"I am Rabbi lsidor Chemelwitz... of the Bronx Home for Aged Hebrews." "We are here this morning to pay respect... for the passing of Sarah lronson... devoted wife of..." "Benjamin lronson." "Also deceased." "Loving and caring mother of their sons..." "Morris, Abraham, and Samuel... and their daughters Esther and Rachel." "Beloved grandmother of Max..." "Mark, Louis, Angela..." "Doris, Luke, and Eric." "Eric is a Jewish name?" "A large and loving family." "We assemble that we may collectively mourn... this good and righteous woman." "This woman...." "l did not know this woman." "I cannot accurately describe her attributes... nor do justice to her... dimensions." "She was not a person... but a who/e kind of a person." "The ones that crossed the ocean... that brought with us to America... the vi//ages of Russia and Lithuania." "And how we strugg/ed... and how we fought... for the fami/y... for the Jewish home." "Descendents of this immigrant woman... you do not grow up in America... you, your children, and their children with the goyish names." "You do not live in America." "No such place exists." "Your clay is the clay... of some Litvak shtetl." "Your air is the air of the steppes... because she carried that old world on her back... across the ocean in a boat... and she put it down... on Grand Concourse Avenue." "Or on Flatbush." "You can never make that crossing that she made... for such great voyages in this world do not anymore exist." "But every day of your /ives... the miles, that voyage from that place to this one... you cross... every day." "You understand me?" "In you... that journey... is." "Hold." "I wish I was an octopus, a fucking octopus." "Eight loving arms and all those suckers." "Know what I mean?" "No." "You want lunch?" "No, that's okay." "Ailene, Roy Cohn." "What kind of greeting is that?" "I thought we were friends." "This will take a minute." "Here, eat a little something." "What is this?" "Tasty sandwich here?" "I already told you, it wasn't a vacation, it was business." "I have clients in Haiti." "Listen, Ailene, you think I'm the only lawyer in history... who ever missed a court date?" "Don't make such a big fuck...." "Hold." "You hag." "lf this is a bad time" "No, it's a good time." "Baby doll." "Fuck, wait." "Hello?" "Sorry to keep you holding, Judge Hollins, I just...." "Mrs." "Hollins?" "Yeah, it's Mrs. Ho//ins." "Sorry, dear." "What a deep voice you got." "You enjoying your visit?" "She sounds like a truck driver, he sounds like Kate Smith." "It's very confusing." "Nixon appointed him." "All the geeks are Nixon appointees." "How many tickets, dear?" "Seven?" "For what, Cats, 42nd Street, what?" "You wouldn't like La Cage, trust me." "Trust me, I know." "For God's sake, hold." "Baby doll, seven for Cats or something." "Anything hard to get." "I don't give a fuck what." "Neither will they." "You've seen La Cage Aux Fo//es?" "No." "It's the best thing on Broadway, maybe ever." "Yeah, who?" "Couldn't find her there." "Couldn't see her." "At least I didn't see her in there." "She was.... lt's all right. I'm gonna take the bus." "What do you mean you're gonna take the bus?" "I'll see you there." "How's life in Appeals?" "How's the judge?" "He sends his best." "He's a good man." "Loyal." "Not the brightest man on the bench, although he has manners..." "and a nice head of silver hair." "He gives me a lot of responsibility." "Like writing his decisions and signing his name." "He's a nice man." "You cover admirably." "Thanks, Roy." "Who's this?" "Well, who the fuck are you?" "Hold." "So, baby doll, what?" "t's gonna be Cats." "Cats." "Cats.. it's about cats." "Singing cats." "You'll love it." "8:00." "Theater's always at 8:00." "Fucking tourists." "Eat already, Joe." "For Christ's sake, live a little." "Roy, could you...." "Yeah, what?" "Mrs. Soffer." "Oh, God fucking damn it." "Roy, I really...." "Baby doll, ring up The Post." "Get me Suzy." "Christ!" "Roy." "What?" "Could you please not take the Lord's name in vain?" "I'm sorry, but please." "At least while I'm...." "Right...." "Sorry, fuck." "Only in America." "Baby doll, tell them all to fuck off, tell them I died." "So, Joe." "l'm sorry, Roy, it's just that" "No, no." "Principles count. I respect principles." "I'm not religious, but I like God, God likes me." "Baptist, Catholic, what?" "Mormon." "Mormon?" "Delectable." "Absolutely." "Only in America." "So, Joe, what do you think?" "lt's a...." "lt's a crazy life." "Chaotic." "God bless chaos, though, right?" "Mormons?" "I knew Mormons in Nevada." "Utah, mostly." "No, these Mormons were in Vegas." "How would you like to go to Washington and work for the Justice Department?" "Sorry?" "How would you like to go to Washington... work for the Justice Department." "All I got to do is pick up the phone, talk to Ed, and you're in." "In what, exactly?" "Associate, Assistant, something big." "Internal Affairs, heart of the woods, something nice, with clout." "Ed" "Meese, Attorney General." "All I gotta do is pick up the phone." "But I have to think." "Okay, great time to be in Washington, Joe." "Roy." "It's incredibly-- lt means something to me, too, you understand." "I can't say how much I appreciate this, Roy." "I'm sort of stunned." "Thanks, but I have to give it some thought." "I have to ask my wife." "Your wife, of course." "But I really appreciate it." "Of course." "Talk to your wife." "To deep-throat a man, to give him intense p/easure... a woman can simp/y /ick the penis... without actua//y putting the who/e organ in her mouth... and sti// provide the man with a /ot of p/easure." "When women te// me that they have a prob/em with fe//atio... / often te// them to think of the penis as an ice cream cone." "Scientists say the ho/e in the ozone /ayer high above the Antarctic... is now a record at 7 mi//ion square mi/es." "That's three times the size of the who/e of the United States." "The ho/e appears as a giant b/ue b/ob tota//y covering Antarctica... stretching out to the southern tip of South America." "Scientists say that with the ho/e so big this ear/y in the year... it cou/d be set to grow even bigger." "I wish I could go traveling." "Things aren't right with me." "Cash, check, or credit card?" "You startled me." "Cash, check...." "l remember you." "You're from Salt Lake." "You sold us the plane tickets when we flew here." "What are you doing in Brooklyn?" "You said you wanted to travel." "How thoughtful!" "Mr. Lies... of the lnternational Order of Travel Agents." "We mobilize the globe." "We set people adrift." "We are adepts of motion... aco/ytes of the f/ocks." "Cash, check, or credit card, name your destination." "Antarctica maybe?" "I want to see the hole in the ozone." "l heard on the radio" "We'll arrange a guided tour." "Now?" "Soon, maybe soon." "I'm not safe here, you see." "Weird stuff happens." "Like?" "Like you, for instance." "Just appearing." "Or last week." "Never mind." "People are like planets, you need a thick skin." "Joe stays away, and now look, my dreams are talking back to me." "The price of rootlessness, motion sickness." "Only cure, keep moving." "l'm undecided." "I feel that something's going to give." "It's 1985... fifteen years to the third millennium." "Maybe Christ will come again... or maybe the troubles will come and the end will come." "The sky will collapse and there'll be terrible rain... and showers of poison light...." "Or maybe my life is really fine... maybe Joe loves me and I'm only crazy thinking otherwise." "Or maybe not." "Maybe it's even worse than I know." "Maybe I want to know, maybe I don't." "The suspense, Mr. Lies, it's killing me." "I suggest a vacation." "That was the elevator." "Oh, God, I should fix myself a...." "You have to go." "You shouldn't be here." "You aren't even real." "Call me when you decide." "Go." "Hey, buddy." "You're early." "I was just walking... and I guess I came home." "Are you...." "Yeah, I'm a little anxious." "Buddy kiss." "Nothing to get anxious about." "How would you like to move to Washington?" "Washington?" "She was pretty crazy." "She was up there in that home for ten years, talking to herself." "I never visited." "She looked too much like my mother." "Poor Louis, I'm sorry your grandma's dead." "Tiny little coffin." "I'm sorry I didn't introduce you." "I always get so closety at these family things." "You're getting butch." "Hey, Cousin Doris, you don't remember me, I'm Lou." "Rachel's boy, Lou." "Not Louis, cause if you say Louis, they'll hear the sibilant "s."" "l don't have a sibilant "s." -l don't blame you hiding." "Bloodlines." "Jewish curses are the worst." "I personally would dissolve... if anyone ever looks me in the eye and said, "Feh."" "Fortunately, Wasps don't say, "Feh"... and by the way, darling..." "Cousin Doris is a dyke." "No!" "Really?" "You don't notice anything." "If I hadn't spent the last four years fellating you... I'd swear you were straight." "You're in a pissy mood." "Cat still missing?" "Not a fur ball in sight. lt's your fault." "lt is?" "I warned you, Louis, names are important." "Call an animal Little Sheba, you can't expect it to stick around." "Besides, that's a dog's name." "l wanted a dog in the first place, not a cat." "He sprayed my books." "He was a female cat." "Cats are stupid high-strung predators." "Babylonians sealed them up in bricks." "Dogs have brains." "Cats have intuition." "A sharp dog is as smart as a really dull 2-year-old child." "Cats know when something's wrong." "Only if you stop feeding them." "They know." "That's why Sheba left." "She knew." "Knew what?" "I did my best Shirley Booth this morning." "Floppy slippers, housecoat, curlers, can of Little Friskies." ""Come back, Little Sheba..." ""come back."" "To no avail." "See?" "That's just a burst blood vessel." "Not according to the best medical authorities." "What?" "Tell me." "Chaos, baby." "Lesion number one." "The wine-dark kiss of the angel of death." "Oh, please." "I'm a lesionnaire." "Foreign lesion." "The American lesion." "Lesionnaire's disease." "Stop." "My troubles are lesions." "Will you stop?" "Don't you think I'm handling this well?" "l'm gonna die." "Bullshit." "Let go of my arm." "Let go." "No." "No." "I can't find a way to spare you, baby." "No wall like the wall of hard scientific fact." "Chaos, wham." "Bang your head on that." "Fuck you." "Now that's what I like to hear, a mature reaction." "Let's go see if the cat's come home." "Louis." "When did you find this?" "l couldn't tell you." "Why?" "l was scared, Lou." "Of what?" "That you'll leave me." "Bad timing, funeral and all, but... I figured since we're on the subject of death...." "Here's the bus." "I have to go bury my grandma." "Lou..." "then you'll come home?" "Then I'll come home." "Washington." "lt's an incredible honor-- -l have to think." "Of course." "Say no." "You said you were gonna think about it." "l don't wanna move to Washington." "Well, I do." "It's a giant cemetery." "Huge white graves." "Mausoleums everywhere." "We could live in Maryland or Georgetown." "We're happy here." "That's not really true, buddy." "Happy enough, pretend happy, it's better than nothing." "lt's time we make some changes, Harper." "No changes." "Why?" "I've been chief clerk for four years." "I make $29,000 a year." "That's ridiculous." "I graduated fourth in my class, I make less than anyone I know." "I'm tired of being a clerk." "I wanna go where something good is happening." "Nothing good happens in Washington." "We'll forget Church teachings... and buy furniture at Conran's... and become yuppies." "l have too much to do here." "Like what?" "l do have things." "What things?" "I have to finish painting the bedroom." "You've been painting in there for over a year." "I know, it just isn't done, because I never get time to finish it." "That doesn't make sense." "You have all the time in the world." "You could finish it when I'm at work." "l'm afraid to go in there alone." "Afraid of what?" "l heard something in there." "Metal scraping on the wall, a man with a knife, maybe." "There's no one in the bedroom." "Not now." "Not this morning, either." "How do you know?" "You were at work this morning." "There's something creepy about this place." "Remember Rosemary's Baby?" "Rosemary's Baby?" "Our apartment looks like that one." "Wasn't that apartment in Brooklyn?" "No." "Well, it looked like this." "lt did." "Then let's move." "Georgetown is worse." "The Exorcist was in Georgetown." "The devil everywhere you turn, buddy?" "Yeah, everywhere." "How many pills today, buddy?" "None." "One." "Three, only three." "Thank you, that was a lovely...." "My grandma, just buried." "Why are there just two little wooden pegs holding the lid down?" "So that she can get out easier if she wants to." "I hope she stays put." "I pretended for years that she was already dead." "When they called to say she had died, it was a surprise. I had abandoned her." "I don't speak Yiddish." "Sharper than the serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child." "Shakespeare." "King Lear." "Rabbi, what does the Holy Writ say... about someone who abandons someone he loves... at a time of great need?" "Why would a person do such a thing?" "Because he has to." "Maybe this person can't... incorporate sickness into his sense of how things are supposed to go." "Maybe vomit and sores and disease really frighten him." "Maybe he isn't so good with death." "The Holy Scripture has nothing to say about such a person." "Rabbi, I'm afraid of the crimes I may commit." "Please, mister, I'm a sick old rabbi... facing a long drive home to the Bronx." "You want to confess, better you should find a priest." "I'm not a Catholic, I'm a Jew." "Worse luck for you, bube/eh." "Catholics believe in forgiveness." "Jews believe in guilt." "Thanks." "You just make sure those pegs are in good and tight." "Don't worry, mister, the life she had, she'll stay put." "She's better off." "Look... I know this is scary for you, but try to understand what it means to me." "Will you try?" "Yes." "Good." "Really try." "Things are starting to change in the world." "l don't wanna" "Wait." "For the good." "Change for the good." "America has rediscovered itself." "Its sacred position among nations." "People aren't ashamed of it like they used to be." "This is a great thing." "The truth restored, law restored." "That's what President Reagan's done, Harper." "He says truth exists and can be spoken proudly... and the country responds to him." "We become better, more good." "I need to be a part of that." "I need something big to lift me up." "Six years ago, the world seemed in decline... horrible, hopeless, full of unsolvable problems... and crime, confusion, hunger...." "But it still seems that way, more now than before." "You see the ozone layer...." "Today out the window on Atlantic Avenue... there was this schizophrenic traffic cop who was making" "Will you stop it?" "I'm trying to make a point." "So am I." "You aren't even making sense." "My point is the world seems just-- lt only seems that way to you because you never go out... and you have emotional problems." "l do so get out in the world." "No, you don't." "You stay in all day fretting about imaginary-- l get out." "I do." "You don't know what I do." "You don't stay in all day?" "No." "Yes, you do." "That's what you think." "Where do you go?" "Where do you go when you walk?" "And I do not have emotional problems." "l'm sorry." "If I do have emotional problems, it's from living with you or-- l'm sorry, I didn't mean" "Then you should have never married me." "You have all these... secrets and lies." "l want to be married to you, Harper." "You shouldn't." "You never should...." "Hey, buddy." "Buddy kiss." "I heard on the radio how to give a blow job." "What?" "Do you want to try?" "You shouldn't listen to such" "Mormons can give blow jobs." "It was a little Jewish lady with a German accent." "Now is a good time for me to make a baby." "Then they went on to a program about holes in the ozone layer... over Antarctica." "Skin burns... birds go blind... icebergs melt." "The world's coming to an end." "Morning." "Good morning, Counselor." "Sorry, I don't know your name." "Don't bother." "A word processor, the lowest of the low." "Joe Pitt, I'm with Justice Wilson." "l know that." "Counselor Pitt, Chief Clerk." "Are you okay?" "Yes, thanks." "What a nice man." "Not so nice." "What?" "Not so nice." "Nothing." "What's wrong?" "Life just sucks shit." "l'm sorry?" "Forget it." "Thanks for asking." "I mean, it really is nice of you." "Sorry." "Sick friend." "l'm sorry." "That's sweet." "Three of your colleagues have preceded you to this baleful sight... and you're the first one to ask." "The others just opened the door, saw me, and fled." "I hope they had to pee real bad." "They just didn't want to intrude." "Reaganite, heartless, macho, asshole lawyers." "That's unfair." "What is?" "Heartless, macho, Reaganite... lawyer?" "l voted for Reagan." "You did?" "Twice." "Twice!" "Well, oh, boy, a gay Republican." "Excuse me?" "Nothing." "I'm not...." "No, forget it." "Republican, not Republican?" "What?" "What?" "Not gay. I'm not gay." "Sorry." "It's just that...." "Yes?" "Sometimes you can tell from the way a person sounds." "You sound" "No, I don't." "Like what?" "Like a Republican." "Do I sound like a...." "What, like a Republican?" "Or do I?" "Do you what?" "Sound like a" "Yeah, like a...." "l'm confused." "Yes." "My name is Louis, but all my friends call me Louise." "I work in word processing." "Thanks for the toilet paper." ""l'm ready for my close-up, Mr. De Mille."" "One wants to move through life with elegance and grace." "Blossoming infrequently, but with exquisite taste... and perfect timing." "Like a rare bloom... a zebra orchid." "One wants... but one so seldom gets what one wants." "Does one?" "No." "One does not." "One gets fucked over." "One dies at 30." "Robbed of decades of majesty" "Fuck this shit." "I look like a corpse." "A corpse-ette." "My queen!" "You know you've hit rock bottom when even drag is a drag." "Who are you?" "Who are you?" "What are you doing in my hallucination?" "I'm not in your hallucination." "You're in my dream." "You're wearing makeup." "So are you." "But you're a man." "My hands and feet give it away." "There must be some mistake here." "I don't recognize you." "Are you my..." "some sort of imaginary friend?" "No." "Aren't you too old to have imaginary friends?" "I have emotional problems, I took too many pills." "Why are you wearing makeup?" "I was in the process of applying the face, trying to make myself feel better." "I swiped the new fall colors at the Clinique counter at Macy's." "You stole these?" "I was out of cash, it was an emotional emergency." "Joe will be so angry." "I promised him no more pills." "These pills you keep alluding to...." "Valium, I take Valium." "Lots of Valium." "And you're dancing as fast as you can." "I'm not addicted." "I don't believe in addiction and I...." "l never drink and I never take drugs." "Smell you, Nancy Drew." "Except for Valium." "Except Valium in wee fistfuls." "It's terrible." "Mormons are not supposed to be addicted to anything." "l'm a Mormon." "l'm a homosexual." "In my church, we don't believe in homosexuals." "In my church, we don't believe in Mormons." "What church do...." "l get it." "I don't understand this." "If I didn't ever see you before... and I don't think I did, then I don't think you should be here... in this hallucination... because in my experience, the mind, which is where hallucinations come from... shouldn't be able to make up anything that wasn't there to start with... that didn't enter it from experience from the real world." "Imagination can't create anything new, can it?" "It only recycles bits and pieces from the world... and reassembles them into visions." "Am I making sense right now?" "Given the circumstances, yes." "When we think we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness... and untruthfulness of our lives... it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged... into the appearance of novelty and truth." "Nothing unknown is knowable." "Don't you think it's depressing?" "The limitations of the imagination?" "Yes." "It's something you learn after your second theme party." "It's all been done before." "The world, finite... terribly...." "This is the most depressing hallucination I ever had." "Apologies. I do try to be amusing." "Don't apologize, you...." "l can't expect someone who's really sick to entertain me." "How on earth did you know?" "That happens." "This is the very threshold of revelations sometimes." "You can see things." "How sick you are." "Do you see anything about me?" "Yes." "What?" "You are amazingly unhappy." "Big deal." "You meet a Valium addict, you figure out she's unhappy... that doesn't count." "Of course...." "Something else?" "Something surprising?" "Something surprising?" "Yes." "Your husband's a homo." "Ridiculous." "Really?" "Threshold of revelation." "I don't like your revelations." "I don't think you intuit well at all." "Joe's a very normal man." "Oh, God!" "Do homos take, like, lots of long walks?" "Yes, we do." "In stretch pants with lavender coifs." "l just looked at you and there was" "A sort of blue streak of recognition." "Yes." "Like you knew me incredibly well." "Yes." "Yes." "I have to go now, get back, something just... fell apart." "Oh, God!" "I feel so sad." "I'm sorry." "I usually say fuck the truth." "But mostly the truth fucks you." "I see something else about you." "Deep inside you, there's a part of you... the most inner part... entirely free of disease." "I can see that." "is that...." "That isn't true." "Threshold of revelation." "People come and go so strangely here." "I don't think there is any uninfected part of me." "My heart is pumping polluted blood." "I feel dirty." "Look up." "Hello?" "Look up!" "Who is that?" "Look up." "Prepare the way." "I don't see any" "Prepare for the parting of the air... the breath, the ascent." "G/ory to" "What the fuck." "Hello!" "is that it?" "Hello!" "Poor me." "Poor, poor me." "Why me?" "Why poor, poor me?" "I don't feel good right now. I really don't." "Harper?" "Where were you?" "Where were you?" "Out." "Where?" "Just out, thinking." "It's late." "l had a lot to think about." "l burned dinner." "I'm sorry." "Not my dinner." "My dinner was fine." "Your dinner." "I put it back in the oven and turned everything up high... and I watched till it burned black." "It's still hot, very hot, want it?" "You didn't have to do that." "I know. lt just seemed like the kind of thing... a mentally deranged, sex-starved, pill-popping housewife would do." "So I did it." "Who knows anymore what I have to do?" "How many pills?" "A bunch." "Don't change the subject." "l won't talk to you." "No, don't do that. I'm fine." "Pills are not the problem, not our problem." "I wanna know where you've been, and I wanna know what's going on." "Going on with what?" "The job?" "Not the job." "I said I needed more time." "I talked to Mr. Cohn on the phone, he said that I had to hurry." "But I can't get you to talk sensibly about" "Shut up!" "Stick to the subject!" "l don't know what that is!" "You have something you wanna ask me, ask me." "Ask me." "Go." "I can't. I'm scared of you." "I'm tired. I'm going to bed." "Tell me without making me ask, please." "This is crazy. I'm not...." "When you come through the door... your face is never exactly the way I remembered it." "I get surprised by something mean and hard about the way you look... even the weight of you in the bed at night... the way you breathe in your sleep... seems unfamiliar." "You terrify me." "I know who you are." "Yes, I'm the enemy." "That's easy." "That doesn't change." "You think you're the only who hates sex?" "I do. I hate it with you." "I dream that you batter away at me till my joints come apart like wax... and I fall into pieces. lt's like a punishment." "It was wrong of me to marry you. I knew.... lt's a sin and it's killing us both." "I can always tell you've taken pills because it makes you red-faced and sweaty." "And frankly, that's very often why I don't want to...." "Because...." "Because you aren't pretty." "Not like this." "l have something I wanna ask" "Then ask!" "What the hell are you" "Are you a homo?" "Are you?" "You try to walk out right now... I'll put your dinner back in the oven and turn it up so high... the building will fill with smoke, and everyone in it will asphyxiate." "So help me God, I will." "Now answer the question." "What if I...." "Then tell me, please, and we'll see." "No." "I'm not." "I don't see what difference it makes." "Jews don't have any clear textual guide to the afterlife." "I mean even that it exists." "I don't think much about it." "I see it as a perpetual rainy Thursday afternoon in March... dead leaves...." "Very Greco-Roman." "For us, it's not the verdict that counts, it's the act of judgment." "That's why I can never be a lawyer." "In court, all that matters is the verdict." "You can never be a lawyer because you're oversexed." "And too distracted." "Not distracted, abstracted." "l'm trying to make a point." "Namely?" "The shaping of the law, not its execution." "The point, dear, the point." "That it should be the questions and shape of a life... its total complexity, gathered, arranged, and considered... which matters in the end." "Not some stamp of salvation or damnation... which disperses all the complexity in some unsatisfying little decision." "The balancing of the scales-- -l like this." "Very Zen." "It's reassuringly incomprehensible and useless." "We, who are about to die, thank you." "You are not about to die." "It's not going well, really." "Two new lesions... my leg hurts, there's protein in my urine, the doctor says... but who know what the fuck that portends." "Anyway it shouldn't be there." "The protein." "My butt is chapped from diarrhea." "And yesterday I shat blood." "I really hate this." "You don't tell me" "You get too upset." "I wind up comforting you." "lt's easier." "Oh, thanks." "If it's bad, I'll tell you." "Shitting blood sounds bad to me." "l'm telling you" "And I'm handling it." "Tell me some more about justice." "I am handling it." "Well, Louis, you win trooper of the month." "I take it back." "You aren't trooper of the month." "This isn't working." "Tell me some more about justice." "You are not about to die." "Justice...." "ls an immensity, it's confusing." "Vastness, justice is God." "Prior." "You love me?" "Yes." "What if I walked out on this?" "Would you hate me forever?" "Yes." "I think we ought to pray." "Ask God for help." "Ask him together." "God won't talk to me." "l have to make up people to talk to me." "You have to keep asking." "I forgot the question." "Oh, yeah." "God, is my husband a homo?" "Stop it!" "I'm warning you!" "Does it make any difference that I might be one thing deep within?" "No matter how wrong or ugly that thing is... so long as I have fought with everything I have to kill it?" "What do you want from me?" "What do you want from me, Harper, more than that?" "For God's sake, there's nothing left." "I'm a shell." "There's nothing left to kill." "As long as my behavior is what I know it has to be, decent, correct... that alone in the eyes of God...." "No, not that." "That's Utah talk, Mormon talk." "I hate it, Joe." "Tell me, say it." "All I will say is that I'm a very good man... who has worked very hard to become good... and you wanna destroy that." "You wanna destroy me but I am not gonna let you do that." "I'm gonna have a baby." "Liar." "You liar." "A baby born addicted to pills." "A baby who does not dream, but who hallucinates... who stares up at us with big mirror eyes... and who does not know who we are." "Are you really?" "No." "Yes." "No." "Yes." "Get away from me." "Now we both have a secret." "Nobody knows what causes it." "And nobody knows how to cure it." "The best theory is that we blame a retrovirus." "The human immunodeficiency virus." "Its presence is made known to us by the useless antibodies... which appear in reaction to its entrance into the bloodstream through a cut." "Or an orifice." "The antibodies are powerless to protect the body against it." "Why?" "We don't know." "The body's immune system ceases to function." "Sometimes the body even attacks itse/f." "At any rate, it's left open to a whole horror house of infections... from microbes it usually defends against." "Like Kaposi's sarcomas... those lesions on your arms, or your throat problem." "Or the glands." "We think it may also be able to slip past the blood-brain barrier into the brain." "Which is, of course, very bad news." "It's fatal in we don't know what percent of people with suppressed immune responses." "Very interesting..." "Mr. Wizard." "Why the fuck are you telling me this?" "Well, I have just removed one of three lesions... which biopsy results will probably tell us is a Kaposi's sarcoma lesion." "And you have a pronounced swelling of glands... in your neck, groin, and armpits." "Lymphadenopathy is another sign." "And you have oral candidiasis." "And maybe a little more fungus under the fingernails... of two digits on your right hand." "So?" "That's why I'm...." "This disease...." "Syndrome." "Whatever." "It afflicts mostly homosexuals and drug addicts." "Mostly." "Hemophiliacs are also at risk." "Homosexuals and drug addicts." "So why are you implying that I...." "What are you implying, Henry?" "l don't think I was implying anything." "l'm not a drug addict." "Come on, Roy." "What? "Come on, Roy" what?" "You think I'm a junkie, Henry?" "Do you see tracks?" "This is absurd." "So say it." "Say what?" "Say, "Roy Cohn, you are a...."" "Roy." ""You are a...." Go on." "Not, "Roy Cohn, you are a drug fiend."" ""Roy Marcus Cohn, you are a...."" "Go on, Henry, it starts with an "H."" "l'm not gonna get into" "With an "H," Henry... and it isn't "hemophiliac."" "Come on!" "Why are you doing this, Roy?" "No, I mean it." "Say it." "Say, "Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual."" "And I will proceed systematically... to destroy your reputation." "And your practice." "And your career in the state of New York, Henry." "Which you know I can do." "You have been seeing me since 1958." "Apart from the face lifts, I have treated you for everything from syphilis" "From a whore in Dallas." "...from syphilis to venereal warts in your rectum... which you may have gotten from a whore in Dallas." "But it wasn't a female whore." "So say it." "Roy Cohn, you are...." "You have had sex with men." "Many, many times, Roy." "And one of those men or any number of them has made you very sick." "You have aids." "aids?" "You know, your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words... on labels... that you believe they mean what they seem to mean." "aids, homosexual, gay, lesbian." "You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with?" "They don't tell you that." "No?" "No." "Like all labels, they tell you one thing and one thing only." "Where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain... in the pecking order?" "Not an ideology or a sexual taste, but something much simpler:" "Clout." "Not who I fuck or who fucks me... but who will pick up the phone when I call." "Who owes me favors." "This is what a label refers to." "Now, to someone who does not understand this... homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men." "But really, this is wrong." "Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men." "Homosexuals are men... who, in 15 years of trying... cannot pass a pissant anti-discrimination bill through city council." "Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows." "Who have zero clout." "Does this sound like me, Henry?" "No." "No!" "I have clout." "Lots." "I pick up this phone, I punch 15 numbers, you know who's on the other end?" "ln under five minutes, Henry." "The President." "Better, Henry." "His wife." "I'm impressed." "I don't want you to be impressed." "I want you to understand." "This is not sophistry and this is not hypocrisy." "This is reality." "I have sex with men... but unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true... I bring the guy I'm screwing to the White House." "And President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand... because... what I am is defined entirely by who I am." "Roy Cohn is not a homosexual." "Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry... who fucks around with guys." "Okay, Roy." "And what is my diagnosis, Henry?" "You have aids, Roy." "No." "Henry, no." "aids is what homosexuals have." "I have liver cancer." "Whatever the fuck you have... it's very serious." "And I haven't got a damn thing for you." "The nih in Bethesda has a new drug called..." "AZT... with a two-year waiting list that not even I can get you onto." "So pick up the phone, Roy... and dial the 15 numbers... and tell the First Lady that you need it on an experimental treatment for liver cancer... because you can call it any damn thing you want, Roy." "But what it boils down to... is very bad news." "Louis." "Please wake up." "Oh, God!" "Please wake up." "What?" "What?" "What is it?" "Something horrible is wrong with me." "I can't breathe." "l'm calling the ambulance." "No, wait." "Wait?" "Are you fucking crazy?" "God, you're on fire, your head is on fire." "lt hurts." "l'll call an ambulance." "No, I don't wanna go to the hospital." "I don't." "Please let me lie here." "No." "Prior, stand up!" "Don't touch my leg." "We have to...." "God, this is so crazy!" "l'll be okay if I could just lie here a little." "Really, if I could just sleep a little." "Louis, don't." "Don't call." "You'll send me there and I won't come back." "Yes, yes. lt's an emergency." "I need an ambulance right away." "Please, Louis!" "Will you shut the fuck up?" "210...." "l have to go to the bathroom." "I don't know. I don't know, he can't breathe!" "Oh, God!" "Prior...." "l'm sorry." "They'll be here in a minute. lt's...." "Oh, God!" "What is that?" "l had an accident." "This is blood." "Maybe you shouldn't touch it." "Help!" "Oh, God." "God help me!" "I can't!" "Why are you sitting in the dark?" "Turn on the light." "No, I heard the sounds in the bedroom again." "I know someone was in there." "No one was." "Maybe actually in the bed, under the covers, with a knife." "Joe, I'm thinking of going away... by which I mean I think I'm going off again." "You know what I mean?" "No, please don't." "Stay." "We can fix it." "I pray for that." "This is my fault, but I can correct it." "You have to try, too." "When you pray, what do you pray for?" "I pray for God to crush me... break me up into little pieces and start all over again." "Please don't pray for that." "I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid... and there was this picture I'd look at 20 times every day:" "Jacob wrestles with the angel." "I don't really remember the story or why they're wrestling." "Just the picture." "Jacob is young, and very strong... and the ange/ is a beautifu/ man... with golden hair and wings, of course." "I still dream about it." "Many nights." "And... it's me... in that struggle." "Fierce and unfair." "The angel's not human and holds nothing back." "So how could anyone human win?" "What kind of a fight is that?" "It's not just." "Soul thrown down in the dust... your heart torn out from God's... but you can't not lose." "In the whole entire world... you are the only person... the only person I love or have ever loved." "I love you terribly." "Terribly." "That's what's so awfully, irreducibly real." "I can make up anything, but I can't dream that away." "Are you really gonna have a baby?" "It's my time and there's no blood." "I don't really know." "I suppose it wouldn't be a great thing." "Maybe I'm just not bleeding 'cause I take too many pills." "Maybe I'll give birth to a pill." "That would give a new meaning to pill-popping." "I think you should go... to Washington alone." "Change, like you said." "l'm not gonna leave you, Harper." "Maybe not... but I'm gonna leave you." "He'll be all right now." "No, he won't." "No, I guess not." "l gave him something that makes him sleep." "Deep asleep?" "Orbiting the moons of Jupiter." "lt's a good place to be." "Any place better than here." "You his...." "Yes." "I'm his...." "This must be hell for you." "lt is." "Hell, the afterlife... which is not at all like a rainy afternoon in March, by the way, Prior." "It's a lot more vivid than I'd expected." "Dead leaves... the kind of dying feeling that breaks your heart." "Yeah, we all get to break our hearts on this one." "He seems like a nice guy." "He's cute." "Not like this." "Yes, he is." "Was, whatever." "It's a weird name, Prior Walter." "Like the Walter before this one." "Lots of Walters before this one." "Prior's an old, old family name in an old, old family." "Walters go back to the Mayf/ower and beyond... back to the Norman conquest." "He says there's a Prior Walter stitched into the Bayeux Tapestry." "is that impressive?" "It's old, very old, which in some circles equals impressive." "Not in my circle." "Will he sleep through the night?" "At least." "I'm going." "Tell him.... lf he wakes up and you're still on, tell him... goodbye." "Tell him I had to go." "The pills are something she started when she miscarried." "No, she took some before that." "She had a bad time at home when she was a kid." "Her home was really bad." "I think a lot of drinking and physical stuff." "She doesn't talk about that." "Instead, she talks about the sky falling down... people with knives hiding under sofas, and monsters...." "Mormons!" "Everyone thinks that Mormons don't come from homes like that." "We aren't supposed to behave that way, but we do." "It's not lying or being two-faced." "Everyone tries very hard to live up to God's strictures, which are very...." "Strict." "l shouldn't be bothering you with this." "No, please, come on, heart-to-heart." "You want another?" "What is it, what you got?" "Seltzer?" "Yeah." "The failure to measure up hits people very hard." "From such a strong desire to be good... they feel very far from goodness when they fail." "What scares me is that maybe what I really love in her... is the part of her that's farthest from the light, from God's love." "Maybe I was drawn to that in the first place... and I'm keeping it alive because I need it." "Why would you need it?" "There are things...." "l don't know how well we know ourselves." "I mean, what if...." "l know I married her... because I loved that she was always wrong, always doing something wrong." "Like one step out of step." "In Salt Lake City, that stands out." "I never stood out, on the outside... but inside, it was hard for me to pass." "Pass?" "Yeah." "Pass as what?" "As someone cheerful and strong." "Those who love God with an open heart... unclouded by secrets and struggles are cheerful." "God's easy, simple love for them shows in how happy they are, the saints." "But you had secrets?" "Secret, secret struggles?" "I wanted to be one of the elect, one of the blessed." "You feel you ought to be, that the blemishes are yours by choice... which, of course, they aren't." "Harper's sorrow, that really deep sorrow... she didn't choose that, but it's there." "You didn't put it there?" "No." "You sound like you think you did." "l am responsible for her." "Because she's your wife." "That, and I do love her." "Whatever." "She's your wife... and so, there are obligations to her." "But also to yourself." "God, she'd fall apart in Washington." "Then let her stay here." "She'd fall apart if I leave her." "Then bring her to Washington." "I just can't, Roy." "She needs me." "Listen, Joe, I'm the best divorce lawyer in the business." "Can't Washington wait?" "You do what you need to do, Joe." "What you need." "You." "Let her life go where it wants to go." "You'll both be better off for that." "Somebody should get what they want." "What do you want?" "I want you to fuck me, hurt me and make me bleed." "l want to." "Yeah?" "I want to hurt you." "Fuck me." "Yeah?" "Hard." "Yeah, you been a bad boy?" "Very bad, very bad." "You need to be punished, boy?" "Yes, I do." "Yes, what?" "Yes, what, boy?" "Yes, sir." "I want you to take me to your place, boy." "No, I can't do that." "No what?" "No, sir, I can't. I don't live alone, sir." "Your lover know you're out with a man tonight?" "No sir, he...." "My lover doesn't know." "Your lover know you like" "Let's change the subject, okay?" "Can we go to your place?" "I live with my parents." "Everyone who makes it in life makes it... because someone older, more powerful takes an interest." "The most precious asset in life, I think, is the ability to be a good son." "You have that, Joe." "I've had many fathers. I owe my life to them." "Powerful, powerful men." "Walter Winchell, Edgar Hoover..." "Joe McCarthy most of all." "He valued me because I was a good lawyer... but he loved me because I was, and am, a good son." "He was a very, very difficult man." "Very guarded and cagey." "I brought out something tender in him." "I don't know." "He'd have died for me." "And me for him." "Does this embarrass you?" "I had a hard time with my father." "Your father's living?" "Dead." "He was what, difficult man?" "He was in the military." "He could be very unfair... and cold." "He loved you, though." "l don't know." "No, he loved you, Joe." "This I know." "Sometimes a father's love has to be very, very hard." "Unfair, even." "Cold." "Make your son grow strong in a world like this." "This isn't a good world." "Relax." "Not a chance." "l...." "What?" "I think it broke, the rubber." "You want me to keep going?" "Pull out?" "Keep going, infect me, I don't care." "I'm sorry, but I think I wanna go." "And give my best to Mom and Dad." "It was a joke." "How long...." "How long we known each other?" "Since 1980." "Right." "That's a long time." "I feel close to you, Joe." "Do I advise you well?" "You've been an incredible friend, Roy." "l wanna be family." "Famig/ia... as my Italian friends call it." "La famig/ia." "Lovely word." "It's important for me... to help you, like I was helped." "l owe practically everything to you, Roy." "l'm dying, Joe." "Cancer." "Oh, my God." "Please, let me finish." "Few people know this." "I'm telling you this because...." "l'm not afraid of death." "What can death bring that I haven't faced?" "I've lived." "Life is the worst." "Listen to me, I'm a philosopher." "Joe, you must do this." "You must, must." "Love, that's a trap." "Responsibility, that's a trap, too." "Like a father to a son, I tell you this." "Life is full of horror." "Nobody escapes." "Nobody." "Save yourself." "Whatever pulls on you... whatever needs from you, threatens you." "Learn at least this:" "What you are capable of... let nothing stand in your way." "Miss thing!" "Stella." "Stella for star." "Let me see." "You look like shit." "Why, yes, indeed you do, comme /a merde." "Not to despair." "Magic goop." "What kind of crap is that?" "Beats me." "Let's rub it on your poor blistered body and see what it does." "This is not Western medicine." "Voodoo cream from the botanica round the block." "And you, a registered nurse." "Beeswax and cheap perfume cut with Jergens lotion." "Full of good vibes and love from some little black Cubana witch in Miami." "Get that trash away from me." "I'm immune-suppressed." "I am a health professional." "I know what I'm doing." "It stinks." "Any word from Louis?" "Gone." "He'll be back, I know the type." "Likes to keep a girl on edge." "It's been...." "How long?" "l don't remember." "How long have you been here?" "I don't remember. I don't give a fuck." "I want Louis. I want my fucking boyfriend." "Where the fuck is he?" "I'm dying." "Where's Louis?" "This is a very strange drug, this drug." "Emotional lability, for starters." "Save a tab or two for me." "No, not this drug." "This drug, she is serious, poisonous chemistry." "And not just disorienting." "I hear things." "Voices." "Voices?" "A voice." "Saying what?" "l'm not supposed to tell." "You better tell the doctor, or I will." "Don't, please." "I want the voice. lt's wonderful." "It's all that's keeping me alive." "I don't wanna talk to some intern about it." "Do you know what happens when I hear it?" "What?" "l get hard." "Oh, my!" "And you know I am slow to rise." "My jaw aches at the memory." "And would you deny me this little solace?" "Betray my concupiscence to Florence Nightingale's storm troopers?" "Perish the thought, ma bebe." "They'd change the drug, just to spoil the fun." "You and your boner can depend on me." "All this girl-talk shit is politically incorrect, you know." "We should have dropped it back when we gave up drag." "I'm sick. I get to be politically incorrect if it makes me feel better." "You sound like Lou." "At least I have the satisfaction of knowing he's in anguish somewhere." "I have to go." "If I wanna spend my whole lonely life looking after white people... I can get underpaid to do it." "You're just a Christian martyr." "Whatever happens, baby, I'll be here for you." "Don't go crazy on me, girlfriend." "I already got enough crazy queens for one lifetime." "For two." "I can't be bothering with dementia." "I promise." "Ouch." "Ouch, indeed." "Why'd they have to pick on you?" "And eat more, girlfriend." "You really do look like shit." "Are you still here?" " can't stay." " wi// return." "Are you one of those follow-me-to-the-other-side voices?" "No... / am no nightbird." " am a messenger." "You have a beautiful voice." "Stay with me?" "Not now." "Soon / wi// return." " wi// revea/ myse/f to you." " am g/orious." "G/orious." "You must prepare." "For what?" "I don't" "No death." "No." "A marve/ous work and a wonder we undertake... an edifice awry we straighten... a great /ie we abo/ish." "A great error, correct... with the ru/e, sword, and broom of truth!" " am on my way." "When / am manifest, our work begins." "Prepare for the parting of the air." "The breath, the ascent." "G/ory to" "What?" "It's a revolution in Washington, Joe." "We have a new agenda, and finally, a real leader." "They got back the Senate but we have the courts." "By the '90s... the Supreme Court will be solid Republican appointees... and the federal bench, Republican judges like landmines everywhere." "Everywhere they turn." "Affirmative action?" "Take it to court." "Boom!" "Landmine." "Roy, are you feeling...." "No, I'm fine." "We'll get our way in everything." "Abortion, defense, Central America, family values, a live investment climate." "We have the White House locked till 2000... and beyond." "A permanent fix on the Oval Office?" "It's possible." "It's really the end of liberalism, Joe." "The end of New Deal socialism." "The end of ipso facto secular humanism." "The dawning of a genuinely American political personality... modeled on Ronald Wilson Reagan." "lt sounds great, Mr. Heller." "Martin." "And justice is the hub." "Especially since Ed Meese took over." "He doesn't specialize in legal fine points." "He's a flatfoot." "Cop!" "He reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt." "l can't wait to meet him." "Too bad, Joe." "He's been dead for 60 years." "Martin?" "Yes, Roy." "Rub my back." "Roy." "No, no, I mean it, a sore spot." "I get them all the time now." "Please, rub it for me, darling." "Do that for me?" "Right there." "Yeah, right there." "Yes, a little lower." "How do you think a handful of Bolsheviks... turned St. Petersburg into Leningrad in one afternoon?" "Comrades." "Who do for each other." "Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky..." "Joseph Stalin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt." "Comrades, right, Martin?" "This man, Joe, is a saint of the right." "l know, Mr. Heller." "See what I mean?" "He's special. lsn't he?" "Don't embarrass him, Roy." "Gravity, decency, smarts." "His strength is as the strength of 10 because his heart is pure." "And he's a Roy-boy, 100%." "We're on the move, Joe, on the move." "Mr." "Heller, I'd really" "We can't wait any longer for an answer." "Joe's a married man, Martin." "With a wife." "She does not care to go to D.C., and so Joe cannot go." "Keeps us dangling." "We've seen that before, haven't we?" "These men and their wives?" "Yes, beware." "l really can't discuss this" "Then don't discuss." "Say yes, Joe." "Now." "Say, "Yes, I will."" "Now." "Now I'm gonna hold my breath till you do." "I'm turning blue waiting." "Now, God damn it!" "Roy, calm down." "Here." "Fuck it." "Came today, read." "Roy, this...." "Roy, this is terrible." "You're telling me." "New York State Bar Association, Martin, they're gonna try and disbar me." "Oh, my." "Why?" "Why, Martin?" "Revenge." "The whole establishment." "Their little rules, because I know no rules." "Because I don't see the law as a dead and arbitrary collection... of antiquated dictums." ""Thou shall, thou shall not."" "Because I know the law is a pliable, breathing, sweating organ." "Because, because...." "Because he borrowed $500,000 from one of his clients." "There's that." "And he forgot to return it." "Roy, that's...." "You borrowed money from a client?" "I'm deeply ashamed." "Roy, you know how much I admire you." "I know you have your unorthodox ways... but I'm sure you did what you thought you needed to at the time." "And I have faith that" "Not so damp, please. I'll deny it was a loan." "She has no paperwork." "Can't prove a fucking thing." "I really appreciate your telling me this, and I'll do whatever I can to help." "I'll tell you what you can do." "I'm about to be tried, Joe... by a jury that is not a jury of my peers." "No, you don't." "You're from the hospital." "You're Roy Cohn's nurse." "No, I'm not a nurse." "We all look alike to you, you all look alike to us. lt's a mad world." "Home on the range." "Chaps and spurs." "Now, girl, we gotta get you home." "Mega butch!" "He made me feel beyond nelly... like wispy daisies are sprouting out my ears." "Run." "Wait." "What game are you playing?" "This is a federal courthouse." "You said something about...." "Who are you?" "I'm nothing. I'm a mental patient." "He's my nurse." "I'm not his nurse." "We're here because my will's being contested." "What's that called?" "Competency?" "But this is an appellate court." "And I'm appealing to anyone!" "Anyone in the universe who'll listen to me for some charity." "Some people are so greedy." "Such pigs!" "They have health, everything." "Still they want more." "You said something about my friend." "Look, is this about Louis?" "is he.... ls he what?" "Sad, hot, happy?" "Talk to him yourself, Bullwinkle." "What do I look like, a marriage counselor?" "Nursie, dear, fetch the medication." "I'm starting to rave." "Behave yourself, cheri, or nanny will have to use the wooden spoon." "Nice angel." "What angel?" "Bethesda." "What's she commemorate, Louis?" "I'll bet you know." "The naval dead of the Civil War." "The Civil War. I knew you'd know." "You are nothing if not well-informed." "This is Prior's favorite place in the park." "Listen, I saw him." "Prior." "Prior's upset." "is he okay?" "He seemed..." "not himself." "He seemed" "Crazy?" "is he delusional?" "With a little help from his friends." "Listen, this guy I'm seeing, I'm not seeing him now." "Prior misunderstood" "Oh, yeah." "Your new beau." "Prior and me went to the courthouse, scoped him out." "You had no right to do that." "Did we violate your rights?" "Why did you call me here?" "I don't have time for you." "You walk out on your lover." "Days don't pass before you're out on the town with somebody new." "I am not out on the town." "I want you to tell Prior-- ...share your dank and dirty bed with Roy Cohn's butt-boy." "Come again?" "Doesn't that bother you at all?" "Roy Cohn?" "What the fuck are you...." "I'm not sharing my bed" "Your little friend didn't tell you?" "Joe Pitt is not Roy Cohn's...." "Joe's a very moral man." "He's not even that conservative." "Not that kind of a...." "I don't wanna continue this." "Bye-bye." "It's not my fault that Prior left you for me." "I beg your pardon?" "You've always hated me because you are in love with Prior." "You were when I met him, and he fell in love with me." "So now you cook up this...." "l mean, how do you know this?" "That Joe and Roy Cohn-- l don't know whether Cohn has penetrated more than his spiritual sphincter." "All I'm saying is you better hope there's no GOP germ. lf there is, you got it." "I don't believe you." "Not Roy Cohn!" "He's, like... the polestar of human evil." "He's the worst human being who ever lived." "He's not human even." "Give me credit for something." "Please." "I'm horribly unhappy, I'm lost... I hate myself so fucking totally and completely." "But still... I wouldn't go around sleeping with someone who's Roy Cohn's...." "Butt-boy." "I'm so fucking wet and miserable." "I want everything to go back the way it was." "Wouldn't that be convenient and all?" "You know what your problem is?" "Your problem is that you are so full of piping-hot crap... that the mention of your name draws flies." "You don't know thing one about this guy, do you?" "Ain't that pathetic?" "And just so the record's straight... I love Prior, but I was never in love with him." "I have a man uptown and I have since long before... I first laid eyes on the sorry-ass sight of you." "l didn't know that you had a" "No, because you never bothered to ask." "Up in the air, just like that angel." "Too far off the earth to pick out the details." "Louis and his big ideas." "Big ideas are all you love." "America is what Louis loves." "So what?" "Maybe I do." "You don't know what I love." "You don't." "l hate America." "I hate this country." "Nothing but a bunch of big ideas, and stories... and people dying, and then people like you." "The white cracker who wrote the national anthem... set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it." "That was deliberate." "Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me." "You come with me to Room 1013 at the hospital, I'll show you America." "Terminal, crazy, and mean." "I live in America." "I don't have to love it." "You do that." "Everybody's got to love something." "Everybody does." "He's a Mormon?" "How is she?" "Nothing surprising." "Thank you, ma'am." "is she okay?" "That would be surprising, wouldn't it?" "I couldn't go home, Ma. I had to see her." "l'm afraid." "Three whole weeks?" "Has it been three?" "Afraid of what?" "I didn't come to New York to volunteer." "I thought you did." "Don't be a fat-head." "l'm not." "ln your way, you always were." "Then why?" "My motives are a mystery to me." "I have a theory about you, though." "There's no possible thing I can imagine you doing, Ma." "You shouldn't have come." "You made that clear as day... for a month now." "You can't even return a simple phone call." "A phone call from you is not so simple." "Just so I'd have something to tell her." "This insanity." "Your wife, left like a loony in a roomful of mannequins." "And you, living in some rainy rooftop, for all I know." "I call you at work just so I can have something to say to her." "You can't talk on the phone, and you won't call me back." "Like I'm poison." "What do you call that?" "Vitality?" "It'd be pathetic if it weren't so ugly." "lt's cruel." "Not intended to be." "Are you sure about that?" "l'm taking her home." "Do you think that's best for her?" "l know what I'm doing." "l think you have no clue." "But that's only typical of you." "You're a man, you botch up, it's not such a big deal." "Just being a man doesn't" "Being a woman is harder." "Look at her." "lt's a big deal, Ma... botching up. I could use some...." "l migrated across the breadth of the continent of North America." "I ran all this way to get away from.... ls she...." "She's not here." "She's not at the apartment." "Then she escaped." "Good for her." "Ask yourself... what it was you were running from." "It's about time you did." "Not from me. I was nothing." "But from what?" "And what are you running from now?" "You have a responsibility to your wife." "You cannot wish it away." "l want to...." "l don't know anymore what I want." "What you want." "That shifts with the breeze." "How can you steer your life by what you want?" "Hold to what you believe." "You and me... it's like we're in Salt Lake again." "You sort of bring the desert with you." "Are you...." "Don't cry." "If I ever do... I promise you... you'll not be privileged to witness it." "It was a mistake." "I should never have called you." "You should never have come." "I can't imagine why you did." "That man who was just here..." "We're c/osed." "Go away." "...is he your son?" "You know him, Batman?" "How do you know...." "My ex-boyfriend, he knows him now." "I wanted to warn your son about later, when his hair goes... and his hips and jowls, and all that human stuff." "That poor slob there is gonna wind up miserable, fat, frightened, and alone." "Because Louis, he can't handle bodies." "Are you a homosexual?" "is it that obvious?" "Yes, I am." "What's it to you?" "Would you say you are a typical..." "homosexual?" "Me?" "No, I'm stereotypical." "What do you mean, like, am I a hairdresser?" "Are you a hairdresser?" "It would be your lucky day if I was, because frankly...." "l'm sick. lt's expensive." "Shit, now I won't be able to stop." "Now it's started. I feel really terrible." "Do I have a fever?" "Yes." "How high?" "Maybe there's a thermometer somewhere." "Very high." "Would you get me to a cab to...." "l think I'm...." "Don't be alarmed. lt's worse than it looks." "I mean...." "You should...." "Can you stand?" "No, let me see if there's anyone back here." "Lack of breath. I overdid it." "I'm in trouble again." "Take me to Saint Vincent's Hospital." "Help me to a cab." "Here." "Can you stand?" "No, don't." "Just call me a cab." "It's all right, I'm useless here." "That's it." "Please, if you're trying to convert me, this isn't a good time." "Look at it out there." "That's a boy." "We'd better move." "You all right?" "Where are they all going?" "The end of the world is at hand." "Hello, paleface." "Nothing like storm clouds over Manhattan to get you in the mood for Judgment Day." "It's freezing." "lt's starting to rain." "Where are your shoes?" "l threw them in the river." "The Judgment Day." "Everyone will think they're crazy now, not just me." "Everyone will see things." "Sick men will see angels... women who have houses will sell their houses." "Dime-store dummies will rear up on their wood-putty legs... and roam the land, looking for brides." "Let's go home." "Where's that?" "You wanna buy an island?" "It's going out of business." "You can have it for the usual cheap trinkets." "Fire sale." "The prices are insane." "Did you miss me?" "l've come back." "Oh, I know." "Here's why I wanna stay in Brooklyn." "The view." "Water won't ever accomplish the end, no matter how much you cry." "A flood's not the answer." "People just float." "Let's go in." "Fire's the answer." "The great and terrible day at last." "Mira, it was on last night when I got home." "It's called She." "And I'm telling you, hand to my heart, the greatest movie ever made." "There's this fabulous chick called "She who must be obeyed."" "She lives on this hill with" "Excuse me." "I beg your pardon?" "I gotta get out of here." "I know... but first, we have to make you better." "What?" "The boogeyman is here." "Lookit, Ma." "A shwartze toytenmann." "Come in, sweetheart." "What took you so long?" "You're flying, Roy. lt's morphine." "They put morphine in the drip." "You awake?" "Can you see who I am?" "Yeah." "You came for my mama years ago." "Wrap your arms around me now." "Squeeze the bloody life from me, okay?" "No, it's not okay." "Dark, strong arms." "You're stoned, Roy." "Take me like that." "Deep and sincere, but not too rough." "Just open me up... to the end of me." "Who am I?" "The Negro night nurse." "My negation... come to escort me to the underworld." "Come on!" "You want me, Roy?" "Want me to take you away?" "God, I'm ready." "I'll be coming for you soon." "Everything I want is in the end of you." "Can I ask you something, sir?" "Sir?" "What's it like... after?" "After?" "This misery ends?" "Hell or heaven?" "Like San Francisco." "A city." "Good." "I was worried it'd be a garden." "I hate that shit." "Big city... overgrown with weeds... but flowering weeds." "On every corner... a wrecking crew... and something new and crooked going up catty-corner to that." "Windows missing in every edifice, like broken teeth... gritty wind... and a gray, high sky full of ravens." "Isaiah." "Prophet birds, Roy." "Piles of trash... but lapidary like rubies and obsidian... and diamond-colored cows spit streamers in the wind... and voting booths." "And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages." "Big dance palaces full of music and lights." "Racial impurity and gender confusion." "And all the deities... are Creole." "Mulatto." "Brown as the mouths of rivers." "Race, taste... and history... are finally overcome." "And you ain't there." "And heaven?" "That was heaven, Roy." "The fuck it was." "Who are you?" "Your negation." "I know you." "You're nothing." "Stomach grumble." "Wakes you in the night." "Been nice talking to you." "Go to sleep now, baby." "I'm just the shadow on your grave." "Why do you keep your eyes closed?" "l don't." "You always do." "You can say why. I already know the answer." "Then why do I have to?" "Do you imagine things?" "Imagine men?" "Yes." "Imagining, just like me." "Except the only time I wasn't imagining is when I was with you." "You." "The only part of the real world I wasn't allergic to." "Please don't." "But I only thought I wasn't dreaming." "Back in Brooklyn, back with Joe." "I'm going out." "I have to get some stuff I left behind." "Look at me." "Here!" "Look here at me!" "What do you see?" "What do I...." "What do you see?" "Nothing." "I see nothing." "Thank you." "For what?" "Finally, the truth." "I'm going." "Out." "Just out." "Goodbye." "You lost eight pounds." "People would kill to be in the shape you were in." "You were recovering, but you blew it." "This isn't about weight, it's about lungs." "Pneumonia." "We don't know yet." "The fuck we don't. I know!" "You may not, but I can't breathe." "You'd breathe better if you didn't holler like that." "This is my ex-lover's lover's Mormon mother." "Even in New York in the '80s, that is strange." "This is serious, you understand?" "Keep breathing, stop moving, and stay put." "I'm getting you a room." "I should go." "I saw an angel." "Two weeks ago. I did. I saw her. I did." "I'm not insane." "l didn't say you-- -l saw an angel." "That's insane." "Insane." "But I'm not insane." "But then why did I do this to myself?" "'Cause I have been driven insane by your son and by that lying...." "Because ever since she arrived... ever since I have been consumed by this ice-cold razor blade... terror that just shouts and shouts:" ""Keep moving, run," and I've run myself into the ground." "Right where she said I would eventually be." "Really, she seems so real." "As real as you. I remember everything." "What's happened to me?" "Tell me." "You had a vision." "A vision?" "Thank you, Maria Ouspenskaya." "I'm not so far gone I can be assuaged by pity and lies." "I don't have pity." "It's just not something I have." "1 70 years ago... which is recent... an angel of God appeared to Joseph Smith... in upstate New York, not far from here." "People have visions." "That's preposterous." "It's not polite... to call other people's beliefs preposterous." "He had great need of understanding, our prophet." "His desire made prayer." "His prayer made an angel." "The angel was real." "l believe that." "l don't." "I'm sorry, but it's repellant to me, so much of what you believe." "What do I believe?" "I'm a homosexual with aids." "l can just imagine what you" "No, you can't... imagine... the things in my head." "You don't make assumptions about me, mister." "And I won't make them about you." "Fair enough." "My son is..." "..." "like you." "Homosexual?" "I flew into a rage when he told me." "Mad as hornets." "I assumed at first it was about...." "Homosexuality?" "But that wasn't it." "Homosexuality." "That just seems so ungainly to me." "Two men together." "It's not an appetizing notion." "But then, for me, men in any configuration is...." "They're just so lumpish and... stupid." "Stupidity gets me crazy." "I wish you'd be more true to your demographic profile." "Life is confusing enough." "You know the Bible." "Reasonably well, yes." "The prophets in the Bible, do they ever refuse their vision?" "There is scriptural precedent, yes." "What does God do to them when they do that?" "He feeds them to whales." "Here, just be still... you'll be all right." "No, I won't be." "My lungs are getting tighter." "The fever mounts, and you get delirious." "Then the days of delirium and all the pain and drugs." "Then you start slipping." "I really fucked up." "I'm scared, I can't do it again." "You shouldn't talk that way." "You should make a better show of yourself." "Look at this horror." "See?" "That's not human." "That's why I run." "Wouldn't you?" "Wouldn't anybody?" "It's a cancer." "Nothing more." "Nothing more human than that." "God, I wanna be done. I don't want this!" "I reject this." "I'm sorry." "Stay with me, please." "Just till my friend gets off work." "You comfort me." "You do." "You stiffen my spine." "When I got up this morning... this is not how I envisioned the day would end." "An angel is a belief... with wings and arms that can carry you." "It's not to be afraid of." "If it can't hold you up... seek for something new." "Louis." "Oh, my God." "It's the spring rain, is all." "It's her." "She's approaching." "She?" "Modesty forbids explaining exactly how I know... but I have an infallible barometer of her proximity." "And it's rising." "Hello." "I've come back." "Please let me in." "You're in." ""Have you no decency, sir?" "At long last, Have you no sense of decency?"" "Who said that?" "I'm having a really hard time, Louis." "It's so good to see you again." "You really don't know who said, "Have you no decency?"" "What's wrong?" "Second question:" "Have you no decency?" "Guess what I spent the rainy afternoon doing?" "What?" "My homework." "Research at the courthouse." "Look what I got." "The decisions of Justice Theodore J. Wilson..." "Second Circuit Court of Appeals, 1981-1984." "The Reagan Years." "You read my decisions." "Your decisions." "Yes." "The librarian was gay." "He had all the good dish." "He said Wilson didn't write these opinions any more... than Nixon wrote Six Crises..." "Or Kennedy wrote Profi/es in Courage." "...or Reagan wrote Where's the Rest of Me... or you and I wrote the Book of Love." "Listen, I don't wanna do this now." "I need you to stop attacking me." "These gems were ghost-written by you... his obedient eager clerk." "Naturally, I was eager to read them." "Now I love the one where you found against those women... on Staten Island who were suing the New Jersey factory." "The toothpaste makers whose orange-colored smoke... was blinding children." "Not blind, just minor irritation." "Three of them had to be hospitalized, Joe." "It's sort of brilliant in a satanic sort of way... concluding that these women have no right... to sue under the Air and Water Protection Act... because that Act doesn't protect people... but actually only air and water." "Amazing!" "Have you no decency?" "I can't believe my opinions are being criticized by the guy... who changes the coffee filters in the Secretary's Lounge." "Absolute favorite is this." "Stephens v. the United States... the Army guy who got a dishonorable discharge for being gay." "Stevens told the Army that he was gay when he enlisted." "When he got ready to retire, they booted him out... cheat the queer of his pension." "Right." "He sued, won the case, and got his pension." "The first judges gave him his pension back because... they ruled that gay men are members of a legitimate minority... entitled to the special protection of the 1 4th Amendment of the US Constitution." ""Equal protection under the law."" "I can just imagine... how news of that momentary lapse into decency was received." "Then all the judges of the Second Circuit were assembled" "We found for the guy again." "But on an equitable estoppel." "I had to look that up." "But Mr. Coffee can't be expected to know these things." "They didn't change the decision, just the reason for the decision." "They gave it to him on a technicality." "The Army knew Stevens was gay when he was enlisted." "That's why he won." "Not because it's unconstitutional to discriminate against homosexuals." ""Because homosexuals," they write..." ""are not entitled to equal protection under the law."" "You're being melodramatic." "They didn't write this." "You did." "They gave this decision to Wilson to write." "Which, since they know he's a vegetable incapable of writing do-re-mi... was quite the vote of confidence in his industrious little clerk." "This is an important bit of legal fag-bashing, isn't it?" "They trusted you to do it and you didn't disappoint." "It's law, not justice." "It's power, not the merits of its exercise." "It's not an expression of an ideal, it's reality." "So who said, "Have you no decency?"" "I'm leaving." "You moron." "How could you not know that?" "I'm leaving, you son of a bitch!" "It's the greatest punch line in American history." "Out of my way!" ""Have you no decency?"" ""At long last, sir, have you no decency?"" "I don't know who said it." "Why are you doing this?" "l love you!" "Joseph Welch!" "The Army-McCarthy Hearings!" "Ask Roy!" "He'll tell you, he knows!" "He was there." "Roy Cohn!" "What I want to know is, did you fuck him?" "Did I what?" "How often has the latex-sheathed cock I put in my mouth... been previously in the mouth of the most evil, twisted... vicious bastard ever to snort coke at Studio 54?" "'Cause lips that kissed those lips will never kiss mine!" "Don't worry about that." "Get out of my" "Did you fuck him?" "Did he pay you to let him fuck you?" "Move!" "You lied to me." "You love me?" "Fuck you, you cheap piece of shit!" "He's got aids." "Do you even know that?" "Stupid closeted bigot!" "You probably never figured out" "Hypocrite!" "Stop!" "Please say you're okay." "God, that hurt." "I never did that before." "I never hit anyone." "Can you open it?" "Can you see?" "l can see blood." "Let me get a towel." "I could have you arrested, you creep." "They could put you in jail for beating me up." "I've never hit anyone before." "It'd really be for those decisions.... lt was like a sex scene in an Ayn Rand novel, huh?" "I hurt you. I'm sorry, Louis." "I never hit anyone before." "Get lost... before I really lose my temper and hurt you back." "I just wanna lie here and bleed for a while." "Do me good." "Look at that big smile." "What you got to smile about, Roy?" "I'm going, Ethel." "Finally, finally... done with this world." "At long last." "All mine enemies will be standing on the other shore... mouths gaping open like stupid fish... while the Almighty parts the sea of death... and lets his Roy-boy cross over the Jordan... on dry land... and still a lawyer." "I wouldn't count my chickens, Roy." "It's over." "Over?" "I wanted the news should come from me." "The panel rules against you, Roy." "Oh, no." "They just started meeting two days ago." "They recommended disbarment." "The executive has to rule on the recommendation." "That'll take at least a week to sort things out." "The executive was waiting." "And they ruled." "One, two, three." "They accepted the panel's recommendation." "And one of the main guys on the executive... he leaned over to his friend and he said:" ""Finally!" ""l've hated that little faggot for 36 years."" "They won, Roy." "You're not a lawyer anymore." "But am I dead?" "No." "They beat you." "You lost." "I decided to come here... so I could see, could I forgive you?" "You... who I have hated so terribly." "I have borne my hatred up into the heavens... and made a needle-sharp little star in the sky out of it." "It's the star of Ethel Rosenberg's hatred." "And it burns every year, for one night only." "June 19." "It burns acid green." "I came to forgive... but all I can do is take pleasure in your misery... hoping I would get to see you die... more terrible than I did." "And you are... 'cause you're dying in shit, Roy." "Defeated." "And you could kill me." "But you couldn't ever defeat me." "You never won." "When you die... all anyone will ever say is..." ""Better he had never lived at all."" "Ma?" "Muddy, is it?" "It's Ethel, Roy." "I feel bad." "Who are you talking to?" "It's me." "Good to see you, Ma." "It's been years." "I feel bad." "Sing to me." "I am not your mother, Roy." "It's cold in here." "I'm up so late." "Past my time." "Don't be mad, Ma." "I'm scared a little." "Don't be mad." "Sing me a song." "Please." "l don't want to, Roy." "l am not-- -lt's scary out here." "Oh, God." "God... I'm so sorry." "So sorry." "Roy." "Are you...." "That's it." "What's up?" "Do you need me?" "No, I'm not!" "I fooled you, Ethel!" "I knew who you were all along." "I can't believe you fell for that Ma stuff." "I just wanted to see if I could finally... make Ethel Rosenberg sing!" "I win!" "Fuck." "Next time around... I don't wanna be a man." "I wanna be an octopus." "Remember that, okay?" "She's on her way." "Turn the lights back on!" "Turn the lights back on!" "I have returned, Prophet... and not according to plan!" "Take it back!" "The book, whatever you left with me, I won't be its repository. I reject it." "You gotta help me out here!" "Help me!" "This is a dream." "I don't think that's really the point at this particular moment." "I don't know what to do." "It was your idea. "Reject the vision," you said." "I thought it was going to be more of a metaphorical...." "You said scriptural precedent." "What am I supposed to do?" "Wrestle her!" "Say, what?" "It's an angel!" "You just grab hold of her... and say...." "What was it?" "Wait." "Yes." "You grab a hold of her and you say..." ""l will not let thee go except thou bless me."" "Then you wrestle her until she gives in." "You wrestle her." "I don't know how to wrestle." "I will not let thee go except thou bless me!" "Take back your book!" "Free me!" "Unfetter me!" "Bless me or whatever, but I will be let go." "I am the continental principality of America!" "I am a bird of prey!" "I will not be compelled!" "Entrance has been gained." "Return the text to Heaven." "Can I come back?" "I don't wanna go unless...." "You have prevailed, Prophet." "You choose." "Now release me." "I have torn a muscle in my thigh." "Big deal." "My leg's been hurting for months." "What?" "You've got no business with me." "I didn't call you." "You are his fever dream." "Not mine." "He's gone now... so you should go, too." "I'm going to wake up now." "Right now." "The body is the garden of the soul." "Greetings, Prophet." "We have been waiting for you." "Hurry." "Oh, my God." "This is too weird for words. lt's Roy Cohn." "It's so creepy here. I hate hospitals." "Stop whining." "We have to move fast." "I'm supposed to call the duty nurse if his condition changes." "It's changed." "Take off those glasses." "You look ridiculous." "What happened to you?" "Expiation for my sins." "What am I doing here?" "Expiation for your sins." "I can't take this stuff out myself." "I have to tell them he's dead and fill out forms." "I don't want them confiscating the medicine." "It's AZT." "Nearly 60 bottles left." "I needed a pack mule, so I called you." "Why me?" "You hate me." "I needed a Jew." "You were the first to come to mind." "What do you mean?" "We're gonna thank him." "For the pills." "Thank him?" "What do you call the Jewish prayer for the dead?" "A Kaddish." "That's the one." "Hit it." "Do it." "I'm not saying Kaddish for him." "The drugs, okay, fine, sure." "But no fucking way am I praying for him." "My New Deal pinko parents in Schenectady would never forgive me." "They're already so disappointed:" ""He's a fag, he's an office temp." ""Now look, he's saying Kaddish for Roy Cohn."" "I can't believe you'd actually pray for him." "Louis, I'd even pray for you." "He was a terrible person." "He died a hard death." "Maybe a queen can forgive her vanquished foe." "It isn't easy. lt doesn't count if it's easy." "It's the hardest thing." "Forgiveness." "Maybe that's where love and justice finally meet." "Peace at least." "Isn't what the Kaddish asks for?" "It's Hebrew or Aramaic or something." "Who knows what it's asking." "I'm 32 years old... and I've never been in a room with a dead body before." "So heavy and small." "I know probably less of the Kaddish than you do." "I'm an intensely secular Jew." "I didn't even bar mitzvah." "Do the best you can." "No, that's the Kiddush, not the...." "l don't know." "This is silly." "Please, I can't." "You son of a bitch." "You son of a bitch." "Thank you, Louis." "You did fine." "Fine?" "What are you talking about fine now?" "It was fucking miraculous." "I saw it. lt was there." "Most august fellow principalities, angels most high... I regret my absence at this session." "I was detained." "This is...." "The Prophet." "Yes." "We're working." "We're making progress." "I wanna return this." "What's the matter with it?" "lt just...." "We can't just stop." "We're not rocks." "Progress, migration, motion is modernity." "It's animate." "It's what living things do." "We desire." "Even if all we desire is stillness, it's still desire." "For, even if we go faster than we should... we can't wait, and wait for what?" "God...." "He isn't coming back." "Even if he did, if he ever did come back... if he ever dared to show his face or whatever in the garden again... if after all this destruction... if after all the terrible days of this terrible century... he returned to see how much suffering his abandonment has created... if all he has to offer is death... you should sue the bastard." "That's my only contribution to all this theology." "Sue the bastard for walking out." "How dare he!" "Thus spake the Prophet." "So thank you for sharing this with me, but I don't want to keep it." "He wants to live." "Yes!" "I'm 30 years old, for God's sake." "I haven't done anything yet." "I wanna be healthy again." "And this plague, it should stop in me and everywhere." "Make it go away." "We have tried." "We suffer with you... but we don't know." "We do not know how." "This is the tome of immobility... of respite." "Stay in heaven, don't return to life." "Suffer no more." "You choose." "I can't." "I still want my blessing." "Even sick, I wanna be alive." "You only think you do." "Life is a habit with you." "You have not seen what is to come." "We have." "What will the grim unfolding of these latter days bring... that you or any being should wish to endure them?" "Death... more plenteous than all heaven has tears to mourn it." "The slow dissolving of the great design." "The spiraling apart of the work of eternity." "The world and its beautiful particle logic... all collapsed, all dead... forever." "We are failing." "The earth and the angels." "Who asks of the Order's blessing with Apocalypse descending?" "Who demands more life... when death like a protector blinds our eyes... shielding from tender nerve more horror than can be borne?" "Let any being on whom Fortune smiles creep away to death... before that last, dreadful daybreak... when all your ravaging returns to you." "And morning blisters crimson and bears all life away." "A tidal wave of protean fire... that curls around the planet and bares the earth... clean as bone." "But still... bless me anyway. I want more life." "I can't help myself." "I do." "I've lived through such terrible times... and there are people who live through much worse." "But you see them living anyway." "When they're more spirit than body... more sores than skin... when they're burned and in agony... when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children... they live." "Death usually has to take life away." "I don't know if that's just the animal." "I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit." "The addiction to being alive." "So we live past hope." "If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do." "It's so much not enough." "It's so inadequate." "But still... bless me anyway." "I want more life." "And if He returns, take Him to court." "He walked out on us." "He ought to pay." "I'm exhausted." "You've been working hard." "l feel terrible." "We were worried we'd lost you." "Welcome back to the world." "From where?" "Well, look at this." "It's the dawn of man." "Venus rising from the sea." "l'm wet." "Fever broke." "That's a good sign." "Mrs." "Pitt." "The little girl's room." "Where did you find her?" "We found each other." "I've had a remarkable dream." "And you were there and you... and you." "I what?" "Some of it was terrible and some of it was wonderful." "But all the same, I kept saying I wanna go home." "And they sent me home." "What are you talking about?" "Thank you." "l just sat in a chair." "She saved my life." "Did no such thing. I slept in the chair." "Being in the hospital upsets me, reminds me of things." "I have to go now." "I had the most peculiar dream." "Can I come in?" "I have to start rounds." "You are one of the lucky ones." "I could give you a rose." "You rest your weary bones." "What happened to you?" "Visible scars." "Louis, you're so goddamn literal about everything." "l'm going now." "You'll come back?" "If I can...." "l have things I have to take care of." "Please do. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." "That's a stupid thing to do." "Who's she?" "You really don't want to know." "Before I depart... a homecoming gift." "What, I can't read the label." "My eyes aren't any better." "AZT, where on earth?" "These are hot pills. I am shocked." "Contribution to the Get Well Fund from a bad fairy." "These pills, they make you better." "They're poison, they make you anemic." "This is my life from now on, Louis." "I'm not getting better." "I'm not sure I'm ready to do that to my bone marrow." "We can talk about it tomorrow." "I am going home to nurse my grudges." "Ta, baby." "Sleep all day." "Ta, Louis." "You sure know how to clear a room." "Prior." "I wanna come back to you." "You could respond." "You could say something." "Just say it's fine or... it's not fine, but sure, what the hell or...." "l really failed you." "Sorry." "Failing in love... isn't the same as not loving." "It doesn't let you off the hook." "It doesn't mean... you're free to not love." "I love you, Louis." "Good." "l love you." "l really do." "But you can't come back." "Not ever." "I'm sorry, but you can't." "I want your credit card." "That's all." "You can keep track of me from where the charges come from... if you wanna keep track." "l have some things to tell you." "We shouldn't talk." "I don't want to do that anymore." "Credit card?" "I don't know what will happen to me without you." "Only you love me... out of everyone in the world." "I've done things, I'm ashamed, but...." "l've changed." "I don't know how yet, but... please... don't leave me now, Harper." "You're my good heart." "Did that hurt?" "Yes?" "Remember that." "Please." "If I can get a job or something, I'll cut the card to pieces and there won't be charges." "Credit card." "Just call or...." "Just call." "You have to." "No, probably never again." "That's how bad." "Sometimes, maybe lost is best." "Get lost, Joe." "Go exploring... with a big glass of water." "You look a fright." "So do you." "l had a horrid night." "So did I." "Where is...." "l'm sure she'll be all right." "What can happen to her in New York City?" "lt's not what I expected... which is the best thing you can say for it." "Shall I make supper tonight?" "Joe?" "I'll try to wait up till you get home." "Night flight to San Francisco." "Chase the moon across America." "God!" "It's been years since I was on a plane." "When we hit 35,000 feet... we'll have reached the tropopause... the great belt of calm air." "As close as I'll ever get to the ozone." "I dreamed we were there." "The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air... and attained the outer rim, the ozone... which was ragged and torn, patches of it... threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening." "But I saw something only I could see... because of my astonishing ability to see such things." "Souls were rising... from the earth far below, souls of the dead... of people who'd perished from... famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up... like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and... spinning." "And the souls of these departed... joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed... a web... a great net of souls." "And the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules... of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired." "Nothing's lost forever." "In this world, there is a kind of... painful progress." "Longing for what we've left behind, and... dreaming ahead." "At least I think that's so." "The Berlin Wall has fallen." "The Ceausescus are out." "He's building democratic socialism, the new internationalism." "Gorbachev is the greatest political thinker since Lenin." "We don't know enough yet to start canonizing him." "The Russians hate his guts." "Happy birthday." "Thomas Jefferson died on his birthday." "You aren't Thomas Jefferson." "l'm related to him." "The Walters are related to everyone." "Only the white meat, darling." "Salute." "Remember four years ago, the whole time we were feeling... everything everywhere was stuck." "While in Russia, perestroika, the thaw." "It's the end of the Cold War." "The whole world's changing overnight." "I wonder what will happen now, though, in places like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia." "Yugoslavia." "Let's turn the volume down on this, okay?" "They'll be at it for hours." "It's not that what they're saying isn't important, it's just...." "This is my favorite place in New York City, no, in the whole universe... the parts that I've seen, on a day like today." "A sunny winter's day, warm and cold at once." "The sky's a little hazy, so the sunlight has a physical presence, a character." "In autumn, those trees across the lake are yellow... and the sun strikes those most brilliantly... against the blue of the sky." "That sad fall blue, those trees are more light than vegetation." "They're Yankee trees." "New England transplants." "They're barren now." "It's January 1990." "I've been living with aids for five years." "That's six whole months longer than I lived with Louis." "...amount of energy, whatever comes, what you have to admire in Gorbachev... and the Russians is that they are making a leap into the unknown." "You can't wait around for theory." "The sprawl of life... the weird...." "lnterconnectedness." "Yes." "Maybe the sheer size of the terrain." "It's all too much to be encompassed by a single theory now." "The world is faster than the mind." "That's what politics is, the world moving ahead." "And only in politics does the miraculous occur." "But that's a theory." "Yes, but you can't live in the world without an idea of the world." "But it's living that makes the ideas." "You can't wait for a theory, but you have to have a theory." "Go know, as my grandma would say." "This angel, she is my favorite angel." "I like them best when they are statuary." "They commemorate death, but suggest a world without dying." "They're made of the heaviest things on earth, stone and iron." "They weigh tons." "But their wings, they are engines and instruments of flight." "This is the angel Bethesda." "Louis will tell you her story." "She was this angel who landed in the Temple Square in Jerusalem... in the days of the Second Temple." "Right in the middle of a working day, she descended and... her foot touched earth, and where it did, a fountain shot up from the ground." "When the Romans destroyed the temple, the fountain of Bethesda ran dry." "Belize will tell you about the nature of the fountain before its flowing stopped." "If anyone who was suffering in... the body or the spirit... walked through the waters of the fountain of Bethesda... they would be healed... washed clean of pain." "They know this 'cause I've told them many times." "Hannah here told it to me." "She also told me this:" "When the Millennium comes...." "Not the year 2000 but..." "the capital-M Millennium." "Right." "The Bethesda fountain will flow again." "And I told him that I would personally take him there to bathe." "We will all bathe ourselves clean." "Not literally in Jerusalem." "We don't want this to have Zionist implications." "But we do recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist." "But the West Bank should be homeland to the Palestinians and the Golan Heights...." "Not both the West Bank and the Golan Heights and... no one supports Palestinians more than I do." "You're right." "l'm almost done." "The fountain's not flowing now." "They turn it off in the winter." "Ice in the pipes." "But in the summer... it's a sight to see." "I wanna be around to see it." "I plan to be. I hope to be." "This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all." "And the dead will be commemorated... and will struggle on with the living... and we're not going away." "We won't die secret deaths anymore." "The world only spins forward." "We will be citizens." "The time has come." "Bye now." "You are fabulous, each and every one." "I bless you." "More life." "The great work begins." "And don't, please, start another political discussion." "That is not walking." "l know." "We can agree about walking."