SALLY: Some things just come out without our knowing, don’t they? Ancient, burning things. Catastrophes. All in a moment. You’re wheeled from the operating room on the stainless steel gurney—you see all their gleaming, beady eyeballs staring down at you. White masks. You hear their excited whispers—the miracle of it! New life! Brought back from the dead by death itself. The pure lucky accident of murder. You’re the one! You’re the one and only one who deserves to live! Not the poor little empty corpse curled up in the sand. Discarded. Forgotten. Like they’ve forgotten you were never meant to be living! Never meant to continue breathing. Dead—long, long, long ago. Before the earth began!

(MABLE suddenly screams from off right.)

MABLE’S VOICE: (Off right.) ELIZABETH!!!!

(LUCY jumps to her feet as though jolted by lightning. Short pause.)

LUCY: Why doesn’t she ever call my name?

(LUCY goes rushing off, stage right, to attend to MABLE, leaving SALLY alone. Long pause. SALLY just sits on bed—then speaks softly to herself and, again, to some “other.”)

SALLY: (To herself.) Oh, boy—here we are again. Just the two of us. Sometimes you think—maybe it will never end.

(From deep upstage center, suddenly appearing, LIZ comes running directly downstage. She is fully clothed except for her white stockings and her shoes, which she carries in her right hand. She is barefoot and her feet are bleeding. SALLY stays on bed, unalarmed. LIZ stops at glass table, then sits in stage right chair, paying no attention to SALLY. LIZ raises her shoes to about head level and then lets them drop to floor. Pause.)

LIZ: (Out of breath, without looking toward SALLY.) You got a rag? Washrag or something.

SALLY: (Loudly, with finger to lips.) SHHHHH!!!

LIZ: (Without turning to SALLY.) They can’t hear us.

SALLY: (Whispering loudly.) They might be right around the corner. The whole pack of them.

LIZ: They’re all deaf. Deaf and dumb. You know what that’s like, don’t you? (Rubbing her feet.) You got a rag?

(SALLY gets up, crosses stage right, and exits abruptly. LIZ, to SALLY offstage, as she picks up one shoe and smells it.)

You can get it wet if you want to.

(Sets shoe down, picks up the other one, and runs her hand inside it—pulls out a small leaf, flicks it into the air, and lets it flutter to the floor.)

Roscoe still out walking his dog?

SALLY: (Enters from right with wet washrag.) I guess. He goes off wandering sometimes.

LIZ: Where to?

SALLY: Never says. I assume he’s thinking about what he’s done.

(SALLY hands washrag to LIZ, then crosses to stage left chair and sits. LIZ crosses her legs and begins wiping blood off her toes.)

LIZ: What has he done?

SALLY: You know—abandonment. The wife. The kids. Running away.