I Couldn't, I Can’t, I won’t (A play in one act)

Three adjacent rooms in a boarding house. The rooms do not appear divided by walls, but rather the layout and furniture indicating they are separate apartments. The men’s rooms are located to the left and right of the actress and are essentially bare save for a few bits of furniture and standing mirrors into which they recite their monologues respectively. The men appear to be getting ready for work, and present themselves in multiple stages of dress. They remain aloof and self-involved. The actress appears in a robe with hair wrapped indicating having gotten out of the shower, sits at a vanity putting on makeup and jewelry while reciting her lines as if rehearsing for a play. Early morning. This or any continent.

Man #1:

Too much! Too much! I can't stand the temples crumbling under my feet, one after the next, like loincloths on garbage day. My voice is rotten with the weight of my own expectation, and my feet, not wet in a sandy place, remain far from those whose smiles spell “I love you” in lights, yet can’t help but reveal their disillusionment with my cowardice. Where to now?

Who is left to save in this shopping mall of the heart? It's over! It's done! The sonatas that sustained me have turned to mush in my too small hands. The simplest, most eager and strapping parts of me have gone to a quiet place to lie down, like a dying bird. I'm squeamish! I'm afraid of every dog that does not bark, my commission has run out! taken leave of my own enterprising spirit! No coming back from times like this, absolutely none!

Actress:

He’s fled the coup, left me stranded here to fend off the wolves who've licked my wounds from a distance, and heed the whining of my unhappy, lost savior. No longer does he glance warmly in my direction; a man whose narrowness was his charm and whose charm was too narrow to make any kind of [primps hair] “lasting” impression. Where will I go? If not into the arms that once held me like a Walkman? The one who’d careen into my room at the latest possible hour when the snow fell in the aspens, dusting the garish tread of those who looked away and never removed their socks, yet feared me! I’ll cleave through the forests of smoke and debris and lose them. I long for something shining in the distance: the smell of fresh paint! a gymnasium! throbbing of the legs and heart! a basketball trophy! Love!

Man #2:

[mocking]

We are all feeling bit self-powered these days. Every meal can’t go on uninterrupted. There’s a lot of shared history to be dredged up like a pot of kimchee. Lawsuits rain from the sky, like lawsuits. This time things will be different. What do you think about this sock and shoe combination?

Man#1:

You speak as if you knew her. I guess we all have a little longing left so long as what’s said in confidence remains a champagne gift to my flora. Let’s go over this again, you say you flew to Istanbul in a gondola? The kind you've kept in the heart of your walk-in; where the skeletons grow limp as a drowned moth, and November the least likely month to fondle the glass shoot of my quietness?

Actress: [impish, bordering on camp]

I didn't take you for a lush someone else did, you just heard me repeat them. Possibly they are wrong, but then again it’s not even an insult as I can think of about a thousand other things you or I or anybody would hate to be called. Hell, once someone labelled me a ‘colonist,’ I didn't know what they were talking about until I realized they were German, and I, being Canadian, have the queen on my money. [sighs all around]

Man#1:

Let them lie where they fall as snowflakes on a child`s tongue would lie about not being tired, toes curled under a duvet of crisp sod.

Actress:

Well, “it’s not even my money!” and they snickered something, I’m not sure; it was German. Though the heart want’s to dive deep as an ice field to avoid insult and embarrassment I wouldn't suggest it, as I don’t suggest those shoes with those socks, I’m sorry I just don’t.

Man#1:

Then why pay lip service to it in the form of political tract? Boring I know, but not altogether useless when considered from the empty lot where Mr. Swinburne suffered a twisted ankle, thereby cozying up in effect to the last strawberry known to appear in the Antarctic sun.

Actress:

Next time we’ll gush in a more private way, but we are happy with the view we've got. It doesn't move around too much or lobby for better working hours. It does what it’s told and more or less conforms to the endeavors we are unable to appreciate without the appropriate amount of distance falling ever from us. Either way we`re done for, once again, it’s an absolute wash!

Man#2:

The building will go on as whatever sign you put in front of it, and “nada” continues to be an expression of great social and cultural significance. Why shouldn't it be? Idealistic notions are a lot of fun in the right hands, can be attributed to the forefathers of our forefathers but their fathers would likely have disapproved most vehemently, you might say, correctly even.

Man#1:

It’s freezing in here. Someone turn the knob. Let’s make a change. We’ll change the temperature and then ourselves; it will be like inspiration.

[exits for work]

Actress:

More like moving in without seeing first whether they fit in your bedroom. The corks popped without us; a divine tragedy like smoke in the subway. Actually we are not more than the sum of our parts. You two are so blue; I guess I’m a little blue too. But as they say in the films, oh well!

[grabs for her purse and exists]

Man#1:

We are so unlike ourselves. So unlike the time it got quiet in the mail room and the trouble began to shoot up from the very place weather is made and was simple for us to understand.

[End]