SCENE 1
North Philly. Piano music tumbles out of a second-story window.
RUBY: I am eleven.
(Into: Daphne’s Dive—a corner bar in North Philadelphia. A potted aloe vera plant by the window. Pablo drinks orange juice. Rey nurses a beer. They hear the piano music from upstairs.)
PABLO: That’s one helluva rooster.
DAPHNE: Those eighty-eight get beat like a birthday piñata.
PABLO: You admire him more than me.
DAPHNE: Live music every morning? I ain’t complaining.
PABLO: There’s more to art than pretty songs.
DAPHNE: Ay, you’re my favorite artist, okay?
PABLO: Okay.
DAPHNE: It’s not a contest.
PABLO: Yes it is.
(She splashes some vodka in his orange juice.)
DAPHNE: For inspiration.
PABLO: Isn’t Acosta usually through by now?
REY: You waiting on Acosta? Me, too.
(Daphne pours a Coke from the tap.)
PABLO: What’s with all the Coca-Cola? It’s barely eleven.
DAPHNE: Yeah, my stomach is protesting, but those sirens, all night? You didn’t hear from the corner?
PABLO: Nah, I was sketching and blasting Vivaldi.
DAPHNE: My upstairs tenants, above the piano player? Three nights ago, cops raid the place. Two nights ago, feds raid the place. Last night, one in the morning: Wham! Whack! “F you, B! Suck this!” Playing baseball with the furniture.
PABLO: That’s what you get, not evicting them years ago.
DAPHNE: All those kids running, screaming, carajo, they have more kids than the old lady who lived in a shoe. Feds took the parents in handcuffs. DHS rounded up the children. The little boy, the one who can’t walk, beautiful clear eyes, wearing rags, Pablo. Cuando hay un Salvation Army two blocks away. In the United States of America, you gonna dress your kids like a shantytown? So I’m tired. I’m tired and I’ll be drinking Coca-Cola all day.
PABLO: At least one of ’em got out. The older boy. Navy, was it?
DAPHNE: Last week he comes home. His “tour of duty” is up. We’re chatting in the stairwell. Kid never stepped foot in boot camp. “Navy,” it turns out, means Graterford Prison.
PABLO: Maximum security!
DAPHNE: Just eighteen years old, so you know he did some heavy shit. I gave him a mop and a ten and he cleaned the hell outta my stairwell.
PABLO: Ten bucks won’t keep him off the street.
DAPHNE: It’ll keep him outta my face.
PABLO: You need a proper coffee.
DAPHNE: I can’t. My reflux.
PABLO: So brew it light.
DAPHNE: My Krups broke.
PABLO: I’ll go to Lawrence Bakery. How do you take it?
DAPHNE: Why you being so nice?
PABLO: I have a favor.
DAPHNE: Not my trash.
PABLO: Daphne.
DAPHNE: You know I don’t go for that.
PABLO: I started a new canvas.
DAPHNE: My garbage, my business.
PABLO: You take sugar?
DAPHNE: Two equals, skim milk. The answer’s still no.
(Pablo exits. Daphne has a stomach pang. Using a knife, she removes a chunk from the potted aloe and dissects it for the gel inside.)
That your motorcycle out front?
REY: Goldwing GL.
DAPHNE: What club you ride with?
REY: Whole point is to get away from folks.
DAPHNE: The guy I was just talking to, he paints bikes. He came through one time with a Harley-Davidson, whole thing airbrushed with eagles, buffalos, tomahawks—a powwow on wheels. Following week he showed up with a trophy tall as this bar.
REY: You ever ride?
DAPHNE: There’s two kinds of people. Those who ride bikes and those who don’t wanna die. Roy is it?
REY: Rey.
DAPHNE: Welcome back.
(Daphne has removed the gelatinous “meat” from the aloe. She slurps it down whole, like a live fish, and grimaces.)
Ach ayy blaghghg!
REY: Too much drink?
DAPHNE: Too much life.
(Jenn enters. Her sequined American flag bikini shows off a lithe figure. Over each breast is a blue glittery star; the bikini bottom is red-and-white stripes. The effect is not sexual but striking and bold. Her handmade flag reads: PEACE LIBERTY ECOLOGY DEMOCRACY. It’s ripped down the middle.)
JENN: Beautiful day for a dance in the sun.
DAPHNE: Art Museum Steps?
JENN: Best real estate in the city, and it’s mine.
DAPHNE: What did the cops have to say?
JENN: They might as well have had 3-D glasses and tubs of popcorn. They were cracking up. Called me every name in the book. But there were a lot of school groups today. Wide-eyed children, so curious, completely open, and they can’t look away. “Hey miss, why you dance like that?” “Hey miss, let me wave that flag!” I had a whole class of first graders chanting, “Peace! Liberty! Ecology! Democracy!” The cops pulled out handcuffs, Daphne.
DAPHNE: To arrest you or the kids?
JENN: They chased me around the Calder scu...
