updated 20.10.23
built with indexhibit
© 2023
↘︎ Complete publication, pdf
BEN:
[Sets down drink. To PRISCILLA:]
Let’s talk about this.
I’m not sure what you expected, precisely, but this is a business. Negotiations commence until an exchange is proffered. Transactions are made, and everybody goes back to their corner. Someone wins, someone loses.
Last night, you expounded relentlessly about ethics, for example. What ethics? The only rubric is the price and the receipt of payment. People live, people die, but savings accounts are immortal.
Go sleep it off. You’ll feel better in the morning, certainly by boarding time. A round of mezcales and two Xanax can’t hurt.
PRISCILLA:
[Alone, writing, while speaking aloud.]
Note One – avoid composing a list of things I saw.
Note Two – consider removing my first-person perspective, and talk through a surrogate.
Note Three – flow my words together more naturally, as if speaking.
Note Four – Don’t. Show. Off!
PRESENTER ON TV IN BACKGROUND:
--sgraced director was brought up on charges today in federal court, with the trial set to begin next month in what is sure to be a major media ev--
PRISCILLA:
[Speaking aloud, staring upward.]
Ugh.
[Turning to page, pen in hand, not writing.]
Occult, yet atheistic, taking time to process. Pointed arches, as if proposals for commemorative inserts into the vaults of a disused gothic chapel.
Blank faces, empty eyes, and scepters. A dark modern liturgy, zombie clerics, enacting a robotic re-animation of long-deceased epochs.
PRISCILLA:
[To BEN:]
You are not the most skilled actor. I don’t believe it’s clear if it is important to you, or not. I shouldn’t say this to you, probably.
We are no longer close, and my impression of you is a total fiction, fixed in the unreachable past.
You don’t know if you want to stay on the margin, or in the spotlight. The position that it’s all about you, while somehow remaining systemic is a terrible deflection.
Be more authentic. Own it.
Don’t sublimate your needs upon me, and make me another proxy for your bullshit.
BEN:
I’m sick of this mindset. I helped you when you were dying. We are partners in crime. I only want to be real with you, about the ways in which the world works.
PRISCILLA:
You have no perspective to tell me how anything works.
[Aside:]
As if anyone did.
[BEN, walking swiftly downstage right.]
BEN:
[Silent. Red.]
[Exit BEN.]
PRISCILLA:
[On phone to unnamed colleague.]
It’s almost subterranean. The rendering process took ages, and our conversation meanwhile about the relative subtleties of their talents led into a harsh criticism of contemporary Mexican cuisine. Or more accurately, the lack thereof.
Mexican food was fixed in the late 60s. Mole, for example, just means sauce. It has nothing to do with the content.
You can make variations: a little more of this, a little less of that, but the ingredients stay the same. Anything else is just pretentious.
UNNAMED COLLEAGUE:
[Unintelligible.]
PRISCILLA:
That’s how I feel. But it’s completely wrong.
[Lights dim. End.] •