Sequence (3 page)

THEO

Morning sickness?

CYNTHIA

I can deal with the morning sickness. I just… I swore I wouldn't put myself in this situation.

THEO

What situation?

CYNTHIA

You wouldn't understand.

THEO

Yeah, you're probably right.

CYNTHIA

The situation where I'm sitting on a ladder wearing a miniskirt, talking to some guy who claims he's the luckiest man in the world… all because of this.

CYNTHIA produces an envelope.

THEO

What's that?

CYNTHIA doesn't answer.

I'll bet you want my help with that.

CYNTHIA

You like to bet, don't you?

THEO

That's what we do, we lucky people.

CYNTHIA

According to
60 Minutes
, you made your first bet twenty years ago.

CYNTHIA puts away the envelope.

THEO

Yes, I believe that was Super Bowl XYZ-IMNOP.

CYNTHIA

Don't most people bet on who's going to win?

THEO

My way, you didn't have to worry about silly things like who had the better team.

CYNTHIA

So that's why you bet on the coin flip.

THEO

That was the only place on the planet I could actually make a bet like that. A true fifty-fifty proposition.

CYNTHIA

Flipping a coin is not a true fifty-fifty proposition.

THEO

I've been misled.

CYNTHIA climbs down from the ladder, still protecting the briefcase. She makes her way to the board.

CYNTHIA

For starters, there is a one in six thousand chance of a coin landing on its edge, so it's more like 49.99 each way. But that aside, if you start with a coin showing tails up, there is a greater likelihood of it ending tails up.

THEO

How do you figure that?

CYNTHIA draws on the board a coin, rotating in air.

CYNTHIA

The coin rotates in the air… Tails, then heads, then tails… Overall, it spends fractionally more time in tails than in heads.

THEO

I should have bet tails.

CYNTHIA

You did. Twenty years ago. A thousand dollars. Every penny you had to your name.

THEO

I felt lucky.

CYNTHIA

Doubled your money.

THEO

I
was
lucky.

CYNTHIA

Same thing the following year. Only heads. Why heads?

THEO

Why not?

CYNTHIA

Doubled your money. Again. Now four grand. Next year, tails. Then tails. Then heads. Double or nothing every time. Don't believe in hedging your bets?

THEO

I was on a roll.

CYNTHIA

You're not kidding. Every Super Bowl since you've bet on the coin toss. And every year, for the last twenty years, you have doubled your money.

THEO

More or less. Casinos take a cut. Bookies take a cut.

CYNTHIA

Last January you placed a bet of 440
million
dollars on heads. And won.

Laboratory

DR. GUZMAN

That's ridiculous. Your God's bright idea is that he bestows upon you paraplegia as your ticket to the Ivy League?

MR. ADAMSON

Isn't that why you're here?

DR. GUZMAN

What are you implying?

MR. ADAMSON

I figured if anybody would understand it would be you. Can I please have my briefcase back?

DR. GUZMAN

Are you suggesting I'm here because I've lost ninety-two per cent of my peripheral vision?

MR. ADAMSON

No, of course not. Your success is clearly due to your achievements. But in the beginning…

DR. GUZMAN

In the beginning? Isn't that the opening line of Darwin's
On the Origin of Species
? No, that's not it.

MR. ADAMSON

I was just wondering if your disability might have helped you. When you were starting out. A foot in the door.

DR. GUZMAN

Because my white cane might look good in class pictures.

MR. ADAMSON

I'm sorry. I didn't mean—

DR. GUZMAN

You have the audacity to suggest my blindness is somehow an advantageous mutation? Do you have any idea what I've had to overcome to be here? The sacrifices I've made for
this
?

DR. GUZMAN gestures to her lab.

If
you
knew you were going to be completely blind within a year, what would you be staring at right now? Tropical sunsets? Impressionist paintings? Or test tubes?

MR. ADAMSON

Why don't you just stop? Go see the world, before…

DR. GUZMAN

Before I can't see the world? Because if I stop now, Mr. Adamson, I will have wasted my sight on a failed experiment and that would mean I earned an F. But, unlike you, I have no intention of spending my remaining days lying awake at night second-guessing my choices.

MR. ADAMSON

I don't do that.

DR. GUZMAN

You never think about that chance rendezvous with the car? I don't believe that.

MR. ADAMSON

I try not to. But you know what I do think about? All those little things I could have done that day that might have slowed me down half a step. If I had to tie my shoelace. Or even just sneeze. But what's there to second-guess? How could I have known?

DR. GUZMAN

I knew. I saw the darkness creeping in from the corners. And I chose to lock myself in this basement lab. I chose science. Over sunsets.

MR. ADAMSON

Some people might second-guess that.

DR. GUZMAN

I am not some people. I knew I had the brains and the ambition and opportunity to attempt something significant. Better a bold F than a timid W. Only now, they're calling me unstable! An intellectual liability. They're looking for an excuse to put me out to pasture, while I work day and night to make my mark, before I lose the remaining eight per cent of my visual field.

MR. ADAMSON

Dr. Guzman, there's a pub down the street. With a ramp. How about I buy you a drink?

DR. GUZMAN

Mr. Adamson, do you want to walk again?

MR. ADAMSON

I don't need to walk again to have a meaningful life.

DR. GUZMAN

Answer the question.

MR. ADAMSON

I will walk again when God decides—

DR. GUZMAN

A. You want to walk again. B. You don't.

MR. ADAMSON

A.

DR. GUZMAN

I may be able to help you.

MR. ADAMSON

I'm not interested in spinal-cord research.

DR. GUZMAN

Neither am I. I'm talking about something much bigger.

MR. ADAMSON

I don't need your help.

MR. ADAMSON makes a grab for his briefcase.

DR. GUZMAN sees him just in time, thwarts him using her white cane as a weapon.

She locks the door, puts the key back in her pocket.

DR. GUZMAN

I think you do. But first, I need to know something.

Auditorium

CYNTHIA

What's your secret?

THEO

I'm on a lucky streak. That's all.

CYNTHIA

A lucky streak? How the hell do you have the audacity to go double or nothing on each flip, and that aside, how on earth do you get twenty consecutive coin flips right?

THEO

I'm a lucky man.

CYNTHIA

No. You're not.

THEO

Time Magazine
called me the Luckiest Man Alive.

CYNTHIA

Give me a break. You can't keep hiding behind luck.

THEO

Who's hiding? The media follows my every move. There are cameras and reporters waiting outside the building right now. Do you have any idea what that's like? Now if you'll kindly give me back my briefcase—

CYNTHIA

Okay. Fine. Let's say you are lucky. Why? Why are you so lucky? That's what I want to know.

THEO

That's what everyone wants to know.

Pause.

Even me.

CYNTHIA

I don't understand why the casinos let you keep betting. Are they just hoping your luck is going to catch up with you sooner or later?

THEO

Are you kidding? Nobody will let me stop. The casinos
want
me to keep winning. The believers bet with me. The skeptics bet against me. But everybody has their theory and now the entire planet bets on the coin flip. Seniors. Soccer moms. Even Canadians.

CYNTHIA

What about this year? What's it going to be? Heads or tails?

THEO

I don't know yet. But Vegas is waiting for my call. And my phone is in my briefcase. And my briefcase is still, by strange
coincidence
, in your hand.

CYNTHIA

Aren't you worried your streak is going to end?

THEO

Do I seem worried?

CYNTHIA

It will end. Sooner or later. It has to.

THEO

No, it doesn't.

Pause.

But it will.

Pause.

Today.

Laboratory

DR. GUZMAN

Now. Did you even read the textbook?

DR. GUZMAN renews her efforts to open the briefcase.

MR. ADAMSON

No.

DR. GUZMAN

Why not?

MR. ADAMSON

Because I don't care.

DR. GUZMAN

About your grade? About your future? What exactly don't you care about?

MR. ADAMSON quietly pulls out his cellphone. There is no signal.

MR. ADAMSON

Genetics. I don't believe in genetics.

MR. ADAMSON moves around the room, inconspicuously holding up his cellphone, searching for reception.

DR. GUZMAN

That's preposterous. Our genes are the very building blocks of life. The order of the four base pairs in your DNA has programmed everything about you. That sequence created you.

MR. ADAMSON

I don't know. It seems kind of arbitrary.

DR. GUZMAN

Arbitrary? Without order there is chaos.

MR. ADAMSON

Without God there is chaos. The DNA is just… calligraphy.

DR. GUZMAN

There is order to DNA. Just like there is order to everything. What if Beethoven played every note in his fifth symphony simultaneously? How would that sound? Without order it's not a symphony, it's a cacophony.

MR. ADAMSON

Maybe it's just a different piece of music.

DR. GUZMAN

No, I'm pretty sure it's a cacophony.

MR. ADAMSON

Order is subjective. It doesn't matter what order the ten commandments are written in.

DR. GUZMAN

Really? They're not prioritized? How sloppy! I would have used a logarithmic scale to compensate for the relative value discrepancy of killing versus merely coveting.

MR. ADAMSON

Wouldn't change their meaning. The sequence was not part of the design.

DR. GUZMAN

But a gene, like any text, is not a palindrome. If you read
Hamlet
backwards, what do you have?

MR. ADAMSON

Tel… mah?

DR. GUZMAN

You'd have gibberish. There is order in everything. Just ask Watson and Crick.

MR. ADAMSON

Why not Crick and Watson? The order is meaningless. It's the chicken and the egg.

DR. GUZMAN draws a B on the board.

DR. GUZMAN

Actually, it's the egg and chicken. The correct answer was B.

The egg came first.

Pause.

Mr. Adamson, how much more research will you require to establish, with a p-value of less than 0.05, that there is no cellphone signal down here?

MR. ADAMSON

Dr. Guzman, what did you mean when you said you might be able to help me?

DR. GUZMAN

How badly do you want to walk?

MR. ADAMSON

What do you mean, on a scale of one to ten?

DR. GUZMAN

If I gave you two new legs right now, what's the first thing you'd do?

MR. ADAMSON

I'd probably take the door key from your pocket.

DR. GUZMAN

You don't want my help.

MR. ADAMSON

I guess I'd try to meet a girl.

DR. GUZMAN

Right. You've never had sex.

MR. ADAMSON

It's not about sex.

DR. GUZMAN

Everything's about sex. Ask Darwin.

MR. ADAMSON

Sure, I want to experience… that. After I get married, of course. And fall in love.

DR. GUZMAN

Of course.

MR. ADAMSON

I want to be a dad.

DR. GUZMAN

You don't need new legs for that. If your reproductive organs are still intact they can extract the sperm.

MR. ADAMSON

Sounds romantic.

DR. GUZMAN

There could be scented candles. Vivaldi. Perhaps a moonlight extraction.

MR. ADAMSON

If God wants me to have kids, He will make it happen naturally.

DR. GUZMAN

So if He decides you're worthy of having children, He will first make you walk.

MR. ADAMSON

Yes.

DR. GUZMAN

You know your God is rolling his eyes right now.

MR. ADAMSON

I don't think you can help me.

DR. GUZMAN reaches into a beaker full of coins. She produces a single coin.

DR. GUZMAN

Tell you what, Mr. One-in-Five-Quintillion. Call it. Heads or tails. If you get it right, you can go.

Auditorium

CYNTHIA

Really?

THEO

Call it a hunch.

CYNTHIA

You have a hunch you're going to guess wrong? Today?

THEO

Yes.

CYNTHIA

Do you think that every year?

THEO

First time.

CYNTHIA

So don't place your bet. Just leave your money in the bank. Why risk it?

THEO

He who lives by the coin flip should die by the coin flip. Don't you think?

CYNTHIA

No! That makes no sense. If you think you're going to lose, quit while you're ahead. Thank your lucky stars and ride off into the sunset. That's the smart thing to do.

THEO