Soul of a Whore and Purvis Read online

  Stalled while the IRS and FTC

  Shine a light on your money.

  BILL JENKS: Let it shine,

  There ain’t a lot to see.

  WILL: You claim you’re clean.

  BILL JENKS: Nope. I just claim there isn’t any money.

  SIMON: THERE’S NEVER BEEN A SWEETER RIDE TO HELL

  BILL JENKS: This one’s getting agitated now.

  STACY: I take it you’re a husband-and-wife team?

  BILL JENKS: We are as siblings.

  WILL: Ooh, you two are juicy.

  SIMON: I’ll climb back up your cunt and suck your mind

  The way we used to do when we were lovers

  JAN: Simon! Shame on you!

  STACY: Well, talk about a mouth!

  BILL JENKS: You recognize him, don’t you? Yes. You do.

  MASHA: It’s him. It’s him.

  STACY: Do you eat with that mouth?

  DOC: Actually, he’s nourished through this tube.

  MASHA: I’m free of you! You hear? Leave me alone!

  WILL: Just grab his scrotum there to shut him up.

  Just reach on out—go on—and shake the hand

  Of the old banana, with a manly grip.

  NURSE: Doctor Nasum, please, this doesn’t seem—

  WILL: Take hold! There can’t be any harm in it,

  Right? Big deal, as far as he’s concerned…

  I used to get him down and drool a strand—

  Now this’ll git ’im, if he’s there a-tall—

  And slurp it back—

  NURSE: Now, what on earth!—

  WILL: Aha!

  STACY: You can’t spit in a coma person’s face!

  WILL: You get a pain response? Huh, buddy? There!

  NURSE: For goodness’ sakes alive, he’s hurting him!

  They restrain him, DOC and NURSE taking either arm.

  WILL: The point is that I’m not. He doesn’t hurt.

  But everybody else—this family,

  Our parents, this man’s wife, his wife’s relations—

  Het up by this fireball of faith,

  Yinked and yanked by hope in God like gobs

  Of spit he dangles from his fat, red mouth—

  His doctor shouldn’t let them play these games.

  I want this sucker ceremony canceled!

  Who is actually in attendance here?

  NURSE: It’s Dr. Cassady. He makes his rounds

  Just after lunch on weekdays, Sir.

  WILL: Then page old Hopalong immediately.

  Come on!—He doesn’t want to see his patient

  Used like bait to fish for dollars, does he?

  SIMON: LET IT THUNDER FARTS AND RAIN DOWN VOMIT

  JAN: STACY!

  STACY [grabbing SIMON’s crotch]: Hon, it’s simple courtesy.

  MASHA: He’s wild for me. The demon’s wild for me.

  WILL: Jesus Christ, Morticia—lighten up!

  BILL JENKS: I’d like to be alone with Simon now.

  WILL: Go right ahead. Remember—manly grip!

  DOC and NURSE begin dragging WILL out.

  BILL JENKS: No—Let him stay. I want him here. Let go.

  DOC: If I were Simon’s primary physician—

  BILL JENKS: Go on, the rest of you. Leave us alone.

  [To MASHA] You especially. We can’t have you here.

  All exit. BJ alone with WILL and SIMON. WILL collects himself, goes to window.

  WILL: What’s he saying?…(Jesus. What a morning…)

  Sights…heights…Keep your eyes—the prize—

  BILL JENKS: Keep your sights

  On the heights

  Keep your eyes

  WILL: On the prize. The guy’s a public nuisance.

  BILL JENKS: He’s with me.

  WILL: He would be, wouldn’t he?

  …I’m calmer now.

  BILL JENKS: No need to apologize.

  WILL: I feel no need. I’m not apologizing.

  My position hasn’t altered; I’m just calmer.

  Simon, too.

  BILL JENKS: I don’t expect you like this

  Invasion of your realm—

  WILL: It ain’t my realm.

  I’m not a doctor. I’m just Simon’s brother.

  BILL JENKS: I thought you were a medical man.

  WILL: I am.

  BILL JENKS: Then please don’t be so hostile. I don’t go

  So far as to suggest you look on us

  As colleagues, but I think we share a goal.

  WILL: I’m a technician of a very special kind.

  I don’t fix people. Quite the opposite.

  I supervise the termination teams.

  BILL JENKS: Sounds like you’re in the personnel division.

  WILL: No.—The tie-down team, the I-V team…

  BILL JENKS: I see.

  WILL: Next to me, boys, Lucifer never fell.

  BILL JENKS: You execute the folks.

  WILL: That’s not quite true.

  We execute the sentence, not the person.

  BILL JENKS: And who, exactly, executes the person?

  WILL: “To execute” means “to carry out.”

  Well, I guess in the end we carry them out.

  …So you do the opposite of what I do.

  BILL JENKS: I’ve never raised the dead.

  WILL: But—in a sense.

  BILL JENKS: I’ve never raised the dead.

  WILL: Why don’t you try?

  Go where the dead go. Haunt the mortuaries.

  Give ’em the razzle-dazzle of your gift

  And see if anybody cheats the grave…

  —What’s the matter with him now? My God!

  BILL JENKS: The demon’s agitated. SETTLE DOWN!

  …I wonder where you know my assistant from?

  WILL: Morticia? Man, I’ve seen that honey shake

  Her titties! You a preacher, or a pimp?

  BILL JENKS: The line between the two is faint. I think

  It moves. I’ve found myself on either side.

  WILL: You didn’t move yourself?

  BILL JENKS: Not to my knowledge…

  Maybe…If I moved, I didn’t feel it…

  Well, I just had to ask. Not my affair,

  But I was curious. Now you can leave.

  WILL: You think you’re safe alone? I mean, he’s strong—

  He may be out of it, but—

  BILL JENKS: I’ll be fine.

  WILL: The Lord protects you.

  BILL JENKS: I believe he does.

  WILL: You trust in the Lord.

  BILL JENKS: I find him predictable…

  We’ve got three this week. Uh. Tuesday, Wednesday,

  I think Thursday…Thursday?

  WILL: So do we.

  BILL JENKS: Yes, three…Three executions in three days?

  WILL: Hey, I don’t make the reservations, boys.

  I just fly the plane.

  BILL JENKS: Here and yonder,

  Even in prison, I’ve met up with good

  And decent people. But…How do you say this?…

  I’ve never met one in the mirror.

  WILL: …Yeah…

  O well, that’s life, huh?

  BILL JENKS: That’s life on Death Row.

  WILL: I don’t get you. Do you believe, or not?

  Do you really heal? And cleanse these souls

  Of maladies and spirits? Do you care?

  BILL JENKS: The gift is real, but I just turn a buck.

  I turn a buck, he executes his vague

  Intentions on a baffled universe:

  Win-win…Of course, he screws with me.

  That’s his style—the gift, and then the gag.

  And in return I fail to reverence him,

  Fail in gratitude. I fail to love him.

  WILL: Wow! You are an existentialist.

  It’s a little hard to see that message landing

  Anywhere. It’s no surprise you’re bankrupt.

  BILL JENKS: Aa
h, they’re just watching television, man.

  I tell it like I see it, but I doubt

  There’s anybody listening. Faith is scary.

  Faith affords its consolations, sure—

  By opening the maw to the dark depths

  Where going blind and getting lost and hurt

  Seem understandable and natural,

  And all night long two graces fall like rain:

  A tragic sense of life, and hope of Heaven.

  WILL: Are grace and Heaven all you’ve got to offer?

  Man, I’ve watched one hundred twenty people

  Die because I killed them with a button.

  I’ve seen them breathe their last—the air

  Goes out, and out, and then they kind of shiver

  And there’s this second where you know it’s over

  And it ain’t never gonna start again.

  …On summer evenings I sit on my porch

  And listen to this train that comes along.

  I listen to the wheels bang on the tracks,

  I listen to the whistle drag the air

  And fill the world, and fade, and leave it empty,

  And I am gonna tell you: Heaven never

  Dreamt of anything as sweet as that:

  To listen to a train and not be dead.

  VOICE ON RADIO: Insects are often the only witnesses

  To a crime.

  BILL JENKS [to SIMON]: Did you turn that thing on?

  WILL: It wasn’t me.

  BILL JENKS: Well turn the damn thing off.

  VOICE ON RADIO: The president’s order has been disobeyed.

  Soft music on radio…

  BILL JENKS: All right. It’s time you left us, please.

  WILL: Don’t heal, or even touch, or even think

  About—Don’t—don’t…Don’t hurt him. He’s my brother.

  BILL JENKS:…No. I wouldn’t hurt him, Mr. Blaine.

  WILL exits.

  BILL JENKS falls and weeps.

  VOICE ON RADIO laughs hysterically—SIMON joins in.

  BILL JENKS quells them with a laying on of hands.

  SIMON: HEALER!…HEALER, NOLI MI TANGERE!

  BILL JENKS: All right. They’re gone. I’m here. Who are you, demon?

  SIMON: Et cetera non sequitur mon cher

  BILL JENKS: Is it you? Are you the same one?

  SIMON: E pluribus non sequitur tyrannis

  BILL JENKS: I saw this movie. Everybody saw it.

  Are you the demon who prophesies, or not?

  SIMON: O. This. Yes. That.

  Jack

  Sprat

  Begat Jehosephat.

  BILL JENKS: Cut it out. Get serious. You know

  I coulda had your ass in Huntsville—

  Coulda sent you to the Pit. You owe me.

  SIMON: Coulda shoulda woulda hadda oughta.

  BILL JENKS: God! There’s something wrong with me or something.

  There’s something wrong with me or something wrong

  With money. Anyhow, we tangle wrong,

  Me and the dollar…What a mess, what…All

  Those people on the money—can’t they see me?

  SIMON: I love you. Love you with a love that burns.

  BILL JENKS: If I’da lived a hundred years ago,

  I’d be riding circuit, I’d be praising God

  And healing hearts and saving souls

  And money’d never touch me long enough

  To suck itself inside me like it has.

  SIMON: I love you with a love that burns and smokes.

  BILL JENKS: OK, OK, you’re probably aware

  We’ve got a hearing set for Wednesday next

  To go and file for Chapter—I don’t know—

  Eleven, Thirteen, Twenty-one—they make

  The whole thing sound like Vegas, don’t they?

  They tap you out as quick as Vegas, too.

  But you know me: I’ll bet my shorts and socks

  And get back in the game, or hitchhike home

  As naked as my mama made me. Anyhow,

  The institute is broke, but the foundation

  Holds several thousand shares of Motorola.

  Here’s the thing: This Freddie Spendersnap,

  The NASCAR racer, wants to make a swap,

  My Motorola for a razor-thin

  Controlling interest in his hot-dog thing,

  His vending franchise thing. It sounds superb,

  It’s very liquid, totally set up—

  I mean, you figure hot dogs are forever—

  But Motorola’s flirting with Verizon,

  The big fat cell-phone company; O, yeah,

  Verizon makes my Motorola pretty—

  But if the feds resolve to yank tobacco

  Sponsorship of NASCAR, man, the brokest

  Sucker in the South is gonna be

  The guy with fifteen hundred red-and-white

  Stripèd hats and fifteen hundred hot-dog carts.

  But. Cell phones give you cancer. They could tank.

  SIMON: “Spendersnap.” I think you made that up.

  BILL JENKS:…Why can’t I be like simple John and stand

  My cross in a melting Texas parking lot—

  What did he have to endure to get like that?

  Remove from me these bonds of self…Release…

  Shit. Am I praying to you? Praying to a demon?

  SIMON: Jenks, I reject your terminology.

  Demon is a term whose definition

  Seems to shift its shape as much as we do.

  Call me a teenymeanymotherfucker.

  BILL JENKS:…So…am I Motorola, or Freddie’s Franks?

  BLACKOUT

  Lights up stage left:

  Hospital waiting room. MASHA at the window.

  WILL enters. Comes up close behind her.

  WILL: Look at this guy. Just can’t wait to give

  His life away. He’s chomping at the bit.

  He’s straining at the traces. Giddyap,

  Ol’ hoss. Drag that contraption into

  The third millennium. You get farther and farther

  From Calvary all the time. Farther and farther

  From the place of skulls. Farther from Golgotha.

  …An overpowering scent of blossoms on

  The air today. Inebriating.

  MASHA: Just about a stench.

  WILL: Or is it your perfume?

  MASHA: I wear no scent.

  WILL: But I can smell you. You smell womanly.

  My my, you give a man an appetite.

  You’re womanly. Dazzlingly. Deeply.

  MASHA: I don’t hear such talk. It strikes me deaf.

  WILL: I know you from Sylvester’s. I know you

  From head to toe three nights a week stark naked,

  No matter how you cover up in gray.

  I don’t forget the times I watched you dance.

  First time, I said to my buddies, Hey now, there’s

  The type I crave, a dancing contradiction:

  I crave my women simultaneously

  Loose and tight.

  MASHA: You’re talking to the walls.

  You’re talking to the moon. Nobody hears you.

  WILL: You cast one glance and liquefied my bones

  And alla that. Sweet Jesus, what a rack.

  What a set of pins.

  MASHA: Would you not swear?

  WILL: “A set of pins”?

  MASHA: You took the Lord in vain.

  WILL: I’ll take him any way that I can get him,

  Honey baby lover fucker-doll.

  MASHA:…Who’s the ones with everything stripped off?

  Who’s the peep show? Is it really me?

  I strut along and toss down feed to you.

  You hunch there with your glass of screw-top wine

  And all the feelings naked in your face.

  You gobble me down with your eyes, but you don’t see me.

  You see the act, you see your fantasy
r />   And not the person working at a job.

  You see me panting for you, but I’m bored,

  My ankles hurt, my car got repossessed,

  I’d like to move because my rickety

  Apartment’s on the building’s sunny side—

  The prancing slut is prancing in your head.

  You got me backwards. I’m not undercover.

  I never was so hidden as when I was naked.

  …And plus fact is I ain’t no Norma Jean.

  I’m sort of regular, with decent legs.

  Dim light, I’m gorgeous.

  WILL: Dancing decent legs.

  Decent legs made for indecent dancing.

  MASHA: I think I wish to stop this conversation.

  WILL: Dim light, spilt liquor, dancing decent legs.

  …Where does he keep you stashed?

  MASHA: In Hawk Hills. Outside Fort Worth. Way outside.

  WILL: I think you need to get to Houston.

  MASHA: No.

  WILL: But not downtown. Just out there by the lake.

  I’d put you by the golf course. Weekend nights

  We head downtown, see what the action’s like.

  MASHA: I don’t like the city. I never did.

  It smells. It stinks. I mean it reeks.

  WILL: The smells and lights and noise and all the tense

  Faces and the cries of the lunatics.

  You’ve gotta get out of Hawk Hills, swoop down

  To Second Street and put the world before you.

  Downtown. In the night. That’s where you hide.

  Do you know what this is?

  MASHA: Money, yeah. So what?

  WILL: Two dollars.

  MASHA: Stick it up your ass!

  WILL: Come on.

  You never took a little nap for money?

  MASHA: You can go to Hell!

  WILL: I’ll take you with me!

  …All I did was watch. Not like the others.

  Everybody knows what goes on there.

  “They dance till two and then they screw.” That’s right.

  Sylvester pimped you as a nightly thing.