Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition (24 page)

BELIZE
: From what I read you never paid a fucking bill in your life.

ROY
:
No one
has worked harder than me. To end up knocked flat in a—

BELIZE
: Yeah well things are tough all over.

ROY
: And you come
here
looking for
fairness? (To Ethel)
They couldn’t
touch
me when I was alive, and now when I’m dying they try this:
(He grabs up all the paperwork in two fists)
Now! When I’m a—
(He can’t find the word. Back to Belize)
That’s fair? What am I? A dead man!

     
(A terrible spasm, quick and violent; he doubles up. Then, when the pain
’
s subsided:)

     
Fuck! What was I saying Oh God I can’t remember any . . . Oh yeah, dead.

     
I’m a goddamn dead man.

BELIZE
: You expect
pity
?

ROY
(A beat, then)
: I expect you to hand over that key and move your nigger ass out of my room.

BELIZE
: What did you say?

ROY
: Move your nigger cunt spade faggot lackey ass out of my room.

BELIZE
(Overlapping, starting on “spade”)
: Shit-for-brains filthy-mouthed selfish motherfucking cowardly cock-sucking cloven-hoofed pig.

ROY
(Overlapping, starting on “cowardly”)
: Mongrel. Dinge. Slave. Ape.

BELIZE
: Kike.

ROY
:
Now
you’re talking!

BELIZE
: Greedy kike.

ROY
: Now you can have a bottle. But only one.

(Belize tosses the key at Roy, hard. Roy catches it. Belize takes a bottle of the pills, then another, then a third, and then leaves
.

     
As soon as Belize is out of the room Roy is spasmed with pain he’s been holding in.)

ROY
: GOD!
(The pain subsides a little)
I thought he’d never go!
(It subsides a little more. Then to Ethel)
So what? Are you going to sit there all night?

ETHEL
: Till morning.

ROY
: Uh-huh. The cock crows, you go back to the swamp.

ETHEL
: No. I take the 7:05 to Yonkers.

ROY
: What the fuck’s in Yonkers?

ETHEL
: The disbarment committee hearings. You been hocking about it all week. I’ll have a look-see.

ROY
: They won’t let you in the front door. You’re a convicted and executed traitor.

ETHEL
: I’ll walk through a wall.

(She laughs. He joins her.)

ROY
: Fucking SUCCUBUS!

(They’re laughing, enjoying this.)

ROY
: Fucking blood-sucking old bat!

(They continue to laugh as Roy picks up the phone, punches a couple of buttons and then stops dialing, his laughter gone. He stares at the phone, dejectedly, not noticing that Ethel has vanished
.

     
Roy puts the receiver back in its cradle and puts the phone aside. He turns to the empty chair where Ethel had been sitting. He talks to the chair as if she’s sitting in it.)

ROY
: The worst thing about being sick in America, Ethel, is you are booted out of the parade. Americans have no use for sick. Look at Reagan: he’s so healthy he’s hardly human, he’s a hundred if he’s a day, he takes a slug in his chest and two days later he’s out west riding ponies in his PJs. I mean
who does that
? That’s America. It’s just no country for the infirm.

Scene 3

Same day. The Diorama Room of the Mormon Visitors’ Center. The room’s a small proscenium theater; the diorama is hidden behind closed red velvet curtains. There are plush red theater seats for the audience, and Harper is slouched in one of them, dressed as she was in her previous scene. Empty potato chip and M&M bags and cans of soda are scattered around her seat. She stares with dull anger at the drawn stage curtains. She’s been here a long time
.

Hannah enters with Prior, dressed in his prophet garb
.

HANNAH
: This is the Diorama Room.

     
(To Harper)
I thought we agreed that you weren’t—

     
(To Prior)
I’ll go see if I can get it started.

(She exits. Prior sits. He removes his scarf and dark glasses. He wipes his face, startlingly pale and clammy with sweat, with the scarf. He breathes in and out, feeling tightness in his lungs
.

     
Harper watches this with a level stare and a flat affect
—
jaded, ironic disaffection she’s self-protectively, experimentally assumed
.

     
The lights in the room dim. After a blare of feedback/static, a Voice on tape [the Angel’s] intones:)

A VOICE
: Welcome to the Mormon Visitors’ Center Diorama Room. In a moment, our show will begin. We hope it will have a special message for you. Please refrain from smoking, and food and drink are not allowed.
(A chiming tone)
Welcome to the Mormon Visitors’—

(The tape lurches into very high speed, then smears into incomprehensibly low speed, then stops, mid-message, with a loud metallic blat, which frightens Prior. The lights remain dim.)

HARPER
: They’re having trouble with the machinery.

(She rips open a bag of M&Ms and offers them to Prior.)

PRIOR
: No thanks, I—

     
You’re not supposed to eat in the—

HARPER
: I can. I live here. Have we met before?

PRIOR
: No, I don’t . . . think so. You
live
here?

HARPER
: There’s a dummy family in the diorama, you’ll see when the curtain opens. The main dummy, the big daddy dummy, looks like my husband, Joe. When they push the buttons he’ll start to talk. You can’t believe a word he says but the sound of him is reassuring. It’s an
incredible
resemblance.

PRIOR
: Are you a Mormon?

HARPER
: Jack Mormon.

PRIOR
: I beg your pardon?

HARPER
: Jack Mormon. It means I’m flawed. Inferior Mormon product. Probably comes from jack rabbit, you know, I
ran
.

PRIOR
: Do you believe in angels? In the Angel Mormon?

HARPER
: Moroni, not Mormon, The Angel Moroni. Ask my mother-in-law, when you leave, the scary lady at the
reception desk: If its name was Moroni why don’t they call themselves Morons. It’s from comments like that you can tell I’m jack. You’re not a Mormon.

PRIOR
: No, I—

HARPER
: Just . . . distracted with grief.

PRIOR
(Startled)
: I’m not. I was just walking and—

HARPER
: We get a lot of distracted, grief-stricken people here. It’s our specially.

PRIOR
: I’m not . . . distracted, I’m doing research.

HARPER
: On Mormons?

PRIOR
: On . . . angels. I’m a . . . an angelologist.

HARPER
: I never met an angelologist before.

PRIOR
: It’s an obscure discipline.

HARPER
: I can imagine. Angelology. The field work must be rigorous. You’d have to drop dead before you saw your first specimen.

PRIOR
(A beat, then deciding to confide)
: One . . . I saw one. An angel. It crashed through my bedroom ceiling.

HARPER
: Huh. That sort of thing always happens to me.

PRIOR
: I have a fever. I should be in bed but I’m too anxious to lie in bed.

     
You look
very
familiar.

HARPER
: So do you. But—

     
But it’s just not possible. I don’t get out. I’ve only ever been here, or in some place a lot like this, alone, in the dark, waiting for the dummy.

(Dramatic music as the house lights dim in the Diorama Room, the red curtains part and stage lights come up to reveal a brightly painted, brightly lit backdrop of the desert between Colorado and Utah, mountains looming in the distance. Posed before the backdrop, in silhouette, a family of Mormon pioneers, seated in a covered wagon.)

A VOICE
: In 1847, across fifteen hundred miles of frontier wilderness, braving mountain blizzards, desert storms, and renegade Indians, the first Mormon wagon trains made their difficult way towards the Kingdom of God.

(During the above, Harper noisily rips open a bag of Nacho-Flavored Doritos, which she holds out to Prior:)

HARPER
: Want some Nacho-Flavored—

(She stops as, to the accompaniment of the sounds of a wagon train and the Largo from Dvořák’s
9th Symphony,
stage lights illuminate the Mormon family of costumed mannequins: two young sons, a mother and a daughter, and, driving the wagon, a father, who looks a lot like Joe.)

HARPER
(To the Mormon father)
: Hi Joe.

(The music and background sounds give way as the diorama scene begins. When either Caleb or Orrin speaks, his immobile face is hit with a pinspot; this has an unintentionally eerie effect. The father’s face is animated, but not his body.)

CALEB
(Voice on tape)
: Father, I’m a-feard.

FATHER
: Hush, Caleb.

ORRIN
(Voice on tape)
: The wilderness is so vast.

FATHER
: Orrin, Caleb, hush. Be brave for your mother and your little sister.

(Louis suddenly appears in the diorama. The lights onstage and in the dark auditorium shift, subtly.)

LOUIS
: OK yeah yeah yeah but then answer me this: How can a fundamentalist theocratic religion function participatorily in a pluralist secular democracy? I can’t
believe
you’re a Mormon! I can’t believe I’ve spent two whole weeks in bed with a Mormon!

JOE
: Um, could you talk a little softer, I—

LOUIS
: Are you busy?

JOE
: I’m working, but—And it’s closer to three weeks, almost, it’s—

LOUIS
: But you’re a lawyer! A
serious
lawyer!