Rachel and Feldman sitting next to each other at a bare plywood table facing the audience. Each is half-present, ghostly.
RACHEL: If one more person mentions Grandma Moses, I’m gonna stab em in the eye! I get it. There’s always hope, and it’s not how you start it’s how you finish. (Pause.) I’ve spent years, decades, doing nothing. But I really think I’ve turned a corner. My time is coming. And thank God I’m not 80 or whatever, like that old runny…
FELDMAN: Can I ask—how old are you? Ballpark.
RACHEL: Let’s not go into it. I mean, how many individual days do you have to waste to add up to decades? It seems like just yesterday I was a girl being punched in the face by her father. A kid whose favorite toy was the cardboard box she hid inside.
FELDMAN: Wait. You talking about a literal…?
RACHEL: Yeah. A regular cardboard box. I’d get bigger and bigger ones to fit me as I grew. I used my allowance, and then money from my jobs. (Pause.) Funny, it seems like just yesterday I was an 8-year-old with abnormally small arteries, having a stroke. Yup, I remember stroking out, and dying, and going to the gray world where…someone held me by the hand, and I was happy.
FELDMAN: Jeez. An 8-year-old having a stroke? And an out-of-body experience?
RACHEL: Oh, I was a prodigy.
FELDMAN: So that was you as a kid, and here you are now. What happened in between?
RACHEL: I don’t know. It seems like just yesterday I was cutting myself and walking toward my dad, blood pouring down, saying, ‘Look what you made me do.’ But there must’ve been other events. I vaguely remember a trip across the river. And I think I had to move to a new apartment…
FELDMAN: The lost decades. It’s a mystery. Well, we agreed to meet. Are you ready?
RACHEL: Wait, what about you? What’s your story?
FELDMAN: I’ll tell you sometime. (He takes out two bowls and two forks.) Here we go—quinoa with vegetables. Enjoy.
RACHEL: Healthy food for a healthy mind.
FELDMAN: Exactly.
RACHEL: I’m trying to lift a fucking finger, you know? Trying to help myself.
FELDMAN: I hear you.
RACHEL: To finally get something out of my system. The bleeding didn’t do it. Or showing the blood to any of the boyfriends who laughed at me, and they all did. And they all had a point, because look how I was made—my own arteries were wrapping me tighter and tighter. A medieval torture device under my own skin! A person like that is not viable and they were just stating the obvious. I mean, what does it take? Do I need God himself to come down and say, ‘What was I thinking? Better to drown her like a kitten’. (Pause.) But somehow I did live, so I figure now at my age let me look around. And health is key. Health is the foundation. How about you?
FELDMAN: Pretty similar.
Two hulking guys burst in with two plates of pancakes.
MAN 1: (to Rachel) Eat this.
RACHEL: Is it gluten-free?
MAN 1: No, it’s loaded with gluten.
RACHEL: Then I’ll have to pass. On top of everything else, I’m gluten-intolerant.
MAN 1: Eat it.
RACHEL: Hell if I will.
MAN 1: Oh, you’re gonna eat this.
RACHEL: If I do, I’ll swell up. You want that? You don’t even know me.
MAN 1: I wouldn’t mind seeing you swell up. What part swells? Your stomach?
RACHEL: My tissues. Throughout my body. And that causes me pain. Which makes me nervous and depressed. Why would you want that?
MAN 1: Will it kill you?
RACHEL: No.
MAN 1: Well, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?
RACHEL: I’m sick of that mentality.
FELDMAN: Maybe you should eat.
RACHEL: What?!
MAN 1: Listen to the nice little wimp. Look, they’re fluffy.
RACHEL: So I have this choice, to feel better or worse.
She knocks the plate out of Man 1’s hands.
MAN 1: Oh, wow.
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He raises his fist to hit her. She cringes and retreats, stops, gathers herself, then lunges at Man 1 and fights him.
RACHEL: (to Feldman) Help me!
FELDMAN: Anyone who knows me, knows I’m the analytical type.
She keeps fighting. Man 1 breaks away and comes back with a cardboard box.
MAN 1: Here girl, here girl.
Most of Rachel’s body lunges toward him, but slowly, against her will, she goes over to the cardboard box and gets inside, shuts the lid.
MAN 2: (to Feldman) Now for you, boyo. (To Man 1.) Get me the drill. Just kidding. You’re so inoffensive. With that shit-eating grin. You ever get mad?
FELDMAN: Oh, I can get mad.
MAN 2: Yeah?
FELDMAN: You better believe it. Most people fight the logic of their opponent’s argument, but a lot of times I quibble with the premise itself.
MAN 2: Uh-huh.
FELDMAN: I’m a truth-teller. An iconoclast. I’m not afraid to speak truth to power. And when someone’s premise is blatantly shaky—that pisses me off! I also find it irksome when people are obsequious.
MAN 2: Ever been in love?
FELDMAN: Plato believed that we go from love of the—of the— individual, to abstract love of mankind. I skip right to the second part.
Man 2 slaps Feldman.
MAN 2: Now, you’re gonna eat these pancakes.
FELDMAN: Okay. I can’t argue with a superior force. But I want you to know. I have this thing. Gluten comes in and my system attacks it like a virus. I’m going to have headaches, serious fatigue, digestive problems. I’ll have to fight every minute just to get through the day, then I’ll drag myself home and crawl into bed.
MAN 2: That’s most people, pal. Now open up.
Man 2 gets some pancakes onto the fork.
FELDMAN: So I have this choice—to feel better or worse.
MAN 2: That’s about the size of it.
FELDMAN: All right. But at least let me do it to myself. Give me my dignity.
Man 2 hands over the fork with pancake speared on it. Feldman stabs him in the side with it.
FELDMAN: I only disabled you!
Man 2 removes the fork from his side and lunges at Feldman. Feldman ducks him, runs, does a jumping pivot off the wall, lowers his head and plows into him in a tackle. They go down. Man 1 comes over and tries to pull Feldman off. Rachel bursts out of the box and tries to pull Man 1 off. All are fighting. Feldman immobilizes Man 1’s head and Rachel punches him out. She immobilizes Man 2’s head and Feldman punches him out.
FELDMAN: (primal scream at Man 2) Next time I’ll shit down your throat!! (Still wild-eyed, to Rachel.) Nice!
RACHEL: You, nice!
FELDMAN: Thanks for the backup! You came out of nowhere! How’d you get out of the box?
RACHEL: Oh. Well, I was lying there having an out-of-body experience. I went off to the gray world, and that Someone was holding me by the hand. I felt like I belonged there. But then something changed, and I saw a world of—don’t laugh—parrots, beagles, swans, the ocean. I saw red, blue, and a pink-orange. Debussy was playing. So I came looking for it. Then I saw you, in your fight.
She looks at the two men on the ground, then takes Man 1’s unconscious hand and beats it against his face.
RACHEL: When I see someone hurting himself, I want to take it on myself. But not with him. Can quinoa be eaten at room temperature?
FELDMAN: Yes. It’s versatile.
RACHEL: Good. Let’s eat.
They go back to the table and start eating.
RACHEL: Yeah, it definitely works like this.
FELDMAN: It’s good with the zucchini.
They eat silently.
RACHEL: I’ve never seen the face. But I would know the person, in real life, when we hold hands. That’s what I always thought. But now I’m thinking: what a search. To look my whole life for one person. Maybe it could be many. It could be my husband, but also friends, teachers. It could even be…my own child.
Feldman smiles at her and they keep eating silently.
FELDMAN: (with gusto) Oh, hell yeah! Tastes good and it’s good for ya!
RACHEL: I love it.