Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Tony Kushner
This is why, Joe, this is why I shouldn’t be left alone.
(Little pause)
I’d like to go traveling. Leave you behind to worry. I’ll send postcards with strange stamps and tantalizing messages on the back: “Later maybe.” “Nevermore . . .”
(Mr. Lies, a travel agent, appears, carrying a briefcase.)
HARPER: Oh! You startled me!
MR. LIES: Cash, check or credit card?
HARPER: I remember you. You’re from Salt Lake. You sold us the plane tickets when we flew here. What are you doing in Brooklyn?
MR. LIES: You said you wanted to travel . . .
HARPER: And here you are. How thoughtful.
MR. LIES: Mr. Lies. Of the International Order of Travel Agents. We mobilize the globe, we set people adrift, we stir the populace and send nomads eddying across the planet. We are adepts of motion, acolytes of the flux. Cash, check or credit card. Name your destination.
HARPER: Antarctica, maybe. I want to see the hole in the ozone. I heard on the radio—
(He opens his briefcase. Inside it, there is a computer terminal.)
MR. LIES (His hands poised over the keyboard): I can arrange a guided tour. Now?
HARPER: Soon. Maybe soon. I’m not safe here you see. Things aren’t right with me. Weird stuff happens.
MR. LIES: Like?
HARPER: Well, like you, for instance. Just appearing. Or last week . . . well never mind.
People are like planets, you need a thick skin. Things get to me, Joe stays away and now . . . Well look. My dreams are talking back to me.
MR. LIES: It’s the price of rootlessness. Motion sickness. The only cure: to keep moving.
HARPER: I’m undecided. I feel . . . that something’s going to give. It’s 1985. Fifteen years till the third millennium. Maybe Christ will come again. Maybe seeds will be planted, maybe there’ll be harvests then, maybe early figs to eat, maybe new life, maybe fresh blood, maybe companionship and love and protection, safety from what’s outside, maybe the door will hold, or maybe . . . Maybe the troubles will come, and the end will come, and the sky will collapse and there will be terrible rains and showers of poison light, or maybe my life is really fine, maybe Joe loves me and I’m only crazy thinking otherwise, or maybe not, maybe it’s even worse than I know, maybe . . . I want to know, maybe I don’t. The suspense, Mr. Lies, it’s killing me.
MR. LIES: I suggest a vacation.
HARPER (Hearing something): That was the elevator. Oh God, I should fix myself up, I— You have to go, you shouldn’t be here, you aren’t even real.
MR. LIES: Call me when you decide.
HARPER: Go!
(Mr. Lies vanishes as Joe enters.)
JOE: Buddy?
Buddy? Sorry I’m late. I was just . . . out. Walking.
Are you mad?
HARPER: I got a little anxious.
JOE: Buddy kiss.
(They kiss.)
JOE: Nothing to get anxious about.
So. So how’d you like to move to Washington?
Scene 4
Same day. Louis and Prior sitting outside on a bench near an Upper West Side funeral home, both dressed in funereal finery; Prior is elegant, Louis is rumpled/negligent. The funeral service for Sarah Ironson has just concluded and Louis is about to leave for the cemetery.
LOUIS: My grandmother actually saw Emma Goldman speak. In Yiddish. But all Grandma could remember was that she spoke well and wore a hat.
What a weird service. That rabbi.
PRIOR: A definite find. Get his number when you go to the graveyard. I want him to bury me.
LOUIS: Better head out there. Everyone gets to put dirt on the coffin once it’s lowered in.
PRIOR: Oooh. Cemetery fun. Don’t want to miss that.
LOUIS: It’s an old Jewish custom to express love. Here, Grandma, have a shovelful. Latecomers run the risk of finding the grave completely filled.
She was pretty crazy. She was up there in that home for ten years, talking to herself. I never visited. She looked too much like my mother.
PRIOR (Hugs him): Poor Louis. I’m sorry your grandma is dead.
LOUIS: Tiny little coffin, huh?
Sorry I didn’t introduce you to— I always get so closety at these family things.
PRIOR: Butch. You get butch. (Imitating) “Hi, Cousin Doris, you don’t remember me I’m Lou, Rachel’s boy.” Lou, not Louis, because if you say Louis they’ll hear the sibilant S.
LOUIS: I don’t have a—
PRIOR: I don’t blame you, hiding. Bloodlines. Jewish curses are the worst. I personally would dissolve if anyone ever looked me in the eye and said “Feh.” Fortunately WASPs don’t say “Feh.” Oh and by the way, darling, Cousin Doris is a dyke.
LOUIS: No.
Really?
PRIOR: You don’t notice anything. If I hadn’t spent the last four years fellating you I’d swear you were straight.
LOUIS: You’re in a pissy mood. Cat still missing?
(Little pause.)
PRIOR: Not a furball in sight. It’s your fault.
LOUIS: It is?
PRIOR: I warned you, Louis. Names are important. Call an animal Little Sheba and you can’t expect it to stick around. Besides, it’s a dog’s name.
LOUIS: I wanted a dog in the first place, not a cat. He sprayed my books.
PRIOR: He was a female cat.
LOUIS: Cats are stupid, high-strung predators. Babylonians sealed them up in bricks. Dogs have brains.
PRIOR: Cats have intuition.
LOUIS: A sharp dog is as smart as a really dull two-year-old child.
PRIOR: Cats know when something’s wrong.
LOUIS: Only if you stop feeding them.
PRIOR: They know. That’s why Sheba left, because she knew.
LOUIS: Knew what?
(Pause.)
PRIOR: I did my best Shirley Booth this morning, floppy slippers, housecoat, curlers, can of Little Friskies: “Come back, Little Sheba, come back . . .” To no avail. Le chat, elle ne reviendra jamais, jamais . . .
(He removes his jacket, rolls up his sleeve, shows Louis a dark purple spot on the underside of his arm near the shoulder.)
PRIOR: See.
LOUIS: That’s just a burst blood vessel.
PRIOR: Not according to the best medical authorities.
LOUIS: What?
(Pause)
Tell me.
PRIOR: K.S., baby. Lesion number one. Lookit. The wine-dark kiss of the angel of death.
LOUIS (Very softly, holding Prior’s arm): Oh please . . .
PRIOR: I’m a lesionnaire. The Foreign Lesion. The American Lesion. Lesionnaire’s disease.
LOUIS: