That makes the news story perfect, doesn't it? The adulterous couple, the poor husband and wife—two perfectly innocent bystanders.
HAL
You're crazy.
DAVID
That's what they said about the Son of Sam.
HAL
Yes—so—they were right.
JENNY
He's flipped out.
HAL
But you can't kill us —we didn't do anything. I never cheated. I could have—and believe me, I wanted to.
SANDY
You did?
HAL
Well, face it, Sandy, you can be a cold fish.
SANDY
Me?
HAL
That's right—she is the opposite of Jenny—will not ever try anything new.
SANDY
Well, maybe if you'd romance me once in a while instead of doing everything so fast.
HAL
I'm only trying to get it done before the headache sets in.
DAVID
Shut up! Who let them in?! It's unfortunate you wandered in, but that's life—full of ironies—some of them pleasant, some rather ugly—I've never thought life was a gift—it's a burden— a sentence—cruel and unusual punishment—everybody say your prayers—
(They huddle together as he cocks his shotgun. Suddenly they hear a noise and a man comes down the stairs. The man is tied up and gagged, apparently having gotten loose from a chair. His arms are still tied and he makes muffled, gagged sounds.)
DAVID
(noticing him)
Oh no—
SHEILA
Oh Christ.
NORMAN
I thought—
SHEILA
Oh brother.
JENNY
Help! Help!
(Hal and Sandy—one or both run to the man and take off his gag.)
DAVID
Don't do that—don't—oh—
MAX
OK—the party's over.
SANDY
Who are you?
JENNY
Who tied him up?
DAVID
It was Norman.
SHEILA
This sinks us.
HAL
Aren't you Mr. Krolian? I'm Hal Maxwell. I sold you this house a few years ago. Sandy, it's Max Krolian—
MAX
(referring to ropes)
Get these off me.
HAL
(untying him)
What's going on?
MAX
These wild animals—I created them—then they turned on me.
DAVID
Ah, you're incompetent.
MAX
They're from my pen.
SANDY
What is this?
JENNY
The game's up—why don't you tell 'em the truth?
HAL
What?
NORMAN
He had an idea for a play—which he was writing—
SHEILA
He invented us.
DAVID
From his fertile imagination.
SHEILA
He wrote half the play.
MAX
That's right—and I couldn't figure out where I was going with it—it wasn't coming—
DAVID
He was blocked.
MAX
Sometimes an idea seems great, but after you work on it for a while it just doesn't go anyplace.
SHEILA
But by then it was too late. We were born.
DAVID
Invented.
MAX
Created. I had half a play.
HAL
You always had a flair for creating wonderful live characters with fascinating problems and great dialogue.
NORMAN
So then what does he do?
JENNY
He gave up the idea.
NORMAN
He threw the half-finished play in the drawer.
DAVID
It's dark in the drawer.
MAX
What else could I do? I had no finish.
I hated the goddamned drawer.
SHEILA
I mean, picture you and your wife in a drawer.
JENNY
There's nothing to do in a drawer.
NORMAN
It sucks.
SHEILA
Then Jenny got the idea that we push it open and escape into the world.
MAX
I thought I heard the drawer opening—by the time I turned around they were all over me.
SANDY
What did you think you'd do once you broke out?
SHEILA
We hoped we could figure out some way to finish his third act.
NORMAN
So we could have a life every night in theatres—forever.
JENNY
What's the alternative? To be half-finished in a dark drawer?
DAVID
I'm not going back in the drawer! I'm not going back in the drawer! I'm not going—
(Norman slaps David.)
MAX
I've thought and thought—I can't figure where it goes.
HAL
Well, let's analyze what we've got … she discovers her sister is having an affair with her husband.
MAX
Who are you?
HAL
Hal Maxwell—I sold you—
MAX
The accountant?
HAL
I've always wanted to write a play.
MAX
So does everyone.
HAL
Why are they having an affair? What's wrong with their marriage?
NORMAN
I'm bored with Sheila.
SHEILA
Why?
NORMAN
I don't know.
MAX
Don't ask me. I'm written out.
HAL
Why does any husband get bored with his wife? Because with time they get too familiar. The excitement wanes—they're always together around the house—they see each other undressed—there's no more mystery—now even his secretary is sexier to him—or the next-door neighbor.
JENNY
That's not realistic.
HAL
How would you know? You're not even well written. It's very realistic—it happens all the time. Take it from me.
SANDY
It does?
HAL
I mean, freshness in marriage has to be worked on—otherwise, there's no music in a relationship, and music is everything.
SANDY
What if the husband was once romantic but he gradually takes the wife for granted? What used to be a relationship full of imaginative, charming surprises is now just a life together by the numbers, with them having sex but not making love.
HAL
I'd hardly find that a believable conflict.
SANDY
I think many women would identify with it.
HAL
Too far-out.
SHEILA
I think it sounds very plausible.
JENNY
Very close to the bone.
SANDY
Very.
DAVID
And you think it can just evaporate? Even if at one time they loved one another?
MAX
That's one of the sad truths of existence. Nothing in this world is permanent. Even the characters created by the great Shakespeare will, in millions of years, cease to exist—when the universe runs its course and the lights go out.
DAVID
Jesus, I think I'll just go back and watch Tiger Woods. The hell with it all.
NORMAN
That's right. What's it all mean if the cosmos breaks apart and everything finally vanishes?
JENNY
That's why it's important to be held and squeezed now—by anyone willing to do the squeezing.
SHEILA
Don't try to jus
tify screwing my husband on existential grounds.
HAL
What if you and David were also having an affair?
MAX
I thought of that, but then it starts to become silly.
JENNY
But if life is anything, it's silly.
DAVID
That's right. The philosophers call it absurd, but what they really mean is silly.
MAX
The problem is, it implies everyone is unfaithful, but it's not accurate.
HAL
But it doesn't have to be accurate if it's funny. Art is different from life.
MAX
Art is the mirror of life.
HAL
Speaking of mirrors, I always wanted to put a mirror on the ceiling over our bed, but she wouldn't go for it.
SANDY
It's the dumbest thing I ever heard.
HAL
It's sexy.
SANDY
It's adolescent. I want to make love, not watch two images of each other having intercourse—from that perspective I'll just see your behind going up and down.
HAL
Why do you always ridicule my needs? Then you wonder why I sit and daydream about Holly Fox.
SANDY
Just don't tell her your mirror idea, she'll burst out laughing.
HAL
If you must know, we've done it in front of a mirror.
SANDY
In your fantasies.
HAL
In your bathroom.
SANDY
What?
DAVID
Aha! This is a juicier story than ours.
HAL
Not that I loved her or that we had an affair or anything. It was a one-shot deal.
SANDY
You and Holly Fox?
HAL
What are you acting so surprised? You've accused me of it jokingly for two years.
SANDY
I was joking.
HAL
There are no jokes. Freud said that.
SHEILA
That's my line.
SANDY
Besides, you always swore she didn't appeal to you.
HAL
That's right, I swore—I held up my right hand—I'm an agnostic.
NORMAN
Be reasonable, Sandy. No husband admits to having slept with another woman.
SANDY
He just did.
MAX
That's why my wife left me. That's why I bought your house to live alone and keep out of the rat race of romantic relationships. I was having an affair with my wife's mother.
NORMAN
My God—why isn't that in our story—it's great.
MAX
Because no one would believe it. Her father was a well-known film star—well, I don't have to tell you—he divorced her biological mother and married their au pair girl—so my wife now had a mother ten years younger than she.
JENNY
A stepmother.
MAX
It's semantics—meanwhile I was boffing her.
DAVID
So you're also cheating on your father-in-law.
MAX
That's OK because he was a shoe fetishist who could only get aroused if Prada was having a sale.
SHEILA
This does strain credulity.
MAX
My wife's mother kept a diary. Very graphic. Our intimacies— our lovemaking. Details. Names. She thought it romantic. One night my wife said to her, I'm going to the Hamptons tomorrow—I need a good book for the beach. Thinking it was her leather-bound volume of Henry James, she mistakenly gave her the leather-bound diary. I was with my wife when she read it on the beach. A change came over her—a physical change— like when the full moon comes out in a Wolfman movie.
HAL
So that's where you got the idea.
NORMAN
What'd you do?
MAX
What could I do? I denied it.
NORMAN
What'd she do?
MAX
She tried to drown herself. She ran into the ocean but only succeeded in getting stung by a jellyfish. It made her lips swell up. Suddenly with those big lips she looked sexy, and I fell back in love with her. Of course, when the swelling went down she got on my nerves again.
HAL
Well, I wasn't having an affair—mine was a onetime thing. At our New Year's Eve party. Everyone was downstairs drinking, partying—I happened to walk past your bathroom upstairs, Holly was in it and asked if we had any Q-tips, so I went in to help her find them, closed the door and did it with her.
DAVID
Why did she need Q-tips?
JENNY
What's the difference!?
NORMAN
Who cares about the goddamn Q-tips?
SANDY
They'd been making eyes at each other for months.
HAL
That's pure projection. You were the one with big eyes for her brother.
SANDY
If you were more perceptive you would have known I had no interest in Ken Fox.
HAL
No?
SANDY
No. If I ever would have strayed at all it would have been with Howard Nadleman.
HAL
Nadleman? The real estate agent?
SANDY
Howard Nadleman knows how to make a woman feel her sexuality.
HAL
What does that mean?
SANDY
Nothing.
HAL
You had a one-night stand with Howard Nadleman?
SANDY
No.
HAL
Thank God for that.
SANDY
We had a long romance.
HAL
You had a romance with Howard Nadleman?
SANDY
Yes, I did.
HAL
Don't deny it.
SANDY
As long as we're coming clean, I may as well be honest too.
HAL
A minute ago you said, “if I ever would have strayed at all,” implying you never strayed.
SANDY
I can't live this lie anymore. With all due respect to you, I've been sleeping with Howard Nadleman.
DAVID
Go, Nadleman!
HAL
Don't make me laugh.
SANDY
I've always loved you, Hal—you know that. But what does a person do when the romance fades—when the passion drains away and you still love and respect your spouse—you cheat on him.
NORMAN
That's what I was trying to explain to Sheila.
HAL
How many times did you sleep with Howard?
SANDY
Do numbers ever really tell you anything?
HAL
Yes, I'm an accountant.
SANDY
Let's put it this way—I don't go for psychoanalysis.
HAL
You mean—all those Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays—
SANDY
There is no Doctor Fineglass.
HAL
And I thought your depression was lifting.
SANDY
It was.
HAL
But a hundred and sixty dollars an hour?
SANDY
That was for the hotel rooms.
HAL
I was paying for your hotel rooms three days a week with Howard Nadleman all year?
SANDY
Didn't you notice it was strange I had the only shrink who didn't take August off?
DAVID
It turns out their life is the farce, not ours.
SHEILA
The farce, or is it tragedy?
NORMAN
Why is it tragedy?
SHEILA
It's a sorry situation—two people who must've loved one another at one time—obviously still do—but the initial excitement drains from the
ir marriage …
JENNY
But no one can sustain that first rush of excitement.
DAVID
That's right—we settle in—the sexual passion is replaced by other things—shared experiences—children—beastiality.
HAL
Is it still going on with you and Nadleman?
SANDY
No—remember some months ago he suffered a brain concussion?
HAL
Yes—he's never been the same—how did it happen?
SANDY
The mirror on the ceiling over the bed fell on him.
HAL
Oh God! Him and not me!
DAVID
I'll tell you why their situation is farce—because they're pathetic. They lack tragic stature. What is he, an accountant? And she's a housewife. This is not Hamlet or Medea.
HAL
Oh please—you don't have to be a prince to suffer—there's millions of people out there every bit as tortured as Hamlet. They're Hamlet on Prozac.
SANDY
And jealous as Medea.
MAX
Therefore, what can I conclude? Everybody has their dark secrets, their longings, their lusts, their awful needs—so if life is to continue one must choose to forgive.
NORMAN
And that's where our play should go. So I took a momentary fancy to your sister—big deal—so maybe you should write it so that Sheila and David once spent a passionate night together—so we all learn each other's pathetic shortcomings and we forgive each other.
JENNY
Yes. And the audience laughs at all of us and they escape from their own sad lives for a brief moment and then we kiss and make up.
MAX
Forgiveness—it gives this little sex farce dimension and heart.
SHEILA
That's right. Who am I to judge others and throw away years of closeness and love because my husband the dentist was drilling my sister?
JENNY
We'll change—we'll make amends. Where there's life there's hope.
SANDY
But how is forgiveness different than just sweeping all your problems under the rug?
MAX
It's much grander—it takes a bigger person—forgiveness is divine.
JENNY
And maybe it's the same but it sounds better.
MAX
I like it—it's funny, it's sad, and best of all, it's commercial. Come—let's go to my study so I can complete the third act while it's all fresh—I feel my writer's block lifting. The key word is “commercial”—I'm sorry, “forgiveness”—the key word is “forgiveness.”
(They go upstairs together. The Maxwells look at each other.)
HAL
I don't think I can forgive you, Sandy.
SANDY
No. Nor I, you.
HAL
I don't know why. I know Max Krolian is right—he's a deep playwright.
SANDY
It's easy to forgive in fiction—the author can manipulate reality. And as you say, Krolian's a clever craftsman.
HAL
I can't believe you had a long affair with Howard Nadleman— he was probably getting even with me for the audit.