CONSTANTINOPLE Did you not love me enough?

Did you not love me enough to keep me alive?

MORGAN We can stay like this. I don’t mind. I’ll read you your books. I’ll take you for walks.

I’ll make all the food you would have grown up to like.

CONSTANTINOPLE

(with quiet certainty)

You loved me. You loved me more than anything else in the universe.

So it wasn’t that.

MORGAN I don’t mind if we can’t talk. Silence is meditative. We can meditate.

CONSTANTINOPLE I wanted to know.

I thought you could tell me and I wanted to know, why I wasn’t going to have all the things I wanted to have.

But you don’t know either. So you can’t explain.

MORGAN We can’t meditate, can we. This silence is terrible.

You don’t care about books or walks and you don’t eat food. You won’t nurse.

You don’t belong here, do you.

CONSTANTINOPLE I wish you could.

MORGAN I wish you did.

CONSTANTINOPLE I wish you could make it all make sense for me, because I like learning new things and I’m very good at learning and that would be something I would like to learn about. But I’m glad I found you. I’m always going to be glad that I found you.

MORGAN

(gathering herself)

Mom will take care of this, Constantinople.

Mom understands, and Mom will take care of this for you.

Scene Thirteen

The hotel. ELENA, dressed in the discarded dominatrix gear.

There are pumpkins all over the pool table. ELENA addresses them.

She is learning how to be mean, and it’s exhilarating.

ELENA The house rules, first-timers: If I get bored, I stop. If I get tired, I stop. If you don’t suffer in a manner that I find enjoyable, I stop. And please, for the love of God, don’t talk about your feelings. Any questions?

(The pumpkins have no questions.)

Good. You vile orange lumps. Pestilent gourds. Putrid misshapen squashes.

ELENA puts nipple clamps on the pumpkin stems. She whips them gently. She breaks a sweat and stops for a breather.

ELENA Mercy, you say? Mercy? We at Hotel Elena do not believe in mercy. We here in the Dungeons Du Elena, in the Palais Elena, in the Elenian Keep, we do not trade in mercy. If you want mercy, go somewhere else.

(DOLORES enters. She is sad and exhausted.)

You’re back!

DOLORES What. Are you doing.

ELENA Welcome to the Black Abyss of Elena. There’s a waiting list, but if you want to set up an appointment—

DOLORES You’re wearing my clothes.

ELENA Your assistant is actually a guru and he gave them to me. Do you want them back?

DOLORES No. I don’t want them back.

I just want to be alone. In a very small space.

She curls up under the pool table.