Act Two Scene One
(The bar. Jamie enters, and takes a quick glance around at the other patrons. He is on-edge, pacing slightly, and muttering something just quietly enough that we can not make out the words. When he sees Felix, he stops pacing, and his muttering rises to an audible volume.)
Jamie: It must be.
Felix: Hmm?
Jamie: Speak of the devil.
Felix: What?
Jamie: You. It must be you. You’re the one Perrin was going on about. “Limber-limbed and elsewhere-eyed,” she said, and it sounded like nonsense at the time, but I can see it, now. You have that look about you.
Felix: I’m flattered, I think. By the description. Limber-limbed and elsewhere-eyed. I like that girl. She has a way with words, you know. Anyway, you’re Perrin’s... what? Boyfriend? Brother?
Jamie: Neither.
Felix: Then you only want to be her lover.
(Jamie looks genuinely surprised. He stares at Felix almost as if he is seeing him for the very first time. After a pause, he laughs good naturally, and sits on the stool beside Felix.)
Jamie: Wrong again.
Felix: Then your interest in her is what? Academic?
Jamie: Platonic. She’s my cousin.
Felix: Really?
Jamie (startled) : How...?
Felix: Easy.
Jamie: O.k. Not by blood. She’s my friend. Since we were children. Might as well be my cousin. I taught her to swim. Stuff like that.
Felix: You love her.
Jamie: And you?
Felix: Hardly know her.
Jamie: That’s what I’m afraid of.
Felix: For her sake or mine? She’s a spirited girl, that Perrin.
Jamie: But young, and arrogant with it. Like me, maybe. Still, it isn’t a matter of not knowing your strengths; it’s a matter of not knowing your weaknesses. And I don’t like her hanging round with folk like you.
Felix: Folk like me?
Jamie: Whatever kind of folk that may be. Perrin only told me enough to make me worry, not enough to say exactly why.
Felix: Ah.
Jamie: So.
Felix: So?
Jamie: So then want do you want from her?
Felix: Boy you need to take a few deep breaths and a walk around the block.
Jamie: I’m fine.
Felix: Fine, sure. But worried about demons you’re dreaming up all on your lonesome, with smoker yellow teeth and blood shot eyes leering at Perrin’s bare, freckled shoulders.
Jamie: Funny you should notice her shoulders like that.
Felix: She’s pretty. And I like talking to her.
Jamie: That’s all?
Felix: For now. Who knows? Oh, don’t look at me like that. You’re not her keeper.
Jamie: And you’re no one to her.
Felix: Alright, I’ve got a proposition for you. I’ll buy you a beer and you’ll sit with me for a while, and maybe you’ll find you like talking to me just as much as Perrin does. Might help you sleep easy tonight.
Jamie: Deal.
(Felix orders a beer for Jamie, and another for himself.)
Felix: So, what do you want to know? Ask me.
Jamie: Anything?
Felix: Sure, ask me anything. Can’t promise you’ll get a straight answer, but you’ll get an answer. That’s for sure.
Jamie: That’s not entirely reassuring. But let’s start with your name. It’s Felix?
Felix: Yes. And you?
(Jamie hesitates. After a beat, he nods, and his posture relaxes slightly.)
Jamie: I’m Jamie.
(Felix offers Jamie his hand. Jamie stares at it for a moment before taking it. They shake. It is a brusque affair, all business. Afterwards, Felix returns his hand to his glass, and Jamie rests his elbows on his knees.)
Felix: Next question.
Jamie: You’re new to town?
Felix: Fresh off the train.
Jamie: It’s only cargo trains that roll through this town.
Felix: I know.
Jamie: Ah.
(Jamie studies Felix curiously for a beat before continuing.)
Jamie: Well, what brings you here?
Felix: Now that is an interesting question.
Jamie: Family?
Felix: No.
Jamie: Business?
Felix: Hardly.
Jamie: Love?
(Felix laughs ambiguously. He raises his glass.)
Felix: Not exactly. But I’ll drink to that.
Jamie: Then what is it?
Felix: Not so much love as lust. Wanderlust, Jamie. That’s all.
Jamie: I don’t believe you.
Felix: No? Why not?
Jamie: Because there’s nothing here. This isn’t a city people come to; it’s a city people leave. Only things we’ve got here are long-haired grasses and train-mangled pennies and people wandering around like ghosts. It’s a veritable ghost town, more or less. Not the setting for a grand adventure. Nothing here for a nomad’s hungry eyes.
Felix: There’s Perrin. There’s her bare, freckled shoulders.
(He winks.)
Jamie: There’s shoulders in every city in the world. Hips, too. Thighs. Breasts, even.
Felix: Yeah, but maybe none like you have here.
Jamie: You could say that of any city in the world.
Felix: I do say that of every city in the world. Nomads aren’t as picky as you seem to think. Anything new is good enough for our hungry eyes.
Jamie: But there’s nothing new here. I’m sure you’ve seen this all before, dozens of times.
Felix: It’s nothing to you. You’re from here. You don’t even hear the cicadas anymore, I’ll bet. It’s all white noise, to you. You tune it out. I hear it. Feel it. It thrums right through me.
Jamie: Maybe. But the cicadas are a nuisance, not a tourist attraction.
Felix: You’d be surprised. Sometimes here there’s this horrible hum. It’s like the whole world is infested with cicadas. No matter what you crack open, you’ll find them there: an infinity of brittle wings and lurid green eyes whose gazes you can never quite meet. A horrible hum...sure, but wonderful, too. There’s the same purr rising from every throat in the city. It’s beautiful.
Jamie: Do you even know what you’re talking about when you say things like that? Or are you just as lost as the rest of us?
Felix: Perrin follows me just fine.
Jamie: Just cause she follows doesn’t mean she has a damn clue where she’s going.
Felix: Perrin would follow a ghost into a fog bank.
Jamie: Exactly. But you shouldn’t know that about her yet. I thought you said you’d only just met?
Felix: I did; we have.
Jamie: Then don’t go talking like you know all the cicadas in her bones.
Felix: I do though. And all the cicadas in your bones. It’s all the same purr and psst and shhh and click. If you listen right you can hear it anywhere.
Jamie: I can’t hear a damned thing.
Felix: Close your eyes. If you close your eyes, then sounds have color. You’ll see.
(Jamie closes his eyes. Abruptly, however, he opens his eyes, and glares at Felix. )
Jamie: No.
Felix: Suit yourself.
Jamie: You still haven’t answered the real question at hand.
Felix: That being?
Jamie: What do you want with Perrin?
Felix: Oh, right, right. Of course. You want to know what my intentions are with your lady.
(Another, infuriating wink.)
Jamie: My lady?
Felix: I knew this lady once--
Jamie (Interrupting) : I’m sure you did. Known a great deal of ladies in my time too.
Felix (Annoyed.) : I said, I knew this lady once.
Jamie: Fine. Go on.
Felix: Little and firm with mischief in her stride. And black, black eyes. For weeks, I'd longed to take her home with me. Then one night she put her hand on my arm and said, Felix. Just that. When we got to my apartment I flipped on the light and the fuse burst in a little shower of sparks, so I'll understand if you think I just saw what I did because of the dark. But let me tell you. Under that lady's fine red coat was a fine red gown, and under that lady's fine red gown was a fine red fox tail, lush and sweeping and curled towards her bare white hip.
Jamie: I don't believe you.
Felix: That’s a shame.
Jamie: But of course I have to ask.
Felix: Yes?
Jamie: What happened then, Felix?
Felix: Lady turned tail and fled.
(Jamie chuckles despite himself.)
Jamie: Right. Should have known.
Felix: Oh now that was a lady. Kind of lady who when she walked into a room, you could feel it in your thighs. Feel it go through you like music. She was all mermaid hips and parted lips. Parted just enough to make you lean in close enough for a whisper or a kiss... just to make sure you wouldn’t miss whatever words she was about to speak. That was a lady.
Jamie: You sure do talk.
Felix: What?
Jamie: I said you sure do talk a lot.
Felix (a low chuckle, a slight duck of the head. He looks over at Jamie and raises his glass, goes to drink it, then sets it down on the counter and stares at it instead.) : Can’t help myself sometimes.
Jamie: I get it now. Why Perrin is so fixated on you. You’re word people, both of you. That’s the deal. People like you, you’re all rhyme and no reason.
Felix: Or our rhyme is the same thing as our reason.
Jamie: Yes, or that.
Felix: All rhyme and no reason. I like that. You might just be a word person yourself, boy.
Jamie: No. Perrin says she thinks my love of syntax has more to do with dissection than poetry, and I believe she’s right on that count.
Felix: Dissection?
Jamie: I never minded formaldehyde.
Felix: Can’t stand the smell, myself.
Jamie: We had these fetal pigs. They were perfectly colorless. Like frog eggs. Their eyes were closed, but I always imagined that their irises would be completely transparent. I remember that was the only thing that really bothered me. Even the part where we cut the males up between their legs to pull out their balls didn’t get to me. I did all the cutting. Liked the knife in my hand. Thought about being a doctor, but only for a moment.
Felix: Why only a moment?
Jamie: Too much school.
Felix: You surprise me. You seem like the sort to like learning.
Jamie: Learning, sure. But not school, never school. School is all bullshit typed out like it means something. For you word people, not me. Not my game.
Felix: Then what is? Your game, I mean.
Jamie: I’m not sure. Right now it seems to be chasing down shady men such as yourself who get my cousin all kinds of worked up.
Felix: Ah, that old game. Well, it’s a pleasure to play.
Jamie: Yeah, yeah. You would say that.
Felix: What does that mean?
Jamie: It means you word people are all the same. You’d rather have poetry than facts, and you’d rather have games than... rather have games than... I don’t know. Maybe than real life, or maybe that’s too trite. Maybe than solid things. No. That’s not it either. I don’t quite know. Stumbling upon a rhyme now and then doesn’t make words my thing, and I just don’t know the right word for what I mean.
Felix: I think I know what you’re saying. Don’t like it much; I’ll be frank. But I think I know.
Jamie: What, don’t you have a word for me, storyteller man?
Felix: None I’m willing to give you. You know a magician never takes off his coat and lets you look up the sleeve. There’s a reason for that. Some tricks you just have to keep.
(Jamie snorts indignantly, then grabs Felix’s beer and drains it one long sip.)
Jamie: Sure. I know that. Everyone knows that.
Felix: Good.
(The door opens. A woman, Mara, steps in. She is dressed to the nines in a black gown, fish net stockings, and a fox stole. Her air of glamor, however, is somewhat compromised by the rain-ruined state of her hair, the smearing of her crimson lipstick, and the wild look of desperation in her eyes. Upon entering the bar, she smoothes out her dress, doing a little hip shimmy in the process, and closes her eyes as if an attempt to regain her composure. When she opens them, she looks around the bar to take in the patrons-- but someone is missing. Felix is already gone. He has ducked out so quickly that the back door is still banging shut in his wake. Jamie is staring after him, his confusion blatant.)
Mara (A bitter, humorless laugh. Loud and bark-like.) : Of course.
(Jamie turns to look at her, but does not speak. Mara stares at him accusingly, then continues as if he has asked her for clarification. )
Mara: What I mean is that that just fucking figures.
Jamie: I’m sorry?
Mara: You’re sorry? You’re sorry! Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t even know what I’m talking about. How could you possibly be sorry?
Jamie: Guilty conscience.
Mara: Haha. You’re funny.
(She isn’t actually laughing, and nothing in her voice, posture, or face implies good humor.)
Jamie: Known for it, actually. Is this the part where I say you look like you need a drink?
Mara: And charming.
(She does not look charmed. Jamie, however, proceeds as if utterly unfazed by her aggressive, sarcastic demeanor.)
Jamie: That too. But you didn’t answer my question.
Mara: It’s the part where I say I can pay for my own.
Jamie: Never said I was offering.
Mara: Just ‘cause you didn’t say it, don’t mean a damned thing.
Jamie: Well. I wasn’t offering.
(Mara takes the seat to Jamie’s right. She looks up pointedly at the bartender.)
Mara: Something with olives. I don’t care what. Something strong, I’d prefer. But really I just want the olive, and a toothpick. The toothpick is important.
Bartender: Martini on the rocks?
Mara: Perfect.
Jamie: Why is the toothpick so important?
Mara: The point of a martini, in my experience, is so that beautiful women can stab olives with toothpicks, looking tragic and unapproachable. And I find that stabbing olives with toothpicks is quite therapeutic, actually.
Jamie: Ah. I see. Do you pretend the olive is an eyeball?
Mara: I hadn’t thought of that. But now that you mention it... yes, that’s brilliant. That’s perfect. It is an eyeball. It’s his.
(She turns to Jamie and smiles for the first time. It’s an evanescent thing, that smile, but stunning for the brief second that it lasts.)
Thank you.
Jamie: You’re welcome.
Mara: I’m Mara.
Jamie: Jamie.
Mara: No, wait. I don’t want to be Mara. That isn’t a very good olive-stabbing name, even if it is my name. Can I be Scarlet instead? Can we just start over, and say that I’m Scarlet, and you can be whoever you like as well?
Jamie: Scarlet. Charmed. I’m still Jamie.
Mara (Disappointed.): You won’t humor me.
Jamie: You won’t let me buy you a drink. We’re even.
Mara: That’s fair.
Jamie: Yes, I thought so, too. So tell me, Scarlet. Whose eyeball?
(A pause. Mara hesitates uncomfortably. )
Mara: Lucifer’s.
Jamie: Another alias.
Mara: He doesn’t deserve a name.
(The bartender hands Mara her martini.)
Jamie: Should I just pause uncomfortably when I talk about him, then? To indicate the space in which his name would fit if he had one?
(Mara laughs. It is a slightly more sincere laugh than her previous ones.)
Mara: If you wish. But I already gave you Lucifer, and I think that serves just fine.
Jamie: I’ll think about it.
Mara: Good.
Jamie: Then... may I ask what this Lucifer did to warrant such a name?
Mara: Wouldn’t do you any good if I told you.
Jamie: Wouldn’t do me any harm.
Mara: You’re sweet.
Jamie: You flatter me.
Mara: You give me cause.
Jamie (indulging in a Mara-esque humorless laugh): Ha.
Mara: Anyway, you’re wrong.
Jamie: Oh?
Mara: It might very well do you harm if I told you.
Jamie: But Scarlet! I’m curious now.
Mara: And curious you will remain.
Jamie: I’ll lie awake every night wondering what horror you’ve suffered at Lucifer’s hand.
Mara: And you’ll sweat bees out of your breast in a dream fever that grips you by the hips and holds on tight. I know. But still you won’t be told.
Jamie: You’re cruel.
Mara: There’s an art to it.
Jamie: And unrepentant.
Mara: You flatter me.
Jamie: You give me cause.
Mara: You’re good. (Pause) I’m not sure I like that.
Jamie: And I’m not sure what that means.
Mara: That’s O.K. with me.
Jamie: There’s something very strange happening in this town these days, Mara.
Mara: Scarlet.
Jamie: Scarlet, right. There’s something strange happening in this town these days, Scarlet. Sketchy men with red hair and chipped teeth are hopping trains and taking shots and telling tales and making deals with desperate looking men down in the streets. And beautiful women are slamming into bars and doing just the opposite, really; they’re refusing to tell a damn thing. And all of this in a dead-end town without a thing to want.
Mara: Sketchy men with red hair and chipped teeth?
Jamie: O.k, so the phrasing was a little off. There’s only been the one. But yes, a red-haired man with a chip in his tooth and everything else I said as well.
Mara: And he only just arrived?
Jamie: Mara, you’ll give yourself away.
Mara: And he’s still here?
Jamie: So far as I know. Why?
Mara: Where’s he staying?
Jamie: What if we’re not talking about the same man? Aren’t you even going to ask his name?
(Mara takes the olive from her glass and spears it mercilessly on a stray tooth pick. She holds the olive up to her mouth, slides her teeth over its skin, but does not bite down. Around the olive, she speaks. )
Mara: It’s Felix. You know that as well as I do.
(She bites.)
Jamie: Well then I won’t have to pause awkwardly to allow a space for his name.
Mara: I didn’t say that that’s who Felix was.
Jamie: He has olive colored eyes, Mara. You know that as well as I.
Mara: Fuck you.
Jamie: That’s awful forward of you.
Mara: Look, do you want interrogate me or do you want to flirt with me?
Jamie: That depends. Which one will I get farther with?
Mara: Neither.
Jamie: Well then I don’t see any reason to make up my mind. Now. I do have a question for you.
Mara: Of course.
Jamie: What does he do? Felix, I mean. There’s all manner of speculations in this town.
Mara: He... talks. Felix, he talks.
Jamie: Then I mean what did he do? What is he running from? What is his game?
Mara: He deals.
(Jamie studies Mara for a long moment. Mara has fallen very still and very quiet, and is swallowing dryly, her hand-- the martini glass wobbling inelegantly between her thin fingers-- is hesitating on its way towards her mouth.)
Jamie: Ah.
Mara: No, don’t say that. Don’t say ‘ah’ like ‘aha’ like that explains everything then.
Jamie: But it does. It does explain everything. Felix deals; O.K. Check. I get him now.
Mara: But there isn’t a word for what he deals.
Jamie: I don’t think that matters. That’s semantics. That’s nothing. Mere trivia.
Mara: He doesn’t deal in poisons, Jamie. He deals in dreams.
Jamie: And I imagine any addict of any drug would say the same.
Mara: Quite likely. But this is different. And it doesn’t matter if I can’t convince you; that won’t change a thing.
Jamie: Maybe you can convince me. Maybe all you have to do is explain. Maybe all you have to do is tell me what Felix deals, and how, and I’ll nod, lean back in my stool, and say, “O.K.”
Mara: And maybe it would be your best interest to have less interest in my affairs.
Jamie: Maybe. But on the other hand, my cousin has been spending a pretty hour with Felix for days now, and I don’t like that much. And maybe there’s more at stake here than just whatever gruesome gossip you’re trying to keep under wraps.
Mara: Your cousin, and Felix?
Jamie: Yes. Should I be concerned?
Mara: More likely than not it’s too late for that. You should be mourning, is what you should be doing.
Jamie: And if it isn’t too late?
Mara: Does she love him?
Jamie: Hardly knows him.
Mara: Doesn’t matter. Does she love him?
Jamie: No. I don’t know.
Mara: But they are lovers, then?
Jamie (appalled): That’s quite the brash assumption!
Mara: One can never be too quick of tongue where Felix is concerned.
Jamie: She’s fascinated with his stories. And I think with the road unwinding endlessly behind him. It’s a child’s infatuation with a stranger, nothing more. If he only said he’s staying here, she’d lose interest in him in a second.
Mara: Then pray he buys a house and plants flowers in the yard and settles down.
Jamie: You make him out to be a dangerous man.
Mara: That’s generous.
Jamie: You’re what, then? His bounty hunter?
Mara: Me? No. I’m just a cautionary tale.
Jamie: You’ve escaped a chicken bone cage in a witch’s kitchen then, I’m sure.
Mara: A con man’s noose, and I didn’t escape a thing.
Jamie: Your head looks nicely wrought upon your shoulders.
Mara: It isn’t my head I’m missing.
Jamie: You seem to be perfectly intact. Why you even got to keep your youth and beauty!
Mara: That’s the trick of it, though. The trick of the trade.
Jamie: What?
Mara: Felix has this one story that he tells. About the children with armfuls of yellow roses, gathered around the cathedral. Do you know it?
Jamie: I don’t.
Mara: The children had eyes as big as planets, he said, and dresses sewn of dust. And they pressed the roses into his hands and said monsieur should take them. Take them as a welcome to this beautiful land. He was in Paris. Did I say that?
Jamie: You didn’t.
Mara: Oh. Well anyway, they were. And they pressed the roses into his hands and smiled, and their smiles were big and floating and glowing like the Cheshire cat’s, he said, but only because the rest of their faces were so dark and hollowed with starvation that the smiles seemed larger than life, you know?
Jamie: That’s terrible.
Mara: But beautiful. Felix is so good at that.
Jamie: I suppose. Anyway, the children?
Mara: Smiled. And said bienvenue. And bowed-- so humble. And vanished one by one into the crowd.
Jamie: And?
Mara: I think this was the first story Felix ever told me.
(She drinks.)
Jamie: Was that it, then? Was that the ending?
Mara: No. Felix went into the cathedral and put a coin in a box and took a tea light from another box and lit it, and put it on a stand covered in dozens of other candles. They were supposed to be to remember the dead by. The candles, I mean. And Felix couldn’t choose who he’d known who’d passed away to have the candle be for, so...
(She trails off.)
Jamie: Have another drink.
(Mara drinks)
Jamie: Good. And so?
Mara: And so... And so, he said, he lit that candle for me. There wasn’t anyone who’d gone away he wanted to light it for, so he lit it for someone who had yet to come.
(She smiles to herself.)
Anyway, the candle doesn’t really matter. That’s not really part of the story. What matters is that then he left the cathedral and went back to his hotel room. He set the roses on the windowsill. When he went to put his wallet next to them, however, he found that it was gone.
(Another drink. She swivels on her stool, uncrossing and recrossing her legs, and looks Jamie squarely in the eyes.)
And that, Jamie, is how it’s played. The tricks of the trade, right there.
Jamie: I see.
(He doesn’t.)
Mara: Felix, he gives you something beautiful. Something that makes you let your guard down. And then he smiles. And then he disappears. And only then do you realize what he’s taken. You said I’d give myself away, and maybe I have, but Felix did just the same.
Jamie: It was sloppy, telling you that story on the first day.
Mara: Either that or it was brilliant foreshadowing. I’m not sure which I’d say.
Jamie: I’m not sure, either.
Mara: Doesn’t matter, I guess. But I’m telling you now: don’t believe for a second that anyone gets through a deal with Felix perfectly intact. Felix could eat all the chocolates in candy box without so much as peeling up a single corner of the wrapper.
Jamie: Well I wasn’t planning on buying chocolates from the man, but now that you’ve warned me, I definitely won’t.
Mara: You laugh. You laugh now, until he gets you alone. Until he says lend me your ear. Until you do. Until he never gives it back.
Jamie: Losing an ear is trendy enough, though, in its way. Van Gogh cut off his own, and look where it got him!
Mara: Jamie.
Jamie: What? I’m funny? Yeah, yeah. I know.
Mara: I was going to say you’re impossible.
Jamie: That too.
Mara: I don’t suppose you know where Felix is staying?
Jamie: It sounds to me like you’d be better off avoiding him.
Mara: I’ve got some unfinished business to attend to.
(Jamie laughs.)
Mara: What?
Jamie: Nothing. Just. ‘I’ve got some unfinished business to attend to.’ Of course you do. Just look at you! You already look like you’re in the movies. Might as well talk like it, too.
Mara: I have no idea how to take that.
Jamie: Any way you like it.
Mara: You’re--
Jamie: Not going to tell you where Felix is staying unless you let me buy you a drink? Good call.
Mara: You never even told me if you know where he’s staying or not.
Jamie: Oh.
Mara: Caught you.
Jamie: I’ll tell you something, at least.
Mara: What? A hint?
Jamie: No.
Mara: Then what?
Jamie: You have beautiful eyes.
(Mara bites back a smile. )
Mara: You have a strange sense of humor.
Jamie: I also have no idea where Felix is staying. But I do know something about his whereabouts.
Mara: And you’re going to help me?
Jamie: I know that he’s not here and-- wait, don’t roll your eyes like that. I wasn’t done. I know that he’s not here, and I know that he was here until just the second that you came in. Never seen a man leave a bar faster in my life. Honestly, if you hadn’t have stayed to talk to me, you could have caught him, easy.
Mara: Fuck.
(Now Mara drains her glass. She slams the empty glass down on the counter)
Jamie: But it’s too late now. You could stay and have another drink, and maybe in an hour, maybe two, he’d figure the coast was clear and come back.
Mara: No, no I don’t think I’ll do that.
(She starts to stand.)
Jamie: Wait, wait. If I take it back, will you stay?
Mara: What?
Jamie: If I say I made that up, and Felix wasn’t anywhere near here, and he’s nowhere you’ll be able to find for sure, will you stay?
Mara: Too late.
(She leaves. Rather as quickly as Felix did, but with at least some semblance of grace. Jamie is alone in the bar.)
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