The Death of the Lovers

by Taylor Gould

Characters:
Man
Woman

Scene:
A dimly lit room.

At Rise:
A man and a woman sit in black chairs, back to back. Both dressed in black. Stage is dim.

◊◊◊

Man:

Haven’t I seen you somewhere?

Woman:

(Perplexed overall) I … I don’t think so….

Man:

Where’ve … I …

Pause.

Librarian?

No reply.

Coffee shop?

No reply.

(Stage-whisper) Prostitute …?

Woman:

(Outraged) Shame!

Man:

No, no, of course not.

Pause.

Woman:

Doctor?

No reply.

Jury duty?

No reply.

Love?

Man:

(Uncovering) Love?

Woman:

Were we in love?

Man:

You’ve seen me?

Woman:

No.

Man:

(Disappointedly) You’d remember that.

Woman:

You’d think so …

Man:

I’d say so …

Woman:

You did.

Man:

So I said, “I’d say so …”

Woman:

You said so, you did. You did say so, so you said you said “I’d say so,” and I said you did. You did say so. (Pause) I feel … not right, here.

Man:

(Attempting humor) You can … you can say that again.

Woman:

Is that a joke? Is that humor?

Man:

I suppose so.

Woman:

Oh.

Pause; silence. She offers a weak laugh.

Man:

You didn’t have to—

Woman:

But I did.

Man:

You did.

Woman:

Like I said …

Man:

And thank you, then.

Woman:

Think nothing of it.

Man:

Well, in any case …

His words trail into nothing.

I feel like I know you. Or, have known you. Have you known me?

Woman:

I haven’t known anything, it seems.

Man:

In when? Haven’t known anything in when?

Woman:

In ever, I suppose. Or, forever. Forever. I have known nothing since forever.

Man:

I feel like your favorite color is … everywhere.

Woman:

A color. The color of everything. Yes, that fits, kindly.

Man:

Kindly. Would you agree, then?

Woman:

Kindly.

Man:

Then I must’ve known—must know—you. Surreptitiously?

Woman:

Sexually.

Man:

Symphoniously.

Woman:

Surreptitiously.

Man:

Right?

Woman:

Yes, must be, it’s coming back to me, then.

Man:

Good, so it was Love?

Woman:

Maybe not.

Man:

Serendipitously loving? Lovers? Must be, me, loving, you? Lovers, surreptitiously. You loving, who?

Woman:

I’ve not thought of that quite yet.

Man:

When you do, I’d like to know.

Woman:

Good, I’d like to tell you.

Man:

I’d like to think it’s Love.

Woman:

You’d like to hope.

Man:

Yes, I guess.

Pause.

Woman:

There was lightning, it felt like.

Man:

Lightning?

Woman:

Yes, lightning. When things are lightened, if only for a moment. Lightening.

Man:

That could be lo—

Woman:

When somewhere in the sky, a bird of life appears and the world is illuminated—lightening—and it will float down to the ground, less like a feather and more like the ending of a good novel, leaving the scorched marks of disappointment and disgrace on the ground, but really only the memory of that amazement—that lightening. A lightening which we found, and which was more like lightning, it was quick and it was bright, and then it was over. But you, well, with flowers to an office building and phone calls late at night, you held on to that brightness—you played the echoing thunder, screaming for another chance at brightness. But all that was left, we find, was the scorched earth, and the darkness. A lost mistress and a lonely married man.

Man:

(Piecing things together) So … that means …

Woman:

What we remember is the process, not the product.

Man:

Then that means … I’ve loved you?

Woman:

Is that the moral of every story? That you’ve loved me?

Man:

It must be. It must be that I’ve loved you. If that’s what I remember! It must be. That is my lightening, my lightning, enlightenment, something of the sort. That is my process! My process is that I’ve loved you. It wasn’t just the thunder and the lightning—it was coffee, right? On long afternoons? I would leave my house—bidding adieu to the woman whom I slept with every night—(He leaves the stage; speaks from offstage) and I would find the best outfit: (As if trying on clothes) No, not that. Not with these shoes…. What about with a black belt? (He comes onstage, having shed his black clothing and replaced it with nice, but casual, new clothes. Preferably black, red, or a nice mixture of both) And I would be determined to wow you, isn’t that how it went? Because we loved! Why else would we have met for lunch, for coffee?

Woman:

Only to pass time, only to pass time…. It was all procedural.

Man:

I’m sure if you look hard enough, you’ll find that, procedurally, you were mine, as well as I, yours.

Woman:

Your words are lost on me, it seems. You talk and, during some sort of sunrise, I put a frustrated pillow over my face to mute you. I’m lying on a red sofa, and your words are lost. They must be.

Man:

Why must they be?

Woman:

Because they always have been.

Man:

I understand.

Woman:

Good.

Man:

It’s not—good. Not good.

Woman:

It’s a difference of opinion.

Man:

No, it’s good to understand—to be understood—and it’s my understanding that I’m being misunderstood, or lost, my words lost, me lost. So this understanding we’ve just reached is something bittersweet, something not so wholly good and not so wholly bad. An understanding maybe that I’m gone. An understanding of being misunderstood. It’s not good, like you say.

Woman:

You talk yourself into dizziness—

Man:

You’re right …

Woman:

You haven’t even the mind to tell where we’re at, I’d say.

Pause; he contemplates.

Man:

Then where are we?

Woman:

In a dark room.

Man:

Does it have to be dark?

Woman:

No. (Lights flash brightly, then back to dim)

Man:

Was that … serendipity?

Woman:

I would suppose so.

Man:

That wasn’t … Love, though, right? The Lightness?

Woman:

It was so quick, though …

Man:

And certainly not surreptitious.

Woman:

Certainly.

Man:

Then where are we?

Woman:

In chairs.

Man:

Do we have to be?

Woman:

(Soft, then definitely) … No.

Stands up.

Man:

I’d really love to be so definite.

Woman:

Definite?

Man:

Defined.

Woman:

How am I defined?

Man:

By your actions?

Woman:

How so?

Man:

Well, it appears to me that you’ve come to control yourself. When I asked where we were—the first time—you perceived that we were in a dark room. I, upon learning this, was hugely impressed at your clarity. I myself am fuzzed. Fuzzy? Fuzz? I am Fuzz, I think, and since we became ourselves here, in this darkness—I in my chair, you in your … definedness—I have been Fuzz. Have been blurred and blurry, and I would like to think that we’d fallen in love, but you’d insist that it is otherwise. And it seems every question I ask, you, while perhaps not having thought it over beforehand, prepare an answer and prove it, with fact, and motion, and definedness. Definedness in standing. Defined in stilettos outside some corporate office in a pinstriped miniskirt. And I am sitting, but may look at you with adoration and admiration, and I suppose I will do so … surreptitiously. Above a newspaper I’m not even reading—you’re, instead, my headline—and the wind blows it away, blows the paper away, and there I am. A child whose comfy bed of autumn leaves has been swept away, and there he is. There I am. Surreptitiously looking at you—oh, I’d love to look at you now. Love to look at you, I’d love to—look at you. Will you come here? So I can look at you? I don’t think I can look at you on my own. I need you here, in front of me, to look at.

Woman:

I can’t do that.

Man:

And you’re so defined. “I can’t do that.” You know that you can’t and all I’ve got left is … unknown. You’ve taken all the knownness and put it somewhere in your … where? Bosom? Heart? Your heart! Oh, how I would love to know what’s in there.

Woman:

I don’t believe you would.

Man:

Decision.

Woman:

She may move about the stage.

It was raining, wasn’t it? I was wearing a dark sweater and a light demeanor and it was storybook. It had been written some other time, perhaps by you, perhaps by me, in something which may’ve been made into a movie, and people may’ve watched it and cried at the end. At the end, they cried. And for a while I would look at you from beneath an umbrella (Exiting) stay here …

She returns with a red umbrella. She has shed her black clothes and is now revealed in a pinstriped suit and stilettos, red lipstick.

An umbrella. I would stare at you from under the umbrella, and you would remark—

Man and Woman:

A warm stare on a cold night does me well, ma’am.

Woman:

—and I would tell you it was even warmer under the umbrella, and perhaps you could come stand with me until the late train came. I told you I was cold, and lonely, and alone, and I was telling you things which I’d never told anyone—which was a lie—and perhaps everything I was saying was a lie, but you didn’t care—if at all you knew. You didn’t know, though, I could guess. And it was written, this story of you and I, me and you, you, me, and somewhere there was her.

Man and Woman:

I have a wife.

Woman:

You would add. And I would subtract: “That’s all circumstantial. She isn’t here, and thus, she does not exist.” Which would turn out to be endlessly true because it appears that you would never reconnect with her, and Forever would draw us together and pin us down to it with disgusting beauty. But I would be distant, in that love. Surreptitious. What’s my name?

Man:

I’ve never known.

Woman:

That’s true too. Surreptitious, right? Not using one another’s names, we could never fall in love because, well, without names there is only action and no existence.

Man:

And you called it “romping”!

Woman:

Mustn’t have been me! Mustn’t have been me! There was no fun in it for me, I called it duty—the deletion of certainty from your life.

Man:

Definédness.

Woman:

More a job, I’d like to think. More a job than entertainment. Action, certainly, but not for fun. Not for fun, but still a necessity. I’d call you and you’d say—

Man:

I’m at dinner with—

Woman:

HER. And I hated her for what she’d done to me. So I thought about her every time I would pull off my silken panties and kick them, using my big toe as a hook to send them flying skillfully. I would think of her every time I would lay my silken body down on your rigidity. I would think of her every time my hips would be opened and my heart would be closed and my mind would be black. I would think of her, and I would think of him.

Man:

Another lover?

Woman:

A former. One with a ring, a band, a gold band and a promise which was also golden. Another man who lent himself to her, so she could be businesslike to him in the same manner in which I was businesslike to you, and I had found out. That was years ago, and he meant nothing to her and everything to me, and so when I saw that there was something similar and opposite, I took the opportunity by the proverbial horns and I laid you down on the bed and made you a puppet of mine, as he was a puppet to her, and like you had been to her as well. She took my heartstrings and tugged my Love away, and I would do the same to her.

Man:

May I stand yet?

Woman:

A puppet of mine. Yes, you may stand.

He does so.

Man:

May I look at you?

Woman:

You may not.

Man:

I’ve figured out where I know you from.

Woman:

I’ve told you.

Man:

It was a rainy night, and I was sitting—like I was just then—only it was on a bench, and we were waiting for a bus—

Woman:

Train.

Man:

—bus, and I peered over at you, and said

Man and Woman:

A warm stare on a cold night …

Man:

And so it was. So it was—until you invited me unto your umbrella. Which, in turn, invited me into your boudoir. Which in turn, invited you into my life. And it was surreptitious.

Woman:

Ideality! Ideality in your words—

Man:

Invited you into my life! There was the color of everything and the feeling of everywhere and all that poetry I wrote, all that poetry, all that poetry! We would spend the nights coiled up in cheap motels! Romping, yes, but the poetry! You would say, “That was divine!” and I would exclaim, “It’s yours! It’s yours!” And we were the poetry of the gods, and we were in love.

Woman:

You, you were in love!

Man:

But, behind the coffee shop, where you had me pull your hair—and your glasslike neck turned itself outward to me and I kissed it as if it were lips, as if it were lips, and I said, “I love you I love you I love you,” and songbirds would mimic me and the wind would blow the newspaper clipping onto the rear window of the car, and I would look up and see the headline “US headed toward depression.” And I felt fine. I felt better than fine—I felt your neck and the rattling of air’s passage through it, escaping a weak moan, and I was not depressed, I was not depressed, I was not. I was a writer and you had become my words—that’s how it was, right? A writer, and you my words, my pen, my pad, my paper, my Love, my Love.

Woman:

(Singing) Lover, lover, perhaps, perhaps.

Man:

And there we were, locked in a car behind the coffee shop, just outside of town, just outside the city, just on the edge of the state, at the edge of the country on the edge of Depression. And we were happy, right? We threw our dollars away, didn’t we? Screwed them away, the dollars, didn’t we? Nothing mattered when it was us—the Lovers. In love … Romping like we did—romping. You called it romping—

Woman:

Never!

Man:

Romping! Romping! Yes!

Suddenly unleashed, he glides about the stage.

Surreptitiously, yes, but romping! And there was love! Love! Love! And we knew each other! Biblically, yes, but anatomically, emotionally, mentally, comically, serendipitously, I’d say, even! (Grabbing the umbrella) And our love blossomed (Opens it), and we became one another—defined by one another, and beautifully blossoming into one another, and it was fun, it was fun, it was fun, and it was surreptitious.

Woman:

Disconnect.

Man:

Delving into one another!

Woman:

Perhaps dining—

Man:

Diving into love! And that is how we know one another!

Woman:

It is fanciful. It is a phantasm, I’d like to say. And therein is the problem: where you saw fun, I saw none. And equally it was so with, yes, Love.

Man:

So you love me?

Woman:

Disconnect! Disconnect in your words and mine! Love is neither here nor there, friend. Love isn’t present when I allow you into my umbrella. Nor when the sun sets just beyond the rigidity of a skyscraper. You would wrap me up and, in my mind, there I was, jumping from the highest high, scraping the sky on my way down to taxicabs and cheaters like us. No, there was no love, there is no love.

Man:

(Explosive, screaming, swiping at the background) There is LOVE! There is love there is love there is love and I will tell you so! I tell you, I tell you, there is Love!

Woman:

(Aside) Oh, emptiness, emptiness, how it fills him to the brim.

Man:

Emptiness! Emptiness! (Turns to her for the first time and looks at her) A spill of rouge, dear, a spill of rouge (Moves to her) a spill of rouge on your fine lips! A kiss! A kiss! An emptiness in me is a spill of rouge upon your lips! A kiss! A kiss!

Woman:

No! Please! No!

Man:

A spill of rouge upon your lips. Your lips … Your … lips …

Woman:

And on my new blouse, and the curtains—dear, me.

A long silence.

Man:

Don’t chalk it up to me, wholly. Don’t chalk it up to me. My emptiness. There is you to blame.

Woman:

Disconnect, disconnect.

Man:

There is you to blame for the night.

Woman:

He would come to my home—

Man:

—enter, surreptitiously—

Woman:

—unbeknownst to me—

Man:

—serendipitously—

Woman:

—silence at his heels—

Man:

—armed with my emptiness, and—

Woman:

—he would enter my bedroom—

Man:

—where she slept—

Woman:

—and—

Man:

—and …

He has made his way behind her; she covers her ears. The umbrella, now closed, is put up behind her, unopened.

(Opening the umbrella) BOOM!

Woman:

(Hand over chest) … and just like that, the fun and games were over.

Man:

Not so over, not so—yet.

Woman:

And they were over, and that’s when I found myself in the black room. In the black chairs.

Man:

And that’s when I found myself next to her. When there was a fourth opening of the umbrella.

Woman:

One:

Man:

Your allowance of me beneath it, for covering from the rain.

Woman:

Two:

Man:

The way our—my—love unfolded.

Woman:

Three, four:

Man:

The opening and closing and opening which led to the death of The Lovers.

Woman:

The Death of the Lovers?

Man:

Gunshots … gunshots … the Death of the Lovers …

Curtain.