Our Lady of 121st Street
Page 11
Scene 6: Manhattan Correctional Center: legal consultations room. Angel alone, more beaten up. Mary Jane enters, tentatively.
MARY JANE: Hello, Angel—
ANGEL: What are you doing here?
MARY JANE: Came to check in on you.
ANGEL: Check in on me?
MARY JANE: You don’t look so good.
ANGEL: The fuck you care?!
MARY JANE: Angel—
ANGEL: Yo, I gotta visitor coming, so—
MARY JANE: I didn’t see anyone else’s name in the log book—
ANGEL: Log book?
MARY JANE: When I signed in—
ANGEL: They prolly ain’t here yet.
MARY JANE: Do you know who’s coming?
ANGEL: Not exactly. Somebody.
MARY JANE: Regular visiting hours are, uh, over.
ANGEL: Over?
MARY JANE: Yeah.
ANGEL: Oh.
(Pause)
MARY JANE: Angel, I’m sorry about yesterday.
ANGEL: What?
MARY JANE: I said—
ANGEL: What time did visiting hours end?
MARY JANE: About a half hour ago.
ANGEL: Was there people down there when you came in?
MARY JANE: Yeah.
ANGEL: So people could be down there, but maybe they don’t get in?
MARY JANE: It happens a lot.
ANGEL: Did you, was there any white guys down there?
MARY JANE: Umm.
ANGEL: Like a guy my age with, like, black hair, curly, kinda look like me but white? Maybe he was wit’ some Chinese-lookin’ people, Korean?
MARY JANE: I don’t think I saw anyone who looked like that, but—
ANGEL: No big deal.
(Pause)
MARY JANE: I could check downstairs—
ANGEL: Yo, is there sumpthin’ that you want?
MARY JANE: I, uh, I brought some food—
ANGEL: Food?
MARY JANE: I got some chicken, potato pancakes, coleslaw, I also got some Ring Dings in here someplace and some donuts—
ANGEL: You didn’t bring no deviled eggs?
MARY JANE: Deviled eggs?
ANGEL: Some deviled eggs and a little blanket, we could have a fuckin’ picnic—
MARY JANE: Angel—
ANGEL: And we could invite some nice guests! Who you wanna invite?
MARY JANE: I’m just—
ANGEL: Tell you what: I’ll invite my lawyer, and you could invite fuckin’ “Hector Villanueva,” and we’ll party, ‘cuz thass what this is, right? A fuckin’ party? Let’s … let’s go get some “opera music” and some Popsicle sticks and go see the fuckin’ Shakespeare in the Park—
MARY JANE: I could leave if you want.
ANGEL: Who’s stoppin’ you?
MARY JANE: But then they’d just return you to your cell.
ANGEL: Return me to my … Did you juss fuckin’ threaten me?
MARY JANE: Did you shoot Reverend Kim with the intention of killing him?
ANGEL: Are you makin’ fuckin’ threats?
MARY JANE: You went there to kill him, didn’t you?
ANGEL: You ain’t my lawyer no more.
MARY JANE: I know that—
ANGEL: I got another lawyer now, much better than you. Got a beard and everything.
MARY JANE: I know.
ANGEL: Little half glasses, whaddya call them, bifocals? Nice suit, Smart. Langdon Brown!
MARY JANE: I know Langdon.
ANGEL: Dass right! Man’s even writin’ a screenplay! You ever write a fuckin’ screenplay?!
MARY JANE: I’m too busy practicing law to write screenplays.
ANGEL: Yeah well, Langdon Brown, he don’t need ta practice, he already got that shit down!
MARY JANE: Yeah, well …
ANGEL: He toal me all about you too! Toal me I could sue you if I wanted, make a complaint. Dass why you brought me chicken, right?
MARY JANE: I brought you—
ANGEL: ’Cuz if you wanted to bribe me, you shoulda brought me steak!
MARY JANE: This—
ANGEL: Big ol’ steak, with a pair a Nunchucks—
MARY JANE: I’m—
ANGEL: Chainsaw inside the baked potato—Where you goin’?
MARY JANE: Like I said—
ANGEL: You’re a fuckin’ bitch, you know that?
MARY JANE: I wish you all the best—
ANGEL: I don’t need your wishes or your “sorrys” or your chickens or your anything! I don’t need anything!
MARY JANE: Angel—
ANGEL: Get the fuck outta here! Go on! Get out!
MARY JANE: Did you shoot Reverend Kim with the intention of killing him?
ANGEL: I shot Reverend Kim in the ass with the intent to bust a cap in his lyin’, bullshittin’ ass!
MARY JANE: I don’t believe that for a second!
ANGEL: I doan give a shit what you believe!
MARY JANE: What really happened? Were you ready to do it, but then you got scared and aimed low, is that it?
ANGEL: Aimed low? I aimed for his damn ass and hit it. Mothahfuckah got an ass like a water buffalo, it ain’t hard to locate!
MARY JANE: But you wanted to kill him—
ANGEL: I wanted to shoot him in the fuckin’ ass, lady! How many times I gotta say it?
MARY JANE: Why?
ANGEL: It was something I could do, ah-right?! These mothahfuckahs, like Reverend Kim, they run around, talkin’ shit, talkin’ “God,” and they steal people! Steal mothahfuckahs right out from your face. And what can you do about it? Nothin’! You go to The Law, you know what the law do? The law do fuckin’ nothin’, that’s what the law do! You try to go to a outside agency, make a complaint: “They stole my friend,” you know who you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to the same mothahfuckahs who stole him in the first place! Juss like the, whaddyacallit, Scientologists and the Cult Awareness Network!
MARY JANE: Scientologists?
ANGEL: Read the fuckin’ paper, lady! Scientologists sued the Cult Awareness Network, bankrupted them, and took over the damn Cult Awareness Network! Same office! Same phone number! But when you call the mothahfuckahs up, you speaking to one of them! Now what kinda help you think they gonna give you?
MARY JANE: So you went out, you got a gun—
ANGEL: C’mon now! They didn’t steal my friend yesterday! I didn’t juss smoke a vile a crack, and bum-rush the show “guns a blazin’”!
MARY JANE: But you were high!
ANGEL: Look, I seen a seventy-five-year-old grandmother from Astoria get sent to penitentiary for trying kidnap her granddaughter from Reverend Kim’s church! I kidnapped my friend Joey myself!
MARY JANE: When?
ANGEL: Two months ago! Two years in the makin’! Surveillance, kidnappers, fuckin’ deprogrammer—you know what that is, right?
MARY JANE: I—
ANGEL: Dass a expensive mothahfuckah: expensive and useless.
MARY JANE: It didn’t work out.
ANGEL: Deprogrammer said Joey had an unusually strong faith, some bullshit—didn’t stop him from cashin’ the check!
MARY JANE: And you did this all yourself?
ANGEL: Nah, but, it’s amazin’ how people act. One day they all, like, “Yeah, bro’, whatever ya need,” next day it’s, “Yo, fuck that niggah, B, got better things to do.” People, they forget.
MARY JANE: But not you.
ANGEL: Dass my friend! If someone’s your friend, like, a real friend, how you supposed ta juss forget about him? You got any friends, lady?
MARY JANE: Mary Jane—
ANGEL: You got any friends, “Mary Jane”? ‘Cuz we got a friend, Eustace, he’s doin’ life in Arizona, but we stopped hangin’ wit him when we was like eleven. And we got this other friend, Crazy Legs, he died a cancer at twenty-two, and dass hard, but at least he’s dead! At least we could account for him, ya know? We’d go to the park, Grant’s Tomb, smoke a joint, we’d save the last hit for Crazy Legs, put
the roach to the side. But Joey? He juss gone. Bang: out! It’d be one thing if he was out for some good reason, like if he was an astronaut in space chasin’ the cure for AIDS, but what he out for? He out for bullshit! He out ’cuz Reverend Kim sold him a straight-up lie—
MARY JANE: According to you—
ANGEL: According to me?! Do you know what Reverend Kim say? He say he’s the Son of God! I mean, how big does your fuckin’ balls have to be to sit there with a straight face and claim some shit like that? Son a God? Yo, even if there was a Son of God—which, I mean, get real—but …
MARY JANE: You don’t believe in God?
ANGEL: Ah-right, I’m a put it like this: If there was “another” Son of God runnin’ around here, juss pickin’ up where his older brother left off, tryin’ ta save our ass, He sure as shit ain’t Reverend Kim! How many Sons of God you know drive a Lexus? Or got million-dollar stock portfolios? Or go skiing in Aspen? ’Cuz I’ll tell you right now: If Jesus Christ existed, and I ain’t sayin’ he did, but if, by some miracle he actually did, the mothahfuckah didn’t ski!
MARY JANE: Not in Israel he didn’t—
ANGEL: Not in Israel, not nowhere! Swear ta God, I can’t understan’ why Joey don’t see that! Dumb-ass mothahfuckah! It’s so obvious, so clear, I mean, you wanna hear the fuckin’, the know what I’m sayin’?—the, the irony? The irony is this: Me and Joey, we got, like, the telepathy. He always know what I’m thinkin’ and vice versa the other way. I know what girl he like before he know it! He know what I’m gonna say, it ain’t even come out my mouth yet! People think I’m crazy to have got involved in this shit the way I have, two years of my life and all that, maybe a lot more now, but, for real: If the situations was reversed, and it was me in that cult, no doubt in my mind Joey woulda done the same thing for me, only he prolly woulda did it better. He wouldn’t a forgotten about me—
MARY JANE: How about now?
ANGEL: “How ’bout now” what?
MARY JANE: Where’s your friend Joey now? You’re in jail! Where’s Joey?
ANGEL: It’s ’cuz a—
MARY JANE: Because of what?!
ANGEL: He … he captured!
MARY JANE: He’s not captured, you’re captured! You been here—what?—Three days?
ANGEL: Maybe he don’t know I’m here—
MARY JANE: What? He doesn’t read the papers?
ANGEL: I don’t know what he reads—
MARY JANE: Did it ever occur to you, Angel, that we, as individual people, are responsible for the individual choices that we make? And regardless of how close we may think we are to someone else, we have very little control over their choices, and absolutely zero responsibility for the consequences those choices bring on them?
ANGEL: Zero?
MARY JANE: That’s right, zero!
ANGEL: Maybe for you—
MARY JANE: No! Not just for me, for everybody! If somebody joins some stupid cult, whether they’re a good person or not, whether I love them or hate them, or think they’re better than me, or think they’ve been manipulated, or abused, there’s nothing I can do about it! Nothing! And it doesn’t matter if that person is a total stranger or my sister; they aren’t going to leave unless they want to, no matter what I think or feel!
ANGEL: Dass bullshit—
MARY JANE: My father was still smoking cigarettes while he was in an oxygen tent! I begged him to quit all my life—did it stop him from killing himself?
ANGEL: Maybe you shoulda tried harder!
MARY JANE: Harder than what?
ANGEL: Or maybe you didn’t really give enough of a fuck to really try to help him!
MARY JANE: Should I have gone to the chairman of Philip Morris and shot him in the ass? Would that have helped him?
ANGEL: Maybe you should ax yourself that question!
MARY JANE: That’s ridiculous.
ANGEL: Is it? My friend Joey should be doing what you’re doing! He should be a public defender, or a drug counselor, helpin’ the people, fuckin’ whatever! But where is he? He’s out! Gone! And why? Why is he not here? Why? Do you believe that Reverend Kim is the actual Son of God? That a man deported from his own country and convicted of tax evasion in this one could even speak for God, let alone be God? That a man who steals people, has them selling flowers on the street, gettin’ rich off them, what the fuck? Look me in my eye and tell me that a man like that should be allowed to do what he’s doing! With a fuckin’ government-approved tax-exempt status and a full police escort!
MARY JANE: Angel—
ANGEL: Where’s my mother’s full police escort when she gets off the subway from work after midnight and has to walk home alone? Where’s Mother Teresa’s Lexus? And how ‘bout you? You a public defender, and if you’re any good at lawyering at all, you could prolly make a lot more money working someplace else, right? But you don’t do that, do you? So where’s your mansion? Where’s your frappacino, swimming pool, mistress, Son-a-God fuckin’ wonderland?! He stole my friend. I shot him in the ass. Now I’m fucked in jail, and he’s eating banana cream pie in some plush hospital bed reading his Wall Street Journal! Juss like the chairman of Philip Morris! Your pops, he six feet under, fuckin’ maggot food now, where’s the chairman? I’ll tell you where the fuckin’ chairman is! Out there on the eighteenth green sippin’ a Heineken, wiping the crumbs from his shrimp-salad sandwich off of his cashmere sweater, and he’s smiling, unaffected. Or am I just being “ridiculous”?
(Pause)