Indigo

 

[Lightning and thunder suddenly plunge the audience into the waiting room of a seedy, dimly-lit train station. It is raining, and water runs down the Victorian walls. The clock points after midnight, and the ticket office is closed. Chris is sleeping on a low waiting-area bench against the wall.]

[The next flash of lightning can be seen through the windows at back. Ravens are in the trees. Steam vents quietly from under the male and female rest-room doors, through whose cracks a faint light can be seen. Thunder. Another flash of lightning.]

[The blue man enters from the rain, with a flashlight. In the ultraviolet, we do not notice the tint of his skin. He is carrying the burlap bag in which he arrived over his shoulder. He examines the room, shines his flashlight on the sign on the ticket booth, which reads ``Will Call,'' pauses, keeps looking, and discovers Chris. He kneels beside her, almost caresses her face, but stops, his fingers not touching to disturb her rest. He whispers tenderly.]

MAN:

Baby, I'm back. Sorry about not calling ahead, but the gammas shooting out of this place are doing the year-2k to my comm gear. Looks like power's gone, too...you look great. Just like I remembered, those long days in Vegas, working nights, fancying myself Captain Ahab harpooning the gargantuan pasties. You floated like a velvet painting on the cheap wood paneling, dancing in my sight, shimmying to beat all the hulas in Tinderland, but that's all right, 'cause dreams are meant to move.

Yeah, I'm back. Couple dollars poorer, couple dollars richer; wading in deep water but nearing the shore. Migrating on the dark winds of primal urge. I'll probably be gone before your eyes greet the dawn. Drifter, dirt-road king, that's me. My friend, he wouldn't even stay for his funeral before he hop-bang-skipped out of town; they buried an empty coffin in the rain. Rain like tonight, babe.

It was rain like this last time, too, remember that? I think so, at least; it mighta' been tears clouding my eyes instead of Oregon showers. Me cryin', you cryin'--I still don't really know why you asked me to go, but I always listened to the lady. You were probably right, too, I dunno. I'm here now, for a while. Took me quite a bit to find y'all camped out here beyond world's end--heck, the info-tracker just shows black beyond the Metropolis, these days--but those nights with you were the only happiness I've really known: green rubber garden-hose summertimes, plastic bubble machines in the sunlight. Fragile hollow spheres of cleanliness and air. Funny, I've never considered myself clean. Maybe I was the air.

[Another lightning bolt startles him, for an instant, and is gone.]

Seeing you sleeping there brings all kind of memories. You still love me, too--and it's not just by your postcards I can tell. Just looking at you lyin' peaceful--everything around you's changed but you and me, we're still the same. Just hearing you breathe, I can tell.

[sings softly]

My cries of love
fly from the asphalt
Your lovin' me's
your own sad fault.

The wind's pickin' up. My roof will be torn to dust if I don't go nail it down. It's hard to leave now that I've seen you, but I can't stop yet; I've got one more job to do. Maybe it'll be the death of me, maybe not. I needed to see you once more before it's done; now that I know where you are, not rampaging tumbleweeds could keep me away.

[Checks his watch.] I'm going now. Train's due real soon. I'll be back, perhaps.

[He goes towards the door, then looks back.]

I hope so.

[A train whistle sounds in the distance, softly, and the mysterious blue figure is out the door and gone. A soft-building rush of air as the express glides past without stopping. The blue man vanishes with his train.]

[Lightning and thunder follow the train like a sonic boom, shaking the station with the wrath of Zeus. Bats shuffle overhead as dust rains down and the ravens outside stir. The roof creaks as a giant weight shifts. Chris awakes and fumbles for a lantern, but the lightning's return stroke aborts her attempt. This bolt shoots up out of the ticket-booth towards the sky, starkly illuminating the sign which now reads: ``Call Will.'' The light on the altered sign lingers past the deafening crash, the letters burning sooty self-replicas into Chris' retinas.]

[The lantern lights itself.]