Water by the Spoonful (Revised TCG Edition)

Quiara Alegría Hudes

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781559368773
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Scene Six

The chat room. Orangutan is online, seems upset.

ORANGUTAN: 2:38 A.M. Tuesday. The witching hour.

(Chutes&Ladders logs on.)

CHUTES&LADDERS: 1:38 P.M. Monday. The lunch hour.

ORANGUTAN: I’m in a gay bar slash internet café in the city of Sapporo. Deafening dance music.

CHUTES&LADDERS: Sure you should be in a bar, little monkey?

ORANGUTAN (Disappointed): I flew halfway around the world and guess what? It was still me who got off the plane. (Taking comfort) Sapporo is always open. The world turns upside down at night.

CHUTES&LADDERS: You’re in a city named after a beer sitting in a bar. Go home.

ORANGUTAN: Everything in this country makes sense but me. The noodles in soup make sense. The woodpecker outside my window every evening? Completely logical. The girls getting out of school in their miniskirts and shy smiles? Perfectly natural. I’m floating. I’m a cloud. My existence is one sustained out-of-body experience. It doesn’t matter if I change my shoes, there’s not a pair I’ve ever been able to fill. I’m a baby in a basket on an endless river. Wherever I go I don’t make sense there.

CHUTES&LADDERS: Hey, little monkey. How many days you got?

ORANGUTAN: I think day ninety-six is when the demons really come out to play.

CHUTES&LADDERS: Ninety-six? Girl, hang your hat on that.

ORANGUTAN: I really really really want to smoke crack.

CHUTES&LADDERS: Yeah, well don’t.

ORANGUTAN: Distract me from myself. What do you really really really want, Chutes&Ladders?

CHUTES&LADDERS: I wouldn’t say no to a new car—my Tercel is one sorry sight.

ORANGUTAN: What else?

CHUTES&LADDERS: Tuesday’s crossword. On Monday I’m done by the time I sit at my desk. I wish every day could be a Tuesday.

ORANGUTAN: What about your son? Don’t you really really really want to call him?

CHUTES&LADDERS: By all accounts, having me be a stranger these ten years has given him the best decade of his life.

ORANGUTAN: I’ve known you for how long?

CHUTES&LADDERS: Three Christmas Eves. When you logged on you were a stone-cold user. We sang Christmas carols online all night. Now you’ve got ninety days.

ORANGUTAN: Can I ask you a personal question? What’s your day job?

CHUTES&LADDERS: IRS. GS4 paper pusher.

ORANGUTAN: Got any vacation days?

CHUTES&LADDERS: A solid collection. I haven’t taken a vacation in ten years.

ORANGUTAN: Do you have money?

CHUTES&LADDERS: Enough to eat steak on Friday nights. Enough to buy pay-per-view boxing.

ORANGUTAN: Yeah, I bet that’s all the pay-per-view you buy. (Pause) Enough money to fly to Japan?

(Pause.)

CHUTES&LADDERS: You should know I’m fifty years old on a good day. I eat three and a half doughnuts for breakfast and save the remaining half for brunch. I have small hands, six toes on my left foot. And my face resembles a corgi.

ORANGUTAN: If I was looking for a hot screw I wouldn’t be logging on to this site.

CHUTES&LADDERS: Damn, was it something I said?

ORANGUTAN (With honest admiration): I’ve been on this planet for thirty-one years and you’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s more sarcastic than I am yet still believes in God.

CHUTES&LADDERS (Taking the compliment): Says the agnostic.

ORANGUTAN: The atheist. Who is very envious of believers. My brain is my biggest enemy—always arguing my soul into a corner. (Pause) I like you. Come to Japan. We can go get an ice cream. I can show you the countryside.

CHUTES&LADDERS: I don’t have a passport. If my Tercel can’t drive there, I generally don’t go.

ORANGUTAN: Come save me in Japan. Be my knight in shining armor.

CHUTES&LADDERS: I’ll admit, I’m a dashing concept. If you saw my flesh and blood, you’d be disappointed.

ORANGUTAN: I see my flesh and blood every day and I’ve learned to live with the disappointment.

CHUTES&LADDERS: I’m the squarest of the square. I live in a square house on a square block watching a square box eating square-cut fries.

ORANGUTAN: I get it. You were the kid who colored inside the lines.

CHUTES&LADDERS: No, I was the kid who ate the crayons. Was. I went clean and all personality left my life. Flew right out the window. I had to take life on life’s terms. Messy, disappointing, bad shit happens to good people, coffee stains on my necktie, boring life.

ORANGUTAN: Maybe we could hang out and have a relationship that has very little to do with crack or addiction or history. We could watch DVDs and microwave popcorn and take walks on the waterfront while we gossip about celebrities. It could be the land of the living.

CHUTES&LADDERS: Stay in the box. Keep things in their place. It’s a simple, effective recipe for ten clean years.

ORANGUTAN: Forget simple. I want a goddamn challenge.

CHUTES&LADDERS: You’re in recovery and work in a foreign country. That’s a challenge.

ORANGUTAN: No. No it’s fucking not. Not if I just stay anonymous and alone. Like every day of my shit life so far. A friend, the kind that is nice to you and you are nice to in return. That would push the comfort zone. The invitation is open. Come tear my shyness open.

CHUTES&LADDERS: All right, now you’re being weird. Can we change the subject?

(Haikumom appears. She’s reading the newspaper.)

HAIKUMOM: Orangutan, cover your ears.

ORANGUTAN: Big Brother, always watching.

HAIKUMOM: Cover your ears, kiddo.

ORANGUTAN: That doesn’t really work online.

HAIKUMOM: Okay, Chutes&Ladders, can we g-chat? One on one?

ORANGUTAN: Come on! No talking behind backs.

HAIKUMOM: Fine. Chutes&Ladders, you listening?

CHUTES&LADDERS...