Play & Book Excerpts
Excerpt from: Drive
An original play
© Emily Dodi
~~~
Arthur tries to reach Grace before it's too late.
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Sally cracks a few jokes with Grace and Queenie.
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Queenie and Honey steal a moment outside the Alibi bar.
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Above photos by Tiffany Weigel: Courtesy Company of Angels Theater, Los Angeles
~~~~
Three women are alone in the Alibi Bar while a thunderstorm rages outside. Grace is a stranger who has just driven off from a fight with her husband, Arthur. Arthur appears as a figment of Grace’s imagination. Queenie, the owner of the bar, is thinking of selling and leaving with her younger lover, Honey. Sally is a barfly and Queenie’s close friend.
SALLY: You okay?
GRACE: Not really.
SALLY: You walked out on your husband, didn’t you?
GRACE: How did you know?
SALLY: We get a lot of business that way.
Queenie is dusting the framed photos hanging on the wall behind the bar. She notices that the glass is broken on one.
QUEENIE: Oh, no.
SALLY: What?
QUEENIE: The glass broke.
SALLY: How’d that happen?
QUEENIE: I don’t know.
Queenie shows it to Sally.
SALLY: (to Grace) That’s a picture of all of us at Christmas 1979. Or was it 80?
QUEENIE: 78.
SALLY: The good old days.
ARTHUR: We had some of those.
GRACE: But where do memories get you?
QUEENIE: Beats the hell out of me.
SALLY: That was the year you and Walter got the jukebox.
QUEENIE: Yeah. And he kept playing that Billie Holiday song over and
over again ... I’m gonna love you, like nobody’s loved you,
come rain or come shine. God it depressed the hell out of
everybody.
SALLY: Yeah, those were good times.
GRACE: (looking at the photo) You look so happy.
QUEENIE: I was.
GRACE: And now?
QUEENIE: Now what?
GRACE: Are you happy?
QUEENIE: Are you?
GRACE: Not so much.
QUEENIE: What have you got to be unhappy about?
ARTHUR: My point exactly.
GRACE: I feel like I’m missing out on something.
QUEENIE: Like what?
GRACE: Whatever it is that makes everybody else happy.
QUEENIE: What makes you think everybody else is happy?
GRACE: They can’t all feel the way I do.
QUEENIE: So that’s why you walked out on your husband?
GRACE: I guess so.
QUEENIE: If people could find the answers in here I’d have customers
lined up around the block.
SALLY: (wistfully)Nobody drinks anymore.
GRACE: Is that why you’re selling? Because you can’t find the
answers here?
QUEENIE: There are no answers. Just choices. If you’re lucky you make
the right ones.
ARTHUR: There’s the rub.
QUEENIE: Or at least wrong ones you can live with.
GRACE: Rub a dub dub.
QUEENIE: So why did you leave your husband? He hit you? Cheat
on you?
SALLY: The classics.
GRACE: No.
QUEENIE: Then what?
GRACE: I want to remember things.
SALLY: You got amnesia?
ARTHUR: Something like that.
GRACE: I’d like to remember what it was that I wanted to be.
ARTHUR: You remember, Grace.
GRACE: That’s a lie. I remember I wanted to be a writer. I guess I
want to remember if I ever really believed that I could be one instead of
just a wife and an errand girl.
ARTHUR: Sent by a grocery clerk ...
GRACE: I’m having an apocalypse of the spirit. You know what I
mean?
SALLY: Being a wife ain’t so bad.
GRACE: Are you married?
SALLY: Sort of.
GRACE: Sort of?
SALLY: My Stan’s a truck driver. He hauls frozen shrimp. You might
say we have an icy relationship.
GRACE: That’s too bad.
SALLY: It is what it is.
GRACE: So distance doesn’t make the heart grow fonder?
SALLY: What do you think, Queenie?
QUEENIE:The only thing my heart is growing is old.
SALLY: You got that right.
GRACE: But you get along?
SALLY: Yeah, but we get ours in. Everybody does.
GRACE: Do they?
SALLY: Sure they do.
QUEENIE: Of course they do.
ARTHUR: Do-be-do-be-do.
GRACE: So what do you do?
SALLY: I drive off just like you.
GRACE: Where do you go?
SALLY: Where do you think?
GRACE: And then you go home again?
SALLY: Sure.
GRACE: Because you love him.
SALLY: No. I like the shrimp.
QUEENIE: (To Grace) What’s your husband like?
GRACE: Arthur is a very big person.
SALLY: Lots of people are fat...that don’t mean ...
GRACE: No, he’s big in the sense that he takes up a lot of space. He
always has. That’s one of the reasons I fell in love with him. But it doesn’t
leave much room for anybody else.
ARTHUR: There’s room for both of us, Grace.
GRACE: So I had to shrink. Pretty soon I’m afraid there won’t be
anything left.
QIUEENIE: I’ve always felt too big, ever since I was a kid. It was one of the
reasons I left home. A lot of good it did me. Until I met Walter.
GRACE: Why’s that?
QUEENIE: Walter saved me.
GRACE: How did he save you?
QUEENIE: When I first set foot in this place I was nineteen, strung-out and
scared to death. I couldn’t remember the last decent meal I had. So I walk in
and Walter pours me a drink. He even gave me the sandwich he was eating. Can
you believe that? A total stranger. But I didn’t have any money so I was waiting
for him to go in the back or start talking with somebody so I could sneak out. But
he talked to me all night. Maybe he knew what I was up to, I don’t know, but he
kept me talking and before I knew it he was giving me a job and
a place to stay. He saved my life that night. And I hated him for it for a long
time. But he loved me and pretty soon I loved him back.
GRACE: So you were happy. And then he died.
QUEENIE: What are you going to do? Life’s like that.
SALLY: Life is like Uma Thurman. Beautiful and ugly at the same
time.
Lightning.
GRACE: How is life now?
QUEENIE: It’s different.
Thunder.
SALLY: I think that was nine.
GRACE: Nine what?
SALLY: Nine counts between the lightning and the thunder. It was ten
a minute ago.
GRACE: The’s storm’s getting closer.
ARTHUR: You’re in the thick of it.
SALLY: What does he do? Your husband.
GRACE: He’s a teacher.
ARTHUR: I’m an English professor at Yale who has just won a year long
appointment at Oxford University.
GRACE: He’s an English teacher.
SALLY: That’s nice.
ARTHUR: Why do you do that, Grace? Demote me all the time?
QUEENIE: So why tonight of all nights did you decide to walk out?
GRACE: (She begins to cry.) He invited people to dinner.
QUEENIE: That bastard.
ARTHUR That’s not why.
GRACE: And we’re moving again.
ARTHUR: That’s not why either.
GRACE: And I can’t remember what it feels like to be happy. And I don’t want to
pretend it doesn’t matter anymore.
ARTHUR: Bingo.
SALLY: Boy.
QUEENIE: Who wants a drink?
Grace shakes her head. Sally raises her beer bottle. Queenie gets her another.
GRACE: When Arthur and I met it was so wonderful. We were so in love and I was so
proud to be with him that I didn’t mind that everything revolved around his career.
I didn’t realize that I was beginning to fade away.
SALLY: You take things awful hard, don’t you, Gracie?
GRACE: I’m going to be forty and I can honestly say that I’ve never accomplished
anything of my own that I am truly proud of. Not really. Not anything big, you
know? Arthur has gotten ahead in everything he’s tried and I’ve gotten nowhere.
And the further ahead he gets in his life, the further behind I get in mine. It’s
like I have to swim in his wake.
ARTHUR: Then swim faster, Grace.
GRACE: It’s not even that. I mean I’m happy for him. I think. No, I am. I am happy for
him. But it’s like I’m on this bus somebody else is driving and I’ve missed my stop.
ARTHUR: Mixing metaphors. I’d take points off for that.
GRACE: And the driver keeps driving and I keep ringing the bell but he keeps going and
I’m going to have to ride this same stupid bus all the way to the end of the line.
ARTHUR: Why not jump, Grace?
GRACE: Because I’m afraid to jump!
SALLY: Of course, the bus is moving!
GRACE: But I’m tired of being afraid.
SALLY: It’s okay, Gracie. You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. You’ll see.
You’ll go home tonight and you and hubby will make up and everything will be
fine. Tomorrow you won’t even remember what you fought about.
QUEENIE: So, you gonna jump?
GRACE: I don’t know. How do you ever know? It’s like a game, but you get your pieces
one at a time so how can you know how to move?
SALLY: You okay?
GRACE: Not really.
SALLY: You walked out on your husband, didn’t you?
GRACE: How did you know?
SALLY: We get a lot of business that way.
Queenie is dusting the framed photos hanging on the wall behind the bar. She notices that the glass is broken on one.
QUEENIE: Oh, no.
SALLY: What?
QUEENIE: The glass broke.
SALLY: How’d that happen?
QUEENIE: I don’t know.
Queenie shows it to Sally.
SALLY: (to Grace) That’s a picture of all of us at Christmas 1979. Or was it 80?
QUEENIE: 78.
SALLY: The good old days.
ARTHUR: We had some of those.
GRACE: But where do memories get you?
QUEENIE: Beats the hell out of me.
SALLY: That was the year you and Walter got the jukebox.
QUEENIE: Yeah. And he kept playing that Billie Holiday song over and
over again ... I’m gonna love you, like nobody’s loved you,
come rain or come shine. God it depressed the hell out of
everybody.
SALLY: Yeah, those were good times.
GRACE: (looking at the photo) You look so happy.
QUEENIE: I was.
GRACE: And now?
QUEENIE: Now what?
GRACE: Are you happy?
QUEENIE: Are you?
GRACE: Not so much.
QUEENIE: What have you got to be unhappy about?
ARTHUR: My point exactly.
GRACE: I feel like I’m missing out on something.
QUEENIE: Like what?
GRACE: Whatever it is that makes everybody else happy.
QUEENIE: What makes you think everybody else is happy?
GRACE: They can’t all feel the way I do.
QUEENIE: So that’s why you walked out on your husband?
GRACE: I guess so.
QUEENIE: If people could find the answers in here I’d have customers
lined up around the block.
SALLY: (wistfully)Nobody drinks anymore.
GRACE: Is that why you’re selling? Because you can’t find the
answers here?
QUEENIE: There are no answers. Just choices. If you’re lucky you make
the right ones.
ARTHUR: There’s the rub.
QUEENIE: Or at least wrong ones you can live with.
GRACE: Rub a dub dub.
QUEENIE: So why did you leave your husband? He hit you? Cheat
on you?
SALLY: The classics.
GRACE: No.
QUEENIE: Then what?
GRACE: I want to remember things.
SALLY: You got amnesia?
ARTHUR: Something like that.
GRACE: I’d like to remember what it was that I wanted to be.
ARTHUR: You remember, Grace.
GRACE: That’s a lie. I remember I wanted to be a writer. I guess I
want to remember if I ever really believed that I could be one instead of
just a wife and an errand girl.
ARTHUR: Sent by a grocery clerk ...
GRACE: I’m having an apocalypse of the spirit. You know what I
mean?
SALLY: Being a wife ain’t so bad.
GRACE: Are you married?
SALLY: Sort of.
GRACE: Sort of?
SALLY: My Stan’s a truck driver. He hauls frozen shrimp. You might
say we have an icy relationship.
GRACE: That’s too bad.
SALLY: It is what it is.
GRACE: So distance doesn’t make the heart grow fonder?
SALLY: What do you think, Queenie?
QUEENIE:The only thing my heart is growing is old.
SALLY: You got that right.
GRACE: But you get along?
SALLY: Yeah, but we get ours in. Everybody does.
GRACE: Do they?
SALLY: Sure they do.
QUEENIE: Of course they do.
ARTHUR: Do-be-do-be-do.
GRACE: So what do you do?
SALLY: I drive off just like you.
GRACE: Where do you go?
SALLY: Where do you think?
GRACE: And then you go home again?
SALLY: Sure.
GRACE: Because you love him.
SALLY: No. I like the shrimp.
QUEENIE: (To Grace) What’s your husband like?
GRACE: Arthur is a very big person.
SALLY: Lots of people are fat...that don’t mean ...
GRACE: No, he’s big in the sense that he takes up a lot of space. He
always has. That’s one of the reasons I fell in love with him. But it doesn’t
leave much room for anybody else.
ARTHUR: There’s room for both of us, Grace.
GRACE: So I had to shrink. Pretty soon I’m afraid there won’t be
anything left.
QIUEENIE: I’ve always felt too big, ever since I was a kid. It was one of the
reasons I left home. A lot of good it did me. Until I met Walter.
GRACE: Why’s that?
QUEENIE: Walter saved me.
GRACE: How did he save you?
QUEENIE: When I first set foot in this place I was nineteen, strung-out and
scared to death. I couldn’t remember the last decent meal I had. So I walk in
and Walter pours me a drink. He even gave me the sandwich he was eating. Can
you believe that? A total stranger. But I didn’t have any money so I was waiting
for him to go in the back or start talking with somebody so I could sneak out. But
he talked to me all night. Maybe he knew what I was up to, I don’t know, but he
kept me talking and before I knew it he was giving me a job and
a place to stay. He saved my life that night. And I hated him for it for a long
time. But he loved me and pretty soon I loved him back.
GRACE: So you were happy. And then he died.
QUEENIE: What are you going to do? Life’s like that.
SALLY: Life is like Uma Thurman. Beautiful and ugly at the same
time.
Lightning.
GRACE: How is life now?
QUEENIE: It’s different.
Thunder.
SALLY: I think that was nine.
GRACE: Nine what?
SALLY: Nine counts between the lightning and the thunder. It was ten
a minute ago.
GRACE: The’s storm’s getting closer.
ARTHUR: You’re in the thick of it.
SALLY: What does he do? Your husband.
GRACE: He’s a teacher.
ARTHUR: I’m an English professor at Yale who has just won a year long
appointment at Oxford University.
GRACE: He’s an English teacher.
SALLY: That’s nice.
ARTHUR: Why do you do that, Grace? Demote me all the time?
QUEENIE: So why tonight of all nights did you decide to walk out?
GRACE: (She begins to cry.) He invited people to dinner.
QUEENIE: That bastard.
ARTHUR That’s not why.
GRACE: And we’re moving again.
ARTHUR: That’s not why either.
GRACE: And I can’t remember what it feels like to be happy. And I don’t want to
pretend it doesn’t matter anymore.
ARTHUR: Bingo.
SALLY: Boy.
QUEENIE: Who wants a drink?
Grace shakes her head. Sally raises her beer bottle. Queenie gets her another.
GRACE: When Arthur and I met it was so wonderful. We were so in love and I was so
proud to be with him that I didn’t mind that everything revolved around his career.
I didn’t realize that I was beginning to fade away.
SALLY: You take things awful hard, don’t you, Gracie?
GRACE: I’m going to be forty and I can honestly say that I’ve never accomplished
anything of my own that I am truly proud of. Not really. Not anything big, you
know? Arthur has gotten ahead in everything he’s tried and I’ve gotten nowhere.
And the further ahead he gets in his life, the further behind I get in mine. It’s
like I have to swim in his wake.
ARTHUR: Then swim faster, Grace.
GRACE: It’s not even that. I mean I’m happy for him. I think. No, I am. I am happy for
him. But it’s like I’m on this bus somebody else is driving and I’ve missed my stop.
ARTHUR: Mixing metaphors. I’d take points off for that.
GRACE: And the driver keeps driving and I keep ringing the bell but he keeps going and
I’m going to have to ride this same stupid bus all the way to the end of the line.
ARTHUR: Why not jump, Grace?
GRACE: Because I’m afraid to jump!
SALLY: Of course, the bus is moving!
GRACE: But I’m tired of being afraid.
SALLY: It’s okay, Gracie. You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. You’ll see.
You’ll go home tonight and you and hubby will make up and everything will be
fine. Tomorrow you won’t even remember what you fought about.
QUEENIE: So, you gonna jump?
GRACE: I don’t know. How do you ever know? It’s like a game, but you get your pieces
one at a time so how can you know how to move?
Emily Dodi is a senior editor with SANCTUARY. The above excerpt is from Drive, a full-length play that premiered at Company of Angels in Los Angeles.
