"Hello, and good morning." "I am Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz... of the Bronx Home for Aged Hebrews." "We are here this morning to pay respect... for the passing of Sarah Ironson... devoted wife of..." "Benjamin Ironson." "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...." "I did not know this woman." "I cannot accurately describe her attributes... nor do justice to her... dimensions." "She was not a person... but a whole kind of a person." "The ones that crossed the ocean... that brought with us to America..." "the villages of Russia and Lithuania." "And how we struggled... and how we fought... for the family... 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 lives... 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." "–If 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 Hollins." "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 Folles?" "–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...." "It'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?" "–It'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." "–I'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?" "–It's a...." "–It'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— It 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 pleasure... a woman can simply lick the penis... without actually putting the whole organ in her mouth... and still provide the man with a lot of pleasure." "When women tell me that they have a problem with fellatio..." "I often tell them to think of the penis as an ice cream cone." "Scientists say the hole in the ozone layer high above the Antarctic... is now a record at 7 million square miles." "That's three times the size of the whole of the United States." "The hole appears as a giant blue blob totally covering Antarctica... stretching out to the southern tip of South America." "Scientists say that with the hole so big this early in the year... it could 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...." "I 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 International Order of Travel Agents." "We mobilize the globe." "We set people adrift." "We are adepts of motion..." "acolytes of the flocks." "Cash, check, or credit card, name your destination." "Antarctica maybe?" "I want to see the hole in the ozone." "–I 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." "–I'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."" "–I don't have a sibilant "s." –I 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." "It's your fault." "–It 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." "–I 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?" "–I'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?" "–I couldn't tell you." "–Why?" "–I 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." "–It's an incredible honor— –I have to think." "–Of course." "–Say no." "–You said you were gonna think about it." "–I 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." "–It'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." "–I have too much to do here." "–Like what?" "–I 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." "–I'm afraid to go in there alone." "–Afraid of what?" "–I 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." "–It 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, bubeleh." "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." "–I 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—" "It only seems that way to you because you never go out..." "and you have emotional problems." "–I do so get out in the world." "–No, you don't." "You stay in all day fretting about imaginary— I 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." "–I'm sorry." "If I do have emotional problems, it's from living with you or— I'm sorry, I didn't mean—" "Then you should have never married me." "You have all these..." "secrets and lies." "–I 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." "–I 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." "–I'm sorry?" "Forget it." "Thanks for asking." "I mean, it really is nice of you." "–Sorry." "Sick friend." "–I'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?" "–I 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...." "–I'm confused." "–Yes." "My name is Louis, but all my friends call me Louise." "I work in word processing." "Thanks for the toilet paper." ""I'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.... –I 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." "–I'm a Mormon." "–I'm a homosexual." "In my church, we don't believe in homosexuals." "In my church, we don't believe in Mormons." "What church do...." "I 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...." "I 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." "–I 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." "Glory 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." "–I had a lot to think about." "–I 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." "It 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." "–I 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!" "–I 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." "It's like a punishment." "It was wrong of me to marry you." "I knew...." "It'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." "–I 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." "–I'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— –I 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." "–It's easier." "–Oh, thanks." "If it's bad, I'll tell you." "Shitting blood sounds bad to me." "–I'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...." "–Is 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." "–I 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 itself." "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?" "–I don't think I was implying anything." "–I'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."" "–I'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?" "–In 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." "–I'm calling the ambulance." "–No, wait." "Wait?" "Are you fucking crazy?" "God, you're on fire, your head is on fire." "–It hurts." "–I'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!" "–I'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." "It's an emergency." "I need an ambulance right away." "–Please, Louis!" "–Will you shut the fuck up?" "–210..." "–I have to go to the bathroom." "I don't know." "I don't know, he can't breathe!" "Oh, God!" "–Prior...." "–I'm sorry." "They'll be here in a minute." "It's...." "Oh, God!" "–What is that?" "–I 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 angel is a beautiful 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." "–I'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." "–I gave him something that makes him sleep." "–Deep asleep?" "Orbiting the moons of Jupiter." "–It's a good place to be." "–Any place better than here." "–You his...." "–Yes." "I'm his.... –This must be hell for you." "–It 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 Mayflower 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...." "If 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." "–I 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...." "I don't know how well we know ourselves." "I mean, what if...." "I 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." "–I 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." "–I 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." "–I 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." "–I...." "–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." "–I wanna be family." "Famiglia... as my Italian friends call it." "La famiglia." "Lovely word." "It's important for me... to help you, like I was helped." "–I owe practically everything to you, Roy." "–I'm dying, Joe." "Cancer." "–Oh, my God." "–Please, let me finish." "Few people know this." "I'm telling you this because...." "I'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 la 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?" "–I 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?" "–I'm not supposed to tell." "–You better tell the doctor, or I will." "Don't, please." "I want the voice." "It'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?" "–I 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?" "I can't stay." "I will return." "Are you one of those follow-me-to-the-other-side voices?" "No..." "I am no nightbird." "I am a messenger." "You have a beautiful voice." "Stay with me?" "Not now." "Soon I will return." "I will reveal myself to you." "I am glorious." "Glorious." "You must prepare." "–For what?" "I don't— –No death." "No." "A marvelous work and a wonder we undertake... an edifice awry we straighten... a great lie we abolish." "A great error, correct... with the rule, sword, and broom of truth!" "I am on my way." "When I am manifest, our work begins." "Prepare for the parting of the air." "The breath, the ascent." "Glory 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." "–It 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." "–I 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." "–I know, Mr Heller." "–See what I mean?" "–He's special." "Isn'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 DC., and so Joe cannot go." "Keeps us dangling." "We've seen that before, haven't we?" "–These men and their wives?" "–Yes, beware." "–I 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." "This disbarment committee... genteel gentlemen, Brahmin lawyers, country-club men..." "I offend them." "To these men I'm what, Martin?" "What would you say?" "–Some sort of filthy little Jewish troll?" "–No, I wouldn't go so far as that—" "I would." "They're very fancy lawyers, these disbarment committee lawyers." "Fancy lawyers with fancy corporate clients and complicated cases... antitrust suits, deregulation, environmental control." "Complex cases like these need Justice Department cooperation... like flowers need the sun." "Wouldn't you say that was an accurate assessment?" "I'm not here, Roy." "I'm not hearing any of this." "No, of course you're not." "Without the light of the sun, Joseph... these cases and the very fancy lawyers who represent them... will wither and die." "A well-placed friend, someone in the Justice Department, say... can turn off the sun." "Cast a deep shadow on my behalf." "Make them shiver in the cold... if they overstep." "They would fear that." "Roy, I don't understand." "You do." "You're not asking me to—" "Careful." "Even if I said yes to the job..." "it would be illegal to interfere with the hearings." "It's unethical." "No." "I can't." "Unethical?" "Would you excuse us a moment, please?" "–Excuse you?" "–Yeah, take a walk." "–Roy, are you, are you feeling— –Unethical?" "Are you trying to embarrass me in front of my friend?" "It is unethical, I—" "Boy, you are really something." "What do you think this is, Sunday school?" "No, but this is—" "This is gastric juices churning, this is enzymes and acids." "This is intestinal, is what this is." "Bowel movement and blood-red meat." "This stinks." "This is politics, Joe." "This is the game of being alive, and you think you're what?" "You think you're above that?" "Above alive is what?" "Dead." "In the clouds." "You're on earth, God damn it!" "Plant a foot, stay awhile." "I'm sick." "They smell I'm weak." "They want blood this time." "I must have eyes in Justice." "In Justice, you will protect me." "Why can't Mr Heller— Grow up." "The administration can't get involved." "I'd be part of the administration, too." "No, not the same." "Martin's Ed's man, Ed's Reagan's man." "So Martin's Reagan's man." "You're mine." "This will never be." "You understand me?" "I'm gonna be a lawyer, Joe." "I'm gonna be a goddamn, motherfucking, legally licensed... member-of-the-bar lawyer, just like my daddy was... till my last bitter day on earth, Joseph." "Till the day I die." "Martin's back." "So, are we agreed?" "Joe?" "I will think about it." "I will." "It's the fear of what comes after the doing that makes the doing hard to do." "Amen." "But you can almost always live with the consequences." "Come on." "–Can I...." "–Sure." "Sure." "–Crazy cold sun." "–Yeah." "Have to make the best of it." "So how's your friend?" "My—" "He's worse." "My friend is worse." "–I'm sorry." "–Yeah, thanks for asking." "It's nice." "You're nice." "I can't believe you voted for Reagan." "–I hope he gets better." "–Reagan?" "–Your friend." "–He won't." "Neither will Reagan." "–Let's not talk politics, okay?" "–Gosh, you're eating three of those?" "–I'm hungry." "–They're really terrible for you." "Full of rat poo... and beetle legs and wood shavings and shit." "–You're eating one." "–Yeah, the shape." "I can't help myself." "Plus, I'm trying to commit suicide." "What's your excuse?" "I don't have an excuse, I just have Pepto-Bismol." "Yeah, but then I wash it down with Coke." "–Are you always like this?" "–I've been worrying a lot about his kids." "–Whose?" "–Reagan's." "The ones he had with Jane and the ones with Nancy." "Little orphan Patti... and Miss Ron Reagan, Jr., the you-should— pardon-the-expression heterosexual." "Ron Reagan Jr is...." "You shouldn't make these assumptions." "How do you know about him, what he is?" "You don't know." "Darling, he never sucked my cock, but.... –If you're going to get vulgar— –No, I...." "Really." "I mean, what's it like to be the child of the Zeitgeist?" "To have the American animus as your dad?" "It's not really a family, the Reagans." "I read People." "There aren't any connections there, no love." "They don't ever even speak to each other except through their agents." "So what's it like to be Reagan's kid?" ""Enquiring minds want to know."" "You just...." "Whatever you feel like saying or doing, you don't care." "–You just do it." "–Do what?" "It." "Whatever." "Whatever it is you wanna do." "–Are you trying to tell me something?" "–No, I'm just observing that you—" "Impulsive." "–Yes." "I mean, it must be scary." "–Land of the free, home of the brave." "Call me irresponsible." "It's kind of terrifying." "Yeah, freedom is." "Heartless, too." "–You're not heartless." "–You don't know." "Finish your weenie." "Yesterday was Sunday..." "but I've been a little unfocused and I thought it was Monday." "So I came here like I was going to work, and the whole place was empty." "And at first I couldn't figure out why..." "and I had this moment of incredible fear... and also... it just flashed through my mind." "The whole hall of justice, it's empty, it's deserted... it's gone out of business forever." "And I just wondered what a thing it would be... if, overnight, everything you owe anything to:" "justice... or love... had really gone away." "Free." "It would be... heartless terror." "Yes, terrible, and very great." "To shed your skin, every old skin... one by one." "–I can't go back in there today." "I— –Then don't." "I can't go back in, I need...." "I can't be... this anymore." "–I should just...." "–Do you want some company?" "For whatever." "Sometimes even if it scares you to death, you have to be... willing to break the law." "Know what I mean?" "–Yes." "–I moved out." "I moved out on...." "I haven't been sleeping well." "Me, neither." "Antacid mustache." "Mom." "–Joe?" "–Hi." "You're calling from the street." "It must be 4:00 in the morning." "–What's happened?" "–Nothing." "Nothing, I...." "It's Harper." "Has Harper...." "Joe?" "Yeah, hi." "No, Harper's fine." "No, she's not fine." "–How are you, Mom?" "–What's happened?" "I just wanted to talk to you." "I...." "I wanted to try something out on you." "Joe, you haven't...." "Have you been drinking, Joe?" "Yes, ma'am, I'm drunk." "That isn't like you." "No." "But I mean, who's to say?" "Why are you out on the street at 4:00 in the morning... in that crazy city?" "It's dangerous." "Actually I'm not on the street, Mom." "I'm near the lake in the park." "What park?" "Central Park." "My lord, what on earth are you doing in Central Park... at this time of night?" "Are you...." "Joe, I think... you ought to go home, right now... and call me from there." "Joe?" "I come here to watch..." "Mom, sometimes." "–Just to watch." "–Watch what?" "What's there to watch?" "At 4:00 in the...." "Mom... did Dad love me?" "What?" "Did he?" "You have to go home now and call me from there." "–No, answer." "–Really, this is maudlin." "I don't like this conversation." "Yeah, it gets worse from here on." "Joe?" "Mom." "Momma." "I'm a homosexual, Momma." "Boy, did that come out awkward." "Hello?" "Hello?" "I'm a homosexual." "Please, Momma, say something." "You're old enough to understand your father didn't love you... without being ridiculous about it." "–What?" "–You're being ridiculous." "I'm what?" "You ought to go home to your wife, right now." "I need to go to sleep." "This phone call." "We will just forget this phone call." "–Mom." "–No more talk tonight." "And drinking is a sin!" "A sin!" "I raised you better than that." "God." "Home." "The moment of truth has arrived." "I'm gonna move out." "The fuck you are." "Harper, please listen." "I still love you very much." "You're still my best buddy." "I won't leave you." "I don't like the sound of this." "I'm leaving." "I'm leaving, I already have." "Please, listen." "–This is really hard, we have to talk." "–We are talking, aren't we?" "Now, please shut up." "Bastard, sneaking off while I'm flat out here." "That is low." "If I could get up now, I'd beat the shit out of you." "–Did you take pills?" "How many?" "–No pills, bad for...." "You aren't pregnant." "I called your gynecologist." "I'm seeing a new gynecologist!" "You have no right to do this!" "–That's ridiculous." "–No right." "It's criminal." "All right, forget about that." "You want the truth?" "This is the truth." "I knew this when I married you." "I've known this for as long as I've known anything." "But I thought that with enough will and effort..." "I could change myself." "But I can't!" "Criminal." "–There ought to be a law." "–There is a law, you'll see." "I'm losing ground here." "I go walking, you wanna know where I walk?" "I go to the park, or up and down 53rd Street..." "or places where...." "And I keep swearing I won't go again, but I just can't." "I need some privacy." "–That's new." "–Everything's new, Prior." "I try to tighten my heart into a knot, a snarl." "I try to learn to live dead, just numb." "But then I see someone I want and it's like a nail... like a hot spike right through my chest, and I know I'm losing." "The court will come to order." "Let's talk practicalities, schedules." "I'll come over when you want—" "–Has the jury reached a verdict?" "–I'm doing the best I can!" "Pathetic, who cares?" "My whole life has conspired to bring me to this place..." "and I can't despise my whole life." "I think I believed, when I met you, I could save you." "You, at least, if not myself, but...." "I don't have any sexual feelings for you, and I don't think I ever did." "–I think you should go." "–Where?" "–Washington, it doesn't matter." "–What are you saying?" "Without me." "Without me, isn't that what you wanna hear?" "Yes." "You can love someone and fail them." "You can love someone and not be— You can, theoretically, yes." "A person can." "Maybe an editorial "you" can love, Louis, but not you." "Specifically you, I don't know." "I think you are excluded from that general category." "You were gonna save me, but the whole time you were spinning a lie." "I just don't understand that." "A person could theoretically love, and maybe many do." "But we both know now you can't." "–I do." "–You can't even say it." "I.... –I love you, Prior." "–I repeat, who cares?" "This is so scary." "I want this to stop, to go back." "We have reached a verdict, your honor, this man's heart is deficient!" "He loves, but his love is worth nothing." "Mr Lies!" "I wanna get away from here." "Far away right now!" "Before he starts talking again, please!" "As long as I've known you, you've been afraid of men under the bed." "Men hiding under the sofa, men with knives." "I'm dying, you stupid fuck!" "Do you know what love is?" "Do you know what that means?" "We lived together four-and-a-half years." "You animal!" "You idiot!" "I have to find some way to save myself." "Who are these men?" "–I never understood it, but now I know." "–What?" "It's me." "It is?" "Get out of my room!" "I'm the man with the knives." "You are." "If I could get up now, I would kill you, I would." "Go away." "Go away or I'll scream." "–God." "–I'm sorry." "You, I recognize you now." "Please don't scream." "–Go." "–Please." "God, I'm bleeding." "Mr Lies, get me away from here!" "Mr Lies!" "Right here." "I wanna go away." "I can't see him anymore." "–Where?" "–Anywhere far away." "Absolutamento." "When I open my eyes, you'll be gone." "Harper?" "It worked." "I hurt all over." "I wish I was dead." "Okay." "No, thanks." "I got it from here." "I can walk." "Thank you, guys." "Welcome home, doucet." "Call me if you get confused about which pill's when..." "and stay quiet, rest your sad self." "Bye, pussums." "Men are beasts." "Who are you?" "–My name's Prior Walter." "–My name is Prior Walter." "–I know that." "–Explain." "You're alive, I'm not." "We have the same name." "What do you want me to explain?" "–A ghost." "–An ancestor." "Not the Prior Walter, the Bayeux Tapestry Prior Walter?" "Great-great grandson, fifth of the name." "I'm the 34th, I think." "Actually, the 32nd." "Not according to mother." "Then she's including the two bastards." "I say leave them out." "I say, no room for the bastards." "–These little things you swallow?" "–Pills." "For the pestilence." "I, too." "Pestilence, you, too, what?" "The pestilence in my day was much worse than it is now." "Whole villages of empty houses." "Look outdoors and you see Death walking in the morning... as plain as I see you now." "You died of the plague." "The spotty monster." "Like you, alone." "–I'm not alone." "–You have no wife, no children." "–I'm gay." "–Be gay." "Dance in your altogether for all I care." "But why can't you have children?" "Gay, homosexual." "Not "bonny, blithe" and...." "Never mind." "I had 12 when I died." "And I was three years younger than him." "God, another one!" "Prior Walter." "Prior to you by some 17 others." "–He's counting the bastards." "–Are we having a convention?" "We've been sent to declare her fabulous incipience." "They do love a well-paved entrance with lots of heralds." "The messenger comes." "Prepare the way." "The infinite descent, a breath in air." "We have been chosen, I suspect, because of the mortal affinities." "With a family as long-descended as the Walters... there are bound to be a few carried off by the plague." "–The spotty monster." "–Black Jack." "Mine came from the water pump." "Half the city of London." "His, from fleas." "Yours, I understand..." "from the lamentable consequences of venery." "Fleas on rats." "Who'd have known?" "Am I gonna die?" "We are not allowed to discuss that." "But when you do, you won't have the ancestors to help you through it." "–You die alone." "–I'm afraid." "So you should be." "There isn't even a torch." "The path is dark, steep, and rocky." "Don't alarm him." "There's good news before there's bad." "You are a prophet." "Seer." "Revelator." "–It's a great honor for the family." "–He hasn't got a family." "I meant for the Walters, for the family in the larger sense." "Calm." "This is no brain fever." "Even now... from the mirror-bright halls of heaven... across the cold and lifeless... infinity of space... the Messenger comes... trailing orbs of light... fabulous, incipient." "So, Prophet, to you." "Prepare... the infinite descent." "A breath, a feather." "Glory to...." "Why has democracy succeeded in America?" "Of course, by succeeded I mean comparatively, not literally... not in the present." "But what makes for the prospect... of some sort of radical democracy spreading outward and growing up?" "Why does the power that was once so carefully preserved... at the top of the pyramid by the original framers of the Constitution... seem drawn inexorably downward and outward... in spite of the best effort of the Right to stop this?" "It's the really hard thing about being Left in this country." "The Left can't help but trip over all these petrified little fetishes." "–Freedom." "That's the worst." "–And OJ." "Jeane Kirkpatrick, for God's sake, will go on and on about freedom." "What does that mean, the word "freedom," when she talks about it?" "Or human rights." "You have Bush talking about human rights." "What are these people talking about?" "They might as well be talking about the mating habits of Venusians." "I mean, these people don't begin to know what, ontologically... freedom is, or human rights." "It's like they see these bourgeois property-based Rights of Man type rights... but that is not enfranchisement, it's not democracy, it's not what's implicit... what's potential, in the idea." "It's not the idea with blood in it." "That's just liberalism." "The worst kind of liberalism... bourgeois tolerance." "What I think what AIDS shows us is the limits of tolerance." "It's not enough to be tolerated." "When the shit hits the fan, you find out that tolerance is worth nothing." "Underneath all the tolerance is intense, passionate hatred." "Here you go." "–Don't you think that's true?" "–It is." "Power's the object, not being tolerated." "Fuck assimilation." "But in spite of all this, the thing about America... is that we're different from every other nation... in that, with people here of every race, we can't...." "Ultimately, what defines us here isn't race, but politics." "Not like any European country where there's an insurmountable fact... of a kind of racial or ethnic monopoly or monolith." "Like, all Dutchmen, I mean, Dutch people, are Dutch." "And the Jews of Europe were never Europeans." "Just a small problem facing the monolith." "–Whereas, here in America— –Race doesn't count." "No...." "You can't be hearing that." "Look." "Race, yes." "But ultimately, race here is a political question." "Racists just try to use race here as a tool in a political struggle." "It's not really about race." "There are no angels in America." "No spiritual past, no racial past." "There's only the political." "The shifting downwards and outwards of political power to the people." "Power to the people, amen." "My goodness, look at the time." "You think this is racist or naive or something." "–It's certainly something." "–What?" "I really...." "I don't wanna speak from some position of privilege." "I'm sitting here thinking, "Eventually he's got to run out of steam"... so I let you go on and on... saying about seven or eight things that I find really offensive." "But I know you." "I know that the guilt fueling this peculiar tirade... is already swollen bigger than your hemorrhoids." "–I don't have hemorrhoids." "–May I finish?" "–So, finally— –Prior told you." "–You promised." "Prior's not a subject." "–You brought him up." "–I brought up hemorrhoids." "–It's indirect." "Passive-aggressive." "Unlike banging me over the head saying that America has no race problem." "–Be fair." "I never said that." "–Not exactly, but close." "–You misinterpreted." "–Stop interrupting." "–No, let me...." "–What, talk?" "You've been running your mouth nonstop since I got here." "Up the hill and down the hill, playing with your monolith." "You could've joined in." "It's an awesome spectacle, but I got better things to do with my time... than to listen to this racist bullshit because I feel sorry—" "–I am not a racist." "–Come on." "–So maybe I am a racist." "–I really hate that." "It's no fun picking on you, Louis, you're so guilty." "It's like throwing darts at a glob of Jell-O." "There are no satisfying hits, just quivering." "The darts just blop in and vanish." "You know what I think?" "You hate me because I'm a Jew." "–I'm leaving." "–It's true." "You have no basis...." "Louis, it's good to know you haven't changed." "You're still an honorary citizen of the Twilight Zone." "And after your pale white polemics on behalf of racial insensitivity... you have a lot of nerve calling me an anti-Semite." "Now I really have to go." "–You called me "Lou the Jew." –That was a joke." "–I didn't think it was funny." "–It was three years ago." "You hate me because you hate black people." "I do not." "But I do think most black people are anti-Semitic." "That's racist." "–Louis Farrakhan." "–Ed Koch." "–Jesse Jackson." "–Louis, that's pathetic." "You voted for Jesse Jackson." "You sent checks to the Rainbow Coalition." "I'm ambivalent." "The checks bounced." "All your checks bounce." "–You're ambivalent about everything." "–What's that supposed to mean?" "You may be dumber than shit, but I refuse to believe you can't figure it out." "Try." "I was never ambivalent about Prior." "I love him." "–I really do." "–Nobody said different." "Love and ambivalence." "Real love isn't ambivalent." "I'd swear that's a line from my favorite best-selling paperback novel..." "In Love with the Night Mysterious, except I don't think you've read it." "–I never read it." "–You ought to... instead of spending your life trying to get through Democracy in America." "It's about this white woman... whose daddy owns a plantation in the Deep South..." "in the years before the Civil War." "And her name is Margaret... and she's in love with her daddy's number-one slave." "His name is Thaddeus." "She's married, but her white slave-owner husband has AIDS." "Antebellum Insufficiently-Developed Sex organs." "So there's a lot of hot stuff going down... when Margaret and Thaddeus can catch a spare torrid ten..." "under the cotton-picking moon." "Then, of course, the Yankees come and set the slaves free." "The slaves string up old daddy and so on." "Historical fiction." "Somewhere in there, I recall..." "Margaret and Thaddeus find the time to discuss the nature of love." "Her face is reflecting the flames... of the burning plantation." "You know, the way white people do." "And his black face is dark in the night." "And she says to him:" ""Thaddeus, real love isn't ever ambivalent."" "Looking good." "What else?" "Ankle's sore and swollen, but the leg's better." "The nausea's mostly gone with the little orange pills." "BM's pure liquid, but not bloody anymore, for now." "My eye doctor says everything's okay, for now." "My dentist says "yuck" when he sees my fuzzy tongue... and now he wears little condoms on his thumb and forefinger... and a mask." "So what?" "My dermatologist is in Hawaii... and my mother...." "Leave my mother out of it." "Which is usually where my mother is." "Out of it." "My glands are like walnuts, my weight's holding steady for week two... and a friend died two days ago of bird tuberculosis." "That scared me." "I didn't go to the funeral today because he was an Irish Catholic." "It's probably open casket and I'm afraid of something:" "the bird TB, or seeing him, or...." "So I guess I'm doing okay." "Except for, of course, I'm going nuts." "–How bad is he?" "–You want the laundry list?" "There's the weight problem and the shit problem..." "and the morale problem." "And he thinks he's going crazy." "We ran the Toxoplasmosis series." "There's no indication— I know." "But I feel like something terrifying is on its way, you know?" "Like a missile from outer space, and it's plummeting down towards the earth." "And I'm ground zero." "And I am generally known where I am known..." "as one cool, collected queen." "And I am ruffled." "There's really nothing to worry about." "I think that...." "–Excuse me?" "–Everything's fine." "I don't understand what—" "Why are you doing that?" "Stop it." "–Stop what?" "–You were just...." "Weren't you just speaking in Hebrew or something?" "Hebrew?" "No, I didn't speak in Hebrew." "Oh, no." "Oh, God." "–Please, I think...." "–Look, I'm sorry." "I have a waiting room full." "I think you're one of the lucky ones." "You'll live for years, probably." "You're pretty healthy for someone with no immune system." "Are you seeing someone?" "Loneliness is a danger." "A therapist?" "No, I don't need to see anyone." "–I just— –Think about it." "You aren't going crazy." "You're just under a lot of stress." ""Hebrew."" "You're a nurse." "Give me something." "I don't know what to do anymore." "Last week at work, I screwed up the Xerox machine permanently... and then I tripped on the subway steps." "I fell and my glasses broke." "And I cut my forehead." "Here, see?" "So now I can't see much." "And my forehead, it's like the mark of Cain." "Stupid, right?" "But it won't heal." "Every morning I see it and I think Biblical things." "Mark of Cain, Judas Iscariot and his silver." "I miss him so much." "But then those sores and the smell, and where I thought it was going..." "I could be sick, too." "Maybe I'm sick." "I don't know." "Belize, tell him I love him." "Can you do that?" "I've thought about it for a very long time..." "and I still don't understand what love is." "–I'm dying." "–He's dying." "You just wish you were." "Cheer up, Louis." "Look at that heavy sky out there." "Purple." "Boy, what kind of homosexual are you, anyway?" "That's not purple, Mary." "That color up there is mauve." "Snow." "Snow." "Ice." "Mountains of ice." "Where am I?" "I feel better." "I do, I feel better." "There are ice crystals in my lungs, wonderful and sharp... and the snow smells like cold, crushed peaches." "And there's something... some current of blood in the wind." "How strange, it has that iron taste." "Ozone!" "Where am I?" "The kingdom of ice." "Bottommost part of the world." "Antarctica?" "This is Antarctica?" "Cold shelter for the shattered." "No sorrow here." "Tears freeze." "Boy!" "Look at this, like, wow." "I must have really snapped the tether." "Apparently." "That's great!" "I wanna stay here forever." "Set up camp and build things." "Build a city, an enormous city." "I should build by a river." "Where are the forests?" "No timber here." "Too cold." "No trees." "Details." "I'm sick of details!" "I'll plant them and grow them." "It'll be great, and I'm gonna make a new world here... so that I never have to go home again." "As long as it lasts." "Ice has a way of melting." "No." "Forever." "I can have anything I want here." "Maybe even companionship." "Someone who has desire for me." "You, maybe." "It's against the bylaws of the International Order of Travel Agents... to get involved with clients." "Rules are rules." "Anyway, I'm not the one you really want." "There isn't anyone?" "Maybe an Eskimo who can ice-fish for food... help me to build a nest for when the baby comes—" "There are no Eskimo here, and you're not really pregnant." "You made that up." "All of this is made up, so if the snow feels cold, I'm pregnant, right?" "Here, I can be pregnant and I can have any kind of baby I want." "This is a retreat." "A vacuum." "Its virtue is that it lacks everything." "Deep freeze for feelings." "You can be numb and safe here." "That's what you came for." "Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions." "You mean like no Eskimo in Antarctica?" "Correcto." "Ice and snow, no Eskimo." "Even hallucinations have laws." "Then who's that?" "An Eskimo." "An Antarctic Eskimo." "Fisher of the polar deep." "I'm gonna like this place." "It's my own National Geographic special." "I think I felt her kicking." "Maybe I'll give birth to a baby covered with thick white fur... and that way she won't be cold." "My breasts will be full of hot cocoa so that she doesn't get chilly... and if it gets really cold, she'll have a pouch I can crawl into." "Like a marsupial." "And we'll mend together." "That's what we'll do." "We'll mend." "Excuse me." "I said, excuse me." "Can you tell me where I am?" "Is this Brooklyn?" "Do you know a Pineapple Street?" "Or is there some train or bus that I...." "I'm lost." "I just arrived from Salt Lake City." "Utah?" "And I took the bus that I was told to take and I got off." "It was the very last stop, so I had to get off." "And I asked the driver, was this Brooklyn?" "And he nodded yes." "But he was from one of those foreign countries... where they think it's good manners to nod... even if you have no idea what you're nodding at." "In truth, I think he spoke no English at all." "Which I think would make him ineligible for employment on public transportation... the public being English-speaking." "Mostly." "Do you speak English?" "I was supposed to be met at the airport by my son." "And he didn't show." "And I don't wait more than three and three-quarters hours for anyone." "So I should have been more patient, I guess." "–But is this— –Bronx." "Is that the Bronx?" "How in the name of heaven did I get to the Bronx, when that—" "Slurp." "Will you stop that disgusting slurping... you disgusting, slurping, feeding animal." "Feeding yourself." "What would it matter to you or anyone if you just stopped feeding... and died!" "Can you just tell me—" "Why was the Kosciuszko Bridge... named after a Polack?" "–I don't know what you're talking about." "–That was a joke." "What's the punch line?" "–I don't know." "–For Pete's sake." "–Is there anyone who can tell me— –Stand further off, you fat loathsome whore!" "You can't have any more of this soup." "Slurp, you animal." "I know you'll pee it all away, and where will you do that?" "Behind what bush?" "It's fucking cold out here, and I...." "That's right... 'cause it was supposed to have been a tunnel." "Not very funny." "Have you read the Prophecies of Nostradamus?" "–Who?" "–Some guy I went out with once somewhere." "Nostradamus." "Prophet." "Outcast." "–Eyes, like, scary shit— –Shut up!" "Please stop jabbering for one minute... and pull your wits together and tell me how to get to Brooklyn." "Because you know, and you'll tell me, because there's no else to tell me... and I'm cold and I'm wet..." "and I'm very, very angry." "So I'm sorry that you're psychotic, but just make an effort." "Pull yourself together and take a deep breath." "Do it!" "Good." "Now exhale." "Good." "Now tell me how to get to Brooklyn." "Don't know." "Never been, I'm sorry." "You want some soup?" "Manhattan?" "Do you...." "I don't suppose you know the address of the Mormon Visitor's Center." "65th and Broadway." "–How do you know that?" "–Go there all the time." "Free movies." "It's boring, but you can stay all day." "–How can I get there?" "–Take the D train." "It's the next block." "Make a right." "–Thank you." "–Yeah." "In the new century..." "I think we will all be insane." "I can't go to Washington." "The answer's no." "I'm sorry." "Oh, well." "Apologies." "I don't see that there's anyone asking for apologies." "–I'm sorry, Roy." "–Oh, well, apologies." "My wife is missing." "My mother's coming from Salt Lake to help look, I guess." "I'm supposed to be at the airport picking her up now, but...." "I just spent two days in a hospital, Roy, with a bleeding ulcer." "I was spitting up blood." "Blood?" "–Look, I'm very busy here— –It's just a job." "A job?" "A job?" "Washington?" "Dumb Utah Mormon hick shit." "–Roy— –Washington?" "When Washington called me, I was younger than you." "You think I said, "Oh, fuck, no, I can't go." "I got two fingers up my asshole and a little moral nosebleed to boot"?" "When Washington calls you, my pretty young punk friend, you go... or you can go fuck yourself sideways... 'cause the train has pulled out of the station and you're out!" "Nowhere." "Out in the cold." "Fuck you, Mary Jane." "Get out of here!" "–Look, just let me— –What, explain?" "Ephemera!" "Explain." "–You broke my heart, explain that." "–I love you, Roy." "There's so much that I want to be." "What you see in me...." "I wanna be a participant in the world." "In your world, Roy." "I wanna be capable of that." "I've tried, really, I have." "But I can't do this." "Not because I don't believe in you, but because I believe in you so much." "And what you stand for at heart." "The order, the decency." "I would give anything to protect you, but there are laws I can't break." "It's too ingrained, it's not me." "There's enough damage I've already done." "Maybe you're right." "Maybe I'm dead." "You're not dead, boy, you're a sissy." "You love me, that's moving." "I'm moved." "It's nice to be loved." "I warned you about her, didn't I, Joe?" "You don't listen to me." "Why?" "Because you say:" ""Roy." "He's smart, he's a friend... but, Roy, well, you know, he isn't nice."" "And you wanna be nice, right?" "A nice, nice man." "You know what my greatest accomplishment was, Joe?" "In my life, what I am able to look back on and be most proud of?" "And I have helped make presidents and unmake them." "And mayors, and more goddamn judges than anyone in New York City ever... and several million dollars tax-free." "And you know what means the most to me?" "You ever hear of Ethel Rosenberg, Joe?" "–Yeah, I guess, yes." "–Yeah, you've heard of Ethel Rosenberg." "Maybe even read about her in the history books." "If it wasn't for me, Joe, Ethel Rosenberg would be alive today... writing some personal advice column for Ms Magazine." "She isn't." "Because during the trial, Joe..." "I was on the phone every day talking with the judge." "Every day, doing what I do best." "Talking on the telephone." "Making sure that that timid yid nebbish on the bench... did his duty to America, to history." "That sweet, unprepossessing woman... two kids, boo-hoo-hoo... reminded us all of our little Jewish mamas, she came this close to getting life." "I pleaded till I wept to put her in the chair." "Me, I did that." "I'd have fucking pulled the switch myself if they let me." "Why?" "Because I fucking hate traitors." "Because I fucking hate Communists." "Was it legal?" "Fuck legal!" "Am I a nice man?" "Fuck nice!" "They say terrible things about me in The Nation." "Fuck The Nation!" "You wanna be nice?" "Or you wanna be effective?" "You wanna make the law or subject to it?" "Choose!" "Your wife chose." "A week from today, she'll be back." "She knows how to get what she wants." "Maybe I'll send her to Washington." "–I don't believe you." "–Gospel." "You can't possibly mean what you're saying." "You were Assistant United States Attorney on the Rosenberg case." "Ex parte communication with the judge during the trial... would be censurable, at least, probably conspiracy." "In a case that resulted in execution, it's...." "What?" "Murder?" "You're not well, is all." "What do you mean, I'm not well?" "Who's not well?" "–You said— –I did?" "I said what?" "–You have cancer." "–No, I don't." "–You told me you were dying." "–What the fuck are you talking about, Joe?" "I never said that." "I'm in perfect health." "There's not a goddamn thing wrong with me." "Shake." "It's okay that you hurt me... because I love you, baby Joe." "That's why I'm so rough on you." "Prodigal son." "The world is gonna wipe its dirty hands all over you." "–It already has, Roy." "–Get out." "I'll always be here waiting for you." "And what did you want from me?" "What was all this?" "What do you want?" "Treacherous, ungrateful—" "Transgress a little, Joseph." "So many laws." "Find one you can break." "Andy, get in here!" "Who the fuck are you?" "The new nurse?" "Fuck." "Ethel." "You don't look so good, Roy." "Ethel, I don't feel so good." "And you've lost a lot of weight." "That suits you." "You were heavy back then." "Zaftig, mit hips." "I haven't been that heavy since 1960." "We were all heavier back then before the body thing started." "Now I look like a skeleton." "They stare." "The shit's really hit the fan, Roy?" "The fun's just started." "What is this, Ethel, Halloween?" "You trying to scare me?" "You're wasting your time..." "'cause I'm scarier than you are any day of the week." "So, beat it, Ethel." "Boo!" "Better dead than Red." "Somebody trying to shake me up?" "From the throne of God in heaven to the belly of hell..." "you can all fuck yourselves." "You can go jump in the lake..." "because I am not afraid of you!" "Or death!" "Or hell!" "Or anything!" "I'll be seeing you soon, Roy." "–Julius sends his regards." "–Yeah?" "Send this to Julius." "You really are a very sick man." "He doesn't hear you, I guess." "We should send for an ambulance." "Buttons." "Such things they got now." "What's the number, Roy?" "911." "It sings." "Yes, you should please send an ambulance... to the home of Mr Roy Cohn, the famous lawyer." "What's the address, Roy?" "251..." "East 87th." "No apartment number." "He's got the whole building." "My name?" "Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg." "R-O-S-E-N-B-E-R-G." "No, not a relation, an old friend." "They said a minute." "I got all the time in the world." "–You're immortal." "–I'm immortal, Ethel." "I have forced my way into history." "I ain't never gonna die!" "History is about to crack wide open." "Millennium approaches." "Tonight's the night." "Aren't you excited?" "–Tonight she arrives." "–Right through the roof." "Lumen!" "Phosphor!" "–Phosphor!" "–Fluor!" "Candle!" "An unending billowing of scarlet." "Look." "Garlic." "A mirror." "Holy water." "A crucifix." "Fuck off!" "Get the fuck out of my room!" "Go!" "Hard as a hickory knob, I bet." "We all tumesce when they approach." "We wax full, like moons." "–Dance." "–Dance?" "Stand up, damn it, give us your hand, dance." "Listen." "Delightful sounds." "Care for a dance?" "Please leave me alone." "Please just let me sleep." "He wants someone familiar." "A partner who knows his steps." "Close your eyes." "Imagine." "I don't...." "Close your eyes." "And now open them!" "Dance with me." "I can't." "My leg." "It hurts at night." "Are you a ghost, Lou?" "No, just spectral." "Lost to myself." "And sitting all day on cold park benches, wishing I could be with you." "Dance with me, babe." "Now I see why he's got no children." "He's a sodomite." "Be quiet, you medieval gnome." "–Let them dance." "–I'm not interfering." "Done my bit." "Hooray, the messenger's come." "Now I'm blowing off." "I don't like it here." "The 20th century." "Oh, dear." "The world's got so terribly, terribly old." "Prepare!" "Don't come in here." "Don't come in!" "No." "My name is Prior Walter." "I am the scion... of an ancient line." "Abandoned?" "No." "No, my...." "My name is Prior and I live here... and now...." "And in the dark, in the dark, the recording angel... opens its hundred eyes and snaps the spine of the book of life." "Hush." "I'm talking nonsense." "No more mad scene." "Hush." "Do you know the story of Lazarus?" "Lazarus?" "–I can't remember what happens, exactly." "–I don't...." "He was dead, Lazarus..." "and Jesus breathed life into him." "He brought him back from death." "–Come here often?" "–No." "Yes." "Back from the dead." "You believe that really happened?" "I don't know anymore what I believe." "I mean, this is quite a coincidence, us meeting." "I followed you." "From work." "I followed you here." "You followed me?" "You probably saw me in the washroom that day and thought, "There's a sweet guy... sensitive, cries for friends in trouble." –Yes." "–Thought maybe I'll cry for you." "–Yes." "Well, I fooled you." "Crocodile tears." "Nothing." "–What are you doing?" "Don't do that." "–No, I'm sorry." "I think if you touch me, your hand might fall off or something." "Worse things have happened to people who've touched me." "Please." "Oh, boy." "Look, can I...." "I want to touch you." "Can I just touch you... here?" "I'm going to hell for doing this." "Big deal." "You think it could be any worse than New York City?" "Come on." "–Where?" "–Home with me." "–This makes no sense." "I don't know you." "–Likewise." "Yeah, and what you do know about me, you don't like." "–The Republican stuff?" "–Yeah, well, for starters." "I don't not like that." "I hate that." "Then why on earth should I go to your place...." "Strange bedfellows." "I don't know." "I never made it with one of the damned before." "I would really rather not have to spend tonight alone." "–I'm a pretty terrible person, Louis." "–Lou." "No, I really, really am." "I don't think I deserve being loved." "There, you see, we already have a lot in common." "That sound." "What is that, like birds or something?" "Like a really big bird?" "I'm frightened." "No." "No fear." "Find the anger." "My blood is clean, my brain is fine." "I can handle pressure!" "I am a gay man, and I am used to pressure, to trouble!" "I am tough and strong and...." "Oh, my goodness." "All right." "I'm hot." "I must have a fever." "Greetings, prophet." "The great work begins." "The messenger has arrived." "Alphabet land." "This is where the Jews lived when they first arrived." "Now, 100 years later the place to which... their more seriously fucked-up grandchildren repair." "This is progress?" "–It's a terrible mess." "–It's a little dirty." "It's messy, not dirty." "That's an important distinction:" "It's dust, not dirt." "Chemical/mineral, not organic, not like microbes, more like.... –Can I take your tie off?" "–No, wait, I'm uncomfortable, actually." "Me too, actually." "Being uncomfortable turns me on." "Your boyfriend." "He's sick." "We can cap everything that leaks in latex." "We can smear our bodies with nonoxynol-9... safe, chemical sex." "Messy, but not dirty." "Look, I want to, but I don't wanna beg." "–Come on, please." "–No, I should go." "Hurry home to the missus." "Married gentlemen, before cruising the Ramble..." "should first remove their bands of gold." "Go, if you're going." "I'm not staying." "What kind of cologne is that?" "Faberge." "Very butch, very heterosexual high school." "Faberge." "–You smell nice." "–So do you." "Smell is an incredibly complex and under-appreciated..." "physical phenomenon... inextricably bound up with sex." "I didn't know that." "It is, the nose is really a sexual organ." "–You know what a smell is?" "–Yeah, it's some sort of...." "No." "It's made of the molecules of what you're smelling." "Some part of you where you meet the air is... airborne." "Little molecules of Joe." "Up my nose." "Smelling and tasting." "First the nose, then the tongue." "They work as a team, see." "The nose tells the body... the heart, the mind... the fingers, the cock... what it wants and then the tongue explores." "Salt." "Iron." "Clay." "Chlorine." "Copper." "Earth." "What does that taste like?" "Come." "What?" "Nighttime." "Stay." "Yes." "Louis...." "Words are the worst things." "Breathe." "Smell." "Let's stop talking." "Or if you have to talk, talk dirty." "Fuck." "Will you look at this." "First goddamn orgasm in months and I slept through it." "Ten East." "I've had a wet dream." "–The Calvin Klein underwear man?" "–It was a woman." "You turning straight on me?" "Not a conventional woman." "Grace Jones?" "–An angel." "–How fabulous." "I'm scared and also full of...." "I don't know, joy or something." "Hope." "–Are you the duty nurse?" "–Yo." "–Call you back, there's a man bothering me." "–Je t'aime." "–Are you the duty nurse?" "–Yo, I said." "Why are you dressed like that?" "You don't like it?" "Nurses are supposed to wear white." "Doctors are supposed to be at home in Westchester, asleep." "Emergency admit, Room 1013." "These are the charts." "Start the drip, gamma G, and he'll need a CTM." "–Radiation in the morning so— –Liver cancer?" "Oncology's on six, doll." "–This is the right floor." "–It says liver cancer." "I don't give a fuck what it says." "I said this is the right floor." "You got it?" "Testy." "He's a very important man." "Okay, then I shouldn't fuck up his medication?" "I'll be back in the morning." "Safe home." "Asshole." "The Lord moves in mysterious ways." "Get out of here, you." "I got nothing to say to you." "Just doing my job." "I want a white nurse." "My constitutional right." "You're in a hospital, you don't have any constitutional rights." "Find the vein, you moron." "Don't start jabbing that spigot in my arm... till you find the fucking vein, or I'll sue you so bad... they'll repossess your teeth, you dim black motherfucker." "Watch yourself." "Don't talk like that when I'm holding something this sharp." "Or I might slip and stick it in your heart, if you have one." "Oh, I do." "Tough little muscle, too, never bleeds." "I'll bet." "I've done drips a long time." "I'll slip this in so easy, you'll think you were born with it... or I can make it feel like I just hooked you up to a bag of liquid Drano." "So you be nice to me..." "or you'll be one sorry asshole come morning." "–Nice." "–Nice and quiet." "There." "I hurt." "I'll get you a painkiller." "–Will it knock me out?" "–Sure hope so." "Then shove it." "Pain's nothing." "Pain's life." "Sing it, baby." "Yeah?" "When they did my face-lifts..." "I made the anesthesiologist use a local." "Lifted up my whole face like a dinner napkin." "I was wide awake to see it." "Bullshit, no doctor would agree to do that." "I can get anyone to do anything I want." "For instance, let's be friends." "We shall overcome" "Jews and coloreds, historical liberal coalition, right?" "I mean, my people being the first ones to sell retail to your people." "Your people being the first mine could afford to hire... to sweep out the store Saturday mornings." "And we all held hands, rode the bus to Selma." "Not me, of course." "I don't ride buses, I take cabs." "But the one thing about the American Negro is..." "he never went Communist." "Loser Jews did, but you people, you had Jesus." "Reds never got to you." "I admire that." "Your chart didn't mention that you're delusional." "I'm barking mad." "Sit, talk." "I'd rather suck the pus out of an abscess." "I'd rather drink a subway toilet." "Thanks for the offer of conversation, but I'd rather not." "For Christ's sake, what do I have to do, beg?" "I don't wanna be alone!" "I fucking hate hospitals and nurses." "They're a waste of time." "Weakness and wasting." "I wanna kill the...." "They can't kill this though, can they?" "No, it's too simple." "It knows itself." "It's hard to kill something when it knows what it is." "Like pubic lice." "–Ever had pubic lice?" "–None of your business." "I picked up some super crabs once from some kid." "Took 20 drenchings of Kwell... finally shaving to get rid of the little bastards." "Nothing could kill them." "And every time I had an itch I'd smile... because I learned to respect them." "These unkillable crabs." "Because I learned to identify." "Determined lowlife." "Like me." "You seen lots of guys with this?" "Lots." "So how do I look, comparatively?" "I'd say you're in trouble." "I'm gonna die soon?" "That was a question." "Probably." "Probably so." "I appreciate the honesty, whatever." "If I live, I could sue you." "Emotional distress, the whole hospital." "But I'm not prejudiced." "I'm not a prejudiced man." "No, these racist guys, simpletons." "I never had any use for them." "Too rigid." "You gotta keep your eye on where the most powerful enemy really is." "I save my hate for what counts." "Well, and I think that's a good idea." "Good thing to do, probably." "Yeah." "Look, this didn't come from me, and I don't like you..." "but let me tell you a thing or two." "They have radiation for you tomorrow, for the sarcoma lesions... and you don't want that." "Radiation will kill your T cells... and you don't have any you can afford to lose." "So you tell the doctor no thanks for the radiation." "He won't wanna listen." "Persuade him, or he'll kill you." "You're just a nurse." "Why should I listen to you... over my very qualified, very expensive Wasp doctor?" "He's not queer, I am." "Don't wink at me." "You said thing or two." "So that's one." "I don't know what strings you pulled to get in on the azidothymidine trials." "I have my little ways." "Watch out for the double blind." "They'll want you to sign something that says they can give you MM's... instead of the real drug." "You'll die, but they'll get... statistics they can publish in The New England Journa—of Medicine." "You can't sue them because you signed." "If you don't sign, no pills." "So if you have any strings left, pull them." "Everyone is put through the double blind and with this... time's against you." "You can't fuck around with placebos." "You hate me?" "–Yes." "–So why are you telling me this?" "I wish I knew." "You're a butterfingers spook-faggot nurse." "I think you have little reason to wanna help me." "Consider it solidarity." "One faggot to another." "Any more of your lip, boy, and you'll be flipping..." "Big Macs in east Hell before tomorrow night!" "And get me a real phone!" "With a hold button." "I mean, look at this, one little line?" "How am I supposed to perform basic bodily functions on this?" "Fuck." "Hello, who's this?" "Operator." "Get me an outside line." "Well, dial it for me." "It's a medical emergency, darling, dial the fucking number... or I'll strangle myself with the phone cord!" "–Allright!" "Area code 202... 244-3116." "Hello, Martin Heller." "Hi, Martin." "Yeah, I know what time it is." "I couldn't sleep, I'm busy dying." "Listen, Martin." "Those pills that I have?" "You know, those pills...." "What do you call them, azido...." "Yeah, AZT." "I want my own private stash, Martin." "Of serious, honest-Abe medicine... that I control here in the room with me." "No placebos." "No, I'm no good at tests, Martin, I'd rather cheat." "Send me my pills with a get-well bouquet pronto... or I'm gonna ring up CBS, and sing Mike Wallace a song." "You know the ballad of adorable Ollie North..." "and his secret Contra slush fund?" "You only think you know all I know." "I don't even know what all I know." "Half the time I just make it up, it still turns out to be true." "We learned that trick in the '50s." "Tomorrow, you two-bit, scum-sucking, shitheel flypaper... insignificant, dried-out little turd..." "a nice big box of drugs for Uncle Roy... or there's gonna be seven different kinds of hell to pay!" "Fuck!" "The oboe." "The official instrument of the International Order of Travel Agents." "If the duck was a songbird, it would sound like this." "Nasal, desolate... the call of migratory things." "I'm cold." "It's freezing." "What happened to global warming?" "Where'd you get that?" "From the great Antarctic pine forest, right over the hill." "There are no pine forests in Antarctica." "This one's a blue spruce." "There are no blue spruce in—" "I chewed this pine tree down with my teeth." "Like a beaver." "I'm hungry, I haven't eaten in three days." "I'm gonna use it to build something." "Maybe a fire." "Lucky I brought these." "–Snow'll melt." "–Let it." "I don't understand why I'm not dead." "When your heart breaks, you should die." "But there's still the rest of you." "There's your breasts and your genitals...." "They're amazingly stupid, like babies or faithful dogs." "They don't get it, they just want him." "Want him." "Eskimo back." "I know." "I wanted a real Eskimo, someone chilly and reliable." "An Eskimo dressed in seal pelts." "Not this." "This is just some lawyer, just...." "Hey, buddy." "Hey." "I looked for you." "I've been everywhere." "Well, you found me." "No, I'm not looking now." "I guess I'm having an adventure." "–Who with?" "–No one you know." "No one I know, either." "–Is it fun?" "–Scary fun." "Can I come with you?" "This isn't working anymore, I'm cold." "–I wouldn't want you to see." "–You think it's worse than what I imagine?" "–It's not." "–I should go." "Bastard." "You fell out of love with me." "–That isn't true, Harper." "–Then come back!" "I can't." "Blues for the death of heaven." "I tried to tell you." "There's no Eskimo in Antarctica." "No." "No trees, either." "So where'd you get that?" "The Botanical Gardens' arboretum." "It's right over there." "Prospect Park." "–We're still in Brooklyn, I guess." "–Here's the law for real." "Busted." "Damn." "What a lousy vacation." "I don't know about this...." "Turn on the lights!" "For pity's sake, don't I look like his mother?" "Pitt residence." "No, he is out." "–This is his mother." "–Do you know where he is?" "I have no idea where he is." "I have no idea." "You could leave now." "I really wish you would." "So he— No, that was the superintendent." "My son was supposed to meet me at the airport." "I don't sit around waiting more than three and three quarters hours for anyone so he—" "What?" "Oh, my Lord." "Wait." "Officer, I don't...." "She what?" "Pine tree?" "Why would she chew...." "You have no business laughing about it." "You can stop that right now." "That's ugly." "I don't know where that is." "I've only just arrived from Salt Lake... and I barely found Brooklyn." "I will take a taxicab." "Yes, of course, right now." "No hospital." "We don't need any of that." "She's not insane, she's just peculiar." "You tell her Mother Pitt is coming." "–That was tacky." "–It was divine." "He was one of the great glitter queens." "He couldn't be buried like a civilian." "Trailing sequins and incense, he came into the world... trailing sequins and incense, he departed, and good for him." "I thought 20 professional Sicilian mourners were a bit much." "A great queen, big fucking deal." "That ludicrous spectacle in there... just a parody of the funeral of someone who really counted." "We don't." "Faggots." "We're just a bad dream the real world's having..." "and the real world's waking up." "And he's dead." "Lately, sugar, you've gotten very strange." "Lighten up, already." "I apologize." "It was only a for-God's-sake funeral." "A cause for a fucking celebration." "Sorry if I can't join in with the rest of you death junkies... gloating about your survival in the face of... his ugly demise." "Unlike you, I have nothing to gloat about." "Never mind." "And you look like Morticia Addams." "–Like the wrath of God." "–Yes." "That is the intended effect." "My eyes are fucked up." "Fucked up, how?" "Everything's closing in, weirdness on the periphery." "–Since when?" "–For three weeks." "Since that night...." "And what does the doctor say?" "–I haven't been." "–For God's sake, why?" "I was improving before." "Do you remember my wet dream?" "The angel?" "–It wasn't a dream." "–Of course it was." "No, I don't think so." "I think it really happened." "I'm a prophet." "Say what?" "I've been given a prophecy, a book." "Not a physical book." "Or there was one, but they took it back... but somehow there's still this book in me." "A prophecy." "It really happened." "I'm almost completely sure of it." "–Stop looking at me as— –You're scaring me." "It was after Louis left me..." "I'd been having these horrible nights, and then...." "Then?" "And then she arrived." "Greetings, prophet!" "The Great Work begins." "The Messenger has arrived." "Oh, God!" "There's a thing in the air!" "A thing!" "I am the bird of America." "The Bald Eagle..." "Continental Principality..." "Lumen, Phosphor, Fluor, Candle." "I unfold my leaves... bright steel in salutation open sharp before you." "Prior Walter." "Long-descended, well-prepared." "No, I'm not prepared for anything." "I have lots to do, I—" "American prophet, tonight you become American eye... that pierceth dark, American heart all hot for truth... the true great vocalist... the knowing mind, tongue-of-the-land... seer-head!" "Shoo!" "You're scaring the shit out of me!" "Get the fuck out of my room, please!" "Oh, please." "Please." "Now, remove from their hiding place... the sacred prophetic implements." "The what?" "Remove from their hiding place the sacred prophetic implements." "–Your dreams have revealed them to you." "–What dreams?" "You have had dreams revealing to you...." "I haven't had a dream I can remember in months." "No dreams, you...." "Are you sure?" "–Yes, well, the two dead Priors— –No, not the heralds, not them." "Other dreams, implements." "You must have...." "One moment." "Now this is a dream, obviously." "I'm sick and so...." "Okay, it's a pretty spectacular dream, but still." "Quiet!" "Prophet, a moment, please, I...." "The disorganization is...." "He says he hasn't had any...." "Yes!" "In the kitchen." "Under the tiles." "Under the sink." "You want me to tear up the kitchen floor?" "Get a shovel or an axe... or some tool for dislodging tile and grout... and unearth the sacred implements." "No fucking way!" "The ceiling's bad enough!" "I'll lose the lease!" "I'll lose my security deposit!" "I'll wake up the downstairs neighbors, their hysterical dog.... –Do it yourself." "–Submit!" "Submit to the will of heaven!" "What did you...." "What...." "And lo, the prophet was led by his nightly dreams... to the hiding place of the sacred implements and...." "Revision in the text." "The angel did help him to unearth them..." "for he was weak of body, though not of will." "You cracked the refrigerator." "You probably released a whole cloud of fluorocarbons." "That's bad for the environment!" "My wrath is as fearsome as my countenance is splendid." "Open the suitcase." "Oh, look at this." "Like wow, man, totally Paleozoic." "Oh, God, no!" "–That was terrible, I don't wanna see that." "–Remove the book." "From the council of continental principalities... met in this time of crisis and confusion... heaven here reaches down to disaster." "And in touching you, touches all of earth." "Peep stones." "Open me, prophet." "I am the book." "–Read." "–Wait." "How come...." "How come I have this erection?" "It's very hard to concentrate." "The stiffening of your penis is of no consequence." "–Well, maybe not to you, but— –Read!" "You are mere flesh." "I am utter flesh." "Density of desire, the gravity of skin." "What makes the engine of creation run?" "Not physics... but ecstatics makes the engine run." "The pulse." "The pull." "The throb." "The ooze." "Excuse me for just a minute." "Just a minute." "Okay." "Priapsis, dilation... engorgement, flow." "The universe aflame with angelic ejaculate." "No shit." "The heavens a-thrum to the seraphic rut, the fiery grapplings... the feathery joinings of the higher orders..." "infinite, unceasing!" "The blood-pump of creation!" "Holy estrus!" "Holy orifice!" "Ecstasis in excelsis!" "Amen." "Oh, God!" "The body is the garden... of the soul." "What was that?" "Plasma orgasmata." "Yeah, well no doubt." "Whoa, wait a minute." "Excuse me, please." "–You fucked this angel?" "–She fucked me, she...." "Well, she has eight vaginas." "Well, they're hermaphrodites, really..." "and they used to copulate ceaselessly before...." "They live in heaven, a city that looks like San Francisco... and there are earthquakes there, or rather, heavenquakes." "Our maker, our master grew weary of us... our songs and fornications." "Seeking something new, God split the world in two... and made you." "Human beings." "Uni-genitalled, female, male." "In creating you, our Father-lover... unleashed sleeping creation's potential for change." "In you the virus of time began!" ""The virus of time"?" "In making people, God apparently set in motion... a potential in the design for change, for random event..." "for movement forward." "As the human race began to progress, travel, intermingle... everything started to come unglued." "Manifest first as tremors in heaven." "So human progress..." "Migration, science, forward motion— shakes up heaven." "You think and you imagine." "Migrate, explore... and when you do, Paradise itself shivers and splits!" "Progress, movement... shaking Him!" "God?" "He began to leave us." "Bored with His angels, bewitched by humanity." "In mortifying imitation of you, His least creation..." "He would sail off on voyages no knowing where." "Quake follows quake, absence follows absence... nasty chastity and disorganization." "Then April 18, 1906, in that day...." "April 1906, the...." "The great San Francisco earthquake, right?" "in that day, the King of the universe...." "He left." "He abandoned." "And did not return." "–Abandoned." "–Yes." "I smell a motif." "The man that got away." "Well, it occurred to me, Louis...." "Even now, if he came back...." "Listen to your girlfriend." "I think the time has come to let him go." "That's not what the angels think." "They think it's all gone too far." "Too much loss is what they think." "We should stop somehow, go back." "But that's not how the world works, Prior." "It only spins forward." "Yeah, but forward into what?" "Surely you see towards what we are progressing." "Before life on earth becomes finally merely impossible... it will, for a long time before... have become completely unbearable." "You have driven Him away." "You must stop moving!" "–Stop moving?" "–You cannot understand." "You can only destroy." "You do not advance." "You only trample!" "Poor blind children, abandoned on the earth." "Groping, terrified, misguided... over fields of slaughter... over bodies of the slain." "There is no Zion save where you are." "If you cannot find your heart's desire in your own backyard... you never lost it to begin with?" "Turn back." "Undo." "Till He returns again." "Please." "Please, angel or dream, whatever you are..." "I don't understand this visitation!" "I don't understand what you want from me." "I'm not a prophet." "I'm a sick, lonely man." "And what are you?" "Did you come to save me or destroy me?" "Stop moving, that's what you want?" "Answer me!" "–You want me dead." "–Yes." "No." "Yes." "This is not in the text." "We deviate no more." "I want you to go away." "I am tired to death of being done to... walked out on, infected, fucked over!" "And now, tortured by some mixed-up, irresponsible angel!" "Some...." "Leave me alone!" "You can't outrun your occupation, Jonah." "Hiding from me one place, you will find me in another." "I stop down the road... waiting for you." "You know me, prophet." "Your battered heart, bleeding life in the universe of wounds... vessel of the book now." "On you, in you, in your blood we write... have written, stasis." "The end." "–You've been spending too much time alone." "–Not by choice." "None of this by choice." "This is worse than nuts." "What, don't migrate, don't mingle?" "It's malevolent." "Some of us didn't exactly choose to migrate." "I hardly think it's right to get offended." "I didn't invent this shit." "It was visited on me." "Visited by who, Prior?" "It's from you, what else is it?" "–Something else." "–That's crazy." "–Then I'm crazy." "–You're not crazy." "–It was not an angel." "–Then I'm crazy." "The whole world is, why not me?" "It's 1986, there's a plague, half my friends are dead..." "and I'm only 31." "And every morning I wake up, I think Louis is next to me in the bed... and it takes me long minutes to remember that this is real." "This isn't just an impossible, terrible dream." "So maybe, yes, I'm flipping out." "Well, you better not." "You'd better not fucking flip out." "This is not dementia, and this is not real." "This is...." "This is just you, Prior, afraid of what's coming." "Afraid of time." "And you want to go backwards so bad you called down an angel." "–Some comfort, some angel." "–Some cosmic reactionary." "But there is no angel." "You hear me?" "For me?" "I can handle anything, but not this happening to you." "Maybe I am a prophet." "Not just me, all of us who are dying now." "Maybe we've caught the virus of prophecy." "Be still, toil no more." "Maybe the world has driven God from heaven, incurred the angels' wrath." "I believe I've seen the end of things." "And having seen, I'm going blind, as prophets do." "It makes a certain sense to me." "And if I hate heaven, my only resistance is to run." "Okay, answer me this." "How can a fundamentalist theocratic religion... function participatorily in a pluralist, secular democracy?" "I can't believe you're a Mormon." "I can't believe I spent three weeks in bed with a Mormon." "Good morning." "–Why didn't you tell me?" "–I did." "Yeah, after I asked you." "I thought you were a Protestant, or something." "Well, I'm not." "–Sleep well?" "–No." "But you're a lawyer, you're a serious lawyer." "The chief clerk of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a Mormon, Louis." "I don't like cults." "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not a cult." "Any religion that isn't at least 2·000 years old is a cult." "And I know people who would call that generous." "Why is it such a surprise?" "I know." "Most of the men I go to bed with turned out to be— Of course it's a surprise!" "I thought you were all out West somewhere with the salt flats." "And cactuses." "There's some sort of profound displacement going on here." "It's creepy and you hid it from me." "Louis, I love you." "–No, you don't." "–Yes, I do." "You think you do, but that's just the gay virgin thing." "No, I do, I never felt...." "I never wanted something so much." "I never...." "I do." "I love you." "No, you don't, you can't." "It's only been a few weeks." "It takes years and years to fall in love." "Four and a half years, minimum." "You and I, Louis, we are the same." "We both want the same thing." "We have to talk." "No records!" "What are you, deaf?" "I told you, I don't have any records for their shitty little committee." "It's not how I work, I don't...." "Yeah, those notes were lost." "Lost in the fire, water damage, I don't know." "I threw up 15 times today." "I counted." "What are you looking at?" "15 times." "Hang up the phone." "I have to watch you take these." "The limo thing?" "For the love of Christ!" "I was acquitted twice for that." "What are they trying to do, kill me dead with this harassment?" "I've done things in my life, I never killed anyone." "Present company excepted, and you deserved it." "Get the fuck out of here." "Yeah." "Stall!" "They can't start tomorrow if we don't show, so don't show." "–I'll pay the old harridan back, just— –Put down the phone!" "Suck my dick, Mother Teresa!" "–This is life and death." "–Put down the phone." "Touch that phone and I'll bite." "And I got rabies." "From now on I supply my own pills." "I already told them, push their jujubes to the losers down the hall." "Your own pills." "No double blind, remember?" "A little birdie warned me." "God!" "Jesus, these cramps." "Now I know why women go berserk once a month." "Oh, fuck!" "Good, I made her laugh." "I don't trust this hospital." "For all I know Lillian-fucking-Hellman's in the basement switching the pills around." "Wait a minute, she's dead, isn't she?" "Oh boy, memory." "Hey, Ethel, didn't Lillian die?" "Did you see her up there?" "Ugly broad, nose like a...." "Like even a Jew should worry with a punim like that." "Yeah?" "See anyone fitting that description up there in Red heaven?" "She won't talk to me." "Look at her." "She thinks she's some sort of death watch." "Who are you talking to?" "–I'm self-medicating." "–With what?" "–Acid something." "–Azidothymidine?" "Gesundheit!" "100-proof elixir vitae." "Give me those keys." "–You scored." "–Impressively." "There may be 30 people in the country who are getting this drug." "Now there's 31." "Give me the keys." "There are 100·000 people who need it." "Look at you." "The dragon atop the golden hoard." "–It isn't fair, is it?" "–No, but as Jimmy Carter said, neither is life." "So put your brown eyes back in your goddamn head, baby." "I'm not moved by an unequal distribution of goods on this earth." "It's history." "I didn't write it." "Though I flatter myself I'm a footnote, and you are a nurse." "So minister and skedaddle." "If you live 15 more years, you won't swallow all those pills." "I want some." "–That's illegal." "–Ten bottles." "I'm gonna report you." "There's a nursing shortage, I'm in a union, I'm scared." "–I have friends who need them bad." "–Loyalty." "I admire that." "But, no." "–Why?" "–Because you repulse me." "Why?" "You'll be begging for it next." "Why?" "Because I hate your guts and your friends' guts." "That's why." "Give me." "So goddamned entitled." "Such a shock when the bill comes." "From what I read, you never paid a bill in your life." "Nobody worked harder than me." "Yeah, things are tough all over." "You talk about fairness." "You're coming in here looking for fairness." "They couldn't touch me when I was a lawyer." "Now that I'm dying, they try this." "That's fair?" "What am I?" "A dead man." "What was I saying?" "God, I can't remember anything." "Dead." "I'm a dead man." "You expect pity?" "I expect you to hand over those keys and then... move your nigger ass out of my room." "–What did you say?" "–Move your nigger, spade..." "–You shit-for-brains faggot Blacky ass out of my room." "–...filthy-mouthed, selfish... –Slave!" "Mongol!" "Ape!" "–...cock-sucking, cloven-hoofed pig." "–Kike." "–Now you're talking." "–Greedy kike." "–Now you can have a bottle." "But only one." "Oh, God, I thought he'd never go." "What are you gonna do, sit there all night?" "Just till morning." "Cock crows, you go back to the swamp?" "No, I take the 7:05 to Yonkers." "Yonkers?" "What the fuck is in Yonkers?" "The disbarment committee meetings." "You've been harking about it all week." "–I'll have a look-see." "–They won't let you through the front door." "You're a convicted and executed traitor." "I'll walk through a wall." "Fucking succubus." "Fucking blood-sucking old bat." "Worst thing about being sick in America, Ethel... is you're booted out of the parade." "Americans have no use for the sick." "Now, look at Reagan." "He's so healthy, he's hardly human." "He's 100 if he's a day." "He takes a slug in the chest... two days later he's out West, riding ponies in his PJs." "I mean, who does that?" "That's America." "It's just no country for the infirm." "Welcome to the Mormon Visitor Center Diorama Room." "We're happy to receive you." "We hope you will benefit from what you're about to see." "Sit back, relax." "In just a moment, our show will begin." "Please refrain from smoking and food and drink...." "There's something wrong with the machinery." "I thought we agreed." "You weren't going to— The main dummy." "The big daddy dummy." "He looks just like Joe." "We agreed that you would stop eating in here." "Fix him then." "Make him talk." "That's an incredible resemblance." "We can't believe a word that comes out of his mouth... but the sound of him is reassuring." "He's got a tale to tell, the dummy." "The exodus." "The Great Salt Lake." "That's a joke, of course." "They drag you on your knees through hell... and then when you get there, the water is undrinkable." "Salt." "A promised land all right, but what a disappointing promise." "–Harper, you have got to— –Can I ask you a question?" "What?" "There's something that's always bothered me." "Everyone thinks the angel's name was Mormon." "No." "–The name of the angel— –I know, I went to Sunday school." "–Moroni." "–Right." "The angel Moroni." "So why don't we call ourselves Morons?" "You should leave." "It's a visitor's center." "I'm visiting." "For serious visitors." "It's a serious religion." "This is a favor." "They let me work here as a favor." "Just so we have some place we can go each day." "It's for your sake, but you keep on making scenes." "Look at this mess." "–It's a garbage dump." "–They don't have any lines..." "the sister and the mother dummy." "Only his face moves." "It's not really fair." "day after day till...." "Till what?" "You sound just like him." "You even grind your teeth like him." "If I could get him to come back I'd go back to Salt Lake tomorrow." "You can't go back to Salt Lake." "You sold your house." "My mother-in-law, she sold her house." "Her son calls and tells her he's a homo, and what does she do?" "She sells her house." "And she calls me crazy." "You have less of a place in this world than I do, if that's possible." "I call and call." "He won't answer." "I tried to discuss it with the Bishop." "He said they think it's mothers..." "who are too close to their sons that cause this." "Well, I guess we've disproved that theory." "I'm not sure this is the best place for you." "I leave, you know, but I always wind up back here..." "or in some place just like this." "Alone in the dark, waiting for the dummy." "So, you'll just sit here." "Yeah." "Stuck." "–Yeah." "–Till?" "His wife." "His mute wife, we're waiting for her to speak." "But her story is not so jolly." "The winter Atlantic." "Wow, huh?" "Ferocious." "It's freezing." "What're we doing?" "There used to be guys in the dunes even when it snowed." "Nothing deterred us from the task at hand." "–Which was?" "–Exploration... across an unmapped terrain:" "the body of the homosexual human male." "Here, the Ramble..." "the scrub pines on Fire Island, the Saint Mark's Baths." "–Hardy pioneers, like your ancestors." "–Not exactly." "Many have perished on the trail." "I fucked around a lot more than he did." "No justice." "I love it when you can get to places and see what it used to be." "The whole country was like this once." "–Paradise." "–Ruined now." "Still a great country." "Best place on Earth." "Best place to be." "What am I doing with you?" "With anyone." "I should be exterminated." "But with you?" "Married, probably bisexual..." "Mormon, Republican closet-case." "I mean, I really like you a lot, but...." "So the fruity underwear you wear...." "–Temple garment." "–Oh, my God." "–What's it for?" "–Protection." "Second skin." "I can stop wearing it." "How can you stop wearing it if it's a skin?" "Your past, your beliefs." "In bed, you're so sweet." "I don't see how you believe the stuff you do." "I don't wanna fight now." "Stop attacking me, Louis." "You make no sense." "The Republican party...." "I hate the Democrats, too, but the Republicans... half religious zealots wanting to control every breath every citizen takes... and half ego-anarchist, libertarian cowboys..." "shrilling for no government." "McCarthyism." "Watergate, Pat Buchanan, Jesse Helms...." "Barry Goldwater, George Will." "George Bush, Newt Gingrich." "Objectively speaking, a rum bunch." "Responsible for everything bad and evil in the world." "Throw Reagan on the pile and you're not far off." "If people like you didn't have President Reagan to demonize..." "where would you be?" "If he didn't have people like me to demonize, where would he be?" "Upper right-hand square on the Hollywood Squares." "I'm not your enemy, Louis." "–I never said you were." "–Can't you be, I don't know, happy?" "No one is happy." "You believe the world is perfectible." "–No." "–Yes, you do." "And so you find it unsatisfying." "You have to reconcile yourself to the world's unperfectability." "Be in the world, but not of the world." "–That's what being a Mormon is." "–That's what being a schizophrenic is." "Republican, Democrat, it's life." "Time is conservative." "It moves slow." "Accept that." "Don't be tragic." "Accept as rightfully yours the happiness that comes your way." "I have no idea what you're talking about." "What you did when you walked out on him was hard to do." "The world may not understand it or approve..." "but you did what you needed to do." "I consider you very brave." "Nobody does what I did, Joe." "Nobody." "Maybe many want to." "Hear what I'm saying." "Free from politics." "You are in yourself a good man." "And I admire you." "–I believe in you." "I do." "–I know you do." "You seem to be able to live with what you've done." "You abandoned your wife, and you're not torn up and guilty about it." "You blossomed, and that's terrible." "But you're not a terrible person." "You're a decent, caring man... and it's just not possible." "Looking at you, it seems to be, you do seem free." "–And happy." "–I am." "At night, you sleep peacefully." "You don't have these terrible..." "awful, horrible dreams." "No, I never have any dreams at all." "I'm just stressed." "No dreams at all." "That would be amazing." "–I think I love you." "–I want to see Prior again." "You wanna go back?" "I just need to see him again." "I miss him." "–You must want to see your wife." "–I want more to be— I have to see him." "It's been a month." "I'm worried." "Please don't look so sad." "–You understand?" "–You don't want to see me anymore?" "–No, I...." "–Louis, anything." "–What?" "–Anything." "Whatever you want, I can give up." "My skin." "What are you doing?" "Come on." "It's freezing!" "Someone will see us." "–It's not a nude beach!" "–I'm flayed." "No past now." "I could give up anything." "In what we've been doing, maybe I'm even infected." "I don't wanna be!" "I wanna live now." "I can be anything I need to be." "And I wanna be with you!" "You have a good heart." "The good thing is to be guilty... and kind always." "But it's not always kind to be gentle and soft." "There's a genuine violence in softness and weakness." "Sometimes, self-interested is the most generous thing you can be." "–You ought to think about that." "–I will." "You ought to think about what you're doing to me." "No, I mean, what you need." "Think about what you need." "Be brave." "And then you'll come back to me." "Then you'll come back to me." "Bitter lady of the plains... talk to me." "Tell me what to do." "I'm stuck." "My heart's an anchor." "Look." "The magic of the theater, or something." "Look at you, so perfect in place." "The desert, the mountains, the previous century." "Maybe I could have believed in you then." "Maybe we should never have moved East." "Was it a hard thing to do, crossing the prairies?" "You ain't stupid." "So don't ask stupid." "Ask something for real." "In your experience of the world, how do people change?" "Well, it has something to do with God." "So it's not very nice." "God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly." "Then plunges a huge, filthy hand in." "He grabs hold of your bloody tubes." "You slip to evade his grasp, but he squeezes hard." "He insists." "He pulls and pulls... till all your innards are yanked out." "And the pain..." "I can't even talk about that." "Then he stuffs them back... dirty, tangled, torn." "It's up to you to do the stitching." "Get up." "Walk around." "Just mangled guts pretending." "Yeah." "That's how people change." "It's Lou." "I wanna see you." "It's 5:00 a.m." "You ought to change that shirt." "It's starting to smell." "You're telling me." "At first, it can be very hard... to accept how disappointing life is, Harper." "But that's what it is, and you have to accept it." "With faith and time... and hard work, you do get to a point where..." "the disappointment doesn't hurt so much... and it gets actually easier to live with." "Quite easy." "Which is, in its own way, a disappointment." "But...." "I'm not like you." "Strange things happen to me all the time, Mother Pitt." "Maybe I'm a witch." "You're not a witch." "I could be a witch." "Why not?" "I married a fairy." "Anything can happen." "Any awful thing." "It's raw out there." "You put this on." "My mother used to open up every window mid-winter mornings." "Cold, fresh air." "Wake up the dead." "It gave me no end of nightmares." "An implacable hatred of winter." "This is gonna be so much worse than I'd imagined." "–Hello." "–Fuck you, you little shitbag." "If you want the smoke and puffery then you'll listen to Kissinger and Schultz." "When you want to look at the heart of modern conservatism..." "you look at me." "Everyone else has abandoned the struggle." "Everything nowadays, just sipping tea with Nixon and Mao." "That was disgusting." "Did you see that?" "–Were you born yet?" "–Of course I was." "My generation, we had clarity." "Unafraid to look deep into the miasma at the heart of the world." "What a pit." "What a nightmare is there." "I have looked." "All my life, I've searched for absolute bottom." "And I found it, believe me." "Stygian." "How tragic... how brutal and short life is." "Sinful, people are." "The immutable heart of what we are that bleeds through..." "whatever we might become." "All else is vanity." "I don't know the world anymore." "After I die, they're gonna say I did it for the money and the headlines." "I never did it for the money." "It's the moxie that counts." "I never wavered." "You remember." "I will, Roy." "I was afraid you wouldn't wanna see me." "If you'd forgive me for letting you down." "Forgiveness?" "Do you see a lady around here?" "Dumpy lady with a stupid hat?" "She...." "Oh, boy." "She's off watching the hearings." "Treacherous bitch." "Who?" "Did you get a blessing from your father before he died?" "A blessing?" "–Yeah." "–No." "You should have done that." "Life, that's what they're supposed to bless." "Roy, I need to talk to you about— Shush, don't fuck up the magic." "You don't even have to trick it out of me like...." "What's his name, in the Bible?" "–Jacob." "–That's the one." "Ruthless motherfucker." "Some bald runt..." "but he laid hold of his birthright with his claws and his teeth." "–Jacob's father, what was his name?" "–Isaac." "A sacrifice?" "That jerk." "My mother used to read me those stories." "See the scar on my nose?" "When I was 3 months old, I had a bony spur." "She made them operate, shave it off." "They said I was too young for surgery, I'd outgrow it." "But she insisted." "I figure she wanted to toughen me up." "It worked." "I am tough." "It's taking a lot to dismantle me." "Don't waste energy beating up on me." "I'm already taking care of that." "–I don't see any bruises." "–Inside." "You are one noble guy inside." "Don't flatter yourself." "So, it's your tea party." "Talk." "It's good to see you again." "I missed you." "Talk." "–I want to try to make up." "–Make up?" "You don't have to be so hostile." "Don't I get any points for trying to arrive at a resolution?" "–Maybe what I did isn't forgivable." "–It isn't." "But I'm trying to be responsible." "There are limits, boundaries." "You have to be reasonable." "Why are you dressed like that?" "You were saying something about being reasonable." "I've been giving this a lot of thought." "Yes, I fucked up." "That's obvious." "But maybe you fucked up, too." "You never trusted me." "Never gave me a chance to find my footing." "Not really." "You were so quick to attack." "I think maybe just too much of a victim, finally." "Passive, dependent." "What I think is that people do have a choice... about how they handle— –You wanna come back?" "Why?" "Atonement?" "Exoneration?" "I didn't say I wanted to come back." "No, you didn't." "I can't move in again, start all over again." "I've moved." "I don't think it'd be any different." "You're seeing someone else." "–What?" "No." "–You are!" "I'm not." "Occasionally...." "He's just a pickup." "Damn!" "Ask me how I knew." "–How?" "–Threshold of revelation." "–What?" "–Fuck you!" "I'm a prophet!" "Reasonable?" "Limits?" "Tell it to my lungs, stupid." "Tell it to my lesions." "Tell it to the cotton-woolly patches in my eyes." "–Prior, I haven't seen him for days now." "–I'm going." "I have limits, too." "You're crying." "You endanger nothing in yourself." "It's like the idea of crying when you do it." "Or the idea of love." "Attention." "Visiting hours are now over." "Now you have to go." "I left my wife." "I needed to tell you." "Too late." "It happens." "I've been staying with someone else for a whole month now." "Happens." "How can I say this?" "With a... man." "I'm with a...." "A man?" "Yes." "You're with a man?" "Yes." "I got to...." "What?" "The bathroom, or...." "What?" "No." "What are you doing?" "No, Roy!" "Hold on." "Wait, keep your hand up." "God." "Help, please." "He pulled the...." "Holy shit." "Get the fuck away from me." "–Please, just get back in your room." "–Shut up!" "You listen to me." "–Get your ass— –Shut up, I said!" "Now, you listen here." "I want you home with your wife." "Whatever else you got going, cut it down." "–I can't, I need to be— –Listen to me." "Do what I say or you will regret it." "And don't talk to me about it... ever again." "I never saw that coming." "You kill me." "Take off that shirt and throw it out." "Don't touch the blood." "–Why?" "I don't understand." "–Out!" "I already gave you my blessing." "What more do you want from me?" "–Get the fuck out of here." "–But, please, I...." "You wanna stay and watch this?" "–No." "–Fuck you, too!" "–So, your new lover— –He's not my lover." "–Tell me where you met him." "–In the park." "Well, first at work." "–He's a lawyer or a judge?" "–Lawyer." "–A gay lawyer?" "–Yes." "Republican, too." "A gay Republican lawyer." "And he's sort of...." "I don't know if the word...." "In a way, sensitive." "–Sensitive gay Republican." "–He's just company." "Companionship." "Just when I think he couldn't possibly say anything to make it worse..." "he does." "Companionship." "How good." "I wouldn't want you to be lonely." "There are thousands of gay men in New York City with AIDS." "Nearly every one of them is being taken care of by a friend... or by a lover who has stuck by them... through things worse than mine... so far." "Everyone got that." "Except me." "I got you." "Why?" "What's wrong with me?" "Are you really bruised inside?" "–I can't have this talk— –The least of things you can't do." "–So fragile." "Answer me." "Inside, bruises?" "–Yes." "Come back to me when they're visible." "I wanna see black-and-blue." "I wanna see blood." "I can't believe you have blood in your veins till you show it to me." "So don't come near me again... unless you've got something to show." "Every goddamn thing I ever wanted, they've taken from me." "Mocked and reviled all my life." "Join the club." "I don't belong to any club... you could get through the front door of." "What's your name?" "Norman Ariaga." ""Belize" to my friends, but you can call me Norman Ariaga." "Tell me something, Norman." "You ever hire a lawyer?" "No, Roy, never did." "Hire a lawyer, sue somebody." "It's good for the soul." "Lawyers are the high priests of America." "We alone know the words that made America... out of thin air." "And we alone know how to use the words." "The law... the only club I ever wanted to belong to." "Before they take that from me..." "I'm gonna die." "Look who's back." "Who?" "Nobody with me now... but the dead." "He's a clerk." "Joe Pitt." "–Yeah, this is his office." "–This is stupid." "–Go home if you're chicken." "–You should be home." "I have a hobby now: haunting people." "Fuck home." "Wait here." "I wanna meet my replacement." "Oh, God." "Yes?" "Can I...." "What?" "–Do you need something?" "–No." "–Could you— –I'm a prophet." "–What?" "–Prophet!" "I prophesy." "I have sight, I see." "–What do you do?" "–I'm a clerk." "Big deal." "A clerk?" "What, you file things?" "Keep a file on the hearts you break." "That's all that counts in the end." "You'll have bills to pay in the world to come..." "you and your friend, the Whore of Babylon." "Sorry, wrong room." "He's the Marlboro Man." "I wanna see." "–Sweet lord of Jesus." "–What is...." "You're Roy's nurse." "I recognize you." "–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." "It'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...." "Is 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...." "I mean, how do you know this?" "That Joe and Roy Cohn—" "I 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." "If 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." "–I 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." "–I 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." "–I'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." "–I'm not." "–In 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." "–It's cruel." "–Not intended to be." "Are you sure about that?" "–I'm taking her home." "–Do you think that's best for her?" "–I know what I'm doing." "–I 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." "–It's a big deal, Ma..." "botching up." "I could use some...." "I migrated across the breadth of the continent of North America." "I ran all this way to get away from...." "Is 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." "–I want to...." "I 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 closed." "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...." "I'm sick." "It'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...." "I think I'm...." "Don't be alarmed." "It'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." "–It's starting to rain." "Where are your shoes?" "–I 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?" "–I'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." "It'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?" "–I 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." "–I didn't say you— –I 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." "170 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." "–I believe that." "–I 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." "–I 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 Profiles 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 vs 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 14th 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?" "–I 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?" "–I 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...." "It 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!" "I'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." "–I don't want to, Roy." "–I am not— –It'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..." ""I 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." "It'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." "It 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...." "I 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." "It 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?" "–It 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." "–I 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." "–I'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." "–I 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." "–I'm going now." "–You'll come back?" "If I can...." "I 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...." "I 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." "–I love you." "–I 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." "–I 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...." "I'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." "–I had a horrid night." "–So did I. –Where is...." "I'm sure she'll be all right." "–What can happen to her in New York City?" "–It'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." "–I'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.... –Interconnectedness." "–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." "–I'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." "–I know." "We can agree about walking."