Murder Mysteries a Play for Voices (9781466109827) (2 page)

NARRATOR -- LIVE

(amused) Thanks. How far away is her house?
I’m afraid I’m lost already.

FRIEND

It’s a big city.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Well, yes, but so’s London, or Paris, or New
York, and I never seem to get lost in them. I suppose it’s because
you can walk around them, or catch a subway. But LA doesn’t seem to
work without a car.

FRIEND

They’re building a subway. I don’t know
who’s going to take it.

SHE STARTS TO SING A SONG WE CAN GET
PERMISSION FOR THAT MIGHT BE APPROPRIATE -- PROBABLY “HARK THE
HERALD ANGELS SING...” AS IT’S NEARLY CHRISTMAS...

/SFX/THE CAR FADES INTO THE BACKGROUND,
UNDER...

NARRATOR

Los Angeles was at that time a complete
mystery to me; and I cannot say I understand it much better now.
Memories of LA for me are linked by rides in other people's cars,
with no sense there of the shape of the city, of the relationships
between the people and the place. The regularity of the roads, the
repetition of structure and form, mean that when I try to remember
it as an entity all I have is the boundless profusion of tiny
lights I saw one night on my first trip to the city, from the hill
of Griffith Park. It was one of the most beautiful things I had
ever seen, from that distance...

FRIEND

(finishes singing)

“... you got your good things and I got
mine...” Hey. Hey, Jack the Ripper. See that building?

NARRATOR -- LIVE

That red one?

FRIEND

(with respect and pride)

Art deco. Built in the 1930s. Hard to
believe it’s still here today, huh?

NARRATOR -- LIVE

(drily) 1930s? Gosh.

FRIEND

Wish I’d been around back then.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

You’ve never been to England, have you?

FRIEND

No. Why?

NARRATOR -- LIVE

No reason.

NARRATOR

I said something polite, trying to
comprehend a city inside which fifty years could be considered a
long time.

FRIEND

That one there, that’s one of my favorites.
It’s the original Brown Derby building.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

It’s shaped like a hat. How far to Tink’s
place from here?

FRIEND

No more than 15 minutes. Tink's real
excited. When she heard you were in town. She was so excited.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

I'm looking forward to seeing her again
too.

NARRATOR

Tink's real name was Tinkerbell Richmond. No
lie. She was staying with friends in small apartment clump,
somewhere about half an hours' drive from downtown LA. She was ten
years older than me, in her early thirties; she had glossy black
hair and red, puzzled lips, and very white skin, like Snow White in
the fairy stories; the first time I met her I thought she was the
most beautiful woman in the world. Tink had been married for a
while at some point in her life, and had a five-year old daughter
called Susan. I had never met Susan - when Tink had been in
England, Susan had been staying on in Seattle, with her father.

(beat)

People named Tinkerbell name their daughters
Susan.

/SFX/ SOUNDS OF THE CAR FADE OUT SLOWLY,
UNDER...

/MUS/ SCATTERED MEMORIES, DARK RECURRING
THEME, UNDER...

NARRATOR (CONT’D)

Memory is the great deceiver. Perhaps there
are some individuals whose memories act like tape recordings, daily
records of their lives complete in every detail, but I am not one
of them. My memory is a patchwork of occurences, of discontinuous
events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember
precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished
completely.

(BEAT)

I do not remember arriving at Tink's house,
nor where her flatmate went.

/SFX/ INT. OF TINK’S HOUSE; RADIO IN
BACKGROUND, UNDER...

NARRATOR (CONT’D)

What I remember next is sitting in Tink's
lounge, with the lights low; the two of us next to each other, on
the sofa.

TINK

You look wonderful.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Well, so do you. You look amazing.

TINK

Jesus. How long has it been? Oh, never mind
that, let me look at you... (they ad lib, under...)

NARRATOR

We made small talk. It had been perhaps a
year since we had seen one another. But a twenty-two year-old boy
has little to say to a thirty-two year-old woman, and soon, having
nothing in common, I pulled her to me.

/SFX/ TINK AND THE NARRATOR ARE MAKING OUT
ON THE SOFA...AD LIB...UNDER...

NARRATOR (CONT’D)

She snuggled close with a kind of sigh, and
presented her lips to be kissed. In the half-light her lips were
black. We kissed for a little, and I stroked her breasts through
her blouse, on the couch.

TINK

Honey, we can't have sex. I've got my
period.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Fine.

TINK

I can give you a blowjob, if you'd like.

NARRATOR

I nodded assent, and she unzipped my jeans,
and lowered her head to my lap.

After I had come, she got up and ran into
the kitchen. I heard her spitting into the sink, and the sound of
running water: I remember wondering why she did it, if she hated
the taste that much. Then she returned and we sat next to each
other on the couch.

TINK

Susan's upstairs, asleep. She's all I live
for. Would you like to see her?

NARRATOR -- LIVE

I don't mind.

/SFX/ -- UP THE STAIRS. INTO A ROOM.

NARRATOR

We went upstairs. Tink led me into a
darkened bedroom. There were child-scrawl pictures all over the
walls -- wax-crayoned drawings of winged fairies and little palaces
-- and a small, fair-haired girl was asleep in the bed.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

I love the drawings. Did she do them?

TINK

Yes. My little angel. She loves drawing.
Isn’t she beautiful? She takes after her father.

/SFX/RADIO IN THE BACKGROUND, UNDER...

NARRATOR

We went downstairs. We had nothing else to
say, nothing else to do. Tink turned on the main light. For the
first time I noticed tiny crows' feet at the corners of her eyes,
incongruous on her perfect, Barbie-doll face.

TINK

I love you. I really, really love you.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Thank you.

TINK

Would you like a ride back?

NARRATOR -- LIVE

If you don't mind leaving Susan
alone...?

NARRATOR

She shrugged, and I pulled her to me for the
last time.

(beat)

At night, Los Angeles is all lights. And
shadows.

/MUS & SFX/ SCATTERED MEMORIES SOUND FX
SUDDENLY UP AND OUT. MUSIC CONTINUES UNDER...

NARRATOR (CONT’D)

A blank, here, in my mind. I simply don't
remember what happened next. She must have driven me back to the
place where I was staying -- how else would I have gotten there? I
do not even remember kissing her goodbye. Perhaps I simply waited
on the sidewalk and watched her drive away.

(beat)

Perhaps.

(beat)

I do know, however, that once I reached the
place I was staying I just stood there, unable to go inside, to
wash and then to sleep, unwilling to do anything else.

/SFX/ LOS ANGELES STREET SOUNDS IN
BACKGROUND: AN AURAL COLLAGE – DISTANT TRAFFIC, DISTANT
RADIOS...

NARRATOR (CONT’D)

I was not hungry. I did not want alcohol. I
did not want to read, or talk. I was scared of walking too far, in
case I became lost, bedeviled by the repeating motifs of Los
Angeles, spun around and sucked in so I could never find my way
home again. Central Los Angeles sometimes seems to me to be nothing
more than a pattern, like a set of repeating blocks: a gas station,
a few homes, a mini-mall and repeat until hypnotised; and the tiny
changes in the mini-malls and the houses only serve to reinforce
the structure.

(beat)

I thought of Tink's lips. Then I fumbled in
a pocket of my jacket, and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.

/SFX/HE LIGHTS A CIGARETTE AND BLOWS
SMOKE.

NARRATOR (CONT’D)

I lit one, inhaled, blew blue smoke into the
warm night air.

/SFX/ HIS FOOTSTEPS START, ON THE CONCRETE.
SLOW, MEANDERING, GOING NOWHERE.

NARRATOR (CONT’D)

There was a stunted palm tree growing
outside the place I was staying, and I resolved to walk for a way,
keeping the tree in sight, to smoke my cigarette, perhaps even to
think; but I felt too drained to think. I felt very sexless, and
very alone.

(pause)

A block or so down the road there was a
bench, and when I reached it I sat down. I threw the stub of the
cigarette onto the pavement, hard, and watched it shower orange
sparks.

RAGUEL NOW

Hey. Hey pal. I'll buy a cigarette off you.
Here.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Jesus. You startled me. I’m sorry. I didn’t
see you.

NARRATOR

He did not look old, although I would not
have been prepared to say how old he was. Late thirties, perhaps.
Mid forties. He wore a long, shabby coat, colorless under the
yellow street lamps, and his eyes were dark.

RAGUEL NOW

Here. A quarter. 25 cents for a smoke. Take
it. That's a good price.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Keep your money. It's free. Have it.'

NARRATOR

He took the cigarette. I passed him a book
of matches (it advertised a telephone sex line; I remember that),
and he lit the cigarette.

/SFX/ A MATCH IS STRUCK, A CIGARETTE
LIT.

RAGUEL NOW

Here.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Keep them. I always wind up accumulating
books of matches in America. You people just give them away. Where
I come from you have to pay for them.

RAGUEL NOW

That a fact, huh?

NARRATOR

He sat on the bench beside me and smoked his
cigarette. When he had smoked it half-way down, he tapped the
lighted end off on the concrete, stubbed out the glow, and placed
the butt of the cigarette behind his ear.

RAGUEL NOW

I don't smoke much. A pity to waste it,
though.

/SFX/ A SPEEDING CAR CAREENS DOWN THE
STREET. A RADIO BLARES A ROCK SONG -- THAT DEEP BASS THUMP OF A CAR
STEREO. BRIEFLY WE CAN HEAR THE SHOUTING VOICES IN THE CAR. “GARY
YOU ASSHOLE! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU ON, MAN?” A SQUEAL OF
BRAKES.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Idiots. Did you see that? They could have
killed someone.

RAGUEL NOW

I owe you.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Sorry?

RAGUEL NOW

I owe you something. For the cigarette. And
the matches. You wouldn't take the money. I owe you.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

No, really, it's just a cigarette. I figure,
if I give people cigarettes, then if ever I'm out, maybe people
will give me cigarettes. (chuckles) Don't worry about it.

RAGUEL NOW

You’re English, right?

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Yes.

RAGUEL NOW

That’s that thing the English do, where they
say something like it’s a joke, even though they mean it. So. You
want to hear a story? True story? Stories always used to be good
payment. These days... not so much.

NARRATOR

I sat back on the bench, and the night was
warm, and I looked at my watch: it was almost one in the morning.
In England a freezing new day would already have begun: a work-day
would be starting for those who could beat the snow and get into
work; another handful of old people, and those without homes, would
have died, in the night, from the cold.

NARRATOR -- LIVE

Sure. Why not? Tell me a story.

RAGUEL NOW

(coughs, smoker’s cough, then,)

First thing I remember was the Word. And the
Word was God. Sometimes, when I get really down, I remember the
sound of the Word in my head, shaping me, forming me, giving me
life.