Grand Hotel

Hello, and welcome to

The Grand. A princely place

Where one can live

Deliciously. Here you will find

Innumerable ways to dine,

And to recline, and indeed wax

Fresh through the abundance

Of our delicacies. We succor

At your every whim, and believe

You will relish your stay.

(Who can open the doors of its face?)

A wolven shriek –

Many slow minutes pass. Shhh:

(Scrape, scrape;

Scratch, scratch.)

Act I.

Beginning. Earliest morning gloom. An egress in grisaille.

Upstairs and downstairs. Suffocate, sunk in ashen shush.

Shadows gape in huge surge of black geometry.

Yawning form, membranous. Flora of failing womb.

Dusk smeared on face of deep.

[ii.]

Kitchen: mallow-wan glow from meat freezer, respirating in kind.

Shallow, viscous crackle, in, and out.

Silt-soft becoming, lacerating whimper or wheeze of lung.

Expectant sleep in pallid blue.

[i.]

One cold light in the closet, flitting, fulvous, having one jagged, conspicuous filament,

Revealing a small space flossed thick with cream-white film, containing a big trunk.

Bessie covered in bird feathers and dust. Circumscribed in squalid dark.

Moments pass.

[iii.]

Figure at front desk, somnolent, though standing.

Dim leak of yellow light from door behind, slightly ajar.

Faint whistling beyond.

Frisson, a puff of white feathers from the open trunk.

The light flickers off.

Indigo gloom.

Silhouette rises from beneath stove.

Lights pilot, begins to stew.

Studies contents.

Nervous filament returns with frigid flitting.

Bessie has not moved.

Rudy: Did you seal the crack?

Cordula (in the trunk):

From what do we hatch?

Pause.

Gus (behind the door): Lumen or larynx?

Cake or giant fabergé?

No response. Moments pass.

Cook: Get out.

Nothing happens.

Poodle?

Bessie hacks out a mouthful of white dust.

Rudy (dry): Wall.

Something on your face, my dear.

Bessie (rasping): Egg.

Gus: Which? Kitchen slit?

Or maybe big strawberry.

Rudy: Linen closet.

Ask Eva- Slight pause.

Time to stew.

Pause.

Gus: I’m fist deep in viscera.

And warming- Pause.

Lost my lines

And lunch

Among the linen.

Pause.

Another puff of feathers from the trunk.

Friend: She can soak a minute longer.

Your lover is still up there,

Fishing.

Time passes.

Cook (cold, exasperated): We drowned it in brandy

After stuffing its throat: plump and saturate,

She gushes grappa out the eyes.

Cordula: Already sewn things unravel,

And Chinese boxes appear suddenly empty... Pause.

Bessie: The dry run was bosh.

Cordula makes an inquisitive noise from within the trunk.

Bessie: Shit, Cordula. Pause.

Our slow hour is gone;

Cordula (indifferent, murmuring to herself):

And that which has passed is greater

Than that which is to come... No response.

Moments pass.

The morning feed draw forth

Gus: When did you find him?

I fear the stiffness.

(A moist morass of graping maw).

Rudy: Dolores delivered him at midnight,

A mutilation of mascara and wet squall,

Difficult to disentangle-

Evening will be hotter,

Louder, less distinct.

Thought he might have sucked down

Some of her venereal pommade-

Let me lie a little with the meats.

No answer.

Gus: No. Eats through gut.

Throat is lacquered with saliva,

The lining glossed and lesionless,

Though lacerated slightly:

Must be something sharp. Pause.

Cook (whispering): Wally may well be

Leering through the vents. Pause.

Friend (entranced): Our haven here is ventless,

With nowhere left to peer,

All drawn by hook, we splay,

Released from swathe of skin,

Arrayed in row by length of limb

Or wing. Expectant without waiting,

Still, we stay our dispensation,

And fulfillment.

Pause.

(drifting, intimately to the meats)

Cool, cerulean

Seclusion, impossibly lovely, limned

In little crystals, indelible.

Cook stops stewing and stares into freezer with dumb lust and wonder.

[Long empty nothing.]

Rudy (sighs): And to think this morning

Ms. Flower planned at last to press

Her vaunted scarlet constellation in the mud- Pause.

Gus (wry): Plenty of bitumen in the vat.

Rudy (dull, oblivious): No use now.

Sodden with grief,

She pours it out in one of her

Deep tissue interrogations.

[iv.]

Dolly receives reporters during a massage session in the flower suite.

Room is a mess of champagne flutes, spilled ash trays,

Astrological ephemera, glamor magazines.

Her rollicking roulade interjected by batteries of investigative query-flurry.

Face down, she begins to disgorge.

Dolly: Oh hungry, hungry Ciacco! my precious little piggy! your ringlets wriggle in another realm - oh

how you glutted this wayward girl with sticky kisses - spoiled me rot and sloppy with wet, wet —

(mewling) well Wally, yes Mister Wally Walter Mann, who clave the stone and brought the lovely liquid to

the lusty dreamers - has personally pledged my precious piggy’s scrupulous perusal and prognosis by an

amateur mortician of this magnificent monument’s august maintenance staff - oh I was moved beyond

breath or bleating - only an artist could apprehend it - parasitic sycophants can suck away - but amateurs

perform for love alone - I trust the thirsty thrall’s aesthetic predilection will preserve my love’s

unutterably perfect composition for the sacrament - (turns) stuff it! - I will not stomach another screech

about this sometime-once-ex-candy of the eye - just another casualty of crow and clicking clock - (off) as

sweet Ciacco was - (on) well that’s time for you - that fat salivating cannibal who razes all the innocent

and slime - tick tock tick, he snorts - what?? - widow?! you flay me - (tenuto) sickening scriptural striata -

naturally, denied and reviled - why, abstention from breathing! - infallible elixir of annulment - annulment

at least, if not outright redaction will I rake for - the who and how and when of the events are all

inconsequential - nor can I disclose to you the silver secret of my fascination - you see there is a method

to my mosaic, marital, mongrel, or otherwise - (melting again) oh Ciacco darling, mother can see you

now, your little ears akimbo, mellifluously micturating, mercifully on bench or tree (though already I must

admit I miss your must) - oh Ciacco - sweet, beloved Ciacco - your curlicues bobble no more!

Wrests herself from thrall of huge Hungarian Masseur,

Covering herself in gilt duvet, revealing thick cream-green face mask.

Insects! I should snuff the lights and souse you all in pesticide - the viaticum is this evening -

I’m off to gather oils.

Exit with flourish.

Gus: A solemn scene.

Rudy (unamused): Keep slushing, Gus.

Whistling starts again.

Moments pass.

Cook (still transfixed by the mallow glow, barely a quiver under breath): Like jasper.

Moments pass.

Bessie has not moved.

Cordula peers out of the trunk. Only her eyes and fingers (curled over the rim) are visible.

Cordula: Bessie-

Tonight. I want to watch. Pause.

Bessie (with a smidgeon of excitement):

I saw her strike the set.

Strange and extravagant.Sea silk, Larkspur, White Iris.

Cordula (dreamily): (Sunset in the Elysian lagoon.)

Bessie: She has supplied her own linens

(Otherwise I would subject them

To the lamp.)

Cordula: Augurs grime-

Bessie: Abomination.

Cordula: Sweet savor.

Bessie [Together]: Perhaps the picture of the year.

Comes to. Cook: Friend, I have something of interest to share.

Bends beneath stove and digs in cupboard. Clatter of pot and pan.

Cordula: Your marauding Adonis,

Gives sweet plunder and plum.

Pause. Bessie razes with stone-carved glare.

Bessie (low): Rudy wades in murk.

Let him grope there. Pause.

Gulping sound. Bessie places a hand on her gut.

Rises holding the stolen reel.

Friend, eyes agape, bearing skewered chicken carcass, emerges from the freezer.

Another noise, sharper and more deep. Cordula peeks her head out of the trunk. A blue-beaked bird mask

covers her snout, the upper rostrum covered in long, luxuriant, white whisker-like setae. Fear and

fascination in her eyes. Bessie reacts in mechanistic unison, then moves to peer through a small crack in

the wall. Cordula attends with seething excitement.

Friend (quivering): Is that-

Cordula (quiver in her voice):

Is he alone? Pause.

Cook (beaming): The filthiest one.

With boiler

And sluice?

Friend (speechless stutter): Oh, [how,] wonderful-

(lower, hungrier) Can you get a little

Glimpse below the brow? Pause.

Cook: -Abomination-

(lower still) I thirst.

Friend [Together]: -A sweet savor-

Moments pass with no response.

Bessie: The water is out. Pause.

Cook: For us, friend.

Long pause.

Cordula: Psssst...Pause.

(incisive sibiliant) Psssst...

Cordula holds up a small book (one limb, three fingers). Eyes affixed to crack, Bessie maunders backward

(as by suction), then sees, gapes, takes, and reading, crawls inside (the trunk).

Friend (breathless, nigh salivation):

How did you filch it?

(Fulvous filament flickers off.)

Cook: Late one night

I scoured the Oscura.

(Our keeper is the hog

Who hoards the smut.)

Why do you think

I rasp the hinge and

Rake the molten brass

Amid the fumes?

Sniffs.

Morning tar

Stings the nostrils:

They’ve started on the pipes.

Sticky lips and rampant

Music trail in wake.

Remember friend,

Though we smolder here,

Unsheltered from scorch

Or rising steam:

We manipulate the gut.

They cook, accompanied by faint hacking and festering accordion ooze.

Gus: Did we discover the stench?

Rudy: Leeches on floor one

Hoard oyster and clam.

Room is a morass

Of corroding crustacean,

Or so reports Cordula.

Gus: And Arby? Our grandiose auteur?

Rudy: Checked out this morning

A casualty of mirrors

(Angle of the glass

Did not become

The breadth and bounty of his-)

Gus (frivolous melisma): -Visionary loveliness-

Rudy (curt): Find it.

Before the hacking.

Gus: When does it begin?

Rudy: At breakfast time-

You’ll hear the band.A cosmetic approach;

Mr. Mann insists.

Enter Norma, luxuriously glum and overripe.

Rudy: Good morning, Ms. Veen.

Norma (listless, valium veneer):

Have my hyacinths arrived?

Rudy: Not yet,

Anemones though, on the hour,

Daffodils, Larkspur, White Iris-

Norma: Are they freshly cut and soaked,

Or will they wilt before they see another day?

Rudy (raising his hand, fingers curled, stiff and askew):

My swollen yellow

Cuticles to testify:

The corinaria are regal,

Mallow-blue and blush,

Prostrate or plié, they sigh;

You will melt, Norma.

They have been brought to your room.

Lovingly, I fleeced them of fly larvae.

Let the iris seethe a while:

They feed heavily.

Norma: I’ll return for the resins this afternoon.

Norma ascends the grand staircase, levitating in silver lamé.

Gus (mordacious): Though I pluck the strings

You are truly the trouvère, Rudy.

Rudy (glazing over): She was a queen, Gus.

With a wrist to rend the heart or something like it- Slight pause.

This evening’s picture promises to be

Disgracefully fascinating.

Band music seeping in from the trattoria, continental, asthmatic.

Workers arrive and take to the pipes in the lobby.

Cook puts finished dish by kitchen slit, violently dings bell.

(squawks) First birdy of the day, Baldi!

(to friend) (Sickening what they ingest on waking.)

A few acoustical corrections; should sharpen

The metronome of meats.

Baldi attends, zombie-like,

and ferries dish to trattoria with abject sobriety,

thinking in ventriloquized soprano voice:

(amorously) …margarine...!

(Yielding to soft sigh expressing deliciously

ephemeral delight of self-satisfied self-pity.)

Rudy (sighs): Our seasonless rotunda

Ever in media res.

Gus (blasé, yet somehow genuine): A miracle really:

How plumbing goes up!

Bell, pipe, and pan mingle anemic in musical miasma.

All asimmer in the rasp and rhythm of digestion.

Sound and smell wake the beast.

Wally (peering into the kitchen through a crack in the wall, begins as indeterminate grumble):

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-meatstock -

Leak of legume, and garlic, leek, djjjjjjjjj-gelatinous - mmmmmm -

Ffffffroth, mmmmmmmmm (cresc.) sssssssssss-sticky froth -

Djjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-gelatinous [glob] (very low) jiggle, jiggle - [platter of gelatinous glob] (under breath

[lllll,ppppp]) (b)lap, (b)lap, (b)lap - ssssssssticky, sticky (l)lap, (l)lap --- (unanticipated arrival, sharp

cresc.) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssspic! - ssssssssssssticky aspic! -

(open, rhotic rrr, enormous melisma) Ambrosian aspic -

(ritornello) meatstock - (b)lap, (b)lap, - leak (breath) treacle of meatstock -

(sniff, something new) Fat - fat of the kidney,

And fat of the kidneys of lambs,

(fast) (b)lap, (b)lap, (b)lap - fishstock? or flush of fowl? Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm-----

(low) Squab - Cooks begin to butcher a chicken. (low) (bbb)broth of squab -

He notices with delight. (stuttering at first) mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm - (pieno di canto, ppppp) Poulet!

(soft) Paunch it. (with increasing excitement) Flume, lade, leet, flue, sluice (glottal) clotter of the thorax!-

Fat, fat, flanks of fat! Collops of fat on the flanks! (low) haunch - plumpous haunch - sticky and plump -

pluck it - pluck, plunk, plunk the pipe! - (joyously, glottal) g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-gizzard-bbbbblllizzard!

(subito come prima) - mmmmmmmmmmmmm-br(rr-rhotic, glottal)o(--fry)th - br(rr)o(--)th - (lower)

Meatstock. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm-meat (breath) sto(-)ck - Leaves the crack.

Listens to the band. Interest rekindled. (languorous, searching, suspicious) mmmmmmmmmmm-music...

Maunders (as though sore from riding) over to the trattoria to watch guests eat.

Breakfast time.

Veen and Lester sit opposite one another at a table in the trattoria.

Lester is draped in a large sheet of white linen (like a sad little ghost) that dangles nearly to the floor

(though leaving enough vertical space from which to regard the soon-to-be steady dribble of drool and

meat-parts).

Lester: - Before the yellow leak

There comes the stiffness - along with

Lacerating whimper or wheeze of lung -

First a shallow, viscous crackle, then acerbic

Secretion boring through tooth and jaw,

Concludes like clockwork, cataleptic clenching and clatter

Of the chops, molesting mandible somniloquy, and

On caustic occasion, merciless neuralgia caked in not-

Unlikely acid-acrid reckoning of milk or overmeating-

Infirmity and aftertaste, impossible to parse. They say:

Reading prognosis papers (crinkling them under sheet).

“Abstain from all materia medica, immoderate

Musical immersions, or anything that thinks to

Thaw the mind, for fetid fever or, worse, fictive

Euphoria festers on the crest of consciousness (paren.) exempli

Gratia: cocooning in mental emulsions which resist arrest and

Cannot be deprived of their roundliness. conferatur: abstruse or

Prurient obsessions, aesthetic ecstasies, et cetera. (end paren.)

Baldi arrives, utterly expressionless, places dish, implicitly locuting:

Ortolan for Lester Luria Gall.

Thank you, Baldi. Leaves.

My throat is thick with dust

And I pant for thirst-

Is the water still out?

Veen: Esophagus and gooseflesh

Foretell a desert bloom.

No water, but plenty

Of baste to lap from the bird.

Steep in her scent a while:

Under linen one feels

Deliciously unseen.

Lester (ignoring him, visibly by meat-treacle):

Like the lamps are out

In a windowless room.

Cold comfort or sterility,

A little sad. Strange sensation,

Not altogether unpleasant.

Why white gloves, Veen?

Veen: Procedural modesty - a

Malediction of blue.

We all have our softnessess -

(Mine are shucked from shells) -

And lyric, profuse,

I spill when cut. [Slight pause.]

Espies Lester and Veen breakfasting together (and rather

displeased with this morning’s dining couture).

Have you been to the pool?

Lester: Not yet,

Moth-like, I scale in

Sun - though I think

I’ll have a dip

This afternoon.

Begins grumbling and groaning in gastronomical frustration.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-modesty!

Mmmmmmmm-meager dross and driblet

Of sleevesdroppings!

Veen: The chemicals

Are soothing to the skin.

Hack and wheeze in fullest morning bloom. Someone approaches the front desk. Gus in extremis.

Rudy (amiable automaton): Good morning and welcome to

Gus (unheeded, behind the door): Rudy!

Rudy: The Grand, a princely place

Gus: Rudy!

Rudy: Where one can live [Deliciously.]

Gus: Pssssttttttt -

[Wally:] Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

-membranous-sssssssssssssssss (breath, cresc.)

ssssssssssssssmmmmmmmmmear it with butter-

Rudy: Deliciously. Here you will find

Gus: The katechon,

Rudy: Innumerable ways to dine,

Gus: It’s cresting,

[Wally:] (angrily) Can cluck the clotted caul and

taste-toss the mmmmmmmmmmmmm-membranoussssss

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssP(staccato)ects of

purl and burble-([l]lap-[b]lap-[b]lap)-in my upburping[glottal ggg]-

[Veen:] And for the fleecy brains

(craven) Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm-meatparts-

Directing Lester’s attention to the theater with effete gesticulation of the wrist...

Might I advise a silver [Display:]

Mmmmmmmmarshes and brooks of honey and butter-

(vivid crimsoning of face in cresc. of hot ire)

Display: La Maria Oscura,

Veiled here in sackcloth-chic,

Rudy: And to recline, and indeed wax [Fresh]

[Wally:] Eat. Eat full and fill you with fatness-

Gus: Evicting through-

(Behind the black); Lester turns (still under sheet,

visibly excited or agitated by rising globule of mucus).

Rudy: Fresh through the abundance

Gus: Constriction - convulsion;

[Wally:] ‘Til your fangs be flossed thick with sinew and fat-

Rudy: Of our delicacies. We succor

[Veen:] Many feel the pictures have

Gus: Paroxysmus Poodlissimus!

[Wally:] ‘Til it be loathsome unto you, and the flesh come out your nostrils - ere it be chewed-

Rudy: At your every whim, and believe

Gus: Piggy’s crowning!

[Wally:] Eat full and gggggggggg-gorge you with fffffffffffffffff-

Rudy: You will relish your stay.

A mollifying effect.

---

A rigor mortis induced splat of gall -

Or Lester’s thorax-throttling sneeze -

Or the flying spittle from Wally’s “F’s” and “P’s” -

Takes us to the fabled “Maria Oscura”, scrawled sexily in hot pink neon cursive on a vintage marquee.

Underneath, a sign reading “Sphinx”, the tired rerun that plays to an audience of two:

Bunny and Flo slobber in stupid amazement. They slurp up the flicks while fist deep in a massive bucket

of shellfish, which they dispose of with seasoned nonchalance.

Bunny: Nothing like a silver soak -

Flo: -Sleigh ride in a sea of glass -

Bunny: -sweet honey scroll of things become (became) -

Flo: -dissolve in waste of echo, unobserved -

Bunny: -like ripples in suspended waterfall (on flowerwall) -

Flo: -or rivula of lava limned in rime -

Bunny (gaping, turning to mush): -all glaze of iris sheen or opal -

Flo (feebly completing the non-thought): -opal luster in saliva-lake salon -

Bunny: -relinquish limb and eye -

Flo (again, blurrier): -or relish full this wallow rind -

Bunny (fuzzier): -molasses milk of mannequins in clay --- (with Flo) maim me madly mining my own ---

Flo (incoherent mumbling): -to intimately mutter-melt me miming my own [mind] [coincides with:]

Baldi, inexplicably present with enormous joystick in back of the theater, changes the channel:

Bunny (breaking flow): Oh darling, is Dolly not divine in this filthy horsey? -

Flo: Dolores Cornelia Flower: our dirty divorceé!

Bunny: Did you rake the newsies about her husband Ciacco? - Late! -

Flo: Passé! When queens hit peak dazzle,

They come to the caves -

Bunny (hideous eagerness, overglazing): And to think she could be preening by the pool!

Baldi, utterly expressionless and without amusement, clicks:

Flo (weeping): This one really muddles my insides -

Bunny (ecstatic): Finally being told where to climax! -

Flo (stuffing face with mollusk): These pictures are not for the floozy of heart -

Bunny: It’s as though they see me here! To feel authored, possessed -

Flo (grinning like a piggy): Gleefully maneuvered in the gulch!

Baldi yanks:

Bunny (gauzily, spewing oyster-parts from mouth): Ah, this pretty pulpous pile of the past -

Flo: Years ago I could marinate in Norma Veen every morn -

Bunny (sobbing like a puma): Oh life-ache of years and time long bye!

Flo: She was deliquescent in that monster reel -

Bunny: (That kind of thing that gives me psychic indigestion) -

Flo: Where all the sea-things gather on the surface and bellow unintelligibly -

Bunny: Sea Beast?

Flo: No -

Bunny: Wooly Slug?

Flo: Not that -

Bunny: Typhon and the Putti?

Flo: - the one with all the bleeding trees and the three-headed goo-sucking hydro-mutt [that fertilizes] -

Bunny (recalling): - where they slither down a mound of head-high [corpses]-

Flo: Aquaduct!

Bunny (with vapid pride in her enduring capacity to muse): What are we without gulp and flush? [coincides with]

Flip:

Bunny (turning): Oh delight and delectation!

Flo: With ensemble cast to boot!

Bunny: A bona fide feline brawl!

Flo: I’m sticky with mirth! -

Bunny: I’m positively purulent with pictographic pleasure! -

Flo: I sweat! -

Bunny: I slop! - (squeals) Baldi! Dings clandestine bell.

Rewind and begin again.

Flo: More clams?

Finishes out reel: ———————————————————————————————————————————

Scene becomes salon.

Mid-morning in the Gilded Lily.

Dolly reads garbage in a kimono, feet in bucket.

Norma paints her nails with porcelain aplomb.

Eva in robe on massage table in the corner, cream-green face mask, curlers, et al,

Reclining comme un objet on her side. Her tootsies tarried by Cordula.

(Simmering tension that cannot be cut with a katana.)

Dolly attempts to hold court.

Dolly (really tasting ‘l’ and ‘k’): I love a good soak.

Cordula licks her lips.

Dolly: Are you molting for the pool, Ms. Lamarre?

Eva glares icily through her icing goo.

Cordula: Eva is saving her voice for the evening performance.

Dolly: I see. (ponderous) In silver we simply display. Pause.

Some feel the theater is waning,

Or find that its affect offends a certain

Modern sensibility, which suckles at

The subtle searching of the eye. Pause.

Well I think it’s grand:

Connoisseurs can clink,

But a good show really

Grabs the gut. No one reacts.

For some time, Dolly, seething, watches Norma paint.

I see with satisfaction that your nails

Have grown long and sharp. Pause.

Do let Cordula caress them;

She does not gnaw, Norma.

Norma (glowering in veronal haze):

Their skin is red and coarse

From twining daffodil and

Asphodel; the wreath would be

Remiss to spread the rash. Pause.

I am sorry for your loss, Dolores.

Dolly: Thank you.

It has been a trying morning.

I am desiccated as a desert sponge.

Wally was kind to import water

And wafer for the evening service.

For now I succor only through

Ablution, and steep in things

Less fleeting than our little stars:

(A consultation with the columns).

Lashes glossy rag in open palm, twice (smack, smack).

Cordula (aside to Eva): (-metaphysic of the feeble mind-)

Norma (interest piqued ever so slightly):

What do they say about tomorrow?

Long oxygenless caesura, heavy breathing.

Dolly: Nothing new, really-

(The spheres divulge their

Hum to us by husk.)

You see I am Venusian,

Swaddled in furs:

Copper queen at her vanity,

Luminous in alkaline reflection,

Whose windswept hull is hung

Opaque with cream of cloud.

Smothering, as deep sea that

Crushes lung,

or rivermelt

Of lava and hot milk.

Ruddier than rose

And white as shush

Of snow:

the lover who

Leaves by day and binds

By dusk, asphyxiating sweetly

In tendril coil, or rush

Of scorching respiration

Over mouth or nape.

Our brightest object,

Unobservable;

Hostile even to extremophiles

Like us, Norma.

She’s exalting in Libra:

That’s Latin for Lipstick.

Cordula: Baggy time, Ms. Flower?

Norma (utterly apathetic): Inauspicious though in aspect.

Dolly (frothing): Not yet, Cordula dearest. Pause.

You did a number with that pumice. Pause.

(It’s like Pompeii down there.)

(cranes neck back to Norma like a slow motion albatross)

How so, darling? Draw back

The blue curtain for this

Purple sap.

Norma (listless): The ice,

Dolores, from whose

Soft dissevered tissues

She was shucked:

(lower) Our

Featureless observer:

Pale blue-green, and

Bloated with greed of

Glass (a hunger

Incestuous);

Wrung by the nacre

Of her neck,

She has become the

Object of his

Stone-carved leer.

Dolly: A certain scintillation

To be studied- no, Norma? In

Assiduous cyan, no less.

Cold, clinical: like latex. Pause.

(whispers) But peel the glove,

And wallow in the black

(Where sight succumbs to

Resonance and lure): there,

We sense her higher octave;

By suck, by surge, by sulfur

Breath, and let his sindark storm

Seduce in sapphire, seraphic.

Norma: The vernal cave

Turns flood to mist

(He is shackled to its keeper

Dolly (speaking over her): Who culls with seeds of

Pomegranate, and honey

From which none can creep) Beckons to Cordula (fingers curled).

His bitter waters seethe below,

She is ravished by the storm,

Swollen with his own salt drink,

Aswirl in waste of wind,

And sick for want of womb,

And heavy with rime and ice,

He casts forth reel, and reel,

She sunders sweetly, her limbs deliquescing in

And lets his roiling tide of carnage pour,

Oceans of liquid diamond,

She is mangled in his twine,

Her likeness glistening in azurite-

Ravished through sinew and bone;

Struggle collapses with lung.

Liver and language fail between them.

Limbs grow slack and gray.

And skin, deciduous. Pause.

Dolly now attends in fear and fascination.

(low) The gas man trails

In their viscid wake,

Sickle in hand, yellow,

Concentric.

Endlessly

Withholding, he stays

His silt-sweet threshing,

And requital.

Slowly trails off.

The eyes gape widely.

Pause.

White knuckles sink

Along the spine.

Completely gone.

Requital,

Sweet requital. Long pause.

Dolly (sotto voce): Mutilator

In the middle of the maze-

Eva, without moving her head, and with the

Lacerating belt of a veteran vaudevillian):

That’s the bull, you scarlet fuck.

Moondown tomorrow he gores

The meridian: should be a lusty

Sight. Screw your skull around

And weep sweet mercy right into

That ruddy little (deep sniff) natal cleft.

Long silence.

Norma (in her own world): Our wheel too is weak from

Whirring, (Hungry friction is a

Rake); white coats have a name

For the big event: some call it a

Crunch, or Rip, or Slurp. A favorite

Epithet is Heat Death (endearing though

Delusive about the sex). Long pause.

Dolly: I have adored you, Norma.

I’ve emulated the tilt of your wrists,

The way you melt among camera and

Klieg. As a girl I would watch you in

A swoon, and wish by hush of whisper

Under breath: press me in crude

And make me glass. Pause.

I’ve admired you,

Norma. I have truly admired you.

Long silence.

Cordula has migrated over to Dolly’s feet (now aloft and baggied beautifully as groceries from the bubble

farm). She then picks up the slough-bucket and brings it to a nearby tub.

All watch as she pours it out, slow, and with relish.

Trickle becomes cascade.

Triptych No. 1 [click click click]

Poolside: a lively scene. Sun, sky, salt and soak, palms and a general pollenous glut of alien flora.

We even brought the band!

Busby B., martini in hand, mid-steep, is soused spankingly woozy in the jacuzzi.

Bunny and Flo ogle, slobber with sloppy abandon over the real life Matineé Idols.

Baldi, sweating in fastidious butlerian penguin, busily obeys while continuing to have no personality.

Lester snots and drinks heavily. Wally looks on as an infant might over its first structurally sound stool.

Cordula, Bessie, Rudy, and Gus are absent though often audibly musing.

Cameramen and yellow newsies click and snap in wing like muzzled vermin.

Norma and Veen lounging center, flanked by Eva and Dolly. Star-spangled shades, big beach brollies and

heart-shaped lollies;

All Lido-like in baby blue and white stria.

A tableau of high manners and Olympian couture.

Bathers (tutti):

Flick, fleck.

Pip, pop.

Dib, dab.

All in stipple.

Tip, tap. (Pit, pat.)

Blip, blot. (Drip, drop.)

Spot, speck. (Pin-prick!)

Falling tinsel. (Drizzle, Dazzle.)

Dappled daylight draws (drops)

Pixels in the sky

Through the black velvet drapes

Of the eyelid;

Yellow-red-(and)-blue-green

Cinders on the fly,

Tracing Jupiter twirling in trine

With Europa, her parasol plumes

Two hundred miles spiral-high:

We swill their rivers of yolk

And brooks of honey and butter;

Hot streams of carnelian stain in

Jasper dye (her lilting, languid sigh)

For compassion will pass away

And resolve will wilt,

Along with that great golden klieg

In the ochre-dusted sky (Oh my):

Paradise is a grand gateau!

For the mountains will drop sweet wine

And the hills will melt

Into the glittering gloom (incandescing in)

Of our cotton-candied-rose-flush-and-opaline

Paradise is a plump pink gateau;

Or heaven is a fat pink cake.

Lester knocks over a domino-row

Of Manhattan glasses, Baldi attends.

Lester: Another one of those

Bitter red fennel drinks, Birdy- Hiccups.

Bunny: Oh marvelous Matineé Idyll!

Flo: Matins for mops like us!

Bunny: With a Dauphin to boot!

Flo: Hear he’s got a laundry list

Of liaisons to rake-

Bunny (nauseous): Resplendent!

Veen (to Eva): Rich red sillion shine

For a drought, though

Salt and sand bloom will soon be

A billion times told lovelier!

Cordula (offscreen): Hellish

Harangue of linguistic gewgaw.

Norma (to Wally): Why must we always smother in music?

No muddle of plumbing to mask

En plein air-

Bunny: -all a-tickle with timbrel and harp!

Flo: I melt as a wax figurine!

Gus (offscreen): Was that our daily

Dose of plunk, Mister Rudy?

Rudy (offscreen): They have to dog

It through the pipes, Gus!

Bessie (offscreen): Inspector Mann

Will have a happy hunt by the

Boiler this evening-

Cordula (slowly over her): HVAC-

Gus (still in awe): A miracle

Really: how plumbing

Goes up!

Bathers (in whistle and half-hum): For compassion will pass away

And resolve will wilt...

Dolly (to reporters, who clack insectoid about her): As I have already divulged to you:

I am wrung raw and sapless as a desert sponge-

Lester removes shirt for a dip, the dour sop.

(self-pitiful) Leprous Lester neither moth nor fish-

Veen (a bit lower): You see film-stock is coated

In a gelatinous emulsion,

Limned in little crystals. Smiles.

Bunny: Oh she is sassy in stripes, Flo-

Flo (drooling): Like a limbless stone madonna

(with bathers): Smeared in carmine (Ooo-ooo)-

Bessie: Some pigs really tawny in sun-

Veen: Ah, bronze decor!

Lester snotting. (drunkenly to himself):

Narcissus, Sneezes again. anemone, palm,

And a general pollenous glut of alien flora;

Butterfed renal (retake) bitter red -Hiccups.- minerals

Are soothing to the Hiccups. sinus. Sneezes.

Bunny heaves a big stupid happy sigh and takes out a Gedeon Bible.

Flo: Why so good, Bunny?

Bunny: No more penny stinkies:

All that was left-

A glut though of

Oil and dread in this

Less-than-glossy;

Marked a few hot bites:

Discarded clam shells fall out as she opens the book.

An enormous bounty. Attempts to hide and examine privately.

Yellow leak... Quiet panic.

Veen: Or sepia sky!

(reads lustily with bizarre affectation, rolling r’s, muddling pacing, etc.)

“...arrayed in purple and scarlet colour,

...and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls,...

Dolly (snapping):

The man was a mudlark!

(turning) Not like my sweet Ciacco-

Lacerating whimper or wheeze of lung...

Oh Ciacco, Ciacco; naturally

Your pernicious appetite your undoing-

...having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and

filthiness of her-”

Veen (to Baldi): I’ll have the la brea tar-tare-

Acerbic secretion...

Flo (ravished): Fabulous!

Dolly: Where?

Esophagus...Downs another drink.

Bunny (grins widely): Or this beauty (reads):

Dolly: Koi pond-

Gooseflesh...

Clenching and clatter of chops...

“and all their hosts shall fall down,...

Dolly: A lily lake

With flotsam in the mire-

Gaping mouth widely and weirdly.

Cocooning... emulsions... [(melisma)] roundliness...

...as a falling fig from a fig tree-”

(visibly in agony) Birdy, birdy, bastey bird...

Flo (rapturously rhotic): Ripeness is all!

Veen (musing to himself): Dun coconuts dangle in the breeze-

Flo: Do go on though-

(vainly hollering after Baldi) Burpy!

Points to carnage of Manhattan glasses.

Are these cream-based?

Bunny: This one’s a real saucy drop:

Bathers (tutti): Marco, Marco!

Dolly: Oh please, darlings! You do know what happens to the flatterers (underground)...

“and he was sitting in a summer parlour,...

(stares at tubist in stark terror): ...immoderate musical immersions...

...And he arose out of his seat...

Bathers: For the mountains will drop sweet wine

And the hills will melt

Gus: (Utterly waterlogged-)

...And the haft also went in after the blade;...

Into the glittering gloom (incandescing in)

Rudy/Gus/Bessie/Cordula: Chemicals!

Of our (Wally really relishes this part): cotton-candied-rose-flush-and-opaline

...so he could not draw the dagger

out of his belly; and the-”

Baldi comes over and hands her a drink.

Rudy: (calling offscreen): Wally, Wally!

(and continues): -Meatstock!

(knocking it out of his hand): I said WORMWOOD!

Rudy: Quick! They popped the pipes!

Flo: Tuba al fresco!

Paradise plopped: everyone scuttles from the scene.

Bathers (off screen):

Flick, fleck.

Pip, pop.

Dib, dab.

All in stipple.

Tip, tap. (Pit, pat.)

Blip, blot. (Drip, drop.)

Spot, speck. (Pin-prick!)

Falling tinsel. (Drizzle, Dazzle.)

Dolly carves a clearing through the newsy-hedge, removes her shades to take a peek at the action, and

promptly releases a prolonged primeval screech.

Savage clicking of cameras

and oblivious blowing of brass.

Curtain.