THE CITRUSSEXUAL

© 2004 Lawrence Krauser

LKrauser@hotmail.com

CAST OF CHARACTERS

WENDELL

BILL, friend

SALLY, friend, girlfriend of Bill

MOTHER of Wendell

FATHER of Wendell

MARGE, Wendell’s ex

POLICE OFFICER

DOCTOR

CANDICE, Wendell’s boss at Fuller Communication Company

MICHELLE, coworker

SCOTT, coworker

GREG FULLER, CEO

ASSISTANT of FULLER

RECEPTIONIST

GLORIA, a woman who hangs out on Wendell’s street

MONICA, blind date of Wendell

WOMAN

ARCHITECT

MUSEUM PATRONS 1 and 2

TOUR GUIDE at museum

SALESPERSON at art-supply store

HANSEL, proprietor of game arcade

LARRY, police officer

LUCE, police officer

CHORUS

ACT ONE

SCENE 1

[WENDELL and BILL at a bar; JOE is bartending]

BILL [reading aloud]: YOU’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO READ MY HAND-WRITING—YOU NEVER LEARNED TO READ IT! WHICH TO ME SAYS MORE THAN ANY NOTE COULD—

WENDELL: Give me that.

BILL: Hold your horses. I’LL TRY TO WRITE LEGIBLY FOR YOU, AS I WANT NO MISUNDERSTANDING

WENDELL: It’s hard to read, right? Her handwriting is difficult to make out--

BILL: I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND THAT THIS MUST BE.

WENDELL: Now see our only innocent joke for a whole year--

BILL: This is passion. This is the real thing, man.

WENDELL: Give it to me--

BILL: I FEEL SCRUTINIZED WHERE I WOULD PREFER DISINTEREST, AND IGNORED WHEN ATTENTION WOULD BE APT. I CANNOT BOIL A KETTLE OF WATER WITHOUT BEING CRITICIZED.

WENDELL: Absolute gospel, she changes the height of the flame as it heats up, starts with it low and increases it. What is that?

JOE: A feel for nature.

WENDELL: Another shot of this Cuervo please, Mr. Joe, thank you.

BILL: PLEASE WATER MY PLANTS UNTIL I COME GET THEM.

WENDELL: It’s true we were semiotically incompatible.

[enter SALLY]

SALLY: Hello, guys.

[Greetings]

SALLY: Is it true?

WENDELL [Tequila to the sky]: Drink up, aging organism! [drinks]

SALLY: Well it’s about time, I say.

BILL: Sally!

WENDELL: Some sense in a mouth. Thank you, Sal.

BILL: Look, Marge won't hold to it.

WENDELL: She took all her stuff.

JOE: Left her plants.

WENDELL: I'll hold to it.

SALLY (to BILL): You didn’t think they had a quality rapport, did you? Does anyone here think they had a quality rapport?

JOE: People are like Rubix cubes. All depends on whose hands you’re in. Somewhere we’re all pure and beautiful.

WENDELL: Ah yes like that Cuervo there; please if you would--thank you, Mr. Joe.

JOE: Here, chase that.

WENDELL: I do not want to catch it.

SCENE 2

[WENDELL, his MOTHER and FATHER, having dinner.]

FATHER: No wonder.

WENDELL: What.

MOTHER: Maybe now you'll learn to eat.

FATHER (to WENDELL): No fork?

MOTHER: She had zest.

FATHER: With Marge you were functional.

WENDELL: Divisional, it seems.

FATHER: A stabilizing influence. A joy!

WENDELL: I’ll give you her number.

FATHER: Smart-aleck, this one.

MOTHER: You had problems. You had differences? People are different.

FATHER: A gem!

MOTHER: That’s very accurate. Gem.

WENDELL: Mom this sauce is sensational.

MOTHER: Same since forever.

FATHER: He doesn’t wanna talk about it. All right we’ll change the subject. Tell us something else.

MOTHER: Was there screaming?

WENDELL: No.

MOTHER: Was it discussed?

FATHER: Can’t you see it in his eyes? A unilateral decision.

MOTHER: Wendell what’s wrong—

[Wendell is holding aloft the fruit slice from his drink.]

WENDELL: Twenty billion years ago, what was there in the Universe? Now
color, symmetry, form.

MOTHER: Wendell don’t play with your food!

[She reaches for the slice; Wendell yanks away;

the slice flicks up into the air]

MOTHER: There is fruit in my chandelier. There is fruit in your father and I’s chandelier.

[Wendell stands on his chair to get it]

FATHER: You walk around, you’re protected?

MOTHER: His shoes yet! Wendell don’t do that!

FATHER: Will you sit down on your chair when I speak to you? This is life and death I’m talking. Sit down. I don’t think you read the paper.

WENDELL: Dad, how old am I?

FATHER: Sit down here.

MOTHER: He asks you that!

FATHER: Wendell, sit! [Wendell sits] I remember how remote the future can seem. But it gets here, Wendell. It Shall Arrive. Don’t you go out and be foolish now.

MOTHER: He wouldn’t be foolish. He may be a fool--

FATHER: Case in point, Marge is gone. His intelligence is up for debate. I’m not talking sheepskin here, son.

MOTHER: He may be sloppy—

FATHER: Latex. --Where are you going?

WENDELL: I’ll be in the car. [he exits]

SCENE 3

[WENDELL & FATHER, in front seat of car; Father drives.]

WENDELL: Do you lie to people about what I do?

FATHER: Where did you hear that?

WENDELL: In this very van.

[he turns to MARGE; lights off FATHER; WENDELL and MARGE embrace]

[a POLICE OFFICER shines a flashlight on them through the window.]

OFFICER: Excuse me—

WENDELL: Sorry, sorry!

MARGE: Don’t you knock?

OFFICER: You must be Wendell.

WENDELL: Why?

OFFICER: I recognize the van. Father’s a good man. How’s the research going?

WENDELL: What research?

OFFICER: Things busy in the lab these days?

WENDELL: Uh…

OFFICER: You can bet I’m rooting for you. Runs in my family too.

WENDELL: What does?

OFFICER: Well keep up the good work. Keep your research indoors, OK?

WENDELL: Thank you, sir.

MARGE: Excuse me, Officer. What is the point of suburbs if you cannot copulate in your vehicle?

OFFICER: I’m sure I don’t know, miss, but it’s best not to park at a hydrant.

[exits]

MARGE: History demonstrates a fine line between love and proximity.

WENDELL: But not with groups.

[lights off MARGE, up on FATHER]

FATHER: This is your modus operandi? My car?

WENDELL [to audience]: My father does not consider this van a multipurpose, let alone recreational vehicle.

FATHER: Tell me again what you do every day. Just explain it to me simply.

WENDELL: Communications. Triad-based systems. Powers of three.

FATHER: Screwball.

WENDELL: We don’t need to know in Payroll.

FATHER: His family actually involved?

WENDELL: Whose?

FATHER: Buckminster Full-of-it.

WENDELL: The president is his nephew. Rumor has it. Or grand-nephew. I don’t know, I don’t pay attention.

FATHER: Entire cities wrapped in cellophane and detach them from the planet to float through outer space, civilization in Ziplock baggies.

WENDELL: Well that’s an interesting concept. You have to admit it's an interesting idea. Dad I heard this thing--

FATHER: Persisted in his folly, for what.

WENDELL: --these two vets on line at a donut stand.

FATHER: Which war.

WENDELL: I’m not sure.

FATHER: He's not sure.

WENDELL: The enemy have two rows of POWs lined up on their knees with their hands tied behind them.

FATHER: All wars the same in your mind, Wendell?

WENDELL: No, it was these guys. These two enemy soldiers are strolling along between these rows of prisoners, and every few minutes one of the enemy fires his gun into the back of the head of one of these guys, guy falls out of the line dead. For the sport of it. All of a sudden one of these prisoners jumps up and bolts, hands tied behind him, he’s running and yelling. Nobody gets it, they can’t believe it, the two enemy soldiers look at each other, they lift up their rifles and blow the dude away.

FATHER: Of course.

WENDELL: Yeah but the guy who was running--he had to have known he was going to die. They would have had to shoot him. He must have wanted to be shot. Right?

FATHER: So?

WENDELL: This guy exchanged the possibility of surviving for the certainty of dying.

FATHER: This story has meaning for you?

WENDELL: The guy--

FATHER: Suicide, Wendell. That’s called suicide.

[PAUSE; car stops]

WENDELL: Well thanks for the lift, Dad.

FATHER: Give a call, you need anything. And about Marge...well…

WENDELL: Goodnight.

[Wendell gets out and walks. Encounters a LEMON sitting on the ground]

WENDELL: Who are you?

[he picks it up and takes it with him]

SCENE 4

[WENDELL enters his apartment, kicking]

WENDELL: Away, cat! Eleven years old and still nursing incorrect objects. Mount your phantom females, boy. [sees NOTE, reads:]

MARGE: An even mix of dry and wet. Change the litter alternate days.

WENDELL: Fond memories. [crumples note] Catfood uneaten crusts quickly. What’s that you say, Marge? Simple enough; ah well. You will see the crops have been rotated. Appollinaire? Say hello to our yellow guest. Goodnight, all.

[WENDELL sleeps.]

MARGE: We’ve nothing in the house

Save a tiny slice of lemon

and a teaspoon of honey,

and what to do for dinner—

since we haven’t any money?

[ALARM CLOCK RINGS]

[Wendell wakes up]

WENDELL: Fruit Loops! --Something’s wrong with my face. Something’s wrong with my face!

[he telephones]

[CANDICE picks up phone]

CANDICE: Fuller Communication, it’s a pleasure communicating with you, this is Candice in Payroll, how may I help you?

WENDELL: Candice!

CANDICE: Who is this?

WENDELL: This is Wendell.

CANDICE: Wendell! You sound strange.

WENDELL: I’ll be in a little late today.I can’t move the left side of my face.

CANDICE: Oh no! Did you call someone?

WENDELL: I called you. I look kind of scary.

CANDICE: It sounds like a stroke!

WENDELL: You think?

CANDICE: Take a taxi, get the receipt.

WENDELL (aside): If it’s a stroke, time is of the essence—and I can have a day off with pay—Bye, Candice!

CANDICE: Wendell--

WENDELL: Thank you.

[WENDELL hangs up, steps outside.]

WENDELL: Beautiful day!

[feels his face]

SCENE 5

[DOCTOR pokes and squeezes WENDELL]

DOCTOR: You could stand to lose some weight.

WENDELL: How do you stay so thin, Doctor?

DOCTOR: I have no time to eat. You smoke?

WENDELL: Well—

DOCTOR: Now and then?

WENDELL: Yeah.

DOCTOR: You are a smoker.

WENDELL: What is that Chinese proverb, Worst something best something out of difficult something?

DOCTOR: Why’d you start?

WENDELL: I woke up this morning with it.

DOCTOR: You woke up this morning smoking a cigarette.

WENDELL: You think it’s related to my face?

DOCTOR: There is so much information out there; what people choose amazes me. Two symptoms with a common cause perhaps. You have another poison? Drink? Sure you do. How much?

WENDELL: Never more than necessary. Have I had a stroke?

DOCTOR: Please. You have a genetic aberrance in the structure of your heart. One of your valves is particularly long. Nothing half my dancers and basketball players don't have, so you’re in good company. Ever do cocaine?

WENDELL: Once.

DOCTOR: You're lucky to be alive. For you it’s Russian Roulette.

WENDELL: But my face—

DOCTOR: Not related. Pinched nerve. Relax and you’ll be back to normal in three months.

WENDELL: Three months!

DOCTOR: Spare me. There are a lot of people out there in some very bad situations, and you are not one of them. Here’s an eye-patch. Wear it until you can blink again. Alright? Just walk around a little bit, get used to it.

[he leaves the room]

[WENDELL walks around. Then leaves. He wears eye-patch for most of rest of play.]

SCENE 6

[On the street. GLORIA passes WENDELL]

GLORIA: Promises promises, tried to sue and what I get? Late fees! Sparrows in my air conditioner! I know you got that letter I sent. Leaks! Sad and sorry, up and down--

WENDELL: Gloria, how are you.

GLORIA: Ahhhhhh! Look at your face! Look at your face!

[laughs]

WENDELL: Gloria you look very beautiful right now—

GLORIA: Get away from me!

WENDELL: --that's a lovely blouse, and in this light your head tilted like that--

GLORIA: You're the ugliest cat on this block! Saturday I walked downtown and never see nothing like what I see, I think it was Saturday, so who was not looking and they broke the mold on you! Make no difference sad and sorry up and down I can’t even look at what you look like Frankenstein. What happened, you find religion?

WENDELL: My baby done left me.

GLORIA: Skinny Lady?

WENDELL: Yeah.

GLORIA: Two points!

WENDELL: Goodnight, Gloria.

GLORIA: Speak to my hand, child! Speak to my hand. Give a woman time. I seen it before and I done it before and I’d do it again if I had the chance and I hope to Jesus I have the chance. A person has a leg and the leg hurts it don’t make no difference!

WENDELL: You rest well now.

GLORIA: Don’t tell me rest well, I don’t wanna rest well, rest don’t excite me, I’ll tell you what excite me, nothing excite me! Never said nothin’ bad about anyone! Ain’t that the truth. That what killed her.

SCENE 7

[WENDELL & MARGE]

MARGE {reading}: Rind breakdown, Rind staining, Rind stipple. Witches’ brooms of lime. Inherited chimerical agent. Shell-bark complex. Sting, Stunt, Stubby-root. Blind pocket psorosis. Bud union incompatibility.

WENDELL: I like to watch you read.

MARGE: That’s a sex thing: focused gaze, pooling of endorphins in the frontal lobe, bellydancing. The hot highbeam of bibliomania.

WENDELL [to aud:] I first saw her in a bookstore on the cover of a book of poems, an author photo of such profound sensuality I expected to find Psalms inside. I wrote to her, sent it care of her publisher.

[to MARGE]

“So what does it feel like, to hold the Great Torch?

Clearly your palms do not easily scorch!”

MARGE: I wrote back.

[to WENDELL]

“A coffee for two, i.e. me and you

would please at least one,

who is glad you had fun

perusing the hat-hung homes

of her wandering pen.

Coffee? Dim-sum? Where? When?”

WENDELL: Figure I better read her book. Paragraphs shaped like animals and mathematical figures. Pages with only one word on them, or one word in each corner. We meet at a Chinese restaurant.

MARGE: Crinkle leaf. Ringspot. Root-rot.

Satsuma dwarf virus, a.k.a. SDV.

Stem pitting and seedling yellows.

Tatterleaf. Powdery mildew.

Woody gall.

[PAUSE]

WENDELL: Wow.

MARGE: It’s a found poem.

WENDELL: Hearing them aloud is so much richer than, uh—not that reading them wasn’t—isn’t—

MARGE: I think the universe wants us to kiss.

[they embrace]

MARGE: There are places on earth where such behavior would indicate warmth and familiarity.

WENDELL: What are they thinking?

[ALARM CLOCK RINGS

[MARGE vanishes]

[Wendell wakes up]

WENDELL: Something wrong at every chakra. Think emptiness, you are all but solid. Must pee. Move in That Direction Cat. I think it’s time for you to see the world— [sees insect] WHAT! where’s my plunger-- Nine days is not enough time in which to suffocate a roach. You, slime-sucker, say hello to ten days of darkness. Meet MY sucker! [plants plunger] I will grout you in with toothpaste! Can you hear me in there? Did you think you alone could inherit the earth? Ah, what’s there--the moon! Hello, moon. Nearly full, are you, come here.

[It’s the LEMON that he sees. He reaches for it, holds it]

MARGE:

“No sweets to them who sweet themselves were born,

whose natures ooze with lucent saccharine,

who, with sad repetition soothly cloyed,

the lemon-tinted morn enjoy.”

WENDELL: Shush!

SCENE 8

[At the office: WENDELL and MICHELLE and SCOTT]

MICHELLE: Wendell, Candice asked me to give this to you to type up.

WENDELL: Gimme. [reads] “To All Employees...” Very funny.

MICHELLE: She wants it by noon.

WENDELL: You seen the coffee filters?

MICHELLE: There. What, you can’t see on this side of your face?

WENDELL: No, I can see, I just have to swivel. I just didn’t happen to see them. I can see fine.

MICHELLE: Oh.

[WENDELL looks at SNAPSHOT on wall, takes it down, gazes]

MARGE: That’s a very chic thing, that patch, Wend, I would have loved to kiss you with it, I bet it would invert your depth perception.

SCOTT: Wendell.

WENDELL [to himself]: I don’t ski, why should I weekend with skiers?

MICHELLE: Wendell?

WENDELL: Yeah.

SCOTT: Scrap the photo.

WENDELL: Huh.

[CANDICE approaches]

CANDICE: And how are we doing here? How are you feeling, Wendell?

WENDELL: Oh all right.

MARGE {to WENDELL}: Play it up. Frequent-freakout miles to be squeezed.

CANDICE: Wendell?

MARGE: Let your voice waver.

WENDELL: I’m a little— no, it’s nothing.

CANDICE: Sometime we’ll take lunch and I’ll tell some things. Believe me you’ll feel a lot better.

WENDELL: What did we ever talk about?

CANDICE: I know, Wendell, I know.

SCENE 9

WENDELL: Plunger UP! Day Ten, Yoo-hoo, roach! What? Still lively? Is fluoride orzone to you? Congratulations, champ, freedom is yours!

[kills roach]

SCENE 10

[WENDELL, BILL, SALLY, at a café]

WENDELL: A toy.

BILL: No, it’s real.

SALLY: A toy poodle is a poodle.

BILL: Right.

WENDELL: I’m so sorry for this dribbling, I can’t tell where my lips are.

BILL: It has this ultra-silky coat, it’s sold by the Indians to wealthy tourists. Like two thousand dollars per animal.

WENDELL: For pets.

BILL: No, they never leave the island, they’re illegal in the States, they’re a delicacy of some sort—they say culinary, but I'm pretty sure they're for sex.

WENDELL: Do they survive their purpose?

BILL: I don't know.

WENDELL: Wow.

(PAUSE)

SALLY: Wendell. Answer.

WENDELL: What. No, fine, I succumb yes.

BILL: Bravo.

SALLY: It’ll be a double date.

WENDELL: Somebody slipped carpe-diem in my coffee.

BILL: We’ll be there to protect you.

WENDELL: These sugar substitutes--

SALLY: At the very least you will like her, don't worry.

WENDELL: Hm.

SCENE 11

[At the office: CANDICE, MICHELLE, SCOTT, WENDELL]

CANDICE: Wendell? Michelle, have you seen Wendell, he’s not at his desk.

MICHELLE: He was just here a second ago.

CANDICE: Scott have you seen Wendell?

SCOTT: Yeah he’s in today.

WENDELL (to LEMON): See this on me? Navel. Same as on you. We both come from someplace.

CANDICE: Wendell?

MARGE: If Wendell were familiar with Sir Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, he might find the acquaintance handy, for in this book is a line appropriate to the very situation in which Wendell now finds himself: “I’ll be with you in the squeezing of a lemon.”

CANDICE: Wendell.

WENDELL: Yes ma’am.

CANDICE: That memo?

WENDELL: It’s on the screen.

CANDICE: Can you print it out?

WENDELL: My printer’s broken.

CANDICE: Still? How do I get to the top--

WENDELL: Here.

[she reads off the screen]

CANDICE: "Due to recent election returns..." Oh my...Can I read this out loud?

WENDELL: Uh—

CANDICE: Michelle, Scott, you have to hear this memo Wendell wrote for me—DUE TO THE RECENT ELECTION RETURNS, IN WHICH AS YOU KNOW A CERTAIN SOMEONE WAS ELECTED INTO A CERTAIN OFFICE, THERE WILL BE SOME CHANGES MADE IN TAXATION POLICY, WHICH ARE DETAILED IN THE CHART BELOW AND HEREBY SUBMITTED FOR YOU TO SQUEEZE AND SLICE AS YOU SEE FIT AND RETURN TO MYSELF VIA INTEROFFICE MAIL. Oh no, this is fine. Most eloquent. Wendell I don't know what we would do without you.

SCOTT: Fine job

MICHELLE: Ceremonial but familiar

SCOTT: Conversational yet to the point

MARGE: Even au courant

WENDELL: Thanks.

SCENE 12

[CEO GREG FULLER, alone in his office.]

FULLER: The discovery of, the honoring, yes—no--the validation of my great-uncle’s lifelong mission, say crusade, the vindication of—no need—the consecration of my great uncle’s efforts to establish, to assert, the primacy of the triangle in nature! Importance of this primacy, primacy of this supremacy, supremacy of this importance, primacy of this supremacy, supremacy of this primacy--primacy of this supreme importance—to wit: its significance and potential value to mankind, humanity rather, humane living standards, recognized, first recognized, initially first recognized by attentive members of the armed forces, say military establishment, defense community, defensive citizenry, conscientious civilians--who indeed are commonly chief among us, forces so often chief among, frequently foremost among us in foresight and so forth, uncommonly chief, industrial prescience, vision--not that he endorsed war, of course--as Amelia Erehart once said, while riding in a three-wheeled car of his own design, my esteemed uncle's very own invention somewhere in between Boston and Amherst, Boston and Hyannisport, somewhere between Boston and New Haven--

[KNOCK AT DOOR. ASSISTANT peeks in.]

ASSISTANT: Sir?

FULLER: What’s the name of that Ivy in Vermont?

ASSISTANT: There’s an employee in the building with a level-G medical affliction, would you like to pay him a courtesy call?

[FULLER visits WENDELL, scrutinizes him]

FULLER: Not as bad as they told me, you look recognizably of our good species. Permanent, is it?

WENDELL: Probably not.

WENDELL: Well—

FULLER: Still be a place for you here, of course. Maybe with that patch, if you keep needing it, we could waive the necktie requirement for you. Can you run that through a regular wash or does it have to be drycleaned?

WENDELL: Well hopefully I won’t need it for long--

FULLER: Let’s see, your left side, that’d make it your right brain, your language center, uh-oh! Can’t lose that, can we? How about it, Candice, Wendell sharp as ever?

CANDICE: Oh absolutely, in fact—

FULLER: Deformity they say focuses the mind, it’ll all even out. Buddhists believe everybody’s got exactly 83 problems. Wendell your talents do not go unacclaimed in the heart of the Fuller Communication company, nor in the afterhours of my own heart, you are indeed more than proficient in the delicate craft of memorandum composition, and nothing could be more important in our Payroll Department. If there’s one thing people want to be clear on, it’s their finances, isn’t that right Candice?

CANDICE: It certainly is.

FULLER [to WENDELL]: A dangling modifier is something up with which you will not put, eh?

WENDELL: I prefer not to.

FULLER: You read Churchill?

WENDELL: No sir.

FULLER: God’s memoist.

WENDELL: Ah.

SCENE 13

[Wendell’s apartment. WENDELL looks at LEMON.

DOOR BUZZER BUZZES. Wendell speaks into intercom.]

WENDELL: Yeah.

BILL (on intercom): Ready?

WENDELL: Be right down. (picks up lemon) One day I will be dead. Tonight I hold a lemon. You once dangled from a branch. Now you sit on my palm.

[sets lemon down, exits apartment]

WENDELL: What is this thing with my face? Simple fornication would be a prudent short-term goal. Barnacles of stircrazy sperm on my facial nerves. I shouldn’t be thinking this way. I will behave myself. Friend of friends. Civilization. Maybe my condition can summon the coiled nurse in her.

[greets BILL. SALLY and MONICA (Wendell’s date), wait.]

WENDELL: You warn her about my face?

BILL: She knows.

SALLY: Hey Wend.

WENDELL: Hi Sal.

MONICA: I’m Monica.

[she and Wendell shake hands]

WENDELL: It’s not your birthday, is it?

MONICA: No.

WENDELL: Good. I wouldn’t make a very good birthday present.

MONICA: Thanks for the warning.

WENDELL: What are we seeing?

BILL: Hearing.

WENDELL: Cool. Hey did I tell you guys about this freakout, I was at the museum—excuse me, Monica, I was wanting to tell these guys; I mean you can listen too—I was on the admissions line in the lobby there where I could see as I was waiting on line down that gauntlet of Greeks down that hallway toward the cafeteria, bad decision on somebody’s part because they make you, a certain kind of person I imagine might be made self-conscious of their own slothful form as you walk down there to have lunch, or maybe the idea is to discourage indulgent eating in order to keep the crowd chicly slim, or maybe the cafeteria is so mobbed they figure it couldn’t hurt to inspire crowd-controlling dieting thoughts like that, whaddya think?

BILL: Gee I just don’t know, Wendell.

SALLY (looking at concert hall): Look at that facade, that is incredible.

MONICA: All the best architects are curmudgeons.

WENDELL: OK, but as I gaze down this hall of these chipped white naked torsos they are beginning to slowly twist and gyrate, right and then look directly at me like in a TV commercial or a musical comedy or in the commercial, but then I get to the booth and it’s Pay What You Wish, right?

BILL: It’s always Pay What You Wish.

WENDELL: Right but these statues are starting to sing to me--

SALLY: The statues are starting to sing?

BILL: Praise the Lord.

MONICA: The Rockettes.

WENDELL: Listen they’re going,

CHORUS: The number of cents that you pay today

(& Wendell) Is the number of years that you’ll live to be

So count your change in a careful way

As now you determine your destiny...

SALLY: So what did you do?

WENDELL: I left! This was not a decision I could make.

MONICA: Should have paid less than what your age is right now.

BILL: Maybe they were going by a different calendar.

WENDELL: Exactly.

SALLY: Damn this city is beautiful.

MONICA: There was a spaceship they saw here last month.

BILL: Oh I heard about that.

MONICA: Yeah, like three hundred people saw it.

WENDELL: Hey, what is that? What is that, I ask you.

SALLY: What Wend. [she looks] A book.

BILL: [reads] “The World’s Worst Everything.”

WENDELL: Why is that right there though? [upset] Why is it just sitting there on top of the word “Worst,” what is that about!

SALLY: It’s an O, Wend, it’s doubling as an “O.”

MONICA: Clever.

WENDELL: I know what it’s doing, but that’s ridiculous.

MONICA: Savvy.

WENDELL: You know--hold on a minute—

[he runs off]

BILL: What’s he doing. Sorry, Mon.

MONICA: No, hey.

SALLY: I think that patch makes his equilibrium a little funky.

[WENDELL returns, carrying a lemon]

WENDELL: The least I can do. 23 cents. A value assigned. (to lemon) I apologize for the ignorance of my species. You know, I’ve got a lemon at home, this one is a little longer, I think; heavier.

[they take their seats in the concert hall]

[Handel’s MESSIAH plays]

MONICA[singing, completely tone deaf]: The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and He shall reign for ever and ever, King of Kings! Lord of Lords!...

WENDELL (whispers): I’ll meet you guys outside, OK? Just--keep staying here, I’m fine, I’ll enjoy myself, I’ll be outside, I’ll meet you outside.

[he leaves]

[Outside, he sits with the lemon.]

WENDELL: But it's been two thousand years already and look around. What do you think? Subject to the laws of His own creation? You think if Buddha wasn't fat, Americans would pay more attention? Huh? You have nothing to add? You have nothing to add.

[BILL, SALLY, MONICA exit the concert hall]

WENDELL: Hi guys.

SALLY: What a beautiful snow.

WENDELL: Isn’t it lovely? How was the climax?

BILL: It was great.

MONICA: I sing that every year, it completely transforms me.

[BILL takes Wendell aside]

WENDELL: Look at this, it floats.

MONICA: I feel newborn!

BILL: What’s going on?

WENDELL: All that juice and pulp and skin; and yet the orb remains lighter than the water it displaces. But you know, it's not so bright.

BILL: You up for dessert?

WENDELL: Sure.

BILL: Are you? Will you join in or are you just going to play with that lemon all night?

WENDELL: You didn't tell me she was tone deaf.

BILL: Wendell, she's in law school.

WENDELL: That's an excuse? Or an explanation?

BILL: Do you like her?

WENDELL: I find it amusing that her name rhymes with "harmonica."

BILL: You don’t want to go.

WENDELL: Serious harmonica players say "mouth organ," you know.

BILL: All right, we’ll call it a night.

WENDELL: If you guys want to go, I’ll go.

BILL: We would want to go if you did.

WENDELL: So you don’t want to go. Monique doesn’t want to go?

BILL: Monica is terrific, but you don’t know anything about her because you haven’t asked her a single question about herself.

WENDELL: Well I’m not deaf anyway. Look, it drifts, come back here.

BILL: You're an idiot, Wendell.

SALLY: Guys I’m sleepy. Sleepy in the snow…

BILL: Yeah, maybe a rain-check, coffee sometime, we’ll try conversation.

MONICA: Look at this you see your breath go up in the snow, it’s beautiful.

WENDELL (to Monica, shaking hands): I hear you are a vessel of the Law.

SCENE 14

[WENDELL enters his apartment, places his purchased lemon next to the one that’s been there, and says to the latter:]

WENDELL: I’d know you anywhere.

[he throws away the bought lemon]

WENDELL: I exist; I might perform actions. [looks out window] The moon is soft, it’s almost-full, can you see that? Can you relate? There are people sleeping in beds right exactly where I’m pointing, sometimes you can hear them snoring. Oh my. No wonder Matisse was crazy for lemons. Wait--where’s your thing?

[picks lemon up, examines it]

WENDELL: Didn’t you have a thing here?

[he puts it down--]

SCENE 15

[--on his desktop AT THE OFFICE. He is at the keyboard typing.]

[Wendell stops typing.]

WENDELL[to lemon]: You just stay there. Stay right there.

[gets up, walks a little away, reapproaches]

WENDELL: I just wanted to come to—approach you. Wait--

[Wendell goes a little bit further away; returns]

WENDELL: Great. OK. Hold on--

[This time he leaves the office]

[MICHELLE nears Wendell's desk with a cup of steaming tea. She takes the lemon, returns to her desk.]

MARGE: In Ulysses there’s this great scene where someone says “There’s a lemon in the locker,” and someone else says “Damn you and your Paris fads!”

[Wendell reenters, approaches--can’t find it.]

WENDELL: Where did you go. Where are you. Where did you go.

SCOTT: Wendell. Wendell are you OK?

WENDELL: I thought I had a lemon but now I can’t find it.

SCOTT: Michelle has one.

[WENDELL spots it sitting next to her cup of tea. Michelle is on the phone but smiling at him. She holds up the lemon and points to the cup of tea, then to the lemon, then back at the tea. She nods vigorously and mouths OK? and gives him a thumbs-up and continues her conversation. She holds up a plastic knife.]

SCOTT: Now I can’t say for sure that that’s your lemon. I didn’t see where she got it. Was yours about yay big, was it—

WENDELL: Shut up.

SCOTT: Oh my. Ten fingers to the lower lip.

[Michelle hangs up, and says to Wendell:]

MICHELLE: Sorry, you weren’t around. You mind if I use it to spice up my tea? I’ll get you another when I go to lunch.

WENDELL: I understand that your request is not outrageous.

MICHELLE: Thanks, Wendell, this will light up my lunch.

WENDELL: But. If—

SCOTT: Really, Michelle, I’m surprised at you. What could be more crucial to corporate sanity than the sacrosance of personal deskspace?

WENDELL: Can I have it please--

MICHELLE: It’s silly not to keep lemons in the kitchen on every floor, the tea bags go like mad and I’ll bet most tea drinkers would love to have lemon with their tea. Or at least lemon juice, I mean what, whole milk, skim milk, half-and-half for the coffee drinkers, the least they could do

[she positions the lemon on a napkin on her desk, the plastic knife finds a niche in her grip]

WENDELL: Hey—!

[He closes his hand around the lemon.]

WENDELL: I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to stop you. I just am stopping you. I was saving this.

SCOTT: You were saving that lemon?

WENDELL: Yes, to use later.

MICHELLE: Let me please just have my tea with it before it gets cold, then I’ll run down to the caf and get you another.

[enter CANDICE]

WENDELL: No, that’s OK, I mean— You know what? I’ll run down and get you one. That way we’ll both— This one I’m saving.

MICHELLE: You don’t have to do that, Wendell, I’ll do it--

WENDELL [overlapping]: Yes I do. You want lemon in your tea. It was my lemon that gave you the idea, I am responsible for your desire.

MICHELLE: I don’t need lemon juice, I just thought it would be nice.

WENDELL: I could use a break—

CANDICE: Is something the matter?

SCOTT: Oh, no, nothing’s the matter, Candice.

WENDELL: Not at all. Not at all, Candice. Can I get you anything from the caf?

CANDICE: They’re closed for another half-hour.

WENDELL: Closed?

CANDICE: What were you two talking about just now?

WENDELL: Do you have any anything lemony that Michelle can use in her tea?

MICHELLE: No no, forget it. I’ll go get my own.

CANDICE: I think I maybe have some lemon bon-bons in my office, unless—

SCOTT: Paperclips.

MICHELLE: That’s OK, Candice, I’ll be fine. Wendell, I’m fine.

WENDELL: Me too.

CANDICE: {privately, to WENDELL]: Are you having a Marge Day?

WENDELL: Excuse me please.

[he leaves the room, walks in the hall]

WENDELL: I have an eye in my socket and a lemon in my pocket—

[presses elevator button]

[PING!]

[CEO GREG FULLER’s in the elevator]

FULLER: Mr. Memo!

WENDELL: Hello, sir.

FULLER: Say, are you all right? You look a little low on oil.

WENDELL: Just thinking about some food.

FULLER: Going down, then? Good. So am I.

WENDELL: No sir, actually I have to go up, I'll just wait here, if that's OK.

FULLER: Nonsense. Let us ascend together. I've got time. Step in.

[Wendell enters the elevator.]

FULLER: Floor, sir?

WENDELL: Nine.

[The doors close.]

FULLER: Elevator for one flight, eh? I’d think a little exercise’d be good for you, get some blood up into that face of yours, but then you’re probably saving it for the Stairmaster.

WENDELL: Uh-huh.

FULLER: Helluva memo you wrote on that tax-law.

WENDELL: Thank you, Mr. Fuller.

FULLER: You know by now it’s Greg.

WENDELL: Thank you, Greg.

[PING!]

[Wendell leaps out of the elevator]

FULLER: You keep up the good work, hear me?

WENDELL: Yes, Greg.

FULLER: Captain Hook! Knew it rang a bell.

WENDELL: Yes sir.

FULLER: And get some food into you.

[The elevator doors close]

[Wendell takes the lemon out of his pocket.]

WENDELL: You are ordinary. There is no reason not to let Michelle have you for your tea. I will now ditch you. The cafeteria will open, I’ll buy another, give it to Michelle, pretend it’s you, say your intended purpose has been canceled.

MARGE: But be cool, quiet now, be casual.

WENDELL: Right. No ceremony.

MARGE: “Ceremony.” What are you thinking?

WENDELL: What am I thinking.

[drops lemon in wastebasket]

MARGE: See, even that was ceremonial.

WENDELL: Occasionally a point must be made at unusual expense.

MARGE: What point are you making, Wendell?

[WENDELL sits back at his office desk, works.

CANDICE approaches.]

CANDICE: How’s it going, Wendell?

WENDELL: Oh great, Candice, thanks.

CANDICE: Feeling better?

WENDELL: I feel fine.

CANDICE: I’m very glad to hear it. I think I missed something. Was it a rotten lemon?

WENDELL: Yeah, Candice. It was a rotten lemon.

[She leaves and he returns to work. Tries to.]

MARGE: What could be so wrong with a lemon as to warrant deliberately abandoning it in some out-of-the-way locale?

WENDELL: Right. That is simply overreaction.

MARGE: Frankly, Wendell, your whole clandestine attitude reeks of the superstitious.

WENDELL: A fleeting panicked moment led me to an extreme and unnecessary behavior. [he rises] The thing to do is to just go get you and just plain throw you out— here, in my own wastebasket. In a normal manner.

[leaves office, enters hall]

MARGE: Leave the building. Go to the movies.

WENDELL: I could give it to Michelle after all, like I should have done in the first place. I should have returned to my desk, seen the thing missing, and gone back to work without a second thought, lemons are five for a dollar.

MARGE: In Chinatown even six or eight. But it’s too late for that, you have already been observed as oddly reluctant to part with it.

MICHELLE (to Marge): I don't know, I kind of bought it that he really wanted that lemon, I mean people are funny, maybe he spent a long time in his favorite bodega looking over the lemons, maybe he’s really particular about his lemons, which is admirable, I mean I can dig that, how the hell should I know?

[WENDELL presses elevator button]

[PING!]

[Wendell enters the elevator. Doors close. He stands there.]

WENDELL: Stick to your purpose.

SCOTT: His purpose has been Turtle-Waxed.

His will beads up.

[Wendell presses button, waits]

[PING!]

[Doors open. He steps out into the hall]

MICHELLE: Wendell. How about you give it back to me, but tell me that it’s a different one, you got it downstairs in the caf.

SCOTT: Is it eleven-thirty yet?

CANDICE: What does the clock say?

SCOTT: Only twenty past.

MARGE: Squirming does stretch the minutes.

SCOTT: You better get a second opinion.

MICHELLE: Find someone with a watch.

MARGE: Precisely why did you waffle, Wendell?

CANDICE: Maybe I was wrong before when I said it was eleven. I thought it was eleven.

SCOTT: No one was pressing for exactitude.

MICHELLE: Did she even look at her watch?

CANDICE: I don't think I did. Did I? I don't think I did. I think I had just looked at it. But maybe I did.

MICHELLE: If this clock is right now--

CANDICE: Then I was wrong then.

MICHELLE: Ten-thirty, maybe it was.

SCOTT: Quarter to.

MICHELLE: Assuming this clock is right.

[Wendell reaches into wastebasket looking for lemon, digs...]

MICHELLE: So, allowing for having gone downstairs to buy a second one, you need to wait only twenty or at least say fifteen minutes before you give it back to me.

SCOTT: Sometimes they open early.

CANDICE: Sometimes they close early.

SCOTT: But you can say that's what they did.

MICHELLE: Wait ten minutes.

MARGE: Wait in the hallway or go back to your desk or what?

CANDICE: No, he can't go back to my desk until--

MARGE: Right, sorry.

SCOTT: As long as she doesn’t recognize your supposedly "new" one as the one you wouldn’t originally give her.

MARGE: That's true, she certainly had enough time with it.

MICHELLE: Wendell I apologize, that really was sort of a nasty thing to do, I should have asked.

CANDICE: That's true.

MARGE: No, it was reasonable.

SCOTT: Yes, acceptable.

MICHELLE: Should he bruise it or otherwise alter its appearance?

[Wendell can’t find lemon]

MARGE: Is it likely that a person would encounter a particular lemon, then 15 or 20 or 25 minutes later be able to smell-out an impostor?

MICHELLE: I don't think I'd notice. I think subconsciously I tend to consider all lemons to be like one constantly regenerating lemon.

SCOTT: Or maybe there’s no need to refer to the thing as being either the original or a cafeteria item—

MARGE: Charm her with a note

MICHELLE: Something witty

CANDICE: "Thought you could use this!"

MARGE: Something that pretends it never happened.

MICHELLE: A written wink.

[RECEPTIONIST approaches]

WENDELL: Excuse me! The custodians don’t make rounds until after five, do they? I’m looking--

EVERYONE ELSE: Wendell! You’re on the wrong floor!

[Wendell stands straight]

WENDELL: Nine looks like nineteen in every way.

MARGE: Every way but one?

RECEPTIONIST: The receptionists are different.

[Wendell returns to the elevators, presses button]

[PING!]

[He enters. Doors close.]

[PING!]

[Doors open. He exits elevator, heads toward reception desk.]

WENDELL: Do you happen to know the time?

[Receptionist looks at the wall clock]

RECEPTIONIST: Eleven twenty-three.

WENDELL: You’re sure that's right.

RECEPTIONIST: Far as I know.

WENDELL: You don’t happen to have a watch.

RECEPTIONIST: That’s what the whole building’s running on.

WENDELL: I have an important meeting that I mustn’t be late for. Or early for.

RECEPTIONIST: Eleven-thirty?

WENDELL: Right.

RECEPTIONIST: Well this is perfect, then. [picks up phone] What’s the name you’re meeting?

WENDELL: I’m just using this floor to prepare.

[PHONE RINGS]

RECEPTIONIST: Just a sec.[answers phone] Fuller Communication Company, Fractals and Finance, how may I direct your call?

[WENDELL moves toward wastebasket]

RECEPTIONIST: Yes of course, good then, my pleasure, yes OK, a pleasure communicating with you!

[hangs up]

[WENDELL sees lemon in wastebasket]

WENDELL: So-called edibles... Gibbous! [to receptionist] Thank you.

RECEPTIONIST: Thank you.

[Wendell takes lemon back to desk, sits]

WENDELL: If Michelle really wants to get some lemon for her tea she can do it on her own.

SCENE 16

ARCHITECT: There once was a race of giants, lemons tall as redwoods. We know exactly their size and form, for humanity built shelters for them. Or crucibles; the precise original function of these buildings has been rendered oblique by time. But the magnificent chambers still stand, long since adapted to substitute uses, and they count among the most inspired architecture on earth. Where have those great lemons gone to, leaving their crusts strewn like gargantuan cicada shells across the hosting earth? And from where had they come? Was it a large lemon thrown or fallen from beyond this world that sent up the sunproof dust-shroud that did-in the dinosaurs? From the Haga Sophia to the Taj Mahal to Florence Cathedral to St. Basil’s—some nations were host to great broods of lemons, indeed the wholes of Islamic and Russian architecture seem lemon-based, albeit a strain whose shape has long become extinct, with shoulders, a thorny crown, and a waist. Or are those gobbed containers the burnished stylizations of memory? Even our own country has a generous share of such domes, especially in city and state capitol buildings across the continent, even downtown in this city. Bruno Taut’s Glass House of 1914, that structural clarion call for our era, was a perfect hemi-lemon. Lately the form has been toyed with like everything else. Wright’s Guggenheim looks gourmet-carved, and the Bilbao is nothing if not stepped-on; nothing dome-nostalgic there, it may be the most citrically correct building of our time. Or does this honor fall to the opera house in Sydney, that honest sideways stack of peels?

SCENE 17

[Wendell and lemon are watching TV]

WENDELL: Channel flip with me, babe. Oops—sitting on you. Come here, you know you caused me some trouble today. Look, puck, just in time for the show...Oh no, I’m strictly pre-Reformation on this, thank you. “We are gathered here today to rebury the dead, and deny unnatural knowledge.” Wrong. Your pores are larger than my pores... Look at these people!… How can you be so arrogant? The matter’s gray as brains-- Uh, by the way the stuff inside a person’s head is gray and it’s called a brain, like you have pulp, well similar. Different structure, a twistier formation, we got membranes too...Ah, the aftermath of tragedy as photogenic as ever... Oh lemon, I didn’t know you could swim! No, that’s oops sorry, that’s a submarine of some sort, curious thing...oh no. An unworthy mission. Oh my poor tax dollars… Every time a person buys something, lemon, like a person buys a lemon they don’t only pay for the lemon, they pay for the government to build a machine that looks like a lemon...You can understand why I thought it was you, though, that’s lemon yellow, and in its way it too is deep-delving for knowledge … Do you have pride of color, friend?

CHORUS: Life in the public eye can be tough.

Detractors of yellow point myopic fingers

at bile and the blood of insects

asylum wallpaper

The stain on cowards’ backs and bellies

the nose of Hitler’s favorite warhead

The shoulders of Judas in Medieval fresco

The robes of the Inquisition’s designated heretics

pus

WENDELL: Yellow press, all of it! Much maligned, your hue, at least in the West, but then there are only three primaries, and considering that blue got grief and red anger, fear is not such a bad lot, not unrelated to high intelligence.

CHORUS: The Herald of Caution

WENDELL: The dominion of the sun!

CHORUS: Slow Down

WENDELL: The lion’s magnificence!

CHORUS: Danger

WENDELL: To whom does bare urgency turn for a cloak?

ALL: Bellow yellow!

WENDELL: In what tongue do lifejackets scream for passing planes?

ALL: Hello, yellow!

CHORUS: The skin of the great tanner itself

the face of heat

the flesh of gravity

WENDELL: And yellow can be mellow.

ALL: In fields of corn and wheat

WENDELL: In rites of love throughout the East

ALL: In all the gold of the earth.

WENDELL: Or is this yellow’s blues?

ALL: The favorite color of children.

MARGE: Adults prefer it last.

WENDELL: Edenophobia.

[PHONE RINGS]

WENDELL (to aud.): I looked at the lemon as the sound of the ringing phone faded.

CHORUS: A lemon weighs one fifth or one sixth of a pound.

WENDELL: I listened to the ringing of the phone fade while I looked at the yellow of the lemon.

CHORUS: Diameter: two point five inches. Three inches long.

WENDELL: The phone ringing faded, but I could still hear its echoes churning into depths.

CHORUS: Cut into slices or wedges

WENDELL: I am seeing time.

CHORUS: placed or squeezed into many foods and drinks, the lemon will enhance flavor in a universally prized manner.

WENDELL: I am not aging, I am not dying.

CHORUS: It is often a featured ingredient.

WENDELL: In Greece the lemon is whipped up with eggs in soup.

CHORUS: There are many differences between the sound of a ringing telephone and the shape and color of a lemon.

On university chalkboards they might share a denominator.

WENDELL: We too might share that denominator.

CHORUS: You are speaking to something you hold in your lap.

WENDELL: I am talking.

CHORUS: “As though an extra lemon (figuratively speaking) had been squeezed into the nectar of her disposition.”

You are talking to a lemon. It is in your lap.

WENDELL: It is in my lap.

CHORUS: It is an it.

There is no mention of any "lemon" in the Bible

In Russia lemon slices are popularly sprinkled with sugar and powdered espresso, then nibbled between shots of near-frozen vodka.

The peel without the pith is called the zest.

The zest is cherished by all humanity for its store of lemon oil and its ornamental value.

Spiraled down the side of a glass, the zest is an attractive enhancement to the serving of almost any beverage.

A lemon is a lemon.

"Lemons never do forget." Led Zeppelin.

Moroccan lemon preserves are spiced with garlic,

Paprika, and salt.

“Lemons never do forget.”

Limoncello in Capri is a thick, head-spinning syrup.

WENDELL: You know what maybe I'll read a little. What has Marge left behind.

MARGE: Check out Walden, Wendell. You want to relax?

[Wendell opens the book and reads:]

MARGE: "Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mold myself?"

WENDELL: Maybe something a bit more objective.

CHORUS:

Twenty-two calories, none from fat.

One gram of protein

twelve grams of carbohydrates

a proportionally large potassium content

also ample calcium

WENDELL: Your shapWe somewhat changed? Not quite as spherical as it was?

CHORUS:

Squares, hot toddy, hollandaise

Marinade, curd, and mayonnaise

Scones, meringue, meat braise, candy

Marmalade, humus, grog, and shandy.

Iron

Daiquiri

Sodium

Tom Collins

Thiamin

whiskey sour

riboflavin, niacin

gin ricky, coq rouge, martini.

MARGE: “The Germans, if this Government is returned, are going to pay every penny; they are going to be squeezed as a lemon is squeezed—until the pips squeak. My only doubt is not whether we can squeeze hard enough, but whether there is enough juice.”

WENDELL: You wobble when you roll,

the toggle of your tickle

such a buoyant shade of fickle

it's a wonder you are whole!

CHORUS:

“Good lemon aids the tea.”

Eighty-four milligrams of Vitamin C.

Granita?

Gremolata?

Set them by the dozen in silver porringers, strategically posed and pricked to liberate the bracing aroma

grab one only when you need to soothe your cough or whiten your shirt or polish your window or shine your wood

or tauten your skin

or gentle your tap-water

or dry your beer

WENDELL: or brighten my copper or sympathize my ink or neutralize my alkali poisoning

MARGE: “Squeeze my lemon till the juice run down my leg.”

WENDELL: I HAVE A TELEPHONE!!!!, I have a telephone, I have a telephone, you just press these little buttons—

[PHONE RINGS. BILL ANSWERS, groggy]

BILL: Hello?

WENDELL: Bill did you just call me? The phone just rang, was it you? Can you do me a favor?

[to lemon]

Do NOT let me simplify you.
[to Bill]

A quick favor?

BILL: Huh? Right now?

WENDELL: Please.

BILL: What is it?

WENDELL: For you it will be nothing.

BILL: What time is it?

WENDELL: I'll be right over.

[hangs up]

WENDELL: This is you, Wendell, this is your self, it is yours, now grab ahold please--If you press the right buttons, you can turn off the VCR and television-- Cool.

[He leaves the apartment, leaves lemon behind.]

WENDELL: Lemon? Lemon? [checks pockets--] Excellent! The forgettory is working!

[goes back to retrieve lemon]

WENDELL: A taxi is yellow but looks nothing like a lemon inside.