NINA: I decided you can have the Elvis Costellos.
ERIC: Really? (She nods) Your loss.
(He opens the box and removes a pair of sandals.)
NINA: I wasn’t sure what you wanted to do with those.
ERIC: They’re shot. We can toss ’em.
(He takes a book from the box.)
NINA: Did you know you left your Magic Mountain?
ERIC: No, I took the new translation.
NINA: Oh. Well, I don’t want this edition.
ERIC: So give it away.
NINA: You give it away.
ERIC: All right . . .
NINA: No, I’ll do it; I’ve got stuff going to the thrift shop anyway.
(Perplexed, he pulls out an old cable-knit sweater.)
ERIC: This is yours.
NINA: It was yours. You got it in Maine.
ERIC: Yeah, I remember, but I gave it to you.
NINA: I know, but I thought you might like to have it back.
ERIC: Come on, you loved this sweater.
NINA: I know I did. But I can’t see myself wearing it anymore, and I know you were always fond of it, so . . .
ERIC: Do you hate me?
NINA: What? No. It’s just . . . Whenever I see you, or smell your scent on an old sweater, I’m reminded of all the things I failed at. And I can’t live like that anymore. (A beat) Good-bye, Ricky. Congratulations.
(He looks bemused.)
Number eleven.
ERIC: Oh, yeah. Neen, I wish you would just—
(She kisses him on the mouth.)
NINA: Save it for your next novel.
(Remembers) Oh—your key.
(Grudgingly, he takes his key ring out of his pocket and removes the key.)
ERIC: So this is it? This is the end?
NINA: This is it, bubbie. It’s over. This is what the end looks like.
(She holds out her hand. He gives her his key.)
ACT TWO
SCENE 4
Mondrian
Night. A suite in the Mondrian Hotel. In subdued light we find Eric looking out the window at the twinkling amber lights of West Hollywood. Off, a toilet flushes. Alison emerges from the adjoining (unseen) sitting area.
ALISON: Cool bathroom. (A beat) You mind if I check out the minibar?
ERIC: Go right ahead.
(She ducks out again. A beat.)
ALISON (Off): Oooh, look at all the goodies in here!
ERIC (Calls): Can you grab me a water?
ALISON (Off): Sure. (Returns balancing bottles of water and snacks, and drops her loot on the bed)
ERIC (Amused): What is all that?
ALISON: Too much? I’m sorry, I can put some back.
ERIC (Over “. . . I can . . .”): No no, it’s okay. If you’re that hungry, we can always order room service.
ALISON: No, this is fine; this is perfect. I eat like this all the time. Want to split a KitKat?
ERIC: Sure, I’ll help you out with that. (She gives him half) Given minibar inflation, this is probably a ten-dollar KitKat.
ALISON (Wince): Oooh, you’re right.
ERIC: Don’t worry about it. It’s on Paramount.
ALISON: Paramount as in Paramount Pictures?
ERIC: You don’t think publishers put writers up in hotels like this.
ALISON: I have no idea.
ERIC: No, leave it to the movies to know the meaning of excess. I’m here on Paramount’s dime. They optioned my book.
ALISON: Oh!
ERIC: I wrote the screenplay.
ALISON: Oh, wow!
ERIC: We’ll see how “oh, wow.” I’m getting “notes” from my producer in the morning.
ALISON: That is so cool.
(Pause.)
ERIC: Pass the M&M’s?
(She does.)
ALISON: There’s this movie I wrote I want to produce independently?
ERIC: Oh, yeah? What is it?
ALISON: It’s set in the future? On a space colony?
ERIC: Uh-huh.
ALISON: Where the first generation of children born there—do you really want to hear this?
ERIC: Yeah. Absolutely.
ALISON: Okay, so these kids were all conceived like right around the same time and now they’re like sixteen, seventeen years old going through all the usual rebellious earthling shit teenagers go through—sex and drugs and stuff?
ERIC: Uh-huh.
ALISON: Only they spent their whole lives on this like weird, hermetic colony in the middle of outer space, but it’s the only home they’ve ever known, okay?
ERIC: Yeah? . . .
ALISON: And now this like utopian society is on the brink of like total ecological disaster. So, in order to save the colony, they band together to overthrow their leaders—who also happen to be their parents.
ERIC: They overthrow them?
ALISON: Uh-huh.
ERIC: How?
ALISON: They, you know, they kill them.
ERIC: They kill their parents?
ALISON: Yeah, one by one, in really cool ways.
ERIC: Huh.
ALISON: So, like, in the third act, all the grown-ups are dead, okay?
ERIC: Yeah? . . .
ALISON: And there they are, the kids, the new generation, finally in control, right?—in the middle of all this carnage—there are like body parts everywhere, it’s really gross.
ERIC: Uch.
ALISON: And you know what they discover?
ERIC: What.
ALISON: They’re still doomed! They’re just as clueless as their parents! (A beat) And that’s my movie.
ERIC: Hm.
ALISON: People say it’s awesome. It’s an allegory.
ERIC: It’s interesting, it really is. So, let me ask you, when you come up with a story like that, how do you know it’s a screenplay?
ALISON: What do you mean?
ERIC: What makes it a movie and not a novel?
ALISON: It’s a movie. It has to be a movie.
ERIC: Yeah, I know, but what if you actually wrote the story as a piece of fiction.
ALISON: Why? That would be like such a waste of time. No offense or anything, but fiction is like so over.
ERIC (Amused): Really.
ALISON: I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love books. And I really respect people like you who still bother to write them.
ERIC: It seems almost “quaint” to you, huh?
ALISON: Like watchmakers or violin-makers or something. People who devote themselves so completely to a dying craft? It’s touching, it really is.
ERIC: You know, if I let myself think like that, I’d have a pretty hard time getting up in the morning.
ALISON: I don’t know how you do it. I really don’t. It takes a lot of courage to do what you do. Who do you do it for?
ERIC: What do you mean “who”?
ALISON: I mean, besides yourself. Who’s your audience?
ERIC: Uh . . .
ALISON: Middle-aged or old people who have the time and the money to buy books and read them? That’s nothing; that’s like a tiny, miniscule fraction of the population. Kids my age don’t read. They don’t. I mean, it’s not that they’re illiterate, it’s just that it’s not an important part of their lives. The only stories they like are the kind that can be shown to them. All they have to do is sit there and let it wash over them. I mean, why read when they could much more easily go to a movie or rent a DVD or something? Why spend like thirty bucks on a book that might not even be any good ’cause even books that are supposed to be good are rarely as good as they say they are, they’re just hyped to get you to buy them.
ERIC (Teasing): You are being way harsh.
ALISON: I’m sorry.
ERIC: Why’d you come hear me read tonight if this is how you feel?
ALISON: I’m not saying this is how I feel, I’m saying this is how kids my age feel. I wanted to meet you. I’d read The Aerie and I—
ERIC: You did? (She nods) When?
ALISON: A l
ong time ago. Like three years ago.
ERIC: That long ago?
ALISON (Swats at him, then): You know how you read a book and you want to meet the author? If you do meet them . . . you pray to God they don’t turn out to be a schmuck or something?
ERIC: How’m I doing?
ALISON: You’re doing okay. I liked your voice when you read tonight, at Book Soup.
ERIC: Oh, yeah? Thanks. So you liked The Aerie?
ALISON: Yeah, it’s like one of my all-time favorites. First time I read it, I couldn’t stop crying.
ERIC: Really?
ALISON: When the nest is destroyed by the storm? God. It was so beautiful. Every sentence. It was like poetry, the whole book, it really was.
ERIC: Thank you. It’s being reissued in paperback.
ALISON: Wow, that is really great!
ERIC: Yeah, that and The Gentleman Farmer. Out of print for years, now they can’t be rushed back into print fast enough.
ALISON: That is so cool.
ERIC: See? If you live long enough, anything’ll happen.
(They smile at one another. Pause.)
ALISON: What do people call you?
ERIC: What?
ALISON: Your friends. What do they call you?
ERIC (Shrugs): Eric.
ALISON: Just Eric?
ERIC: Rick. Ricky.
ALISON (Delighted): Ricky?!
ERIC: People who’ve known me a long time call me Ricky.
ALISON (Over “. . . call me Ricky.”): I love it! I’m gonna call you Ricky!
ERIC (Sharper than intended): No you’re not.
ALISON (Embarrassed): Sorry.
ERIC (Easing the sting): Ricky’s reserved for a select few. A rapidly diminishing few. (A beat) Why my mother and father named a Jewish boy “Eric”. . . As far as I could tell, there is no Eric in the Old Testament. (She laughs) I looked. When I was about eight or nine I discovered I had the same name as Houdini, and suddenly it was cool to be an Eric.
ALISON: I know I should know who that is.
ERIC: Harry Houdini. The Great Houdini.
ALISON: Was he like a famous magician or something?
ERIC: Illusionist. Escape artist of legend.
ALISON: Oh, yeah.
ERIC: His given name was Erich Weiss. Erich with an “H” at the end.
ALISON: You were named after him?
ERIC: No, it was a coincidence; my parents didn’t know that was his real name. I remember my grandfather telling me stories about The Great Houdini.
ALISON: Oh, yeah?
ERIC: He saw him once, back in the twenties, on the Lower East Side. Houdini had these heavy chains wrapped around him and they locked him inside a steamer trunk. Then the trunk was thrown off a pier into the East River.
ALISON: Wow.
ERIC: It was wintertime; it was freezing. The crowd waited for him to come up—minutes went by; they were certain he’d frozen to death—when, finally, miraculously, he burst to the surface and everybody cheered!
ALISON: Wow!
ERIC: I’ve come to see that Houdini and I actually have more in common than our names. We’re both escape artists.
ALISON: What did you ever escape from?
ERIC (Matter-of-factly): Brooklyn.
(They share a smile.)
ALISON: Speaking of which . . . (Gets Brooklyn Boy out of her bag)
ERIC: Uh-oh.
ALISON: Oh no it is so good.
ERIC: What are you up to? (Meaning, in the book)
ALISON: I just started; I read like the first few pages in the bookstore. The leftie day camp?
ERIC: Camp Zion.
ALISON: Yeah. Kenny changing into his bathing suit?
ERIC: Uh-huh.
ALISON: Oh, God, it’s so awful.
ERIC: Awful?
ALISON: So awful, it’s hysterical. Everyone’s worst humiliation nightmare. Did that really happen like that, the girls walking by and laughing and stuff?
ERIC: Why?
ALISON: You can’t make something like that up; it’s too horrible. It has to be true.
ERIC: Why is that so important?
ALISON: What.
ERIC: Knowing that something is true. People are always asking me, “Is that you, did that really happen?” As if that has any bearing on anything. What is that about?
(She gets cigarettes from her bag and smokes.)
ALISON: You’re Kenny, right?
ERIC: That’s what I mean!
ALISON: It’s no secret, right? Kenny is you.
ERIC: Not me. A version of me. A “me” I might have been.
ALISON: Were you really such a dorky kid?
ERIC: He isn’t “dorky.”
ALISON: He’s pretty dorky.
ERIC: He is not. Kenny’s an Everyboy. Kenny Fleischman is anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider.
ALISON: Sounds like a copy line you’d see in an ad or something.
ERIC: Sorry; I’ve been giving too many interviews lately.
(She laughs; he smiles. Pause.)
You really shouldn’t smoke, you know.
ALISON: Yeah and you shouldn’t take girls half your age back to hotel rooms.
ERIC (A wince): Oooh.
ALISON: Gummy bear?
ERIC: No thanks. You know, I never quite understood the appeal of gummy bears.
ALISON: Really? Oh, they’re wonderful.
ERIC: What’s so wonderful about them? They always get stuck in your teeth.
ALISON: I don’t know, they’re so small and smooth and translucent? (Shows her palm) See? They’re like little nuggets of sea glass or something.
(They look at one another. A sexually charged moment, which she defuses.)
So—don’t you have like a wife or something?
ERIC: Is that what you want to talk about? My wife?
ALISON (Over “My wife?”): No, it’s just I remember the bio thing with your picture on the cover of The Aerie?, said you had a wife.
ERIC: That’s true, it did.
ALISON: And on this one, it’s like, wait a minute, where’s the wife?
ERIC: Very astute detective work.
ALISON: Oh God, she didn’t die or anything?
ERIC: No no, she didn’t die. She just doesn’t want to be married to me anymore, that’s all.
ALISON (Over “. . . that’s all.”): Really? Why? What did you do?
ERIC: What do you mean what did I do? Why do you assume it was something I did?
ALISON: Happens all the time: Middle-aged man gets famous, goes completely sex-crazed, fucks up his marriage.
ERIC: I see you’ve done research on this.
ALISON: It’s exactly what happened with my dad. He’s not a famous writer or anything, he just made a lot of money out here.
ERIC: In the movie business?
ALISON: No, in plastic surgery. I mean, here’s this average, shlumpy guy, and all of a sudden, like in his forties, he’s this millionaire plastic surgeon and there are like all these women around, treating him like he’s God or something and it’s like he thinks he’s been given this imperative to screw as many of them as possible. Never mind that my mother married him before he had anything and put him through medical school and had his children and everything. It’s disgusting. (A beat) So you’re divorced?
ERIC: Not yet.
ALISON: But you’re getting? (He nods) Too bad.
ERIC: Yeah, it is.
ALISON: How many kids have you got?
ERIC: None.
ALISON: Well, that’s good. Divorce and kids: Believe me, that sucks. So is she gonna fleece you now that you’re famous?
ERIC: I don’t know; I don’t think she would do that.
ALISON: That’s what my dad thought. My mom skinned him alive. (A beat) So what went wrong? You mind my asking?
ERIC: Uh, well . . . It’s complicated.
ALISON: How long were you together?
ERIC: Since graduate school.
ALISON: Wow. How come no kid
s?
(He shrugs, looks away. She understands.)
Oh.
ERIC: We met in Iowa. Nina and I. At the Writer’s Workshop.
ALISON: She’s a writer, too? (He nods) Would I have ever heard of her?
ERIC (A beat): No. (A beat) So, UCLA, right? (She nods) Tell me again, when do you graduate?
ALISON: Next June. Soon I’ll be one more overeducated assistant ordering Chinese chicken salad for some asshole producer.
ERIC: What do you want to do?
ALISON: I want to be the asshole producer.
ERIC: You don’t want to write screenplays like everybody else out here?
ALISON: Nah. I wrote my movie; I got it out of my system. Sophomore year? I took screenwriting with this guy who makes all this money doctoring movies but never gets his name on anything?
ERIC: Uh-huh.
ALISON: See, I don’t get that. No amount of money would make me give up having my name on something. I want my name right Out There, you know?, so people know me, know who I am. Otherwise why bother? You live a while and then you die.
ERIC: You want that badly to be famous?
ALISON: Yeah. Doesn’t everybody? Look at you. Why did you want it?
ERIC (Shrugs; pause): My father sold shoes. In a Buster Brown store on Sheepshead Bay Road.
ALISON: He owned a shoe store?
ERIC: No, he worked for the man who did. He wasn’t a partner, he was an employee. For thirty-nine years. He gave his life to that store. It wasn’t even his to profit from, yet still he gave everything to that goddamn store. I could never understand what was so attractive about that place, why he chose to spend so much of his days there and not at home. (A beat) I remember watching him closely in the morning, trying to uncover the mystery of manhood, the rituals of work. The shpritz of Aramis, the buff of the Oxfords, the tying of the perfect Windsor knot. I’d watch him from my window get swallowed up in the sea of Brooklyn fathers all beginning their day. (He’s moved) I should get you home.
ALISON: What? Oh. Okay? (Pause) Is that it?
ERIC: What.
ALISON: Did I do something . . .?
ERIC: No.
ALISON: What happened? Can we start again? Please? I’ll do whatever you want.
ERIC: Sweetie, it’s okay.
ALISON: You sure I didn’t do something?
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