The Best American Short Plays 2010-2011 Page 24

  TAMMY You love him.

  MOLLY No. Oh no. I hate him with all the darkness and fury caught in the monstrous hurricane of my soul. In a night he has caught my dear profession from these hands and abused the morning so he can steal away. If I ever see him again, I will use every fist my body can create to tear holes across his corpse.

  [A knock at the door.]

  TAMMY What to do! Oh, what to do! There’s a man coming for reprieve and he’ll know you’re sick if you can’t weave!

  MOLLY FORGE Bullets of rain, calamity, thunder, wind whirl, and strike! I am the worst beast the wharf ever dreamed. My staid wooden dock demonically rises plank by plank from its stale marine home and writhes viciously high above the oceanic horizons. I am the storm tornadoes flee from. I am the bluster cities bow towards. I am the devil fire no virgin sea could dream.

  [A young man, SAMPSON, enters.]

  SAMPSON Hello, I’m ready for a lascivious stunt.

  TAMMY Tammy. You vile, untempered slut.

  [TAMMY slaps MOLLY.]

  MOLLY FORGE What?

  TAMMY I told you, Tammy, to stop shouting about. Have no fear, sir, this whore, Tammy, is lamenting all the sad fates endured by the poor fellows I cannot service with my famous ten-piece band that plays lubricious carnival tunes on the vibrating accordions of the luckiest sweat-drenched thighs.

  SAMPSON Wow. I’m Sampson.

  TAMMY Hello, young sailor, I’m Molly Forge. Yes, that magical Molly Forge you always hear about. You’re undisguisedly handsome. My bed is there. My tip can is there. And you can have me here, here, and here.

  [TAMMY indicates herself.]

  You’re very pretty. Maybe you just want to hold my hand and talk about an imagined future we could have if you liked me and wanted to stay and live through that.

  SAMPSON I hate to hurry, but this is the first time I’ve ever come to land and I have to get back to my mother very soon.

  TAMMY Mother? Who’s your mother?

  SAMPSON The meanest pirate to ever haul freight

  And tender little me, her only mate.

  She’s generally a ruthless brutal queen,

  But today she’s the cruelest I’ve ever seen:

  Our peaceful pirate vessel got smote

  By this evil oil tanker boat,

  So my irate mother never dull

  Made a cannon crash into their hull.

  As that ship sunk and spewed its night-colored juice,

  Its feral captain swam towards the harbor sluice.

  My mom leapt off our deck to sink that prey

  Which gave me this great chance to steal away.

  While I have my first brothel and rug shop splurge,

  My mom will promptly drown that oil captain scourge.

  MOLLY FORGE But that oil captain’s death is meant for my trample.

  SAMPSON Well you’re too late. My mother, Dirty Vicki, the esteemed pirate queen, already executed the deed. Can we begin? For time is preciously dear. My mom would detach my arms if she found me here.

  MOLLY FORGE For plagiarizing murder from my page, this Dirty Vicki will suffer my rage. Beware, world, for what I like: my terrors unleashed, I have death at my strike!

  [MOLLY exits.]

  TAMMY Tammy, no!

  [TAMMY considers going for MOLLY but stops. Aside.]

  To my defense, I’m not leaving her side, she has left mine, and I will help her later after I tend to the finest little bird trembling on my branch.

  [To SAMPSON.]

  Sampson, don’t mind her. She’ll return. Shall we, or do you prefer that we dream of a mutual future with a farmhouse and a pen of goats we milk together each morning dawn. Sometimes the best love is left dreamt upon.

  SAMPSON I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your friend. But I think I’d prefer her.

  TAMMY I’m more skilled. You’ve no doubt heard about me, Molly Forge. I’m very famous. Is it because she’s prettier?

  SAMPSON No! You’re undeniably lovely and I could even say that I would fall for a face that fine. But I came here because I heard this man, a portly teen, talking all about Tammy. So I want her.

  TAMMY But no one wants Tammy. She’s everyone’s last choice. And Molly makes innocents rejoice.

  SAMPSON I hear Tammy juggles. And I thought that would be a lovely way to spend a morning with a woman. With her juggling and me cheering her on.

  TAMMY You don’t mean that. Molly is the elegant acrobat, Tammy just a dowdy clown. Let me be the bell you ring to wake the town.

  SAMPSON Why a Molly...

  [He mimes a lascivious prostitute.]

  ...when there’s a Tammy!

  [He mimes a fun juggler.]

  TAMMY If you knew how many frowns, grumbles, and crying fits followed an experience with Tammy, you would demand Molly. Trust me, a time with Tammy is a date with disappointment. Your legs are too fine, your eyes too sweet a candy, for you to be soiled with letdown Tammy.

  [CAPTAIN TWISTER enters, wet and oily, unable to bend his legs. He runs around the room.]

  CAPTAIN TWISTER Help! Refuge. Respite! I’m being chased!

  TAMMY Who are you, if you please? And what happened to your knees?

  CAPTAIN TWISTER When I’m not running for my life, I’m the noble Captain Twister, but in this instant I’m willing to disguise myself as your little sister.

  [CAPTAIN TWISTER begins putting on clothes around the room.]

  Hide me.

  SAMPSON [Pointing to TAMMY.] You can hide in her arms. She’s available.

  TAMMY No she’s not. Who’s chasing you?

  CAPTAIN TWISTER Trouble after trouble follows me today.

  A cannon sunk my ship into the bay.

  I fell too and was swimming to the shore

  Hindered by my damn legs both stiff as oars,

  Then a sea beast with a butterfly stroke

  Swam up to me and grabbed by cloak.

  She grappled my head between her thighs

  (And so not to drown)

  I gnashed the flesh her ass supplies!

  This small bite that you will moan

  Permitted me to free myself

  From that brawny vice no man has known.

  And so I escaped from a watery death,

  Hoping you excuse my sea foam breath,

  The pirate chases me to here and now,

  So I’ll hide over there if you’ll allow.

  SAMPSON She’s coming here? Dirty Vicki’s coming here!

  CAPTAIN TWISTER Brutal creature, she won’t stop until I’m bloated in barnacles at the bottom of the bay. If she finds me here, I’m doomed.

  SAMPSON If she finds me here, I’m doomed. But you deserve it. You hit our ship.

  CAPTAIN TWISTER It’s not my fault, I lost my wheel key.

  SAMPSON You broke the gorgeous mermaid off the bow of our ship. My mom spent my entire childhood carving that beautiful woman with a fish tail using no other tools but her fingernails. But now that mermaid lies splintered and broke, whirling lost in the sea, leaving my poor mom bereft and angry. As much as I would like to see you mutilated for your crimes, I have to go before I face my own end times.

  TAMMY Don’t leave, I’ll hide you.

  [To CAPTAIN TWISTER.]

  However, I won’t hide you.

  CAPTAIN TWISTER Where’s Molly Forge? She’ll hide me.

  SAMPSON [SAMPSON points to TAMMY.] She’s right here.

  CAPTAIN TWISTER You’ve mistaken Molly Forge for an unlikely substitute.

  TAMMY No he didn’t, Captain Twister. It’s me, Molly Forge, or do you not recall my electric seaweed fingers, which sent you into the brightest tinctures of pleasure last night. Please, describe for young Sampson here how un-disappointing a night with Molly Forge is. He’s deciding.

  SAMPSON I’ve decided.

  TAMMY Decide again.

  CAPTAIN TWISTER Sometimes it happens that you see the end of your life looking back at you and no culminated machinations of men’s highest pleasures and im
aginations can match the silent hours nestled in the pillows of her bed. You’ve heard the ancient monster Medusa who’s look turned men to stone? You probably heard it wrong. Medusa’s horror was not the snakes twining about her head, nor the mangled skin marring her face; it was her delicate cheek, the adventure of her thighs, a glow about her shy grin, that caught men frozen at her sight. Ugliness elicits indifference, beauty stops.

  And so I last night:

  Seeing the temptation of Medusa unfold

  The blightless beauty beyond the tale told,

  Under the terror of that gorgeous Gorgon gaze,

  Who among us wouldn’t stupidly run aways.

  TAMMY You love her.

  SAMPSON See, I want Tammy. Molly Forge is occupied.

  TAMMY Try this happy Molly fest, here between my heaving breasts!

  [TAMMY buries SAMPSON’s head in her breasts.]

  [A knock at the door. “Let me in! Please! Help!”]

  CAPTAIN TWISTER When people ask, I’m your visiting little sister, who’s crumpled over, blind, and shy.

  [A disguised CAPTAIN TWISTER runs into one of the bedrooms.]

  TAMMY Say you want Molly Forge.

  SAMPSON I don’t. And I never will want anything like her.

  [SAMPSON runs into the other room to hide. DIRTY VICKI enters in a huff.]

  DIRTY VICKI Hide me or I’ll lop your head off its pedestal.

  TAMMY It will be a disappointing interaction, I’m sure.

  [DIRTY VICKI puts TAMMY into a headlock.]

  DIRTY VICKI I am Dirty Vicki, the most horrible pirate imperial, and you will hide me or I will grind you into a gizzard sack of digestible material.

  TAMMY Oh, Dirty Vicki, do as you wish. But if you can reprocess human bodies into new forms, please make me a silky cobweb so that I might enwrap my little angel and freeze his smile with my loving threads.

  DIRTY VICKI [DIRTY VICKI releases TAMMY.] This is why my boat never meets the sand.

  You’re all crazy or miserable on land.

  I was aiming to fix a fiasco:

  Avenge my sweet, sculpted mermaid torso.

  A certain man cracked my only prize,

  So I vowed to drown him ’tween my thighs.

  While I held him down there fast,

  His jaw unhinged and bit my ass!

  (Look, ye, hark

  There’s the mark!)

  I let him loose so I could scratch

  And thus I lost my spiteful catch.

  Giving this man chase into the streets

  I meet two hammers attached to a screech.

  This baleful woman with fists of hate

  Blamed me for drowning her only mate.

  I screamed three times, “I haven’t yet,”

  But fury’s target was surely set.

  She flung innocent me on to the ground

  And let her wrecking balls go pound, pound, pound.

  Had I not moved my skull here and there

  I am sure that my face would share

  The thousand cracks blossomed in the street,

  Her rage breaking the toughest concrete.

  One such punch had the force of a boulder!

  Her whole arm was buried, hand to shoulder!

  While she was fiercely buried

  I slipped away and carried

  My pirate booty to this fruity stop

  Called Connie’s Brothel and Rug Shop.

  I knew a Connie once, a fishy maid,

  But I never speak of that crusade.

  So here I am,

  and if you don’t hide me from this unprovoked war,

  I will sacrifice you to that raging two-fisted manticore.

  TAMMY Do so, but know you kill a woman who wasn’t good enough even when she was being someone else. You can hide behind my loom.

  DIRTY VICKI You will hide me better, or I will weave your face through my thighs and crack you like a walnut. Oh no! She’s come to give her pummeling. I can hear the stairs hum-hum-hum-a-ling!

  [DIRTY VICKI puts her ear to the outside door.]

  [SAMPSON pokes his head out.]

  SAMPSON [Sotto voce.] Please help me.

  [SAMPSON pokes his head back in. TAMMY blows him an unseen kiss.]

  TAMMY Oh, my heart flutters through the pain! I can’t help but try and try again.

  DIRTY VICKI I must hide!

  [DIRTY VICKI tries to go into the bedroom with SAMPSON.]

  TAMMY No, you can’t.

  [DIRTY VICKI opens the door, but TAMMY whirls her away.]

  DIRTY VICKI My son!

  TAMMY No, that’s my nightstand!

  DIRTY VICKI Why’s my son in this dirty house of caprice!

  TAMMY Nay! That was a motherless furniture piece.

  [DIRTY VICKI opens the next bedroom door.]

  DIRTY VICKI A man covered in panties.

  TAMMY No, that’s my introverted sister.

  [TAMMY whirls DIRTY VICKI toward the outside door. DIRTY VICKI opens it. CONNIE is there. DIRTY VICKI stops.]

  DIRTY VICKI Connie.

  CONNIE Dirty Vicki. My sacred enemy.

  DIRTY VICKI My dearest foe. Where have you been?

  CONNIE Here, at my brothel. It’s very lucrative and I’m very happy. Much happier than I currently appear.

  DIRTY VICKI I, too, love my life and your absence from it.

  [SAMPSON and CAPTAIN TWISTER enter from their hiding places.]

  SAMPSON Mother.

  TAMMY The nightstand grew a voice!

  SAMPSON [Pointing at CONNIE.] It’s your mermaid. She walks!

  CONNIE Who is this boy?

  DIRTY VICKI No one. Get back to your room, the nightstand, before I decompartmentalize your tongue.

  SAMPSON The mermaid broke from our ship, grew legs, and walked ashore. Hello, wooden creature.

  CONNIE Is this your son?

  DIRTY VICKI Sampson, this angelic devil is not our wonderful mermaid.

  SAMPSON You said you carved her from your tears.

  DIRTY VICKI He’s been drinking fish pee for years.

  SAMPSON Yes, you carved this very same figure, stuck her on our ship, and now with a little oil and water, she walks. Look here’s the pose.

  [SAMPSON makes CONNIE cup her breasts and rearranges her face in an intimidating glance.]

  There! It is our ship’s guiding force! Hello, two-legged mermaid. Now that you’ve been given birth, would you like to lead our sails across the earth?

  DIRTY VICKI Sampson! Who said you could come to land?

  SAMPSON I came for the love of my life, Tammy.

  TAMMY But he wants to try Molly Forge before he commits.

  CONNIE [To SAMPSON.] Watch out, little boy. You’ll get a SAD.

  TAMMY Not from me. I’m clean, watch me weave.

  CONNIE [To SAMPSON.] Your mother gave me a SAD. St. Matilde’s Malady. And I was locked up for months. But I got over it and am once again pure.

  TAMMY I thought St. Matilde’s Malady didn’t have a cure.

  CONNIE I surrounded myself with daily chores and salty whores. With my attention unblocked, my body unlocked. And the freedom...

  [CONNIE’s jaw locks and she begins speaking gibberish.]

  DAMNIT! I see this woman I’ve sworn I hate and I can’t move my jaws.

  DIRTY VICKI My hands, my hands, damn these frozen claws.

  [DIRTY VICKI’s hands freeze into claws.]

  CONNIE [Having difficulty moving her jaws.] I got my SAD back! I must leave.

  [MOLLY FORGE enters with her fists blazing.]

  MOLLY FORGE Give me room to beat that hag to dust.

  DIRTY VICKI I didn’t do anything!

  CAPTAIN TWISTER I’m just a terribly shy, hunkered-over little girl.

  MOLLY FORGE You musty undertow

  With that camel toe:

  I hereby pity your feeble crown,

  For now my vengeance comes raining down.

  I summon bouquets of lightning strike from high above

  for kill
ing the only man I ever dared to love.

  CAPTAIN TWISTER What?

  TAMMY My sister, who’s visiting for a spell,

  Cannot hear you very well.

  Speak louder if your voice raises.

  And maybe try repeating phrases.

  MOLLY FORGE If love means I can’t move as quick or fast,

  I would lose my speed to make it last.

  If love means I can’t run amuck,

  Then I would stand forever stuck.

  If love means love might die,

  Then I would abandon all just to try.

  But you, molting crow, drowned my stupid dream.

  Now I’ll pound chasms into your topography.

  CAPTAIN TWISTER Don’t kill her.

  TAMMY Listen to my timid sister.

  CONNIE [Garbled.] Kill her.

  [CONNIE tries to leave.]

  SAMPSON Stay, mermaid, stay!

  CONNIE You should kill her...but know you’ll have to get through me.

  [CONNIE grabs DIRTY VICKI’s hand.]

  Though it means I lose my pride, I will not leave her side.

  MOLLY Like that will stop me, you conjoined crones,

  Two lovers are as easy to mangle as one alone.

  [MOLLY advances.]

  CAPTAIN TWISTER You never gave him a chance to return.

  [MOLLY stops.]

  Sometimes beauty-blinded people run away,

  From such beds they should never stray.

  In the best situation they’re given a revelation

  That they were not alone in their adoration.

  And they return with wrenched heart ablazing

  With dreams of futures beyond amazing.

  Now a fearing lover dreads your rebuff.

  He hopes his recurred presence is proof enough.

  [CAPTAIN TWISTER takes off his disguise.]

  CAPTAIN TWISTER I came back.

  [Silence.]

  TAMMY My sister is a man!

  CAPTAIN TWISTER If you’ll let me.

  [MOLLY FORGE walks up to CAPTAIN TWISTER. She hits him in the chest as hard as she can. She hits him again.]

  Careful. You’ll stop my heart.

  [MOLLY FORGE flings herself into CAPTAIN TWISTER’s arms.]

  SAMPSON No, stop! I love that woman.

  [Points to MOLLY FORGE.]

  TAMMY Oh, tragic folly, everyone loves Molly.

  SAMPSON That may be, but I love Tammy!

  TAMMY Are you sure?

  SAMPSON As sure as these balls will find tender hands.

  [An awkward moment, then he produces three juggling balls.]

  TAMMY Sweet angel.

  [TAMMY takes the balls and juggles.]