Beautiful Ruins (95)

“Tutto questo è pazzesco,” Pasquale mutters. This is all crazy. He says nothing more, just slumps back in his seat, hand rising slowly to his mouth. He seems to have no more interest in the file and he stares out the window at the strip-mall sprawl, much the way he stared out the window on the plane earlier.

Claire looks from Shane to Pasquale and back. “Did he expect her never to get married? Fifty years . . . that’s asking a lot.” Pasquale says nothing.

“Have you ever thought about a TV show where you fix people up with their old high school flames?” Shane asks Michael Deane, who ignores the question.

The next pages in the file are a 1970 graduation announcement from Seattle University (a bachelor’s degree in education and Italian), obituaries for Debra Moore’s parents, probate documents, tax forms for a house she sold in 1987. A much newer high school yearbook shows a 1976 black-and-white staff photo from Garfield High identifying her as “Mrs. Moore-Bender: Drama, Italian.” She seems to get more attractive in every photo, her face sharpening—or perhaps it’s just in comparison with other teachers, all those dull-eyed men in fat ties and uneven sideburns, lumpy women with close haircuts and cat’s-eye glasses. In the Drama Club photo she poses at the center of a mugging, expressive group of shaggy-haired students—a tulip in a field of weeds.

The next page in the file is another photocopied newspaper story, from the Sandpoint Daily Bee, circa 1999, saying that “Debra Moore, a respected drama teacher and community theater director from Seattle, is taking over as artistic director of Theater Arts Group of Northern Idaho,” that she “hopes to augment the usual slate of comedies and musicals with some original plays.”

The file concludes with a few pages about her son, Pasquale “Pat” Bender; these pages are broken into two categories—traffic and criminal charges (DUIs and possession charges, mostly) and newspaper and magazine stories about the various bands he fronted. Claire counts at least five—the Garys, Filigree Handpipe, Go with Dog, the Oncelers, and the Reticents, this last outfit the most successful, signed by the Seattle record label Sub Pop, for whom they produced three albums in the 1990s. Most of the stories are from small alternative newspapers, concert and album reviews, stories about the band having a CD release party or canceling a show, but there is also a capsule review from Spin, of a CD called Manna, a record the magazine gives two stars, alongside this description: “ . . . when Pat Bender’s intense command of the stage translates to the studio, this Seattle trio can sound rich and playful. But too often on this effort, he sounds uninterested, as if he showed up to the recording session wasted, or—worse for this cult favorite—sober.”

The last pages of the file are listings in the Willamette Weekly and The Mercury for Pat Bender’s solo shows in several clubs in the Portland area in 2007 and 2008, and a short piece from the Scotsman, a newspaper in Scotland, with a scathing review of something called Pat Bender: I Can’t Help Meself!

And that’s it. They read different sheets from the file, trade them, and finally look up to find that they’re on the expanding edge of the city now, clusters of new houses cut into the slabs of basalt and heavy timber. To have a life reduced like that to some loose sheets of paper: it feels a little profane, a little exhilarating. The investigator is tapping a song on the steering wheel that only he hears. “Almost to the state line.”

The Deane Party’s epic trek is nearing its completion now, a single border left to cross—four unlikely travelers compelled along in a vehicle sparked on the gaseous fuel of spent life. They can cover sixty-seven miles in an hour, fifty years in a day, and the speed feels unnatural, untoward, and they look out their separate windows at the blurring sprawl of time, as for two miles, for nearly two minutes, they are quiet, until Shane Wheeler says, “Or what about a show about girls with anorexia?”

Michael Deane ignores the translator, leans forward toward the front seat, and says, “Driver, anything you can tell us about this play we’re going to see?”


FRONT MAN

Part IV of the Seattle Cycle

A Play in Three Acts

by Lydia Parker




DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

PAT, an aging musician

LYDIA, a playwright and Pat’s girlfriend MARLA, a young waitress

LYLE, Lydia’s stepfather

JOE, a British music promoter

UMI, a British club girl

LONDONER, a passing businessman


CAST:

PAT: Pat Bender

LYDIA: Bryn Pace

LYLE: Kevin Guest

MARLA/UMI: Shannon Curtis

JOE/LONDONER: Benny Giddons


The action takes place between 2005 and 2008, in Seattle, London, and Sandpoint, Idaho.




ACT I

Scene I



[A bed in a cramped apartment. Two figures are entangled in the sheets, Pat, 43, and Marla, 22. It’s dimly lit; the audience can see the figures but can’t quite make out their faces.]



Marla: Huh.



Pat: Mm. That was great. Thanks.



Marla: Oh. Yeah. Sure.



Pat: Look, I don’t mean to be an ass, but do you think we could get dressed and get out of here?



Marla: Oh. Then . . . that’s it?



Pat: What do you mean?