ACT TWO
SCENE ONE
JOHN stands onstage debating whether to wear his green contact lenses. MERLE enters, frantic.
MERLE: My gravestone! My grave!
JOHN: Not now, lady ghost.
MERLE: Don’t you call me a ghost! Once I had a fulsome figure, but now, I’m entirely apparitional.
JOHN: I’m pretending to be entirely Aboriginal.
MERLE: I know. The pretending has to stop! My whole life was an extended lie and all I have left is a grave of deceit. My gravestone is cursed!
Pause.
I’m … I’m not Tasmanian. I just wanted to get in with Flynn. But he was more interested in his ‘merry men’. If I told the truth, I never would have reached the heights that I did.
JOHN: I understand.
MERLE: I know you do. We’re mutually entwined. I may be flawed and fractured, but I’m still your spirit guide.
JOHN: My mum’s messed up and I reckon only you can help her.
MERLE: She’s quite something.
JOHN: Help her to help me? Please?
MERLE: Mahatma’s mother needs help too? That wasn’t part of the plan.
JOHN: Please, Merle. If you fix her then I’ll be whoever you need me to be. Deal or no deal?
MERLE: I shall dig to the depths of your mother’s secret chamber. Deal.
SCENE TWO
ANIL enters. JOHN enters wearing a hoodie and sunglasses.
ANIL: [to an optometrist offstage] Doctor? Where’s my order? Fifteen parcels of the blue. Another fifteen of the grey/blue lenses. Fifteen of the violet blue lenses and twelve parcels of the aquamarine. Jaldi karo, mate. I haven’t got all day.
JOHN: Indian actors wear coloured contact lenses?
ANIL: Of course, my new cast are arriving from India today. How else can I make them look natural and sexy. Who are you—the Grim Reaper?
JOHN: Shhh. I don’t want my new girlfriend to bust me here. I’m trying to wean myself off contacts.
ANIL: Then why are you at the optometrist?
JOHN: I’m lapsing.
ANIL: Hey—I remember you from Bindhi Beach when Patel’s patella was broken. I never forget a face. Good, bad or ugly.
JOHN: How did Bindhi Beach turn out?
ANIL: Let’s just say it’s lucky you didn’t replace Patel.
JOHN: Why?
ANIL: The production was cancelled. My Indian money-man thinks this country is dumb, drunk and racist.
JOHN: Wasn’t that a TV show?
ANIL: That’s why he got that impression. So he pulled the plug on the finance.
JOHN: Sorry to hear that. Do you think we are?
ANIL: Personally I don’t see it. But that might be my cheap contacts. Either way, I’m getting a lot of work here. More than I ever did in Bombay.
JOHN: I thought you were huge over there?
ANIL: No, that was Daddy Dixit—Anil the Second. He won nine FilmFare awards in a single year. My granddaddy Anil Dixit the First, founded the FilmFare awards, which explains why he won so many.
JOHN: So why didn’t you get the same treatment?
ANIL: Somebody changed the bloody rules. Nepotism has a use-by date. My first masterpiece, Gondwanaland, was ripped to pieces by the press like the tattered tectonic plates of a jigsaw puzzle.
JOHN: Is that why you came here to do Bindhi Beach?
ANIL: Ya, I thought I could make it ...