Trainhoppig to Damascus.
The desert.
Train tracks. At some point a freight train starts rolling through.
Darby watches the desert. Does he sing Red River Valley? If he does, it starts with “Come and sit by my side if you love me.”Mary sweeps the giant flashlight across the space a few times. Darby throws a rock, away. She follows the sound. She is very frustrated, cannot find him, and sits down. Darby throws another rock, this time at her -gently. He hits her or comes close.
Darby: Hey.
Mary: Fuck you. I had a fuck of a time finding you.
Darby: Well I wasn’t trying to make it easy.
Mary: I noticed. What is with this bottle? Hana told me you would explain it to me? I fell over and nearly stabbed myself on it chasing you.
Darby: Man I love Hana.
Mary: Well, I don’t. You threw a rock at me.
Darby: I didn’t want you leaving. Well all that effort it took to find me and all. I appreciate the effort.
Mary: You could have torched the whole place.
Darby: Yeah. Um. Can you please apologize to her for that?
Mary: Can I come sit with you?
Beat.
Mary: You were ridiculous.
Beat.
Mary: I hate it when won’t talk to me.
Darby: I want you to know that I’ve sobered up a lot.
Mary: What?
Darby: It could become important and I want you to know that I think I’m more or less completely sober now. The walking, and the cold.
Mary: And the mace?
Darby: Annnnd the mace. You, would, not, believe. How painful mace is. I’m sorry I drank so much.
Mary: I don’t like it when you drink like that.
Darby: Neither do I.
Mary: Even when you don’t try to light things on fire I don’t like it.
Darby: Neither do I.
Mary: So don’t.
Darby: My grandfather was an alcoholic. They say my dad was drunk when the train wrecked. They say it runs in families. They say my grandfather was crazy, too.
Mary: You aren’t crazy, you were drunk. You never would have done that sober.
Darby: True. But did I drink so I could do it? Maybe. May be. Who knows.
Mary: Dammit Darby. Are you still drunk?
Darby: I don’t think so. I don’t know.
Mary: How can you possibly not know?
Darby: I’ve actually got a lot going on right now, it’s kind of hard to sort out.
Mary: How much did you drink?
This should build, as it does in the song: Kiss Off, the Violent Femmes. His singing is more or less continuous over her interjections.
Darby: I drank one.
Mary: One?
Darby: One cause you left me
Mary: I did not leave you.
Darby: And two two two cause you love me.
Mary: What?
Darby: And three three three for my heartache.
And four four four for my headaches
Mary: Those aren’t the words to the song.
Darby: And five five five for my lonely
And six six six for my sorrow
Mary: I didn’t come out here for you to sing at me.
Darby: And seven, seven, n-n-n-no tomorrow
And eight, eight, I forget what eight was for,
Mary: Darby! Darby I want to talk to you.
Darby: But nine, nine, nine for my lost god,
Mary: Stop! Stop!
Darby: And ten ten ten ten is for everything everything everything everything!
Mary: What the fuck is with the god damn singing?
Darby: O, come on, Mary!, get a little more creative with your powers of contextualisaton.
Mary: I have very creative powers of contextualisation. I understand the importance of juxtaposition, and I understand the value of context in quotation, but I do not understand the singing. Because I am not prepared to chase you through the metaphysical landscape of a half-cocked mix tape; I am worn through already from chasing – and possibly (I hope not but possibly) losing – my psychotic boyfriend, who I love very much – in the middle of a distinctly not-meta physical desert in the middle of the night. So. Please just explain the singing.
I’d like to get to the Molotov Cocktail, but we can start with the singing. I’m only trying to get us in the same conversation here. Okay? Anything.
Darby: Life is unreasonable. It doesn’t come with a user guide. There is no customer service
department. It doesn’t even guarantee it’s usefulness or fitness for any given purpose. I certainly never guaranteed my usefulness and especially not fitness for any given purpose.
Mary: Bull shit.
Darby: Says who.
Mary: For three years running now you have told me
you love me.
That is a promise / That is a guarantee
for fitness for a given purpose, Darby:
that you will not descend into drink and break my heart.
Darby: I disagree.
I challenge the terms of the guarantee.
My guarantee to you was to be the sort of person who is unreasonable when betrayed in love.
To throw rocks through windows, try to set houses on fire.
When betrayed in love.
Beat.
Mary: I know. I keep fucking up Darby, but I’m trying not to. I wish I didn’t.
Darby: Was your grandfather an alcoholic too?
Mary: You could try giving me a reason not to fuck up, you know.
Darby: (sings, softly: Ache, Jawbreaker.) I believe in desperate acts – the kind that make you look stupid.
Mary: Please. Stop with the singing.
Darby: (Sung) Just keep reinventing myself. It’s move, or die.
Mary: Please.
Darby: Fuck you. You’ve always been smarter than me. Figure it out, slut.
Beat.
Mary: Fine. For the record, I came. I chased you through the desert, and I found you. I want that on the record. Ariel’s studio is back that way. By the time you crawl back you might be sober enough to operate a motor vehicle. Have at least the decency not to wake Ariel up. One supposes she won’t want to see you after you tried to light her house on fire. Here.
She offers the keys. After a moment he takes them. She offers to go.
Darby: Don’t go. Please. I’m sorry I drank. I’m sorry I’m being an asshole. I’m choking on shit.
I understand how it is for you. I sympathize:
I mean what happens if there is a person –
a person so full of the love of living
so full of – I don’t know –
one dare not say innocence these days, and yet…
Someone who lives so directly from the heart
who puts her heart out into the world
so attuned to every little breath of life
such a sensitive vessel,
a person deserving real love in return because of that,
but in her own way
even if it is not your way –
what happens if this person loves you,
kisses you, seduces you?
What do you do?
You fuck up.
You can’t fight gravity.
Mary: I’m trying.
Darby: No, you’re not.
Mary: We’ve been here before.
Darby: Mary I will make a lousy drunk.
Darby laughs, cries, or both. Maybe he screams.
Darby: O, when did this all become so stupid?
Mary: I can’t remember.
Darby: I want to shave our heads. Forget everything but our love – walk out of these clothes, lose all the shit that weighs us down. Ride off into the sunset / Happily ever after. Free. Unstoppable.
Like.
Like I don’t know, like.
Beat.
Darby: Like that freight train.
Beat.
Mary: Darby?
Darby: Hell with it. Let’s go. Don’t you ever just – want to take off?
Mary: All the time. That’s the problem.
Darby: Let’s go.
Mary: Where?
Darby: I don’t know. West.
Mary: Okay. Let’s go get your car. We can make it to Canyon de Chelley by lunchtime.
Darby: Not the car.
Beat.
Mary: Are you serious?
Darby: Never been more serious in my life.
Mary: You are not talking about hopping trains.
Darby: I’m talking about love. Look, this is stupid. Why are we even fighting?
Mary: Because I keep fucking up.
Darby: And I’m an asshole.
Mary: We’re suffocating.
Darby: Let’s just go.
Mary: Are you out of your mind?
Darby: Possibly.
Mary: Don’t be an idiot, Darby.
Darby: Don’t be bourgeois, Mary.
Mary: Darby stop, you’re making me crazy!
Darby: Hey! That makes two of us / Let’s go / We don’t have much time.
Mary: Where is this train even going?
Darby: Hell if I know, fucked if I care. Away.
Mary: It’s dangerous.
Darby: Everything is dangerous, babe. Otherwise life wouldn’t be worth living.
Mary: Darby, stop. We could be killed.
Darby: Life is a series of inexplicable and traumatic events from which none of us ever escape alive.
Mary: Just think for a minute, Darby. Calm down and think for one minute.
Darby: We don’t have one minute left. Only so many more cars. You have about twenty-five seconds to make this choice. This is the wild heart of living rolling by, and it is happening now. If you pass on this you will regret it for the rest of your life.
Beat.
Darby: Hell, for all we know this train stops in Grants, and we can hitch back before morning. Come on.
I’m not asking everything to change. I’m not even asking that you stop sleeping with Ariel. I’m not asking for anything but that you get on this train with me. Right now.
Mary: Don’t leave me.
Darby offers to board.
Mary: Wait –
Darby: The caboose is coming.
Mary: For God’s sakes, Darby, please!
Darby: I love you.
Beat. He hops the train and is gone.
Mary: Darby! Darby! Goddammit, Darby, GET OFF!
Two or three final cars roll by. Will she hop on? The train is gone. Sound of a train, loud, dangerous.
Mary: Shit. Shit shit shit.
