MR. UNIVERSE

by Jim Grimsley

  DAWN. Thanks.

  BLUE DONNA. I loved you in Oceans of Love and I thought you were incredible in Starving for Your Love, you had like this intense quality. This hunger, you know? You were, like, devouring things all the time.

  DAWN. That was a really hard film to make.

  BLUE DONNA. Who were your costars? I can’t remember. Tomika Tamara and Kiki Dove?

  DAWN. Close. Tomika and Vandra Venandra. She was a total knockout. God. And this man. What was his name? Rod LaRue? LaRock? That’s it. Rod LaRock. God, that was a long time ago. Hardly anybody ever talks about that one.

  BLUE DONNA. Oh, I loved it, I thought it was an incredible performance. So answer my question. Why did you give it up?

  DAWN. Let’s just say I needed a change. But it’s good to be doing this one. With you, I mean. (Touches BLUE DONNA somewhat suggestively.) The movie business is different than it was in my time. You know? These girls you’ve got are stars. I mean, look at Joe.

  BLUE DONNA. Ego queen. He’s had every social disease known to mammals. Every time I want him to work I have to get the health department to certify him. I tell them I’m a caterer and he’s my head waiter.

  DAWN (drolly). That’s a scream.

  BLUE DONNA. Hugh Young, on the other hand, is an angel.

  DAWN. He is pretty.

  BLUE DONNA. I could just lick his face right off.

  DAWN. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.

  BLUE DONNA. What? Hugh?

  DAWN. You’re getting obsessed with him.

  BLUE DONNA. I’m not the only one. I think Joe’s infatuated with him.

  DAWN. Joe’s going to fuck that boy and I don’t mean on-screen. And when he does Montreat is going to blow sky-high.

  BLUE DONNA. I thought I could just hold Pug’s hand and get him through all this but I don’t think I’m going to be able to do it. He’s driving me out of my mind.

  DAWN. You cast him. I begged you not to do it.

  BLUE DONNA. Give me a break. He used to be really good. He used to be a hot man.

  DAWN. He should have got out of this business a long time ago.

  BLUE DONNA. He’s right for this part. He’s great for it. You have to admit that.

  DAWN. Yeah, but the part’s not good for him. He can’t deal with it. He can’t just watch like that. Not the two of them. I don’t even know if I could.

  BLUE DONNA. He has to. That’s the whole point. What he remembers when he looks at them. That. And the bomb.

  DAWN. Montreat is the bomb, baby. And he’s going to blow. You watch.

  BLUE DONNA. Maybe. But he’s sure not the only one.

  (Enter GRIP, with bloody hands.)

  GRIP. Is this the right time?

  VOICEOVER. Warning, you are about to enter a flashback.

  (Lights begin to dim on BLUE DONNA and DAWN STEVENS.

  GRIP stops short of the flashback zone.

  As the lights go out, DAWN STEVENS lies facedown on the blanket, and BLUE DONNA steps forward to join GRIP.)

  BLUE DONNA. It’s all right. We’re pretty much finished.

  GRIP (holding up his hands). We’ve got a problem.

  BLUE DONNA. You should wash your hands.

  GRIP. Yes, I know. Listen. We have a problem. I think there’s something wrong around here.

  BLUE DONNA. Montreat killed himself, if that’s what you mean.

  GRIP. It’s worse than that. It’s everything. I feel as if reality may be distorted, locally. Right here, I mean. Because of what’s about to happen. Maybe we’re actually already in the future. I’m not sure what year this is, are you? Maybe this is not even the real beach.

  BLUE DONNA. Then what is it?

  GRIP. The ghost of the beach. After the bomb. You know.

  BLUE DONNA. You’re dreaming, kid.

  GRIP. Just listen. I mean, you’re dealing with fundamental forces, right? Just a few hours from now. Everything unravels, right? Over there somewhere. Right? I mean, it’s just a little bomb but who’s to say it doesn’t work, like, backward and forward? Maybe it just bends things. Maybe.

  BLUE DONNA. Since when is everybody an expert on subatomic theory? You people kill me.

  GRIP. Joe says he doesn’t think Montreat really had a gun. He says he thinks Montreat only got the gun after he decided to kill himself. The gun just came. Just appeared.

  BLUE DONNA. Because of the bomb.

  GRIP. Yes.

  BLUE DONNA. Look, don’t you think it’s a little early to start blaming the bomb for everything? It doesn’t blow up till tomorrow.

  GRIP. But that doesn’t matter, if it works backward. In time, I mean. You know?

  BLUE DONNA. No. I don’t know. Just shut up, why don’t you.

  GRIP. You should listen to me. I might be right. (Laughs.) I bet Montreat won’t stay dead. What you want to bet. Not here. Not so close to that. (Points to the bomb.)

  BLUE DONNA. Crap. That’s a model. It can’t do anything. (Pause; looks around.) It’s about time we got this goddamn movie started up again. Where is everybody?

  (Enter BEST BOYD, with bloody hands.

  He is carrying a leather flight jacket.)

  BEST BOYD. I’m afraid I’ve had to kill the pilot.

  (As the VOICEOVER speaks, all the actors do exactly as the voice describes.)

  VOICEOVER. This was too much for them. They stared blankly at one another, even Dawn Stevens, who had been lying facedown on the blanket.

  BEST BOYD. It was the only thing I could do. He saw me with Montreat’s body. He was on the radio trying to call the Atomic Energy Commission. I had to stop him.

  BLUE DONNA. Did you damage the helicopter?

  BEST BOYD. No.

  GRIP. How is Montreat?

  BEST BOYD. Still dead.

  BLUE DONNA. How did you kill the pilot?

  BEST BOYD. I stabbed him from behind.

  BLUE DONNA. I didn’t know you carried a knife.

  (BEST BOYD moves away, as if avoiding the question.

  Searches for the knife briefly, but cannot find it.)

  BEST BOYD. I’m sure it’s all right. The pilot will be fine. He’s going to heaven. I know, because he had a cross around his neck.

  BLUE DONNA. I’m sure you’re right.

  GRIP. Something’s wrong. It’s real bad right now. There’s, like, this waveform of unreality coming through here. I can feel it.

  DAWN. It’s like a ripple, isn’t it?

  GRIP. Yes, that’s exactly right.

  DAWN. Distortions in the fabric of space-time. The result of nuclear decay and general atomic instability in the region of the artificial fusion occurrence that’s about to happen. The whole temporal region of Bikini Atoll is quivering like five-dimensional Jell-O.

  BEST BOYD. That’s why I had to kill the pilot.

  DAWN. Exactly.

  GRIP. We should all go look at Montreat and make sure he’s still dead.

  BEST BOYD. I told you, he was still dead just a few minutes ago.

  BLUE DONNA. Have you seen Joe or Hugh?

  BEST BOYD. Joe was asleep in the tent, last time I looked. I don’t know where Hugh is.

  BLUE DONNA. Go wake up Joe. Tell him to get his ass here. Tell him to find Hugh.

  BEST BOYD. What if he doesn’t know where Hugh is?

  BLUE DONNA. Do what I said. Now. We’ve got to film this scene and get the fuck out of here.

  DAWN. We don’t have a helicopter anymore.

  BEST BOYD. I never touched the helicopter. It’s still right there.

  BLUE DONNA. Can anybody fly it?

  BEST BOYD. Joe can.

  GRIP. No shit. He’s a pilot?

  BLUE DONNA. Did that jerk get through to the AEC? On the radio?

  BEST BOYD. No. I don’t think so. I turned it off anyway.

  BLUE DONNA. We’ve got to move. Jesus Christ. We’re going to do this scene and get out of here.

  (BLUE DONNA paces around the blanket, intense and furious.

  She has an idea.)<
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  BLUE DONNA. This is fantastic. This is fate. This is just what the scene needs. (To GRIP.) Go drag Montreat back in here.

  GRIP. What?

  DAWN. Are you out of your mind?

  BLUE DONNA. He wanted to be in this scene. All right, what the fuck? Drag him back in here.

  GRIP. I ain’t touching him.

  BLUE DONNA. Bring the pilot too. We’ll have dead bodies everywhere. This is incredible. This is better than the stair scene in Potemkin.

  GRIP. I mean it, Donna. I won’t touch the sucker. Don’t push me.

  BLUE DONNA. I’ll give you a hundred dollars cash as soon as you get back.

  (Exit GRIP.)

  DAWN. As your attorney I feel compelled to warn you that you are risking considerable liability in this matter.

  (BLUE DONNA is checking the cameras and sound-recording equipment to make sure everything is functional.

  She continues to do this busily, ignoring

  DAWN. DAWN stares at the bomb.)

  VOICEOVER. Dawn was terrified. She had never before been faced by such a collection of bizarre circumstances. She found herself staring at the painted sheet covering the bomb. She was oddly detached from her confusion while she stared at the lurid colors of the sheet. Then she remembered that Montreat was dead and that Best Boyd had stabbed the pilot in the back, and she became upset again. But none of her emotion showed. She was remembering what it had been like to make love to Blue Donna. On her lips was the taste of Blue Donna’s starved kisses. Dawn licked the taste from her lips and relished it. She was remembering Blue Donna naked in the tent, and then suddenly the image changed to Montreat with the big hole in his skull, and then Montreat sat up and started playing with another model airplane. Then the image vanished. Dawn became more afraid, realizing that she herself was now close to madness.

  BLUE DONNA. Are you just going to stand there?

  DAWN. I keep seeing Montreat.

  BLUE DONNA. What do you mean, you keep seeing him? I’m not your analyst, I don’t care what you keep seeing. Make sure that camera’s right. Grip will be back any minute. I want to get a shot of him dragging in the bodies.

  (DAWN does as she has been told.

  Near the camera, however, she finds a book.

  She lifts it, opens it.)

  DAWN (to BLUE DONNA). Is this yours?

  BLUE DONNA. Would you quit fucking around?

  DAWN. No, I’m serious. (Holds up the book.) This is about the bomb.

  BLUE DONNA. How can it be about the bomb, nobody knows about it.

  DAWN (making it physically obvious that she is reading the title). Big Bang on Bikini.

  (BLUE DONNA takes the book and examines it.)

  BLUE DONNA (after examining the copyright page). That explains it. The copyright date is 1965. It hasn’t been published yet. (Reads from the book.) “An unanticipated shift in the wind, toward the south where lay inhabited islands of the Marshall group, carried fallout toward the very sectors the scientists had sought to protect. In the path of the fallout lay a navy destroyer, the islands Rongelap, Utirik and Rongerik, and a fishing boat.”

  (She looks shocked and begins to search through the pages.)

  Doesn’t this goddamn thing have an index?

  (Continues to search, scanning pages.)

  DAWN. What’s wrong?

  BLUE DONNA (throwing down the book). Oh Christ Jesus.

  DAWN. You really have lost your mind.

  BLUE DONNA. It doesn’t give the name of the fishing boat.

  DAWN. Well what do you need to know that for?

  BLUE DONNA. Because it’s a goddamn fishing boat that’s supposed to pick us up. And we’ve got to sail south because the north is crawling with scientists.

  DAWN. Well can’t you talk to the captain?

  BLUE DONNA. What am I supposed to tell him? That I’ve had this premonition that this horrible catastrophe is going to happen from a bomb that nobody even knows about yet? Jesus, I can’t believe this.

  DAWN. The book is probably a fake, some kind of a joke.

  (Enter HUGH YOUNG, unseen.

  He is still wearing the robe. He pulls down the hood.)

  BLUE DONNA. Who would print a book with the copyright date 1965? Who? No, this is another one of those, those whatcha-macallits, those distortion things.

  (HUGH YOUNG advances so that they see him.)

  HUGH YOUNG. I was reading it.

  BLUE DONNA. Where did you get it?

  HUGH YOUNG. On the beach. Two nights ago.

  (Lights change, isolating a playing area for the flashback.)

  VOICEOVER. She remembered now. Their conversation two nights ago. How strange and distracted Hugh Young had seemed. In the moonlight they had walked along the beach. Talking about Montreat, who had tried to strangle Hugh that afternoon between takes. Had Hugh been carrying the book even then? She didn’t remember.

  (HUGH YOUNG and BLUE DONNA enter the flashback zone.

  HUGH is carrying the book.)

  BLUE DONNA. The last time I worked with him was Jealous Jet Fighter; he wasn’t like this.

  (HUGH says nothing, walks ahead of BLUE DONNA.)

  BLUE DONNA. You’re sure he was choking you?

  HUGH YOUNG. Yes.

  BLUE DONNA. You can’t blame him for being jealous, really.

  HUGH YOUNG. I’m not upset. I just wish he wouldn’t try to kill me.

  BLUE DONNA. He was Joe’s lover for years. It’s hard to watch you and Joe falling in love like this.

  HUGH YOUNG. I don’t feel anything for Joe.

  BLUE DONNA. That’s not the way it looks.

  (HUGH examines the book.)

  HUGH. Pug had no reason to choke me.

  BLUE DONNA. No, he didn’t.

  HUGH. He’s going to kill himself. He’s going to shoot himself in the mouth. You watch.

  BLUE DONNA. Montreat couldn’t even pick up a gun, much less pull the trigger.

  (HUGH moves his lips while he reads from the book.)

  BLUE DONNA (after watching HUGH read for a moment). Look, I won’t let him hurt you. All right? You don’t have to worry about that. You just look after yourself with Joe.

  HUGH YOUNG. Why are you worried about that?

  BLUE DONNA. He’s a son of a bitch. He’s a snake. He’d fuck the knot on a log.

  (HUGH goes on reading the book.)

  BLUE DONNA. Are you fucking him yet? I mean, besides in the movie.

  HUGH YOUNG. Yes.

  BLUE DONNA. Have you fucked him today?

  HUGH YOUNG (deadpan, matter-of-factly). Yes. Twice.

  BLUE DONNA. Christ. How am I supposed to get a movie out of you when you’re making love to each other offscreen all the time?

  HUGH YOUNG. I won’t have any problem.

  BLUE DONNA. You are so beautiful.

  (HUGH goes on reading.

  BLUE DONNA becomes embarrassed by what she has just said.)

  BLUE DONNA. You know what I mean by that don’t you? A presence. Something wonderful. I can’t explain it. But it’s what I look for. When I’m making a movie like this. Your cock’s not so big but who cares? You’ve got something else. The camera just eats you up. Gets everything you’re thinking. It’s beautiful. It’s just great.

  HUGH YOUNG. Thanks.

  BLUE DONNA. Are you just shy or am I boring the shit out of you?

  (HUGH looks at her as if she is speaking Chinese and he is not very curious about what she said.)

  BLUE DONNA. I just like to talk to people. And this place is so weird.

  HUGH YOUNG. It won’t be here very much longer will it?

  BLUE DONNA. What won’t?

  HUGH YOUNG. This island. Once the bomb goes off.

  BLUE DONNA. I don’t think it’s quite that strong.

  HUGH YOUNG (closing the book). Oh, I think it is. (Pause.) I’m very tired. I’m sorry. I’m going back to the tents.

  BLUE DONNA. I think I’ll just stand out here for a while.

  HUGH YOUNG. All right.
Good night.

  BLUE DONNA. Good night.

  (Exit HUGH YOUNG.

  BLUE DONNA stands perfectly still.

  She is very sad and cries a little—a very little, lightly.

  Lights fade.)

  VOICEOVER (only as lights fade). She had never been so sad before. She feels stupid. She wants to wallow in the sand and get wet. She hates the movie and everything connected with it. They had made love twice today and would probably do it again. She wanted to be there with her camera the next time, but she knew that would be impossible. She wanted to make love to Hugh Young herself, but she knew—

  BLUE DONNA. I can speak for myself.

  (BLUE DONNA says nothing, gets uncomfortable, and leaves the flashback zone.)

  VOICEOVER. She was uncomfortable. She could not think of anything to say. They had fucked twice. They would do it again.

  (Blackout.

  The following conversation takes place in the dark.)

  JOE LUBE COOL. So you don’t feel anything for me. Is that right?

  HUGH YOUNG. Yes, that’s right.

  JOE LUBE COOL. Nothing at all. Not even right now?

  HUGH YOUNG. Yes, that’s right.

  (Silence for a moment.)

  HUGH YOUNG. So you’re a son of a bitch and a motherfucker. Is that right?

  JOE LUBE COOL. Oh yeah.

  HUGH YOUNG. You’re not even ashamed of it. You’re just a piece of shit. Right?

  JOE LUBE COOL. Right.

  (Silence.)

  HUGH YOUNG. They think we’re fucking each other.

  JOE LUBE COOL. You’re shitting.

  HUGH YOUNG. No, they really do.

  (JOE laughs.)

  HUGH YOUNG. They certainly don’t think it’s very funny.

  (Silence.

  Lights rise on BEST BOYD, onstage alone.

  BEST BOYD is decorating the bomb with blue and pink ribbons, lacing them crisscross over the bomb’s surface.

  He does this in silence for some moments.

  Enter GRIP.)

  GRIP. Where is everybody?

  BEST BOYD. Search me. Blue Donna was in a flashback just a minute ago, then she disappeared.