Trust Exercise(55)

Karen was in David’s office on the day the play arrived in the mail. You could say that she’d been staking out that play, stalking it, the same way she’d been keeping herself abreast of all the David/Martin developments: David’s shock evolving into his crusade, David’s recovery of the letter, etc. Karen had kept herself abreast by making herself indispensable to David, which was always very easy to do. David always needed some administrative favor and was always quick to accept someone’s help, without asking why that person would offer. David, I believe, suffered from low self-esteem yet never had any difficulty believing in the singular importance of his work. This is a distinguishing trait of members of the Elite Brotherhood of the Arts. David also had no difficulty believing that this belief—in the singular importance of his work—was shared by others. When proposing to dedicate hours of your life to some project of David’s, you were never in danger of David asking why you wanted to do that. David had recently relocated his office due to an unfortunate misunderstanding of the fire code, and Karen offered to unpack and overhaul his filing system, which she herself had created several years earlier, but which no one had ever maintained. In this way Karen was able to keep herself abreast of the David/Martin correspondence, and to read Martin’s play, at her leisure. There were no surprises in the correspondence but there were some surprises, at least to Karen, in the play.

The first surprise was that the play was good. At least, to Karen the play seemed to be good. She’s never claimed to be an expert on plays. But she read through it quickly. That seemed like a sign of a good play. Also, how much she thought about it afterward seemed like a sign of a good play. The play had startled her, yet seemed strangely familiar. That was the second surprise, that the events of the play seemed so familiar, as if they had happened to Karen—but in a different life, a life she hadn’t known she’d lived, so that the play was a sort of dream-version, all jumbled but retaining some reminder, like a smell or a stain.

The play was set in a pub, and though it was full of English people drinking English drinks and saying English-sounding things, the setting might have been The Bar. It was the same sort of every-night place. The owner and bartender, “Doc”—the character Martin intended to play—is a taciturn figure. In the opening scene, the patrons argue about an acquaintance who’s drunk himself to death, and whether this should count as suicide. The patrons try to get Doc to weigh in but he won’t. Then a girl enters, seeming to want a handout. She’s dirty and sexless—the audience should even think that she might be a boy—and also small and frail-looking. In spite of that, her arrival gets Doc riled up. For the first time, he says more than a couple of words. He yells at the girl, and kicks her out. Everybody else is uncomfortable but gradually things get back to normal, and the argument resumes. The scene ends.

Then come a lot of scenes about Doc and his patrons illustrating social ills and moral conundrums. They are well done if in no way original. Karen read these with absorption but felt no need to reach for the Post-its. Hence I’ll skip to the almost-last scene.

The bar is dark and deserted, closed for the night. A clock shows that it’s four in the morning. But then we hear a key turn, and Doc enters. And, surprise, with him is the Girl. Before, it seemed as though they were no more than enemy acquaintances, business owner and street hustler. Now it’s clear they’re something more. In the dramatis personae, neither character is given an age. Doc is described as “past his prime; a different life might have left him less stooped, less scowling.” The Girl is described as someone who, “however long she lives, will never cease to look the waif.” She is supposed to be indistinguishable from a boy in her dirty jeans and T-shirt, which means she’s breastless and hipless, but does that make her ten, twelve, or twenty? The Girl sits at the bar while Doc moves around behind the bar and in and out a door through which we now see a pathetic back room, all peeling linoleum, bare lightbulb, and cot. This is apparently where Doc lives. Doc puts a plate of food in front of the Girl, and she eats. They seem to pick up a conversation from where they left off. Doc is angry at the Girl for how she lives. The audience should realize that concern, not accusation, was the subtext of his yelling at her earlier. The Girl says Doc might as well be angry with himself. Doc says, “We all make our own choices.” The Girl says, “Do we?” Doc says, “We do when we can but you know that I can’t.” The Girl says she can’t make Doc’s choices either; no one can make another person’s choices. Here Doc “collapses; whether physically, morally, or both” (to quote stage directions). It’s a moment of reckoning—but for what? “Don’t you see?” Doc says to the Girl. “Don’t you see that I’m trying to repay you?” “Selfishly, as always,” says the Girl. “Please, baby,” Doc says. “Please do this for me.” No blocking is provided, but the Girl apparently finishes her food and stands up. Doc apparently comes around from the back of the bar, or the Girl goes around from the front, because Doc “seizes the Girl in a violent embrace” (to quote stage directions). Is Doc the Girl’s father, or lover, or both? The play doesn’t answer these questions of Karen’s.

Doc and the Girl exit to the back room, the door shutting behind them.

A shot rings out, offstage.

The Girl comes out from the back room and exits.

But the play isn’t over. The lights come up one last time. It’s a memorial. The bar is draped in black bunting, and there’s a framed picture of Doc, and a vase of wilting flowers. All the same patrons, all wearing cheap-looking jackets and ties, are sitting around drinking and talking, just as in scene one, but now the suicide they’re debating is Doc’s. They all have different theories about why he did it, and make different pompous statements about the meaning of life. Suddenly, silence. The Girl has entered. She’s better dressed, in clothes appropriate for church, although they look secondhand and don’t fit. Despite her changed appearance, her evident intention of paying respects, all the patrons attack her. “Get outta here, you little whore!” and “Fuck off, you sticky-fingered bitch,” they variously say. The Girl has no lines in response, but nor does she seem to exit. The play seems to end with her standing there. She enters; she’s assailed by insults; and the word