re asleep. I turn on Johnny Carson to get my mind off and there’s Cardinal Spellman and Bob Hope, whose ski-nose is still bleeding, and they tell the story of what happened to them and everybody laughs. Thirty million people watch Johnny Carson and they all laugh. At me. At me. I’m nobody. I knew all those people better than me. You. Ronnie. I know everything about them. Why can’t they love me?
And then it began to snow and I went up on the roof …
ARTIE, after a long pause: Come see the Pope. Pray. Miracles happen. He’ll bless you. Reader’s Digest has an article this month on how prayer answers things. Pray? Kneel down in the street? The Pope can cure you. The Reader’s Digest don’t afford to crap around.
BANANAS: My fingernails are all different lengths. Everybody’d laugh …
ARTIE: We used to have fun. Sometimes I miss you so much …
BANANAS, smiling nervously: If I had gloves to put on my hands …
ARTIE: The Pope must be landing now. I’m going to turn on the television. I want you to see him. He turns on the television. Here he is. He’s getting off the plane. Bananas, look. Look at the screen. He pulls her to the screen. He makes her kneel in front of it. Oh God, help Bananas. Please God? Say a prayer, Bananas. Say, “Make me better, God …”
BANANAS: Make me better, God …
ARTIE: “So Artie can go away in peace.” … Here’s the Pope. He speaks to the screen. Get out of the way! Let a sick woman see! There he is! Kiss him? Kiss his hem, Bananas. He’ll cure you! Kiss him.
BANANAS leans forward to kiss the screen. She looks up and laughs at her husband.
BANANAS: The screen is so cold …
ARTIE, leaping: Get out of the way, you goddam newsman! He pushes Bananas aside and kisses the screen. Help me—help me—Your Holiness …
While he hugs the set, BANANAS leaves the room to go into her bedroom.
The front door flies open. BUNNY bursts in, flushed, bubbling. She has an enormous “I Love Paul” button on her coat.
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BUNNY: He’s landed! He’s landed! It’s on everybody’s transistors and you’re still here! And the school kids!—the Pope drives by, he sees all those school kids, he’s gonna come out for birth control today!! Churches will be selling Holy Diaphragms with pictures of Saint Christopher and all the saints on them. You mark my words.
To us, indicating her button: They ran out of “Welcome Pope” buttons so I ran downstairs and got my leftover from when the Beatles were here! I am famished. What a day! She goes to the icebox and downs a bottle of soda.
BANANAS comes out of the bedroom. She wears a coat over her nightgown, and two different shoes, one higher than the other, and a hat cocked on her head. She is smiling. She is pulling on gloves.
ARTIE turns off the TV.
BUNNY gapes. Band music plays joyously in the distance.
ARTIE goes to Bananas and takes her arm.
BUNNY: Now wait one minute. Miss Henshaw is going to be mighty pissed off.
ARTIE: Just for today.
BANANAS: Hold me tight….
ARTIE, grabbing his coat: Over the threshold … They go out.
BUNNY: Artie, are you dressed warm? Are you dressed warm? Your music! You forgot your music! You gotta get it blessed by the Pope!!
BANANAS appears in the doorway and grabs the music from Bunny.
BANANAS sings:
It really was comical,
The Pope wore a yarmulke
The day that the Pope came to New York.
BUNNY: You witch! You’ll be in Bellevue tonight with enough shock treatments they can plug Times Square into your ear. I didn’t work for Con Edison for nothing! She storms out after them and slams the door behind her.
The bedroom door RONNIE went into at the beginning of the act opens. He comes out carrying a large gift box.
He comes downstage and stares at us.
CURTAIN
ACT TWO
SCENE I
RONNIE is standing in the same position, staring at us. Out of the pockets of his fatigues he first takes two hand grenades, then wire, then his father’s alarm clock. He wires them together, setting the alarm on the clock at a special time. He puts the whole device into the gift box.
He is very young—looks barely seventeen—his hair is cropped close all over; he is tall, skinny. He speaks with deep, suffocated religious fervor; his eyes bulge with a strange mixture of terrifying innocence and diabolism. You can’t figure out whether he’d be a gargoyle on some Gothic cathedral or a skinny cherub on some altar.
RONNIE: My father tell you all about me? Pope Ronnie? Charmed life? How great I am? That’s how he is with you. You should hear him with me, you’d sing a different tune pretty quick, and it wouldn’t be “Where Is the Devil in Evelyn?”
He goes into his room and returns carrying a large, dusty box. He opens it and takes out an altar boy’s bright red cassock and white surplice that used to fit him when he was twelve. As he puts them on, he speaks to us:
I was twelve years old and all the newspapers had headlines on my twelfth birthday that Billy was coming to town. And Life was doing stories on him and Look and the newsreels, because Billy was searching America to find the Ideal American Boy to play Huckleberry Finn. And Billy came to New York and called my father and asked him if he could stay here—Billy needed a hide-out. In Waldorf-Astorias all over the country, chambermaids would wheel in silver carts to change the sheets. And out of the sheets would hop little boys saying, “Hello, I’m Huckleberry Finn.” All over the country, little boys dressed in blue jeans and straw hats would be sent to him in crates, be under the silver cover covering his dinner, in his medicine cabinet in all his hotel rooms, his suitcase—“Hello, Hello, I’m Huckleberry Finn.” And he was coming here to hide out. Here—Billy coming here—I asked the nun in school who was Huckleberry Finn—
The nun in Queen of Martyrs knew. She told me. The Ideal American Boy. And coming home, all the store windows reflected me and the mirror in the tailor shop said, “Hello, Huck.” The butcher shop window said, “Hello, Huck. Hello, Huckleberry Finn. All America Wants to Meet Billy and He’ll Be Hiding Out in Your House.” I came home—went in there—into my room and packed my bag…. I knew Billy would see me and take me back to California with him that very day. This room smelled of ammonia and air freshener and these slipcovers were new that day and my parents were filling up the icebox in their brand-new clothes, filling up the icebox with food and liquor as excited as if the Pope was coming—and nervous because they hadn’t seen him in a long while—Billy. They told me my new clothes were on my bed. To go get dressed. I didn’t want to tell them I’d be leaving shortly to start a new life. That I’d be flying out to California with Billy on the H.M.S. Huckleberry. I didn’t want tears from them—only trails of envy…. I went to my room and packed my bag and waited.
The doorbell rang. He starts hitting two notes on the piano. If you listen close, you can still hear the echoes of those wet kisses and handshakes and tears and backs getting hit and Hello, Billys, Hello. They talked for a long time about people from their past. And then my father called out, “Ronnie, guess who? Billy, we named him after your father. Ronnie, guess who?”
I picked up my bag and said good-bye to myself in the mirror. Came out. Billy there. Smiling.
It suddenly dawned on me. You had to do things to get parts.
I began dancing. And singing. Immediately. Things I have never done in my life—before or since. I stood on my head and skipped and whirled—he cartwheels across the stage—spectacular leaps in the air so I could see veins in the ceiling—ran up and down the keys of the piano and sang and began laughing and crying soft and loud to show off all my emotions. And I heard music and drums that I couldn’t even keep up with. And then cut off all my emotions just like that. Instantly. And took a deep bow like the Dying Swan I saw on Ed Sullivan. He bows deeply. I picked up my suitcase and waited by the door.
Billy turned to my parents, whose jaws were down to about there, and Billy said, “You never told me you had a mentally retarded child.”
“You never told me I had an idiot for a godchild,” and I picked up my bag and went into my room and shut the door and never came out the whole time he was here.
My only triumph was he could never find a Huckleberry Finn. Another company made the picture a few years later, but it flopped.
My father thinks I’m nothing. Billy. My sergeant. They laugh at me. You laughing at me? I’m going to fool you all. By tonight, I’ll be on headlines all over the world. Cover of Time. Life. TV specials. He shows a picture of himself on the wall. I hope they use this picture of me—I look better with hair—Go ahead—laugh. Because you know what I think of you? He gives us hesitant Bronx cheers. I’m sorry you had to hear that—pay popular prices to hear that. But I don’t care. I’ll show you all. I’ll be too big for any of you.
The sound of a key in the door. ARTIE is heard singing “The Day That the Pope Came to New York.”
RONNIE exits to his room, carrying the gift box containing the bomb.
ARTIE runs in and begins grabbing up sheet music.
ARTIE: Bunny says, “Arthur, I am not talking to you but I’ll say it to the breeze: Arthur, get your music. ‘Bring On the Girls.’ Hold up your music for when the Pope His Holiness rides by.”
To us: You heard these songs. They don’t need blessings. I hate to get all kissyass, you know? But it can’t hurt. “Bring On the Girls.” Where is it? Whenever Bunny cleans up in here you never can find anything. You should see the two girls holding each other up like two sisters and they’re not even speaking which makes them even more like sisters. Wouldn’t it be great if they fell in love and we all could stay …
A beautiful girl in a fur coat stands hesitantly in the doorway. She carries flowers and liquor in her arms. She is CORRINNA STROLLER.