Coronado - Dennis Lehane [48]
WILL Yeah, I miss those jokes. You?
GINA Don’t do funny on this, okay? He’s dead, Will.
WILL Yes, he is.
GINA And it doesn’t seem to trouble you.
WILL No, Gina, it doesn’t.
GINA How is that possible?
WILL Eight hours sleep, proper diet?
GINA You’re clever. Clever and pretty-mouthed. Clever ain’t enough.
WILL You looked around? This is one dumb-ass county, honey. You want me to feel bad because Hal is dead. You want me to feel fear that we’ll be caught. You want remorse. Doubt. I don’t got any of that. Oops.
GINA Bastard.
WILL I want to reach out and hold your hands but I can’t because everyone’s watching. That hurts. Everything else, though? He’s dead. He’s gone. I can live with it.
GINA You’re energized by it. Reborn.
WILL I’m born.
GINA I’m nauseous.
WILL Let’s—
GINA In the existential sense.
WILL I still can’t believe they taught Sartre at community college.
GINA He’s dead.
WILL Yup.
GINA Because of us.
WILL Yup.
GINA What will God say?
WILL “Welcome to the club, don’t park on the lawn.”
GINA Fuck you.
WILL What’s God going to say? “Gee, I was busy killing Indonesians in an earthquake and I hip-checked a few hundred thousand Africans with a sneak famine, but allow me to punish you for Hal.”
GINA You really don’t.
WILL Don’t what?
GINA Feel. Feel anything about this.
WILL Life fucking goes on, Gina.
GINA No. Don’t you understand?
WILL Yes. In your belly right now.
GINA No.
WILL In your womb.
GINA It’s all shit, Will. It’s all stopped. The whole fucking clock. We killed a human being. We murdered. He might have told bad jokes and he might have been a racist and a sexist and a…a—
WILL Douche bag?
GINA But he was human. He had birthmarks and a mother who held him and a favorite smell and—
WILL He liked to take long walks on the beach and his favorite color was blue and he cried whenever he watched Brian’s Song and yet—and yet and yet—he’s passed on. Like your grandparents, like your dog, like a friend who got colon cancer.
GINA But we’re why he’s gone.
WILL And I’m good with that.
GINA I’m not.
WILL You better get good, honey.
GINA I—
WILL You better get good. ’Kay?
GINA You are—you’re energized.
WILL I’m the man who loves you. See that. Okay? I’m the man who loves you and lives for you.
GINA I can’t get it out of my head. The whole thing. I can’t. Save me.
[She reaches across the table toward him.]
WILL Not here.
Scene 11
BOBBY and BOBBY’S FATHER.
BOBBY’S FATHER She’s all you thought of in prison, I bet.
BOBBY All I thought of since. All I thought of before.
BOBBY’S FATHER I don’t know where she got to.
BOBBY I know that.
BOBBY’S FATHER Do you?
BOBBY But when you’re seen—when you’re seen—in this life, it’s not natural to just let that go.
BOBBY’S FATHER How you going to find her, though?
BOBBY I just, I just, I think of her, I see her, I, and I say to myself, I say, “She’s out there. Waiting.”
BOBBY’S FATHER She ain’t waiting, son. She ain’t. They don’t wait. It’s not their gift. That’s why we love them. Because if we blink, they could be gone. We look right instead of left, they’re already on a bus. Because they leave.
BOBBY Not her.
BOBBY’S FATHER Not her?
BOBBY Not her.
BOBBY’S FATHER Well, fuck her.
BOBBY Already have.
BOBBY’S FATHER You think anything’s changed since we fucking cave-painted? They suck our dicks so we’ll go to sleep. They share our beds so we’ll keep them warm. They fuck us so we’ll pay the electric. And if they suck our dicks and share our beds and fuck us just right, they know we’ll buy them earrings and cars and fucking gym memberships. Because they can be alone, but they can’t survive. And we can survive, but we can’t stand to be alone. And that’s it.
BOBBY That’s it?
BOBBY’S FATHER We hunt, they eat. We build, they dwell. We produce, they use.
BOBBY That’s my inheritance, the sum of my received knowledge from you?
BOBBY’S FATHER What did you think—you beat the house? You were the one guy in the history of time who found the perfect woman? You fucking infant. The free lunch ain’t free, the check ain’t in the mail,