Lauren Groff - Fates and Furies

OLLIE: Apparently, sir.

DEAN: Oliver, you’re making a difficult transition.

OLLIE: Yes, sir.

DEAN: Your grades couldn’t be better, but you don’t speak in class. Don’t call me sir. Our boys here are intellectually curious, vital citizens of the world. Are you an intellectually curious, vital citizen of the world?

OLLIE: Nope.

DEAN: Why not?

OLLIE: I’m unhappy.

DEAN: Who could be unhappy here? That’s nuts.

OLLIE: I’m cold.

DEAN: Physically? Or spiritually?

OLLIE: Both, sir.

DEAN: Why are you crying?

OLLIE: [ Struggles. Says nothing. ]

DEAN: [ Opens his drawer. Under a spill of papers is something that Ollie sees, and he sits up as if goosed. The dean shuts the drawer, lifting out a rubber band, tenting it back with his thumb. He aims it at Ollie’s nose and lets fly. Ollie blinks. The dean sits back in his chair. ]

DEAN: An undepressed person would have avoided that.

OLLIE: Probably.

DEAN: You, my friend, are a whiner.

OLLIE: [ … ]

DEAN: Ha! You look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed La-di-da.

OLLIE: [ … ]

DEAN: Ha ha!

OLLIE: Dean. If I may ask a question. Why do you have a gun in your desk?

DEAN: Gun? No gun. That’s crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about. [ Sits back, puts his arms behind his head. ] Anyway, listen to me, Oliver. I’ve been doing this for a billion years. I was a boy like you once at this school. Even I was picked on, believe it or not. And I don’t see why you’re being shat on. You seem to have everything. Wealthy, tall, you’d be good-looking if you washed your face once or twice, Christ. Little acne cream and you’d be strapping. You seem nice. Smart. You don’t stink, not like one of those hopeless loser kids. You know Jelly Roll? Just irredeemable. He smells bad and cries all the time. Foul to look at. Even his little friends, all the Dungeons & Dragons kids, even they only barely tolerate Jelly Roll to make up their bridge parties or something. You? You could be the king of this school. But you’re not, because, one, you’re new, which will burn off in time. Numero dos , you’re scared, which you have to change. Fast! Because kids who go to schools like this one are sharks, my friend. They’re baby sharks bred out of a long line of sharks, every one of ’em. And sharks can smell the blood in the water from miles away, and the blood in the water to these particular sharks? Fear. They smell that blood in the water, they’re going to hunt the bleeder down. Not their fault. They can’t help it! What kind of shark is a shark that doesn’t attack? A dolphin. Who needs dolphins? Dolphins are delicious. They make great snacks. So, you listen carefully to what I’m about to say. You need to learn to be a shark. Punch someone in the schnozz, just don’t break it, don’t want to be sued by these kids’ daddies. Play a prank. Cellophane the toilet so when they piss, the piss bounces on their jeans. Ha! If someone throws a hard-boiled egg in your face, throw a steak in his. Because this is like prison. Only the strong survive. You gotta earn your respect. Gotta do what you gotta do. You hearing me? Capiche?

OLLIE: Capiche .

DEAN: All right, Oliver. What kind of a name is Oliver anyway? Kind of a dolphin kind of name if you ask me. Pussy name. You a pussy?

OLLIE: No. But I like them.

DEAN: Ha! You’re getting it. What did they call you at home?

OLLIE: Ollie.

DEAN: Ollie. You see. There we go. Ollie’s a shark name. King shark. Next time someone calls you Bumblefuck Pie, you get all up in their faccia , make them call you Ollie. You hear me?

OLLIE: Loud and clear.

DEAN: Do you feel your teeth sharpening? Smell the blood in the water? Do you feel like a shark?

OLLIE: Maybe. Or like a dolphin with a razor blade on his fin.

DEAN: It’s a start. Go slay them, slayer.

OLLIE: Slay. Check.

DEAN: Not literally, of course, god, could you imagine? The dean told me to kill them all! I meant figuratively. Don’t slay anyone. You didn’t hear that from me.

OLLIE: Of course. Good-bye, sir. [ Exits. ]

DEAN: [ Alone, takes the gun hurriedly from his drawer, inserts it under the couch. ]

TELEGONY, 2013

“Masks. Magic. Circe and Penelope and Odysseus and patricide and incest. Music and film and dance. You crazy-ass man,” Mathilde said.

“Gesamtkunstwerk,” Lotto said. “Melding all the forms of art as theater. Now we just have to find someone nuts enough to put it on,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Mathilde said. “Everyone we know is nuts.”

SHIP OF FOOLS, 2014 ACT I, SCENE I

Postnuclear wasteland, whale belly-up in the red tide, two women among the rubble.

PETE: wiry, small, skinny, furry, a chimp woman

MIRANDA: enormously fat, three vertical feet of red hair with a scorched bluebird’s nest atop it à la Madame du Barry. Swinging in a hammock between two blackened and skeletal palms

PETE [ Dragging a dead gator into camp. ]: Gator tail for supper this evening, Miranda.

MIRANDA [ Vaguely. ]: Lovely. It’s just that. Well. I was hoping. Well, for some whale steaks? If it were only possible to get whale steaks? I mean, don’t worry too much about it, but it’s the only thing in the world I could possibly digest tonight, but I can get down a little gator. If I must.

PETE [ Picks up hacksaw, sets off, returns wet, chunk of meat in her arms. ]: Gator tail and whale steaks for supper, Miranda.

MIRANDA: What a surprise! Pete! You can do anything! Speaking of which, while you’re up, mind pouring me another cocktail? It’s five o’clock somewhere!

PETE: Reckon not. No such thing as time anymore. [ Pours kerosene out of a drum, stirs it with a peppermint stick kept for the purpose, hands it over. ]

MIRANDA: Wonderful! Now. I think it must be time for my soap? The Starrs in Your Eyes ?

PETE: Time’s dead, Miranda mine. Television’s dead. Electricity’s dead. Actors dead, too, I warrant, in that H-bomb blast over L.A. Or the black-tongue plague after. Or the earthquake. The human experiment done bust.

MIRANDA: Then just kill me, Petey. Just kill me dead. No use in living. Just take that hacksaw and chop off my head. [ Weeps into her great pale hands. ]

PETE [ Sighs. Picks up kelp, places it on her head. Sucks in cheeks like Silvia Starr, heroine of the eponymous soap The Starrs in Your Eyes, and speaks in a gravelly voice. ]: Oh, whatever are we going to do with that dastardly dastard, Burton Bailey…

MIRANDA [ Sinks back, gaping. They are both so entranced, they don’t hear the mechanical whirring that grows until, stage right, a battered boat hull looms into view, and survivors peer at the women from above. ]

Rachel was agitatedly pacing the black-box theater, empty save for her brother, as the opening night reception thudded behind the door. “Cripes, Lotto. I didn’t even know how to watch that,” she said, digging her palms into her eyes.

He went still. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t get me wrong, there’s part of me that kind of savagely delighted in watching Muvva and Sallie duke it out at the end of the world. Sallie scraping and bowing until she finally snaps, you know?” Rachel laughed, then pivoted toward him. “You’re so good at fooling us, aren’t you. You’re so charming you make us forget that you have to be a serial killer on the inside to do what you do to us. Put us in your plays, warts and all, showing us off like we’re some sort of sideshow freaks. The audience out there just kind of laps it up.”