Our Lady of 121st Street Read online

  FATHER LUX: Yes.

  ROOFTOP: Still, how’s a man gonna up and die with no warning?

  FATHER LUX: Sir—

  ROOFTOP: Send a telegram, sumpthin’: “Might die soon. FYI.”

  FATHER LUX: Perhaps you ought to collect yourself and come back later.

  ROOFTOP: Hey Father, did you know that Father C one time got hit by a Mack truck but he was okay?

  FATHER LUX: Sir—

  ROOFTOP: See, us kids, we was playin’ Booties Up on the wall across from here, but we was all standin’ in the street like fools do, and—

  FATHER LUX: Stop.

  ROOFTOP: What, I can’t relate a little anecdote?

  FATHER LUX: What you can do, sir, is confess.

  ROOFTOP: Confess, huh?

  FATHER LUX: Confess your sins. Yes.

  ROOFTOP: Dag, you all business, ain’t cha, Father?

  FATHER LUX: Sir—

  ROOFTOP: No prelude nuthin’—just spit it out.

  FATHER LUX: Sir—

  ROOFTOP:—“Early birds eat apples and worms,” I gotcha—got no argument wit’ that.

  FATHER LUX: Okay then.

  ROOFTOP: You got a forthright nature, Father—no nonsense—I respect that in a man.

  FATHER LUX: Oh. Well—

  ROOFTOP: Still, even Hank Aaron hit a few off the practice tee before he stepped up to the rock—gotta marinate before ya grill, right?

  FATHER LUX: This is not a “cook-out,” sir.

  ROOFTOP: No, it’s not—

  FATHER LUX: No charcoal, no anecdotes, no franks and beans—

  ROOFTOP: True dat—

  FATHER LUX: This is, in fact, a Confessional, sir. A Confessional—not a “Conversational.” Do you understand that distinction?

  ROOFTOP: I’ll keep it moving.

  FATHER LUX: Thank you.

  ROOFTOP: Ok … right: So … So, yeah—I mean, whaddyacallit? The interVenal Sins?

  FATHER LUX: Venal.

  ROOFTOP: What?

  FATHER LUX: Venal.

  ROOFTOP: Venal yeah—mucho venal. Venal Sins. Dass daily, daily occurrence. Prolly racked up a dozen since I walked up in here … And, uh, Mortal Sins? Mortal Sins, Father? I mean, “pick a Commandment, any Commandment,” know what I’m sayin’?

  FATHER LUX: How ’bout you pick one?

  ROOFTOP: Oh … okay … uh … Dag, Father, I’m juss, I’m juss a bad man, Father. Lyin’, cheatin’, stealin’, and humpin’—Dag. Freebasing … See, I’m the kind a guy—one time I … well, there was this girl once … Say Father, I can’t smoke in here, right?

  Scene 3: Flip and Gail by the bathroom—midstream

  FLIP: Do not act like a faggot!

  GAIL: Excuse you?

  FLIP: Put your collar down!

  GAIL: My collar?

  FLIP: Where’d that scarf come from?! You were not wearing that scarf when we left the hotel, Gail!

  GAIL: You said we were coming here as a couple, Robert!

  FLIP: And I changed my mind! And you know that I changed my mind because I been tellin’ you all fuckin’ morning, Gail, that I changed my fuckin’ mind—so just lose the scarf, do not act like a faggot, and stop calling me fuckin’ “Robert”!

  GAIL: What should I call you? Penelope?

  FLIP: Flip, Goddamnit! For the fifty-eighth time, they call me Flip!

  GAIL: Flip what? Flip a pancake? Flip a flappy Flip Flop?

  FLIP: Gail—

  GAIL: Maybe I should have a special name too, like … “Rocky.”

  FLIP: Stop it—

  GAIL: I could be “Hercules,” grow a beard.

  FLIP: Look! You’re an “actor,” right? So juss act like you’re not a faggot for a few fuckin’ hours if that’s not fuckin’ beneath you, okay?!

  GAIL: Cursing.

  FLIP: I will not have this today, Gail! Do you hear me? Will not have it!

  GAIL: Will not have what, Robert? A relationship? A partner? The respect of the man who lies beside you at night?

  FLIP: You know who I am, and you know how I feel about you!

  GAIL: Do I?

  FLIP: Don’t do this today, Gail.

  GAIL: My friends embraced you, Robert! My parents took you in!

  FLIP: Your friends are all gay, Gail, and your parents trumpet my race and sexuality with unconcealed glee ’cuz it makes them feel like better liberals!

  GAIL: I’m going to tell them you said that!

  FLIP: Good. Why don’t you hop on the next plane and tell them in person.

  GAIL: Do you really mean that? Do you?

  FLIP: You know what? I ain’t even tryin’ ta have this conversation!

  GAIL: “Ain’t even tryin’”?!

  FLIP: Dass what I said!

  GAIL: Right, “Assimilation.” Going back ta the “’hood,” can’t be you, gotta be someone you never were.

  FLIP: Careful now—

  GAIL: No, Robert, you’re the one who should be careful! Didn’t you ever see “The Death of Sunny” with Shelley Winters?

  FLIP: Gail—

  GAIL: Sunny Waldman denied her Jewishness before a Nazi tribunal to avoid the death camps—and what happened to Sunny? She became a morphine-addicted harlot who ended up wandering into the forests of Bavaria to be consumed by wolves and jackals—that’s what! Denial’s like a pair of Prada silk pajamas, Robert—the price is just too high!

  FLIP: Look, Drama Empress: Just turn it down a few notches and be here for me. Quiet and dignified. Can you do that, yes or no?!

  GAIL: “Turn it down a few notches”?

  FLIP: Yes or no, Gail!

  GAIL: I am not a drama Empress!

  FLIP: I am begging you, okay? Begging.

  GAIL: On my worst day, I’m more masculine than you.

  FLIP: Gail—

  GAIL: I’m like a young Al Pacino: intense, soulful—

  FLIP: Oh, you aren’t a “young” anything, Gail! And you certainly, certainly, ain’t no Al Pacino!

  (INEZ exits bathroom.)

  INEZ: Flip Johnson, shit!! Is that really you??!!

  FLIP: Inez Smith?! Dag, girl, you’re lookin’ too fine! Oh, Jesus—how long it’s been?

  INEZ: Nevah mind all that. You look so good, Flip! How come you look so good?

  FLIP: ‘Cuz I’m lookin’ at you, Inez Smith!

  INEZ: Aw, Flip! Flip! Who’s this man, Flip?

  FLIP: Ah, Inez, I’d like you to meet my colleague, this is—

  GAIL: Goliath. Goliath Muscleton.

  INEZ: Goliath, huh?

  FLIP: Goliath is one of my partners at the firm.

  INEZ: Oh, well, that’s nice.

  FLIP: Yeah, it is.

  INEZ: I guess things must be pretty progressive out there in Wisconsin. Maybe I should move there.

  GAIL: What do you mean?

  INEZ: I mean, a black man and a gay man, partners in the same firm—

  FLIP: I’m not gay, Inez.

  INEZ: I’m not talkin’ ’bout you, honey, I’m talkin’ ’bout Goliath here. (To GAIL) Now you stay away from my man now, girl—

  FLIP: Say. How’s Rooftop doin’?

  INEZ: Oh, Me and Walter divorced fifteen years now, baby. I hope the bastard’s got leukemia.

  GAIL: (To INEZ) So I look gay to you, but “Flip” doesn’t? I wonder why that is?

  FLIP: Maybe ’cuz you homosexual, and I’m not. (To INEZ) Now how’s that for a theory?

  INEZ: Sounds good to me. Anyway, I’m gettin’ ready to move on, Flip. I gotta go meet Norca before the wake.

  FLIP: Nasty Norca? How is she?

  INEZ: Fucked up and forgotten, so I’m told … Haven’t seen her in years.

  FLIP: Now, why’s that?

  INEZ: Cuz she slept wit’ Walter, fuckin’ ho.

  FLIP: Say what?!

  INEZ: Please. Walter cherry-popped every Jordache bubble-butt from Ninety-sixth on up, served me right to be so damn naive … Comin’ home with tar stains all on his sweatpants. Pigeon feathers. And ta think, I thought y’all call
ed him, “Rooftop” ’cuz he was tall … We gonna have a drink tonight, baby?

  FLIP: Shit, “Do a cow got lips”?

  INEZ: Do a cow got what?! “Lips,” Flip?!

  FLIP: It’s, it’s an expression …

  INEZ: “Do a cow got lips”?! Oh, Flip Johnson, you are just so cute I could eat your little fine-ass self alive—

  FLIP: You know how we do—

  INEZ: You done Gone Country up there in Wisconsin, ain’t cha?!

  GAIL: Yee-haw.

  INEZ: “Do a cow got lips”?—I’m a haveta try that one out on my peoples in Bed-Stuy!—

  FLIP: Anyway—tonight baby, after: it’s you, me, and a pitcher a margaritas—and I’ll be lookin’ forward to that.

  INEZ: All right then … Flip, do I look old?

  FLIP: Girl, you’re The Fountain of Youth.

  INEZ: Thank you. Well, nice to meet you, Ulysses.

  FLIP: Goliath.

  INEZ: Shame about Sister Rose, huh? I heard they found her on the curb.

  FLIP: Heart attack?

  INEZ: Alcohol.

  FLIP: What?

  INEZ: Yeah, now they can’t find her at all.

  FLIP: How you mean?

  INEZ: They stole her body and the pants off a white man.

  FLIP: What?

  INEZ: They gonna bury an empty box in the mornin’ if she don’t turn up. Well … Bye, baby.

  (INEZ exits.)

  (Pause)

  GAIL: What were you inferring when you said that I “certainly, certainly, ain’t no Al Pacino”?

  FLIP: What?!

  GAIL: I want to know what you meant by that.

  FLIP: Gail?!

  GAIL: Because if you’re inferring that I’m not a good actor—

  FLIP: Gail, I just got some unsettling news.

  GAIL: So did I. According to you, I can’t act!

  FLIP: Why are you talking about this?!

  GAIL: And you didn’t just say “certainly,” you said “certainly, certainly,” like, “Oh, certainly, certainty”—

  FLIP: Go back to the hotel, Gail!

  GAIL: I don’t want to be with somebody who doesn’t respect what I do!

  FLIP: Oh, yeah?! Well, you’re a fuckin’ lousy actor, Gail—not “not good,” lousy! You’re the worst actor in the state of Wisconsin—and that’s no easy feat!

  GAIL: That’s not true.

  FLIP: Oh, it is true! When’s the last time you made a fuckin’ dime acting anyway? Never! That’s when.

  GAIL: I studied with Lee Strasberg!

  FLIP: That’s prolly what killed him!

  (FLIP drinks from the flask.)

  GAIL: You’re upset, you’re angry with me, that’s why you’re being cruel right now, saying things that you know aren’t true.

  FLIP: I know when I go to a theater and something sucks ass, Gail!

  GAIL: If you’re referring to my Torvald—

  FLIP: I’m referring to your everything! You did that show with the kids and fuckin’ five-year-olds were acting circles ’round you! Everything you’re in, you’re the worst fucking one! Ask our friends! Ask anyone who knows you! You suck, okay?! You accuse me of denial?! Look at your own self, Gail!

  GAIL: At least …

  FLIP: At least what? I know who I am—I’m a lawyer, Gail! And what are you—other than a fuckin’ self-centered, drunk, swishing community theater housewife!

  GAIL: I am not that fern.

  FLIP: Whatever!

  GAIL: So you admit I’m not that fern?

  (FLIP drinks.)

  FLIP: I am so tolerant of your weaknesses, Gail. I really am. But you? You have no empathy for anything that goes against what you want when you want it.

  GAIL: Robert—

  FLIP: You think joint checking was easy for me? I have your name on everything that’s mine, and I’ve put in the work every day for the last two years to allow myself to keep growing closer to you.

  GAIL: And I applaud that—

  FLIP: Inez ain’t stupid, Gail. All I asked for was the respect to handle my business, in my neighborhood, with my people, at my own pace and in my own way. You couldn’t even give me that.

  GAIL: Where you goin’?

  FLIP: I don’t know.

  GAIL: Can I come?

  FLIP: Get away.

  (FLIP exits.)

  GAIL: So are we still together?

  Scene 4: Norca and Balthazar, a hallway In the funeral home. Midstream.

  BALTHAZAR: Last night, Norca, between ten p.m. and nine a.m., where were you?

  NORCA: I was at your mother’s house fuckin’ her in her ass wid a strap on—dass where I was!

  BALTHAZAR: Very funny.

  NORCA: You see anybody laughin’? I know your mothah ain’t laughin’—I drove that bitch’s head thru the wall, her hair all covered in plaster an’ shit … I could go now, “Ossifer”?!

  BALTHAZAR: Detective.

  NORCA: Rent-a-cop! Fisher Price Bitch!!

  (BALTHAZAR takes a drink from his flask.)

  BALTHAZAR: Where are your kids these days, Norca? Spofford? Foster care? Rikers?

  NORCA: Where’s your kid, Balthazar? Oh, yeah—he in a cemetery, all raped up and dead, ain’t that right, Mr. Parent?! Mr. Judgmental alcoholic mothahfuckah!