CASS: He’ll get over that one. She is a dog, C of J.

SALAZAR: Our church is broke. We’re finished. But the Lord…

Pause.

CASS: Did you push an FBI guy out of your car when it was in motion?

SALAZAR: Salazar? He got his jacket swiped. At the movies. (Pause.) There’s so much putrescence! There’s so much vile rot! Can you—

CASS: I’m an instrument!

SALAZAR:…Maybe.

CASS: I told you it was fate. I told you.

The phone rings.

Pause. SALAZAR studies CASS silently.

Staring at SALAZAR, CASS grabs the phone in the middle of the fourth ring.

As CASS speaks, the two men stare at one another and the lights dim steadily.

CASS: Hello…Franklin…Yes. (Pause.) Yeah, sure, definitely—

A long pause. SALAZAR watches CASS raptly.

Now, wait. I think you’re trying to sell me a book, Franklin. That hurts my feelings, when you call me up and tell me your name and all, like we’re going to be friends, and really you just want to sell me the Famous Aviators series…Because would you want me to do you that way too sometime, just when you need a friend? Because you know what?…I thought you were God…Just when you, you know—

Pause.

Franklin?

BLACKOUT

We hear him hang up softly in the dark.

SHOPPERS CARRIED BY ESCALATORS INTO THE FLAMES

A DRAMA IN TWO ACTS

Shoppers Carried by Escalators into the Flames was written for Campo Santo + Intersection and premiered at Intersection for the Arts (Deborah Cullinan, executive director) in San Francisco, California, on August 8, 2001.

Cast

GRANDMA: Helen Shumaker

CASS: Sean San Jose

DAD: Michael Torres

TV: Brian Keith Russell

BRO: Luis Saguar

SUZANNE: Lisa Joffrey

GIB: John Polak

MARIGOLD: Alexis Lezin

PASTOR ROCK: Brian Keith Russell

MARCY: Catherine Castellanos

(The role of MARIGOLD was understudied and also performed by Gabriela Barragan)

Original musical score by Marcus Shelby

Additional music by Jim Roll

Designed by Suzanne Castillo, James Faerron, and Drew Yerys

Directed by Nancy Benjamin

Look, I am living. On What? Neither childhood
nor future grows any smaller…

—RAINER MARIA RILKE, NINTH DUINO ELEGY

GRANDMA: Around eighty

DAD: Around sixty

MARIGOLD: His daughter, late twenties

CASS: His youngest son; around thirty

BRO: The middle brother; mid-thirties

SUZANNE: Around thirty

GIB: Around thirty

PASTOR ROCK

MARCY: Mid-thirties

TV: A box full of voices

Scene: A lower-middle-income apartment in Ukiah, California, at the start of the third millennium

Set consists of two levels, separately lighted: the upper, DAD’s bedroom; the lower, the kitchen/living room.

Players exit right, out the apartment’s front door (which opens directly onto the outdoors), or left, into a hallway (which leads to GRANDMA’s room and also to the stairs up to DAD’s bedroom).

Sets and lighting should be simple and true-to-life; no music except as indicated. Let TV be realistically rendered and inhabited by a live actor.

Act I

SCENE 1

Downstairs at the Cassandra residence: kitchen-dining area; living area with a hide-a-bed couch, a recliner, a large TV with its face turned upstage.