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The Corsican Brothers
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Matthew Paris

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Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:03 pm - The Corsican Brothers

Matthew Paris
645 E. 14th St 9E
New York, New York 10009
212-995-0299
Holycity@juno.com

 

 
The Corsican Brothers
 

 
A Play By Matthew Paris

Time: November 1963, March 1968
 
Characters: Lucien de Franchi
Louis de Franchi
Lyndon Johnson
Emily

Setting: The Oval Room, an executive office.

Introduction
 
The Corsican Brothers has had such popularity as a novella, stage and movie spectacle over more than a century and a half is intriguing to speculate upon. The tale itself was slight if deft and probably written very quickly. Dumas was probably thinking of not much more than writing a Prosper Merimee tale with a Corsican twist. Yet Dumas’ novella had a sensational success in its original form. It was translated into American in 1944 a few years after it had amused a huge audience in its original French.
It’s not hard to guess why this chivalric tale of the savage and the civilized had such a resonance for its audience. The idea of twins connected over hundred of miles and able to feel the pain of the other one is a metaphor for connnectedness to absent kin any audience can respond to. So is the sense of fatality, the family traditions, the appearance of the ghosts of ancestors announcing the death of a male issue and so on.
Dumas had the gift of larding his romantic plots with sardonic and urbane wit. The very suave character of the telling of the tale. Dumas himself apparently, keeps the primal elements of the story in a kind of inviable babble where they can work on their audience invisibly. The Dion Bochicault version of Dumas story must have been fun for an audience to watch for one great actor to play two roles, The actor himself, in 1852 the legendary Charles Kean, could show off his range, the notion of two seemingly whole beings being half of a composite is at last as old as Plato’s attribution of a similar myth to Aristiophanes, the idea of healing through spiritual blending who a twin or ghost is a kind of covert myth of self discovery.
There are many variations of the idea. It can be found most notably in novels like A Tale Of Two Cities, The Prisoner Of Zenda, Poe’s William Wilson and Dostoyevsky’s The Double. In poetry it is taken up by Heine in Der Doppelganger. One stage it is at the center of Shakespeare’s The Comedy Of Errors, Twelfth Night, Sheridan’s The Rivals and even at another level Charley’s Aunt. Of course, Shakespeare outdoes them with putting two sets of twins on stage, really quite resonant with the acrobatic tightrope quality of such an element in a play. The audience has to wonder how the twins can be pushed by the playwright not to bump into each other though they are exiting and entering on a single stage. They know simultaneously that since they are played by a single actor they can’t bump onto each other. It’s a kind of illusionist trick that hopefully the audience finds attractive because they are persuaded at the same time that the apparent magic is not magic at all.
The various versions of Dumas’ novella have been free with their inventions around the author’s central argument. I was inspired by the Douglas Fairbanks’ Junior’s “free adaption” of 1941 that turned the tale into a diatribe against Hitler as well as am memorial to his great dead father. It also divided the brothers into aristocrat and romantic outlaw, somewhat like Schiller’s The Robbers.
I like some of Fairbanks’ version and have kept

shards of it in my equally free adaption. Making the brothers Siamese twins, keeping each of the form knowledge of each other, making one an outlaw like Dumas’ Orlandini all heightens social contrasts that Dumas had no interest in. They seemed central to Fairbanks Junior; in other forms they are equally vital to me.
A 21st century translation of The Corsican Brothers to an American setting would not divide the brothers to be on two sides of European society in opposition to evil, moral gentlemen and brigand. It might make one an oligarchal right wing patriot and capitalist hawk, the other brother a Marxist left wing new age nerd. Fairbanks Junior pushed the revolutionary theme that toff and criminal are really on the same side in Europe against evil autocrats who are murderous genocidal tyrants. That is a wonderful idea for the Old World; like certain wines it may not travel all that well. The United States hasn’t had rich and urbane fops and toffs since around 1920.
Some American outlaws however are very interesting; yet a modern American tale with political overtones set after 1960 would not look to Jesse James or Al Capone for its rebels but the American left, new and old. Our outlaws are often not any more immoral than the corrupt society and police that hunt them; yet they are pragmatists and libertarians in a New World way not imagined by anybody in Corsica.
Jesse James and Capone didn’t stand for anything but their own freedom of enterprise; they didn’t try to define supposed crimes as political acts as did European protagonists of plays like Schiller’s The Robbers or immense critiques like Sartre’s St. Genet. Two Corsican brothers engaged in redefining social reality itself in America is a much more scary and funny theme than having one a Chicago playboy like Hugh Hefner, the other a bank robber like John Dillinger.
Dumas’ long lived tale is about twins operated upon at birth to be separate but who feel each other’s souls as one. One brother becomes a Parisian gentlemen, the other a Corsican. They love the same woman, a Countess; then in a complicated main action against a common foe only one of the brothers survives. In an American version and stuck to the Dumas and movie versions, one would have a movie star instead of a Countess. The idea of having a common lover is a nice ploy but I am talking the theme in a different direction.
I hope that, if superficially this play is as much a parody as Bochicault’s or the vulgar version of Cheech and Chong, the audience will see that esoterically I have tried in a very serious way to honor Dumas’ original idea. I am restoring Dumas’ names to his two central and even his minor characters. I am also giving back the Corsican brothers their gentility though I am making it American style.
The Corsican Brothers of Alexandre Dumas is an exotic tale about class in a world of intuitions passing though Europeans only half civilized. Douglas Fairbanks Juniors version is aa drama of doubles with the personal resonance of one whose father had the same name, a similar line of work and resembled him uncannily, yet who was tragically separate from him. In his film the brothers becomes a wholeness to fight Hitlerian injustice.

An American adaption of this tale should have the same use of myth to describe social truths. USA is a populist republic envenomed by a poor man’s view of what life is about: infinite wealth as a hedge against poverty, predatory corporations because whose chiefs are the revenging sons of long dead prey, infinite consolations from atheist hierophants one pays for and can dismiss, eviscerated Art like the making of mud pies, the weak artificially privileged by the state in an upside down walking on the ceiling nightmare whose dreamy laws mirror the obligations doting parents have to small children for about three years. It looks to realms of hungry puerility for its morals, to automobile mechanics and smiths for its metaphysics, to furniture salesmen and itinerant hustlers of household idols for its plastic aesthetics, to doctors and nutritionists for its rites of passage.
I have set this play in the time when many of these wonderful ideas had became manifest. I should note in passing that it is easier to make such a play has people are beginning to climb out of the trash heap of this paradise than it was to live through it, know better, and say so. Speaking one’s mind in the middle of any revolution is probably not a good idea; it doubly lacks circumspection when the coups are invisible. I had been telling people in the very year this play opens, 1963, that I thought these realms of dream were not only destructive but a war against nature that would fail like all magic architecture.
In other countries in other times I would have been killed for my opinions. Luckily most of the time in my life I have been taken as a facetious clown while the great capitals of vapor of that day were erected by the pious acolytes of such cults out of faith, air and will. Cassandra thought she was haunted; nobody wants to hear the truth much at any time. When one thinks one can build a parody of Creation, erect darkness made visible in a great Pandemonium as Milton put it, one doesn’t pay much attention to wags like myself. Even half a century later, I am still making this play a low comedy, even a farce, a more acceptable way of offering a dour sermon.

Act One
 

(The stage is an office. There is also a small table, a phone on it and a simple chair set downstage to the far left or right with a harsh spotlight on it, close to but apart from the main set. It is The Oval Room in Washington.
The left half of the stage is an office of the Agaccio Insane Asylum run by Louis de Franchi. It has various signs of the age on the wall including God must love me; God doesn’t make trash. It might have pictures of Freud, Marx along with various token non-Whites and women. There are no Asiatic icons yet; this is not a Zen spa but Washington of the early 60s. The right side of this same office an executive office of Ajaccio Inc., a company that might remind one of Enrom, Microsoft or the United Fruit Company.
This side of the set represents in its heraldry and lineaments the vision of Agaccio Inc. a giant corporation run by Lucien de Franchi. The wall has perhaps many guns, an elk’s head on the wall, is decorated with portraits of Jesus, Teddy Roosevelt, Darwin and Davey Crockett, and a large picture of the atomic bomb hitting Hiroshima. It has no non-Whites or women. Louis tends to occupy the right side of the office, Lucien the left.
If the director prefers an empty or near empty stage and use of lights to create spaces I hope I have put enough language into this play to make that sort of production viable too.
The phone rings. Lyndon Johnson, dressed in boots and a cowboy hat ambles into the spotlight of the Oval Room and answers it. He is tall, well built, and has a kind of stolidity that isn’t matched all that much by sobriety. He is a drinker who gets paralyzed rather than crazy. The booze gives a stiffness to his movements. He speaks in a pronounced Texas accent.)
 
Lyndon- (singing)
 
Come on, little dogies, we’re leaving Cheyenne
You’re fare for the butchers, soup in a can
Tenderloin, sirloin, the tenderest cuts
You’re red meat, liver, eyeballs and guts
Bye bye cattle, bye bye pal
We’re making you steak in the old corral.
 
We were never the servants we might seem
We let a cow live; she gives us cream
Sausages, kidneys, lungs and bologna
Then Ill make some glue from my favorite pony
Bye bye cattle, bye bye pal
We’re making you steak in the old corral.
 

(The phone rings. Lyndon answers it.) Yeah, baby. Rita, the big bird is here. The big kaboom is on. We’re taking out the son of a bitch...Yeah, Dallas...no better place. We might plug Jackie too a few times; It’ll get her off those fucking pills...Hey, honey, bumping off a president is like kicking rat shit out of your shoes; I need to know what kind of a country I’m gonna be running once I kick the bastard into some comfortable suburb of hell... I’m a politician, babycake, I talk a lot but I have got any more ideas than a lush sitting in the gutter.
Don’t worry, I’ve got two fellas from the right and the left, big names too, Louis de Franchi from Agaccio Incorporated, heavy people that run steel, coal, high class munitions like the atomic bomb, passion and bread fruit, any kind of machine or vegetable you could think of. They are very high flying capitalists who are the business power behind our whole empire, and another guy, calls himself Lucien de Franchi, don’t get those names mixed up, a very soulful and compassionate guy who runs the largest insane asylum in America...No, not at the same time; they’d probably kill each other...Hey, honey, nobody knows either of them; they work like God and Lucifer; nobody but God knows which is which. They own newspapers, television stations, maybe even me and you; they live like hornet’s wings, Rita, light just passes through them... Being powerful is dangerous; they are happy to be invisible. I’ve never seen them myself...Yeah, weird that they have the same name, more or less; crazy as life and death, baby. You know, they’re both from Corsica too....Are they related? How the hell should I know? If they are, they sure as hell don’t know it. Talk to you later in the back seat of the car, baby; here comes Louis.
 
Louis- (Entering) Lyndon. You are about to have an interesting flight.
 
Lyndon- You sure you’re Louis de Franchi? You don’t sound Corsican; you haven’t got an accent.
 
Louis- We Corsicans are very musical, Lyndon. I speak five languages with all the dialects as if I were born in the gutters of very one of them. I think you’ve got an accent.
 
Lyndon- You don’t have a brother, do you? You look like somebody I might know.
 
Louis- I do have one, a twin. We were separated at birth; I never met him. You know how it is in Corsica, one long parade of vendettas and killings; my clan in Agaccio all left for Chicago to escape the constant flack a few days after I was born. When they landed on Lake Michigan in a steamer my father was knocked off by Al Capone because Capone thought he was Dutch Schultz. He sort of looked a little like him with the lights out.
 
Lyndon- Welcome to the land of the free, Louis.
 
Louis- My brother was kidnapped by the Purple Gang a few days later; they thought he was the nephew of John Dillinger. We were Siamese twins too; my mother had us operated on in Dearborn to separate us. Two bodies, one soul the doctor said to her.
 
Lyndon- Better than one soul and two bodies. I think.
 

Louis- My mother Luisa took out Capone in prison later with poison. The papers called it syphilis. She took care of most of the Purple Gang too with a machine gun.
 
Lyndon- Very patriotic.
 
Louis- I grew up in the Chicago streets thinking a lot of unhappy thoughts about the Old and the New World, Lyndon. We didn’t want to go back to Corsica; my mother had told me about the vendettas there. I saw it was no different here except people kill strangers for no reason at all.

Lyndon- We all got it tough, Louis. I was a poor boy eating collard greens and chitterlings on a pig farm; I was damned well lucky I was born here. You notice the flow of human garbage only goes one way?
 
Louis- I’ve often wondered what happened to my twin brother. I imagines he’s picking luncheon meat in a Chicago factory somewhere.
 
Lyndon- We don’t have much time to mourn, boy. This is 1963, not 1930; Big Al is dead and so are a lot of other people. Right now I’m trying to put together a package that will make my old mentor FDR seem like a piker. I am going to cut the biggest deal in American history; you and your firm are going to be the center of it. You’re lucky too, Louis.
 
Louis- Yeah, I was just a punk who was in the right room at the right time; I got into slaughterhouses, meat packing, killing horses, buying up spoiled fish, made a pile of cash at rancid pet food. Every dog and cat was my foe; every old stallion and dead tuna fish was my real enemy.
 
Lyndon- You have come a long way from selling lousy cat food, Louis. You are Doctor Death out there.
 
Louis- I know how to talk to people, Lyndon. I took the millions I made in feeding America’s choice pets, put it into speculation big time. I made my own stock charts; I could see who was pushing what most of the time. Then I bought up income tax expert firms, monitions companies, mass market undertaking establishments operating in big volume. You can always count on taxes everywhere, wars somewhere; death’s all over the universe. I undersold coffin makers everyplace from Seattle to Tasmania.
 
Lyndon- You made an enemy of a lot of trees too, Louis till you went into plastic.
 
Louis- Pink plastic coffins are my specialty. Of course I’ve always had a charitable and compassionate side too, Lyndon. I always put a bit of the swag into hospitals and medical laboratories. I own more cures for popular diseases than anybody.

Lyndon- I’ve had you checked out, believe me. I know things your lovers and lawyers couldn’t imagine about you.
 
Louis- I took over the plastic uniform trade too, Lyndon. Not just soldiers, generals and admirals: doormen, post office employees. These days nobody dresses up even to put on a plastic diaper without my say-so.
 
Lyndon- I never know who has a corner on what anymore. So you’re Mr. Plastic. I wonder who’s Mr. Silicon.
 
Louis- I’m Mr. Silicon. It’s just another part of me. By the way, Lyndon, have you eve wonder as you walk through the world what weird and foul stuff going on behind you?
 
Lyndon- What are you talking about? You think there’s a conspiracy against me?
 
Louis- I didn’t say that. I’m sure there are a million of them. I am offering you a chance to know what is happening right in back of you. (He removes a small plastic device the size of a television remote control instrument from his pocket.) This little gizmo will polish your fingernails into mirrors. You’ll be able to hold up your hands and see whatever or whomever is moving directly behind your back.
 
Lyndon- You want me to lift my hands every time I want to take a look? Louis, it’s an absurd gesture. People in front of me will see the palms of my hands and think I’m objecting to something.
 
Louis- At first. They’ll get used to it like a tick. Look, this little piece of plastic turns your fingernail into electronic devices for seeing the entire range of everything that’s around you. It could prevent your assassination.
 
Lyndon- I don’t need it. I have enough mirrors around here.
 
Louis- Do you have them outdoors? Your fingers are curved; they’ll magnify everything. Can you get that in a mirror? Besides, it’s your secret; people won’t know you know more than you know.
 
Lyndon- You’re a tough salesman, Louis. I’m sorry; I’m just not buying.
 
Louis- You think I want money for this? I am giving it to you for free.
 
Lyndon- It probably has a battery; you’ll charge me for that, I’ll bet.
 
Louis- It has one; it’s in there right now. You’ll have to pay for the next battery of course. I won the company. It’s cheap enough. I make my money on volume, of course.

 
Lyndon- What if I keep it, then throw it away when the battery wears out, Louis? Then you make nothing. In fact you lose on giving me the item.
 
Louis- That is the wager we are making, isn’t it, Lyndon? I am betting you will alter your sprite when you use my plastic pecker for a week. You will want something you never knew you hungered for.
 
Lyndon- Plastic pecker? Can you use this for sex?
 
Louis- Maybe. That’s not why I call it a pecker. I have deeper reason, Lyndon. This little device pecks out the reality you never know behind you.
 
Lyndon- Well, I’ll take it. At that price I can’t go wrong, can I? Thanks Louis. I guess I will polish my fingernails and see if I can make out whatever it is behind me. It might expand my senses in some way, as these kids on dope say.
 
Louis- You are going to be a much more fulfilled man, Lyndon.
This is one hell of a pecker.
 
Lyndon- Forget about peckers; let me get to the point, Louis. People are unhappy here and there with Jack and Jackie. He is a pain in the touchas of too many very irate people. He is about to disappear. It’s going to be a tough few months afterwards. What do you and your people want that will stabilize this country?
 
Louis- They want to keep that Asian market open. They don’t like the Reds much; they can't do business with them. I would say they want a show of force, maybe getting serious in Vietnam, maybe atom bombing China. They would like to see a world in which American business can thrive; they want people in power on their pad who understand the meaning of freedom.
 
Lyndon- They want to make money from an Asian war. All right, Louis, they’ll get their war.
 
Louis- Lyndon, this time it’s not about money. You and I were poor boys once; we think these people want a few more dollars. How much can anybody eat, how many airplanes do they need, how many rooms can they be in at the same time, Lyndon? No, these guys want to be invisible, do what they want while they bend light; money means nothing. When you hear a fellow talk about a profit in my circle they are somebody’s perfumed slave.
 
Lyndon- I’ve got it: the Asian war, muscling the Reds, lots of easy business in the outlands, control of the flow of information so they stay purely metaphysical.
 
Louis- There are a bunch of my buddies here and there who will want to talk to you about civil rights.

 
Lyndon- Keep the colored folks quiet; I understand.
 
Louis- We want civil rights now. They can’t have forty million people in this country who don’t have the right to be both affluent and helpless. You want a stable country; you’ve got to corrupt everybody.
 
Lyndon- I’m for civil rights now. Thanks, Louis.
 
Louis- You love civil rights. You deliver after Jack and Jackie retire in a cloud of blood, Lyndon, you get our support. That means you are more or less running the world except for a few rats and Eskimos.
 
Lyndon- I suppose I’m still against Welfare?
 
Louis- We love Welfare now. It destroys people faster than cancer.
 
Lyndon- Look, I’ve got to be against Arts programs. It’s all wimpy stuff, like spraying cologne on your pecker.
 
Louis- Now we’re for the Arts, Lyndon. People who like endless entertainment don’t go out into the streets and cause trouble.
 
Lyndon- well, I can’t stand sex, drugs and rock and roll; thank God you and your people feel the same way.
 
Louis- Now we love it. Only for other people, Lyndon, of course. Anything that fatigues the masses, puts them to sleep, or drives them into a meaningless frenzy is something we get very enthusiastic about.
 
Lyndon- You know, I admire sons of bitches like you, Louis. You’re a tiger, a pure predator. I always wanted to be like you but I’m just a fucken politician. It’s the best I could do I guess.
 
Louis- You’re about to murder the president of the United States. That’s a sign you might be a big cat.
 
Lyndon- You think I’m the head of this hit, Louis? I wish I were but we politicians don’t think of knocking off anybody. We send them to Ethiopia as ambassadors, we promote them, we pack them off the U.N. to make a few speeches, we give them a few sweetheart deals in the stock market. We don’t put bullets in people’s heads. You do.
 

Louis- I have sent quite a few souls south; I have muscled a few spirits to their torment I must admit, Lyndon. I don’t do it often never openly. I am a nocturnal animal. We business people need the look of peace and order if we would take the substance to if we could ever find it. Who’s the big boy who started the conspiracy if it isn’t you?
 
Lyndon- Take a guess. You will never know from me, Louis. You talk too much in this game, you disappear. It’s enough to know there are people like that out there who will make you vanish, don’t ask who. Once you’re dead it doesn’t matter.
 
Louis- Well, it’s not a politician. It’s not the Mafia because they can elect somebody else in a year though they’re understandably unhappy with jack. It’s probably not an American obtuse they can do it too. Any army guy, any Republican, any Presbyterian, any wife, anybody at all can work to retire him legally. No, it’s a foreigner, a corporate head used to getting his way about everything, somebody with a medieval background of liege loyalty and revenge for betrayal of trust of his stewards who is no stranger to assassination of political heads, a guy who probably ha a personal grudge against the Kennedy family who wants to make their humiliation public. Jack to him has to be a traitor not merely an enemy. We are talking about somebody big enough to kill off an American president and put thousands of people to work doing it. That is one big budget and bit of secrecy, London. He can work to get Jack back to Hyannisport and the ladies too; that’s not good enough for him. He’s mad, very, very angry. So whom did Jack or his father betray? Do we know?
 
Lyndon- You know.
 
Louis- Joe Kennedy was a Nazi agent but he finked out on them; I would guess Baron Krupp.
 
Lyndon- You aren’t guessing.
 
Louis- I am. I can’t be everywhere; my own enemies don’t want me to have information. It’s made he a hellova good guesser. I’d suspect the actually mechanics were put together by Martin Bormann and the Forth Reich in South America, the actual hitman probably recruited from Corsica and Marseilles to give Bormann deniability; that’s where I’d go myself if I were looking to kill off anyone. The gunmen are rife there. The paine to take the guys with the guns away I imagine is probably sitting waiting for them at an American air force base in Monterrey, Mexico. The army stands to win big if we go into Vietnam and they wouldn’t shoot at Jack directly, they’d provide that indirect cover. Do I guess at all right?
 
Lyndon- You know too much unless you’re behind Aflried Krupp.
 
Louis- Lyndon, I’ve been around a long time in the corporate world. There’s always more to know. I am ignorant, I live on an island of pale light. I know nothing.
 

Lyndon- You must be afraid sometimes, aren’t you? Goddamn it, it’s a tough world out there. Maybe that’s why I like politics. We’re a bunch of negotiators, not hit men. We talk things over, Louis. I’m not saying we’re better. Half of power is somebody’ helplessness. Maybe tigers don’t get sacred; I don’t know. I’m only a politician, Louis. I like to talk things over.
 
Louis- I can’t afford to be terrified of anything too long, Lyndon. That instant of panic might be the moment I need to make the move that’ll save me; it’s a dark jungle out there. Of course I do have uncanny moments, of course, a dream sometimes, a waking vision also you might say, of suddenly being in an insane asylum, as the director, of course.
I’m running an attempt to take over the world but with a different program; I want to define everybody as lunatics and make the planet legally into a hospital. Sounds strange doesn't it?
 
Lyndon- Are you sure it’s a dream? It’s not anymore eerie that the real world, Louis.
 
Louis- That’s true. I also have other symptoms. I feel drunk occasionally when I’m not drinking. I have moments of odd sexual passion when I’m not making love. Twice I felt as though I was under anesthesia when I wasn’t having an operation. How do you explain that?
 
Lyndon- I don’t know.
 
Louis- I don’t know either. There are so many things in life that are not known, including who if anyone is behind Baron Krupp that we should be grateful we know anything at all. By the way there’s one other explanation but I didn’t think it works as well as the Bavarian theory.
 
Lyndon- You’re Sherlock Holmes. Go ahead.
 
Louis- We are looking for foreign nationals with very big hitting power who were betrayed, then want to humiliate a son of a bitch they can defeat at the polls easily enough. How about, let us say, a conspiracy from Cuban nationals who got massacred at the Bay Of Pigs because Jack, supposedly a hero, got scared, getting together with the CIA who got heavily tarnished in Cuba and the Mafia people who got him the election only to get arrested by Bobby to get the Marseilles and Corsican hitmen? Do you like that alterative?
 
Lyndon- Louis, I’m not saying. These people scare me.
 
Louis- I don’t. It’s too obvious. You think I am thinking of General Orlandini. No, I like Baron Krupp. See, in the end it doesn't matter, Lyndon. It’s somebody among the many thousands of tigers Jack told to drop dead. What’s the difference? I never insult anybody. I might kill them; I am always civil to them. In a field of tigers we all need as few enemies as we can get, even me.

These things happen like a tumble of mathematics. You can put the clothes on the ghostly algebra later. I’m the biggest cat out there and I know enough to seem good natured but cautious. You’re sure you’ll take care of Jack and then you’ll be the most powerful tiger in the world. Maybe you won’t be because there is somebody behind you.
 
Lyndon- I’m owned by more people than a Kentucky Derby horse if I ever get in, Louis. Sometimes you don’t want to know who owns you; your knowledge could be reason they will knock you off. Every hear of Monsieur de Chateau Renaud?
 
Louis- The brains behind capitalism and communism. He plays them off against each other. Apparent enemies, really the same army.
 
Lyndon- He hasn’t killed you for knowing that. You must be very big.
 
Louis- A telephone call from him makes Krupp tremble. When he calls me we are on better terms.
 
Lyndon- You hear from General Orlandini?
 
Louis- I call General Orlandini. He trembles. I can hear the phone shake on the other end.
 

Lyndon- You talk to them. I honestly don’t want to hear from Chateau-Renaud or Orlandini. I know what it’s like to be president; I’ve seen enough of them, God knows. My mentor, FDR, was the best of them. He played one tiger off against the other; the New Deal, Louis, was one great big tiger free for all that made FDR laugh. He himself ran a secret puppet show of enemies. You’ve got to be a very special politician with some charm do to that sort of thing, Louis. FDR had it: magnetism, whatever; it makes people think you like them, you’re on their side, you’re covertly in their corner even when you seem to be their enemy.
 
Louis- You’re describing wives, not tigers, Lyndon. Tigers don’t work the jungle with confederates; they’re loners. Wives work that kind of confidence hustle.

Lyndon- Well, wives, tigers, whatever it is, I haven’t got that quality. You heard of men who have the word husband written all over them? People see me and instantly they say, that son of a bitch is a fucken rogue.
 
Louis- Lyndon, maybe you need to turn off the lights. One be the guy behind somebody. When you really look into this stuff, Lyndon, it comes down to peering into the darkness knowing that there are some places so shadowy you don’t know who’s there; you’ll never know. We have a deal, I think, Lyndon.

Lyndon- You know it. You’re not guessing. I’ll talk to you on the phone later, Louis. Thanks a hellova lot for dropping by.

 
Louis- I may need your counsel, Lyndon. The IRS has been interested in me lately. I don’t know who’s behind them, maybe you putting the muscle on me; they’ve got something about some business I did in Boise a few years ago I am not happy about. They’ve got photos, documents, everything. It’s hard to be a patriot for a country when it’s busy prosecuting you.
 
Lyndon- You can consider that investigation terminated as my first act of office.
 
Louis- Talk to me, Lyndon, when you need a plastic pecker.
 
Lyndon- Use that door over there. I’ve got to talk to the other side now; I don’t want their representatives to see you coming in and out of here.
 
Louis- I don’t want them to either. I’m invisible; I hope to stay that way. You know where to reach me, Lyndon. (Exit Louis through the other exit. Lyndon picks up the phone.)
 
Lyndon- Hi, Rita...yeah, I put half of the deal together already; I think we are going to have a hell of a stable country in the next few years once those sons of bitches Jack and Jackie are put into retirement...Louis di Franchi gave me this plastic pecker too...it polishes the fingernails into mirrors....I don’t know what else it does; maybe it mixes gin and tonic for all I know...if I can put this other bastard in my corner we are gong to celebrate tonight with a party you are going to remember for at least a week...yeah, lobster and marshmallows and your taste in enchiladas...next month we’ll make big whoopee in Abe Lincoln’s bed...the parade is going on right now in Dallas...watch your television set; you are going to see something America hasn’t had to talk about since the holy birth of Elvis...any channel. My chauffeur will pick you up at the hotel; the other fellow is coming in right now. See you later. (Lyndon hangs up the phone. Enter Lucien di Franchi.) How’re you doing, Lucien; you look a little peaked, Lucien. Hope the loonies at the insane asylum don’t have anything contagious.
 
Lucien- You don’t look so good either, Lyndon. You seemed a little scared when I walked in the door. Anything out there worth being afraid of?
 
Lyndon- Nothing, really. You look like a fellow I met a while ago. Freaky, really. You might almost be the same guy.
 
Lucien- That is uncanny, Lyndon.
 
Lyndon- I don’t mind people acting like other people. When they look like them too I get a little frizzled, Lucien.
 

Lucien- I don’t know that much about my background. I might have a twin brother for all I know. Sometimes I have dreams I’m incredibly rich, running some of the biggest businesses in the world. Crazy stuff; it seems more like another reality I’m living in at the same time than anything else.

Lyndon- Two bodies, one soul, so to speak.
 
Lucien- I have some scars on my body my doctor tells me suggests I was separated from something very large at birth, maybe a monster, maybe a growth; maybe I was once a Siamese twin. Maybe I had two heads, Lyndon.
 
Lyndon- We all think like that when we’re kids, Lucien. Then we discover the world is lucky there’s only one of us.
 
Lucien- Unless there really are two of us. Or three of us.
 
Lyndon- Lucien, If there’s more than one of me God is even crazier than I think he is. How’s the insane asylum?
 
Lucien- Expanding. We were a loony bin a long time ago, Lyndon. That’s history like Prohibition. Now we’re the Welfare Department in every city, we run the courts, the jails, the schools, we even do the job testing for those plastic pecker people, whoever they are.
 
Lyndon- You’ve got the Arts on your pad too, don’t you, Lucien?
 
Lucien- You can't turn out a limerick without me.
 
Lyndon- I used to think power came from knowing who was alive and who was dead. Now I see it’s about who’s sane and who’s totally bonkers. We’re going to need all you people to help us after the big kaboom. Those damned Reds gave us a scare. You think you can deliver us a big bunch of quiet patriots?
 
Lucien- I run Welfare. I control forty million people from birth to death; we’re expanding into the middle class. Even my middle management doesn’t have lunch or a spasm without my say-so. They will be your cannon fodder. I need arts programs, Lyndon. People with brains here always go Red; it’s because your people haven’t got the sense to give them a few bucks and a couple of knitting needles. I need to run books, museums, lute recitals. You’re got warriors, politicians; you need some first class priests.
 
Lyndon- We thought we had them. I told them no self respecting priests in America likes rhinestone suits. Now they’re listening to me.

Lucien- Priests are priests everywhere. You get an unctuous, soft spoken consoling son of a bitches with an answer for everything that nobody can explain, even God, and you got yourself a bishop.
 
Lyndon- You don’t seem all that kindhearted, Lucien. You must stay away from the battlefield.

 
Lucien- I’m a Corsican, baby. We don’t forget even in America where we are from. Someplace bloody and tough. It’s great to wake up from the nightmare; sometimes there are dreams that are the clothes of other dreams, you get me? By the way, you’re got Belzheimer’s Disease; I can tell from the way you sway a little when you talk.
 
Lyndon-I’m a little smashed, Lucien; it’s late in the day. What’s Belzheimer’s Disease? Sounds real bad.
 
Lucien- There are diseases with no symptoms. They’re the worst. Belzheimer’s isn’t quite that invisible. It could be an itch, a headache. It could be the lack of them. Either way, you definitely have Belzheimer’s.
 
Lyndon- You’re got some line of jive, Lucien. Have we got a deal?
Lucien- You know what I want?
 
Lyndon- More or less. Arts programs, Welfare for everybody, Marxists running the schools talking about tend loving care for little brats with lots of curiosity, a country like a big city hospital.
 
Lucien- A country? How about the universe?

Lyndon- You want space travel too? We can do that.
 
Lucien- I really do want a galaxy of out patients. Lemme tell you, Lyndon, I am progress. My utopia is better than a Milky Way of criminals, blasphemers and sinners.
 
Lyndon- We want a little more than that, Lucien. You talk about arts as if they’re central; they’re nothing. If you think we’re concerned with what artists think, they’re more trivial than makers of toys. At least a good plastic toy makes money.
 
Lucien- What do you want, Lyndon?
 
Lyndon- We want a new educational system that’ll be passed on kids as lords of a new privileged class. We want to fill every school with experts, psychologists mostly, who will force teachers and parents to lose authority altogether as their children and pupils wander around in a perpetual kindergarten, playing with a plastic pecker world as if it were filled with toys made for them by slaves who owed them a free hula hoop with no obligations.
 
Lucien- You’ll be creating a perpetual slave class of expensive morons, you know that?
 

Lyndon- Of course I know that. The Reformation was the worst thing that ever happened in human history, Lucien. Teach people to read ad think, you never know what will happen.
 
Lucien- Well, I can do that. We have hordes of psychologists who’ll fill these new jobs, ballivo me. They’ll be pensions, medical benefits and lawyers on staff for them I hope? They have to pay the bills.
 
Lyndon- when I’m president, Lucien, I will be printing money. Lots of money. They can have whatever dollars can purchase when is just about everything including themselves. I can make a slave rich and think he has freedom; I do it all the time. You write their contracts; I’ll start those money machines going as soon as they’re on my desk, don’t worry.
 
Lucien- I was always I was a prince or a high priest myself until I realized I only ran the weak and managed the insane; also I couldn’t print money. It’s the next step from running a world that’s not an nut house, I guess. Could I print some money myself, just among my friends and relatives?
 
Lyndon- In this world I will print the money, not you.
 

Lucien- You’re looking forward to it, aren’t you? You know a man with real has power can print money and have people killed with impunity. I never got that far I guess.
 
Lyndon- You’d get used to it in three months. Then when it goes you’d miss it. You don’t need it, Lucien.
 
Lucien- Beyond that, one has to know one’s place, doesn’t one? All right.
 
Lyndon- I know you’re into counterfeiting. The IRS and FBI are aware of you, Lucien. You keep on putting your own picture on your money.
 
Lucien- I forget who should be on our currency. I have a very vague notion of history. I thought my money gave our dollars a diversity and aesthetic interest it lacked, Lyndon. I started out by making certificates for professional people, mostly psychologists; I did my best work with the Orlandini family, not the generals but the therapists. I was great at degrees, diplomas from training institutes, credit cards and coats of arms. I have a talent; is there anything more dull, Lyndon, than American dollars? You could fall asleep looking at them.
 
Lyndon- It’s a kind of ordinary invisibility to be boring, Lucien, You’ve just taken up another way of bending light, that’s all.
 
Lucien- No more churning out pink twenty dollar bills. Anything else?
 

Lyndon- We want to turn women against men. As it is me and women don’t like each other very much; we want to make female rage legitimate as a man raping a woman in a militarily occupied town. We need your psychologists to tell their female patients all their problems came from love and boding with their families or their mates.
 
Lucien- You want to isolate everybody.
 
Lyndon- Of course. Frankly, we also are very heavily funded by a guild of lawyers you may not have heard about. We’re almost all lawyers in Congress; the presidents have all be lawyers except for a few generals. Lawyers like as much litigation as possible. We want men and women to be suing each other all their lives as an ordinary feature of American existence like driving cars, getting drunk and eating hamburgers. If we can get those children you’re turning out to sue the parents, maybe the grandparents to run their cases in court too we will have everybody running in and out of the courts like worms feeding on a gigantic corpse.
 
Lucien- Well, of course, I can do that. We have no end of experts ready to promote whatever you want as long as the salary, pension and health benefits are cushy. If I could print money ,I could do the whole job myself.
 
Lyndon- You can’t print money. You have to need me for something, Lucien.
 
Lucien- I won’t go near a printing press.
 
Lyndon- Forget about counterfeiting. Let us do it. Our money is real. I don’t mean to stand between you and your destiny if you really want to be a counterfeiter, believe me. I just want American life to work, Lucien. That’s why I‘m putting together this deal. I’m for progress myself; the old stuff in the Old World didn’t do anybody much good, did it?
 
Lucien- It’ll work. I’ll produce the stupidest, most ignorant nard arrogant generation in the history of the universe. I guess the Assyrian kings are never going to make a comeback. You look sad, Lyndon.
 
Lyndon-I’m just worried. I haven’t got time to be unhappy. I got a bad feeling about all this, Lucien.
 
Lucien- About Jack and Jackie? Let them die.
 
Lyndon- Naw, not them. They’re just one more rich empty piece of doody and his whore. He treats her lousy, I must say. Shames the poor bitch. He’s just like his daddy. FDR said Joe was the worst man in the world. It’s good to meet him Lucien. You know it can never get any more evil than that. Jackie should be happy I’m doing what I’m doing, Lucien. I’m You marry one of these bastards, you are in terrible trouble.

 
Lucien- You still look a little blue.
 
Lyndon- Don’t give me that therapy bullshit; I am one of the boys. I don’t think this whole routine is going to work, that’s all.
 
Lucien- You’ve got the whole world to pick from if you want gunmen you can trust. Your people have probably hired the best.
 
Lyndon- Lucien, you’re a poor boy like me. I couldn’t get to Marilyn Monroe like the Kennedy brothers; I could explode in a cloud of stars with that bitch. She’s so fucken blonde. She probably smells like lilacs. I ain’t got the clout. I had to be satisfied with Rita Hayworth. You know what Rita has to say to me?
 
Lucien- There are many among us American who would be content with Rita Hayworth. Lyndon.
 
Lyndon- Lucien, she’s a poor girl too, Spanish, Mexican, something like that; she might not even be White like us. She tells me Americans don’t want wars or your left wing bullshit; they just want shopping and television. That’ll stabilize everything. You know something, I’m a poor boy too and I’ll bet she’s right.
 
Lucien- You’re worried about failure.
 
Lyndon- Lucien, I have fallen on my face and eaten shit more times that any army of diarrhetic babies; a little blood and dung on my face never fazes me. Rita and I started with nothing and we understand what it feels like to know you are one step from nothing in your pocket. These rich boys don’t know anything about the world of swine and wolves. They think they can always disappear into their money. They always have why shouldn’t they have that idea? The women they got pregnant get those Key West expensive abortions, there is always more money to spend in some other place than the last place, the prosecutors are paid off to look the other way when they might take it into their mind to murder an uppity woman or rob a bank or two.
 
Lucien- Yes, of course. It’s Dorsheimer’s Disease. I’m very familiar with the symptoms, believe me.
 
Lyndon- I never heard of that; this government stuff is no different than a party in Palm Beach. You make a mistake; you do not have a place to vanish to unless some little fey sheik in the Emirate decides to show you a little mercy.
 
Lucien- I understand that. I haven’t always been running an insane asylum, Lyndon.
 

Lyndon- Well then you might think over what Rita has been telling me after a whole lot of shaking has been going on. A lot of people don’t want to fight a colonial war. They will not go to Vietnam to do to the gooks what the French couldn’t do. We never had an empire there like the French; if the whole place went down in flames we couldn’t care less. This is going to be one impossible little war if the army and the corporate heavies are going to make money they don’t need from it, Lucien.
 
Lucien- Then don’t do it.
 
Lyndon- I can’t back off; that’s half of the deal. They aren’t going to care about the coffins coming back home because they and their kin are going to be safe in Washington clicking in the body bags. I am the one who is going to have to explain to people why we are doing this thing. Now you tell me the Welfare people will fight for me; will they?
 
Lucien- Being in a war is not too different from where they live except they have a right to mil people. Why not?
 
Rita- Rita says no. They will do what they do at home. They will not organize, not go after any enemy with a will and endurance, an they will spend a lot of time getting stoned on heroin and grass, fucking and drinking the local beer in the commissary, and trying to survive.
 
Lucien- You can't back out of that either. You can't afford to seem right wing, Lyndon. You’d give us Civil Rights, Arts, Welfare and lots of hospitals. You never know; maybe you’ll get lucky. We’ll find out everything in a while, won’t we?
 
Lyndon- You don’t believe it yourself, do you, Lucien?
 
Lucien- I can’t afford to think much about the future, Lyndon. It’s going to be good and bad like the past. I’m like Attila. I don’t have a theory of history. I do know like the army my people need jobs. They have the loony bins, the schools, courts, Welfare and industrial hiring; they want the Arts and a army a few states like the Mafia. If they have Las Vegas and New Jersey, why can’t we have North Dakota and Arizona?
 
Lyndon- You talk big. Forget it, Lucien.
 
Lucien- I guess Jack didn’t go for the deal, did he, Lyndon?
 
Lyndon- He didn’t know it was coming. He doesn't know how to talk to people, Lucien. He thinks he’s a cartoon; the only thing he takes seriously is partying. You know what he considers foreplay? He pulls up a girls dress and ells her to bend over.
 
Lucien- I figured. They want you. You have one wife, one mistress; that’s more a more reliable lifestyle. You don’t dismiss anybody either; anybody can talk to you.
 

Lyndon- That is the central talent of a politician, Lucien. We are always polite, ready to talk to enemies and strangers.
 
Lucien- You should; you’re going to be in bed with them tomorrow. I talk to everybody too. It’s something you have to do in an insane asylum. We call it therapy.
 
Lyndon- Do you learn anything from the lunatics?
 
Lucien- Only that you’re sane by very, very ignorant. It’s awful but it’s better than being psychotic and locked up. I do have some bizarre moments myself but only in dreams. Nearly every night I have this nightmare that I’m a great corporate tiger, the man behind a thousand coups and movements of plastic goods, mastermind of assassinations and planner of covert creations of shadow colonies in the hinterlands.
 
Lyndon- That’s one problem I haven’t got. I can’t remember my dreams. I mean on every level. I wake every morning out of nothing. I’m as brainless as an army of bacteria until get my first cup of coffee.
 
Lucien- That’s a sign of disorder. You might have Colkisher’s Syndrome, Lyndon.
 
Lyndon- I hope it’s a whiskey. I never heard of it.
 
Lucien- You never have to worry about it. It’s a disease with no symptoms. It could be worse. Sometimes are symptoms with no diseases. You never liked Jack much, did you, Lyndon?
 
Lyndon- He and his brother bobby called me Colonel Cornpone. They make fun of me, they humiliated me, Lucien. I don’t kill people. I’m a politician. We learn to be civil to even people we hate. Jack isn’t nice to anybody. That’s why he’s getting axed. He’s a guy with a hard on and a bottle who showed up at the wrong party.
 
Lucien- It does make you wonder who wants him dead. Whoever it is, it’s about primal hate, not tactics, Lyndon. If they can run this kind of execution they can take him out at the polls much more easily. There’s so much dirt on this son of a bitch, Lyndon. The heavy Mafia ties, the mistress she shares with a crime biggie, he and his father’s career as Nazis, the fake heroic record, walking away a small army of people with guns who trusted him when they attacked Cuba. The still have the guns, don’t they?
 
Lyndon- They've got them. It really doesn’t matter who does what to whom at that level does it? Or who’s running it? It’s what could be happening to you and me when they manage it and do it. Are you in?
 
Lucien- I am definitely in. (Exit Lucien. Lyndon picks up the phone and dials a number.)
 

Lyndon- Rita?...It’s in place. Pour yourself a Lime Marguerita and keep your eye on that t-v. (He hangs up. He walks over to a television set, turns it on and watches it every intently.)
Goddamn commercials! What the hell is Preparation F?...If I want a pink plastic coffin I’ll buy one, goddamn it...there it is...fucken educational channel...what the hell do I care about the erotic history of toads?...Another Preparation F commercial ....yeah, there it is, Dallas, the motorcade...There the sun of a bitch is, waving and smiling about nothing. What the fuck is he so happy about? God, what a sick fashion plate. I’m a stone lush but he’s on opium and his funky little bitch is on speed...how the hell can we run this country; we’re all barely able to take a shit...O God, there it is!...Boom, boom, boom...Do it, baby...Yeah...yeah, yeah...I thank that last shot took his head off...beautiful...no Secret Service men around....they’re in place....maybe they shot her too...no, she’s ducking under the seat...looks like they got my buddy Conally...He’s a hard nosed bastard; he can take a bullet or two. O boy! I need a fucken drink. I am going to spend some night tonight with Rita. (He picks up the phone and dials a number.) Rita, you see that?...isn’t it beautiful?...what’s that?...yeah, sometimes you get what you want; it can be a lot worse; I know that, baby. I am ready for paradise. I started out in a damned tar paper shack with an pinewood outhouse. I am a poor boy who has eaten more shit in my very long career than an army of Texas dung beetles; from now on I am going to eat lobster and marshmallow sauce, baby. I’ll wash it down with real California champagne. Yeah the boys on the right will get their war, the clubhouse on the left will get Welfare, therapy, Art, and lots of insane asylums. ...no, they don’t want to build them; they want to make the whole planet into one...I know that wars kill people but we’re talking about a bunch of dog eating gooks, honey, not human beings. Anybody they don’t vote, they’re five thousand miles away ene if we lose; how the hell are they going to hurt us?... How any Asians do you think are in this country? You don’t think I can afford to lose the Asian vote? It’s about five hundred people. I can forget about the noodle vote; let the little yellow bastards burn my laundry... Look honey, I don’t even think they’re Christians. See you at the motel at six. keep the bourbon next to the bed. (He hangs up.) I’m president of the fucken United States of America. Son of a gun! (He exits. Lights go up as Lucien and Emily enter their office.)
 
Emily- Too bad they knocked off Jack, Lucien. I loved that guy. Physically I mean, not as president. I think he was too busy in bed to do much in politics. Sometimes I wished I could have been at one of those parties I heard about.
 
Lucien- You would have been very disappointed, Emily. The man was half dead, had a bad back, and didn’t relate much to women. He probably hated them. Unless you have Halfirber’s Disorder you wouldn’t have enjoyed it.
 
Emily- What’s Halfirber’s Disorder?

 
Lucien- An obsessive desire to go to parties, a compulsion to sleep with famous people, a nearly lethal madness about celebrities. It’s usually combined with Babowsky’s Syndrome, a propensity to overdosing on chocolate, cocaine and pickled Korean ginseng. You can look it up.
 
Emily- I just might. I think you make up all these damned illnesses. My real estate agent is named Babowsky. Who the hell was Halfirber anyway, some chiropodist?
 
Lucien- Ignatz Halfirber? You think the psychiatric world would name a respectable disease after a bum?
 
Emily- Why would anybody want an insanity named after them? I think the psychiatrist do that to punish their enemies.
 
Lucien- Halfirber had more enemies than most people. He as also a broker and a lawyer.
 
Emily- I’d like to name a disorder myself after people I hate. You psychiatrists are very powerful.
 
Lucien- One day I had to make somebody so mad he’ll name one after me. Then I’ll be famous.
 
Emily- You don’t want to be known at all, Lucien. You have some hunger to be anonymous. It’s a condition most people achieve without even trying.
 
Lucien- We Corsicans are notoriously secretive. It’s a way you take freedom, Emily. I wish I knew how was the mastermind behind Agaccio Incorporated. He’s the guy I’d like to discover. His corporate network just about covers the whole planet but he’s ultimately clandestine. Nobody knows who he is.
 
Emily- Agaccio. Sounds Corsican. Maybe he’s your relative.
 
Lucien- It’s a blind. He’s pushing around the whole wold behind a series of holding companies and toadies he owns from Samoa to Terra del Fuego. He’s infected the world with broken plastic. I’d like to name a pelage after him.
 
Emily- He probably doesn't think much of you either. You’re a man who wants to turn the same astral body into a loony bin.
 
Lucien- I know this planet isn’t an insane asylum, Emily; I just have to make it legally like one. That means we fill the courts with psychiatrists even if the litigants are arguing about steel factories or divorce. We put them in the schools too; get the kids to hate their parents, teachers and never learn how to read. Somebody’s got to clean the latrines. Somebody’s got to go to prison too; otherwise we might have to lay off the guards and the warden; we could have another Depression.

 
Emily- You can’t create have a global hospital and penitentiary out of this universe, Lucien; nobody will go for it.
Lucien- Emily, people have died for Marduk, Zeus, the Trinity, communism, Hitler and the celery diet. They fall in love with horrors; ask any ex-wife. They listen to dunces; that’s why we have brokers. This is not a particularly intelligent universe. We are the smartest species on this planet; would you call us even vaguely reasonable?
 
Emily- Maybe we’re charming. Lucien, you want me to put everybody on Welfare, give a government bounty for divorce so people can really be themselves undistracted by others, set women to war against men, children against parents, dogs against cats, rats against mice and start Arts programs, whatever that means. I’ll do it because I’m on salary. I don’t have to believe in it.
 
Lucien- You’re wrong, Emily. That’s the difference between us and the filthy corporate world. They do everything for money; we have faith in our politics. You have to believe what we do like a religion or you should get another job.
 
Emily- I like the potato salad here. You convinced me.
 
Lucien- You know, you may have Dorsheimer’s Disease. You look a little peaked to me. Do you have trouble coloring your toenails?
 
Emily- No. Why?
 
Lucien- Just a little test. Rampant toenail disorder is not a symptom. A lot of people like to deny they have Dorsheimer’s. It’s part of the syndrome to claim one doesn't have it.
 
Emily- Don’t psychobabble me, Lucien; I’m one of the boys. What kind of Art do you want? Monuments, epics?
 
Lucien- No, nothing uncomfortable or inflammatory. Minor abstract stuff. The art shooed be dangerous as like knitting. We want to keep people stable and happy, not exciting and irate.
 
Emily- I can understand that.
 
Lucien- We are connected now, never mind with whom. I know about you’re selling life insurance on the job, Emily, personal calls to lovers, ex-husbands, your ex-in-laws, your mother, your phone sex job and the death threats you give to other people on professional insane asylum time. You also run a phone sex operation when nobody else is in the office on company time. Don’t tell me you’re a reliable professional.
 
Emily- You’ve been tapping my phone.
 

Lucien- I know you think you might be a lesbian, that you’d be better off quitting the helping professions and working on macrame in a South Pole lighthouse.
 
Emily- You got that stuff from Doctor Armando Orlandini. He always hated me. I’d name a hellova disease after him if I were you.

Lucien- He doesn’t need my antagonism, Emily. They carted him away a long time ago for stealing half our budget and investing it in Venezuelan mushroom futures. It was only a month after they arrested Doctor Levko Orlandini for moving our furniture in our lobby away by night into a next door flea market and selling it on weekends.
 
Emily- You’ve hired a lot of low life middle management, Lucien.
 
Lucien- People are always being arrested in this place, I know. It’s distracting Every week or so the cop show up and cat somebody else off to the slammer. I don’t like it. I don’t know what to do about it.
 
Emily- You have to change these thugs you hire here, Lucien. They place is filled with human lice. They’re all either crooks or they die of some horrible disease. First of all I would stop hiring Orlandinis.
 
Lucien- All the Orlandinis have credentials, certificates; it turned out they trained each other. How was I to know?
 
Emily- You didn’t take a cut of their swag, did you?
 
Lucien- I don’t need the money of that scurvy Orlandini family, Emily; I am making a tolerably comfortable salary here. I wish I had been a little more cautious in a deal I ran starting an insane asylum in Boise a year ago. It looked very good, everybody in my pocket from the saltpeter and potato salad caterers to the governor of the state. Then a few turns in the weather and before I knew it the IRS was interested in me.
 
Emily- They’re everywhere. Sometimes I think we’d be better off without them. We pay them our own money to have them investigate us. That’s crazy. Isn’t it?
 
Lucien- The federal government has always been interested in me. You know I’m a counterfeiter. They don’t like my work aesthetically or for any other reason. What the hell do right wingers know about beauty?
 
Emily- I think Woman and Blacks should be on some kind of American money filiating out of Washington; I appreciate your pink period currency, Lucien.
 

Lucien- It’s worse than that. Every coin, every bill has somebody on it that’s White, male, rich, powerful and sane. Until we have at least a nickel with somebody certifiably crazy on it we are never going to be able to sell an insane asylum as a model for American politics.

Emily- I guess the IRS and FBI feel different. Of course they do they’re all right wingers.
 
Lucien- They’re the last honest men in America; Emily; you can't move them anymore than you can Mount Fillmore. I got so depressed about it I thought I might fake my own death. I could show up later in Peru and start a new life running insane asylums for the Incas.
 
Emily- You’ve got a good life here, Lucien. Agaccio Insane Asylum giving you a chance to heal people for big bucks. We are the Monaco of lunacy.
 
Lucien- Let’s not kid ourselves; this place is a Roach Motel. Rich people come in but they don’t leave. If we cured them we’d be out of a job. Even when they die we don’t tell the government so we can keep those disability checks coming. I learned more about how to make people accustomed to being crazy at Agaccio Insane Asylum than making them sane; that’s the real nature of the helping professions. Goddamit it, everything here is therapy. You don’t take a shit here; you have a session of defection therapy. Death therapy is the only one that solves all your problems. Look, I want you to call up Ernest Hemingway and tell him he’s finished. No more easy ride for Papa, get it? We’re going to have a new poet laureate.
 
Emily- Ernest Hemingway is dead. He shot himself.
 
Lucien- I thought he had better aim than that. Well tell william Faulkner. Whoever. They’re fired. The government is going to take over the Arts now. No more aesthetic chaos. These monumental oldsters can go to work for us or live on a check for crones.
 
Emily- It’s Robert Frost. He’s eighty nine years old. You want me to tell him he’s kaput, Lucien? He’s liable to have a seizure.
 
Lucien- Dump the son of a bitch. Let him die.
 
Emily- What do we want from him to keep him on the payroll if he says he will work with us?
 
Lucien- How the hell do I know? Look, maybe an epic about how we should take over Asia.
 
Emily- Robert Frost doesn’t know anything about Asia. He’s an expert on building fences around his house to keep out other people he doesn’t like.
 
Lucien- That’s why he writes poetry about? No wonder I’ve never read him. What a shallow swine.

 

Emily- You mean to represent yourself to me as reasonable in a world of greedy lunatics? You are worse than they are. I know you sold the catering franchise through your partner in running television panel discussions about madness to the Mafia.
 
Lucien- My dear, the Mafia knows more about the culinary tastes of the insane than anybody in the world. Psychotics from Tibet to Timbuctoo have a ravenous taste for pasta.
 
Emily- We know too much about each other, Lucien. It’s lucky we’re lovers. Otherwise we’d betray each other.
 
Lucien- If we’re being honest, we don’t have to cavil about what we’re doing here, Emily. I am turning the world into a terminal ward; it’s only to try to give the planet a stability in the web of lunacy it never had when it claimed it was sane.
 
Emily- You’re nuts.
 
Lucien- What is sanity, Emily? Is it honor, glory, standing for one’s country, a piety about right and wrong, a certainly about the dragons that are always invisible and in front of us? We might do better with being openly, legally bonkers.
 
Emily- That’s a crazy idea.
 
Lucien- Madness that might save us when reason has failed us, Emily. We used to talk about people as criminal, sinful and kill them. If we can say they’re inept and daft, we might put them on an entire planet like a rich man’s crazy house.
 
Emily- You’re dreaming.
 
Lucien- We’re all dreaming; only one of us can be the real dreamer. They rest of us are imaginary. One way or another, I’m going to be who I am or be nobody and nothing better than anybody whose just a dream of a dream. I want to put the whole world on Welfare, Emily. Why shouldn’t they be rich when Washington can print as much money as it wants? I want everything and everybody to be creative. A planet of artists is easier to run than one of normal people. All they want is a room where they can be left alone. Prisoners in maximum security penitentiaries want less than they do.
 
Emily- You want to lock everybody up? Who’ll be the guards?
 

Lucien- When people put themselves into the cell and stay there thinking they’re liberated you don’t need them. I want the whole planet unbonded, Emily. I don’t even want cockroaches to like each other. What’s the cause of most misery, Emily? It isn’t hate. Hate just leads to violence. Somebody dies; that’s the end of it. Love, Emily, is the biggest maker of woe on Earth. In the end it make everybody stale, frustrated and enraged in their heart. I want a future of human beings like tigers ready to devour who are willing to tell the whole world to drop dead.
 
Emily- They won’t be happy.
 
Lucien- Life can’t get any worse, can it? When people are alone and feel lousy, they don’t hurt anybody. They look around; there’s nobody there. They don’t know whom to blame. By the way, have you ever thought you might have Flugeldosher’s Syndrome?
 
Emily- Now, what the hell is that?
 
Lucien- Fear of Flugeldoshers. (Exit Lucien. Emily picks up the phone.)
 
Emily- Hello, Robert? Look, you don’t know me but I work for Lucien di Franchi of the Agaccio Insane Asylum...no, I’m not trying to sell you lunacy insurance; we have a contact with the government now that affects your status as Poet Laureate. We represents its artistic council. We are connected with your new president Lyndon Johnson. You haven’t turned on your t-v, Robert; you don’t know Jack got whacked in Dallas...Yep, his brains flew halfway across the boulevard. Look forget about building fences; we know your little fence business, the IRS is on to you. If you want to walk, you’d be smart to write a poem, a big poem, on the future of America in Asia. It’s okay if you make it a comedy; everybody in America needs a laugh or two, don’t they?... We’re going to bring them the suburbs to those little gooks. You work with us, your will be taken care of, believe me; otherwise the IRS will look into your disgusting little fence scam and put you in the slammer...Yeah, turn on your t-v; you’ll see who’s in power here soon enough. It sure as hell ain’t Jack anymore. (Enter Louis di Franchi.) Hi. I think he’s biting, We don’t need a new poet laureate yet, honey.
 
Louis- I’m Louis. Louis di Franchi.

Emily- You want to be known as Louis now? That’s okay. I think I’ve got Robert Frost scared. He wounds as if he were ready to kill himself. Maybe that’s what happened to Ernest Hemingway.
 
Louis- Would you like a plastic pecker?
 
Emily- A what?
 
Louis- (He takes the device out of his pocket.) You never know what’s going on behind you, you know. You use this instrument to polish your fingernails into mirrors. Then you have a view of what’s going on behind your back.
 
Emily- I think you’ve gone crazy.
 

Louis- That’s why I think too. I’m nuts. It’s a sobering idea, I can tell you. At least I’m still sane enough to come here to get cured. I looked it up in the hone directory. Agaccio Insane Asylum. That’s a Corsican name. I figured my fellow Corsicans would understand me.
 
Emily- You can’t be cured of being bankers here. You’re the director.
 
Louis- You know I think you’re gone crazy too. I am the director but not of an insane asylum.
 
Emily- What do you think you’re the director of? I think you have gone totally daft.
 
Louis- it doesn't matter. Look I’ve had these terrible dreams that I’m the director of an insane asylum, not the CEO of the biggest industrial enterprise on the planet. Take this plastic pecker, polish your fingernails with it later.
 
Emily- You are totally nuts. What do I need this piece of plastic for?
 
Louis- Right now you don’t need it. In a week you’ll feel different; the plastic itself with change you. It’s not magic or some act of God; it’s that the access to an expanded sense of life will make you subtle y into someone else. That’s my wager; it’s a good one. I’ve sold three million plastic peckers this week.
 
Emily- You’ve gone completely insane. You don’t sell plastic peckers. Luckily you’re the heard of the insane asylum. Otherwise we’d luck you up.
 
Louis- You think I run this place.
 
Emily- You think you do too.
 
Louis- You know, this is the nightmare of my dreams. I think sometimes I am the head of a loony bin, that you are my mistress, and that I have a plan to take over the world by putting everybody on Welfare, making the whole planet into a hospital, teen setting up Arts programs to help the maniacs express themselves. Now you’re going to tell me this is all true.
 
Emily- You said it. Of course it’s true. I’m definitely your mistress.
 
Louis- I’ve walked into the world of my dreams. I wonder who many men have been able to do that by taking a car ride. Maybe a few kids who’ve gone to Disneyland.
 
Emily- You are the honcho here. What do you want to do now?
 

Louis- Right now? Make love to you in the cellars of the loony bin. Have we got a bed?
 

Emily- This is an insane asylum. You think we haven’t got beds?
 
Louis- Let’s go find one. I want to make some discoveries with you. If you’re real, then so are my visions. Then I think I’d like to sell every inmate a plastic pecker. (Exit Louis and Emily. The phone rings. Enter Lyndon Johnson. He picks up the phone.)
 

Lyndon- Hi Rita...Well, it hasn’t been easy...of course everything is in place but things happen when you run a country that don’t when you are selling apples on the street. It’s all associated with Louis and Lucien di Franchi. They are really good people but they get a little aggressive in their very different way; nothing I can’t handle. Louis has sold guns, bombs, and airplanes to North and South Vietnam and none of them work. It keeps down the casualties I suppose. He sold three million plastic peckers to Peru; it turns out they really are peckers. He makes his money on the batteries. Sure they shine your fingernails, but so what?...He’s hustled an army of lake frogs to Canada to sell as pets. He makes his money on the crickets they need to feed the little bastards...Yeah, I hope they croak too; very funny.... Look, I can see we’re not going to win this war; nobody on our side wants to go up that hill and take out the enemy; they are there for the k-rations and the rest and recreation...al they want to do is sleep or fuck twelve year old little girls, It’s disgusting. We weren’t like this in World War Two, were we? ...they all want to know what are they defending; I say, you are looking out for that fat Welfare check when you get home, you son of a bitch. It doesn’t make much of an argument. They know they’ll get it no matter what they do; that’s Welfare, honey...Yeah, the CIA is big into heroin; they run it back to us in army planes. They say they need the money to fight for American freedom and destroy communism. What kind of an intelligence service is that, Rita? I say they’re a bunch of grifters, clowns, honky tonk rounders and con-artists. Cardinal Spellman is on the phone in between chorus body telling me to win the battle and then put Christianity on the moon...he thinks there are little green aliens up there he wants to baptize and bugger...what’s the religion on the moon? How the hell should I know? At least they don’t get it on with reptilian monsters as perks...it’s a fucken lousy war, Rita; I wish my right wing friends had never started such a dumb, stupid pigsty; what did they do it all for? Money...I could have given the money. I’m the president; I print money...I’m proud I’m a democrat; at least I’m for the people, not for these scum...Lucien’s even worse; he’s put armies of people on Welfare. These bastards still hate us even as they take our money. I gave his people a deal on Welfare they cannot refuse. They only have to show up and say to a little recording machine, I am indigent, I am in need, and they get life better than most European kings in our sacred holy books...yes, mangos, buffalo meat, coconuts, everything. If they’re sick we sent them to city hospitals; if they aren’t sick we sent them there too...now they all want to go on strike. Lemme ask you something, Rita; how does a fucken beggar go out on strike?....I don’t know either...who the fuck needs them? They all want reparations for something. They must think I’m guilty about being president; why should I feel lousy? I didn’t even kill Jack; I was just part of the machine, that’s all. I don’t murder people; I corrupt people...Not you, honey, I never hurt you; you were what you are, whatever that is, long before I met you...yeah, dinner at eight in the unusual fried chicken joint; keep the bourn on ice. I’m in the mood for some motel magic. Give me an extra bump, Rita; I’m a democrat who’s starting to hate humanity. (He hangs up the hone and exits. Enter Louis and Emily.)
 
Emily- This is your office? It doesn’t look too much different than my room in the insane asylum.
 
Louis- All offices are pretty much the same nowadays. Did you like the drive here? Pretty landscape near my corporate digs, wouldn’t you say?
 
Emily- I can’t get over it. I think you’ve been leading two lives. Al the corporate people out their in the lobby seemed to recognize you. I think they were afraid of you. You really do run Agaccio Enterprises as well as Agaccio Insane Asylum, don’t you?
 
Louis- I don’t manage a loony bin. That’s my dream. Except you’re part of it; you were real when I made love to you and I transported you here. I’m very confused.
 
Emily- Usually people are most unreal when we make love to them. It’s strangers who make us sane in spite of ourselves. You only made love to me to test out whether I existed, I suppose.
 
Louis- It was one of the central reasons. I also find you very attractive. I’ve had visions of making love to you innumerable times before, of course.
 
Emily- Did you like making love to me in reality, even though it was sanity inside a loony bin?
 
Louis- Love if you aren’t crazy tends to be disappointing. It’s also cluttered. I think you made me a little bonkers. I enjoyed it too much.
 
Emily- You seem to be very upset while we were in bed. Then you had a spasm while we were driving here in the car. Was that your dream too?
 
Louis- I had visions that I was hounded by the IRS for skimming money off the crazy house funding; I was going to fake my death to get them off my trail. I needed a body; I looked around in the schizophrenic ward for one. Somehow I seemed to know that people are always dropping dead there.

 
Emily- That’s true; they are. It doesn't sound like a dream. (The phone rings.) It’s probably for you.
 
Louis- It’s Jackie Kennedy. She wants a new plastic pecker.
 
Emily- You know Jackie Kennedy?
 
Louis- Mostly as a client; we weren’t lovers long. Somebody has to manage her portfolio. (He picks up the phone.) Hi Jackie... General Orlandini?...Yes, of course...the guns have to go to both sides, even the uniforms; we have hordes of tailors who have to make a living..of course we are catering it; the guerrillas and the government battalions will have the same rancid food. It’s mostly stuff left over from the trash bin in back of fast food hamburgers joints and a lot of your brother-in-law’s produce; by the way he makes a hell of a potato salad...there will be a lot of money to be made in the whorehouses; don’t dismiss the dollar of a customer in a big brothel just because you don’t like sex too much yourself...we’ll have negotiations after about three years. The geography will look the same; the maps might be changed a little...the whole war will be covered by our people alone; the world’ll think it’s sort of like a movie...(He hangs up.) Wrong number.
 
Emily- You can't fool me; that was General Orlandini, wasn’t it? You’re in bed with the worst warlord on the planet. God, what is with these Orlandinis? We used to have a bunch of the nice one’s steal like crazy from us at the insane asylum. Goddamn it, you’re killing people by the carload; you ought to be at least a little bit decreet about it.
 
Louis- I am, Emily, an honorable man. Unfortunately, peace is the worst calamity that can happen to a country if it is excellent in a private life. America hasn’t had any real enemies since 1945 and nobody believes in the Cold War but three people in the State Department an one old lady who cleans the latrines there; peace been divesting to us. Nothing is more poisonous than true victory; if you don’t have foes, you get soft, crazy and degenerate. If you make them up bad guys it isn’t good enough; you know in your heart it isn’t the real thing.
 
Emily- I’ve never hard such crap; how real is this war you’re running through General Orlandini?
 
Louis- It’s third rate stuff. Just a small colony we divided into north and south, or maybe east and west, I forget which. What am I supposed to do, claim we’re all haunted by the devil? Nobody believes that either including myself. Look, honey, I love this country, I’m as much of a patriot as you are, Emily; I just probably have a different view of it than you do. You left wing people want to turn the planet into a hospital, pretend we’re all sick and you can cure us with therapy. What good is that? It’s communism for the insane.

 
Emily- You used to talk very differently once. You were all for rampant insanity. What happened to your principles, hope and enthusiasm?
 
Louis- You’re dreaming; I was always for embracing nature. I love Creation. You left wing nutniks think you can create peace and felicity with convincing people they’re bonkers, running a theocracy of lunatics from birth to death. Emily, Christianity and Islam tried that except they said people were sinful. Look what happened; the ones who could se through them ran everything in three weeks. I’m an honest patriot who has a respect for humanity. I accept they get angry, want a war or two, need a roll in the gutter, kill a few people in a sack or get plastered in a brothel here and there.
 
Emily- You do kill people for money. You’re a thug.
 
Louis- I don’t need the money; I’m rich. If I knew how to live in peace I’d do it, honey. I accept the human race: you don’t.
 
Emily- Well, I don’t have any opinion at all, really. I just work at an insane asylum; I don’t believe in any of it. I smile and take the money; maybe I’m worse than you.
 
Louis- I’ve spent my life hearing that, Emily. People tell me that in slaughterhouses, death row hangings, wars and marriages. Everybody is there to lie, grin and walk off with the swag. I don’t believe it. They want all sides of evil: the malice, the theft and its treasures, the smiling hypocrisy. You want to bake the whole universe into a nut case; take your life seriously.
 
Emily- What of it? A hospital isn’t the worst place in the world even if it’s more like a prison when they lock you in. The food is lousy; you never starve. The beds are filled with bugs but it’s better than the floor. You’re catering and costuming artificial genocides while you’re running an insane asylum on the side. Are you moralizing about me? I’m a whore; I will do anything for money. Language has escaped describing you; you are beyond English. Maybe even beyond German.
 
Louis- You’re filled with self-loathing. You hate yourself and your whole species, probably life itself, Emily; all presets do.
I love life, America and the universe. If I didn’t cater a war everyone on both sides would drop dead of hunger. If my tailors didn’t make uniforms they’d be massacring people naked. You couldn’t show a war like that on television; it would be like pornography about death. (The phone rings. Louis answers it.) Send him up. (He hand up the hone and looks at Emily. It’s Lyndon Johnson. I wonder what he wants.
 

Emily- Maybe he wants to fire you. The war is going badly; everybody hates it. The Welfare people hate him too; they want to go on strike, though I’m sure what that means exactly. The soldiers don’t fight; they’ll kill any officer that tells them to attack the Viet Cong. The kids can’t stand him; he’s an adult. Old people don’t like him; he isn’t retired. Women think he’s a brute and a villain. He’s running half a war, half a loony bin, the biggest litigation arena on the plant for both sides and they’re all of them falling apart.
 
Louis- Maybe he needs better middle management. We ought to stop hiring people named Orlandini.
 
Emily- Maybe there’s another way to keep order. What about a big global playground from birth to death?
 
Louis- We’ve got that for kids. It’s called our educational system. Everybody brat in it is illiterate. In twenty years they’ll be teachers; even the principals will be dunces. In a few decades we’ll have a country of people who can't think either. Luckily everyone has a resident psychologist on staff to take care of the mayhem.
 
Emily- What else do people like? What if we ran movies at them twenty four hours a day?
 

Louis- They’re get fat, covered with bed sores and pass all over their underwear. We could get servants from Peru to change their clothes, of course.
 
Emily- We could always make beds that are also toilets. Goddamn it, what else have we got a technology for? (Enter Lyndon Johnson.)
 
Lyndon- I’ve got bad news, Louis, a brother you know nothing about who is head of Agaccio Insane Asylum, has apparently died. That’s why his assistant, Fabrizio Orlandini, has told my own chief of staff, Colonel Zephyro Orlandini. We’re looking for his body; we can't find it. I think the IRS chased him into a terminal depression because he was still counterfeiting old bubble gum wrappers. These people are worse than the Angel of Death.
 
Louis- I have a brother? You’re crazy. What brother?
 

Lyndon- Look, I guess you are going to be very upset by what I have to tell you, Louis. You had a Siamese twin brother that was separated from you at birth; I’ve checked with the Chicago bospital where the operation was performed. That’s why you’ve had all these dreams of running a crazy house; he was the king of lunatics. Your brother Lucien was a guy who was going to expand his vision of life from a nut house to the whole planet. He was invisible like you, a real power broker on the left; nobody knew about him anymore than they know about you, Louis. I think he’s no longer with us. I’m sorry to bring the news. It would be very upsetting for anyone, I think, to learn you had a Siamese twin who had just dropped dead.
 
Emily- You mean you’re not Lucien? I’ve been sleeping with a stranger!
 
Louis- Not quite; my brother and I obviously exchanged our inner fantasy life two ways, Emily; you’ve been making love to two aspects of the same person, my dear. Well, it explains everything; not that I’m in love with attractive explanations, of course; they’re usually the most false. If its true though, I[‘m not crazy, just leading a very real but grotesque life.
 
Emily- There was no way to guess. There was no difference between you in bed. You made love exactly like Lucien.

Louis- You probably say that about every lover in the armies of men you’ve slept with in a normal American adult life. I can't understand that, Emily; lovemaking is not as inventive as politics. Laden, you’re president; you have better things to do than to bring me news. That’s what the post office is for. Why the personal appearance here?
 
Lyndon- I don’t want anybody to know what we’re gong to say to each other as you may have guessed. If I had invited you to the Oval Room we have a tape recorder there even I can't turn off. We need some privacy.
 
Emily- I hope you’re not going to kill me because I know a few things more than I should, Mr. President.
 
Lyndon- Don’t be silly, Emily; I’m a politician. I don’t kill people I make deals. I have a genius for talking civilly even to my enemies. Not that you are one. You can stay; you might even be helpful to us. You knew all about Lucien’s life and connections; his network of psychologists in education, Arts, and the justice system; Louis doesn't. I know most of them were named Orlandini; that’s not good enough. Louis, I need you to take over Lucien’s life until I can figure out another way to run things. I need you over at Agaccio Insane Asylum to manage the left wing as well as you have the right wing; Emily can tell you all the ticks of mechanics, I’m sure. Can you do that for me?
 
Louis- Sure, for awhile. Make certain this is temporary, Lyndon. I work hard enough setting up and running wars all over the planet, selling trivial amusement machines, building factories that close down in five years like a cheap American car. I don’t’ thin I can manage an insane asylum at the same time and not feel very tired.
 
Lyndon- I understand that. Being president isn’t too dissimilar to what I am asking you to do, I can tell you. Give it a year and a half.

Louis- Given how things have turned out for you, Lyndon, I’d think you were very unhappy with both of us.
 
Lyndon- Not really. I’ve learned things I haven’t wanted to know; that’s always not pleasant, is it?
 
Emily- You probably need more brilliant colonels and material therapists, Mr. President. We’ve been hiring Orlandinis too long. You might do something about the help at the bottom too. I’d imagine the war is filled with solders who aren’t much better than our latrine attendants at the loony bin. I don’t blame them, off course; it’s nice to have a gun but it’s stupid to risk your life for a night in aa Saigon whorehouse; besides the pay is lousy.
 
Lyndon- Yeah, that’s always what we say in Washington when things get dismal, don’t we? Give us better people, more money. It’s what the politicians like me will say this time too, at least in public. That’s not what’s wrong though. It’s the direction of America. You can’t fix it with a band aid. We are a country in a road that looked awfully good for awhile; it sure beat starvation, kings, priests and trying to kill tigers with stone clubs.
 
Emily- America sure is better. I have old relatives who tell me what they came from. They would never go back.
 
Lyndon- We never will either; it is better in America. My dear, the New World is a superior to the old one. The United States is as good as it gets for not living like a poltroon. Still we lions and tigers here, sticky pits one falls into, lairs of unimaginable animals we never dreamt existed when we came over the Atlantic Ocean.
 
Louis- It’s nothing a few wars and loony bins can’t cure, Lyndon. Just be patient. I’ll be busy the next few years put half the world into battle, the other half into solitary confinement in a crazy house.
 
Lyndon- They have to choose solitary confinement. That’s the key. You don’t need guards and wardens then.
 
Lucien- Do they opt for battle too? They must he just as crazy?
 
Lyndon- Being crazy with a gun isn’t as bad as being nuts without one. When you have a weapon people are more polite.
 
Lucien- We all want that, don’t we? So one will hate the enemy over the hill, the other will feel even more fury against their parents, children, lovers and landlords. You are going to be happy with the results, just as you learned to like a plastic pecker.
 

Lyndon- I wish I were as sure of anything as you experts are. I guess it’s built into being a priest or a general to take up a stance of certainty, isn’t it? We politicians are never enthusiasts; we can't afford to have even a small faith system. I know how nature shifts it’s arenas of war invisibly, Louis. Sometimes it’ll come at you like a plague or a tornado; most of the time it’s involved in guerilla action like these Viet Cong you hear about. They are agents of nature. They appear, take out of a few soldiers sitting over lunch thinking of the twelve year old lovers they have in Saigon; then they disappear into the bush. They live on cockroaches and stay in tunnels deep in the Earth for weeks. You lose heart, you get tired and you go someplace else. I think we’re going to do that, Louis.
 
Emily- You’re depressed, Mr. President. You should take a day off and watch daytime television.
 
Lyndon- You don’t understand. Our problem isn’t that we don’t do things well enough or spend enough money doing them; it’s that we traveled up the wrong path in the first place. It looked good from the other side of the Atlantic. We think like poor men, Emily. We want to get as far away from the Old World as possible so we make as much money, buy as many things as we can including stuff we don’t need, eat too much rather than too little, go into debt because only the rich can do that, let ourselves be entertained constantly because we remember only kings could hire such an endless clown show, throw out good food in the garbage because princes one drop big bones with meat on them on the floor so their dogs can devour them, and even make dying unbelievably expensive.
 
Emily- We don’t hurt anybody. There are worse vices, Mr. President.
 
Lyndon- You don’t understand. Our problem is that we don’t know how we are or what we could be though we have the freedom here in the United States to be anything or anybody. We even name our cities and towns after European or Indian villages. We are still half in the Old World, pretending to be rogue princes like right wing or priests without gods like our left wing. We have taken a trial that looked good fro the first few miles but has led us after a while into dreams and lies.
 
Louis- Well, that’s interesting. What do you want to do about it?
 
Emily- You’re right; my grandmother was a Mongolian, Mr. President; she told me how lousy life was out on the Steppes. It sure was cold at night. The blueberry picking never ended. You started to hate blueberries.
 
Louis- My mother used to tell us the same thing about garlic.
 
Emily- You’re our leader, Mr. President. You can lead us to another place where we Americans can really be ourselves.
 

Lyndon- That’s the trouble; I can’t do it. I’m a poor boy and you aren’t any better than I am. Beyond that I’m a politician; I just make deals. I don’t’ think. You Corsican brothers were even poorer than I was. You remember somehow the life of princes and priests better than I do. You’re a third generation Mongolian, Emily; you aren’t far enough away from yogurt, horses and sacking cities to think too imaginatively about the utility of freedom either.

Louis- What do you want to do, Lyndon?
 
Lyndon- I don’t know. I can't leave the Vietnam war or any other war. Orlandini and my own people would kill me. They killed Jack easily enough. I can't tell the nut house gang they have to grow up and have mature obligations. Being crazy, helpless and expensive is a franchise like being free and sane.
We’re living in a funny time in history, Louis. As long as the wold is filled with poor and very desperate people they are going to come our way and fill our country with themselves whenever they can. They will take one look at their own land such as your mother did in Corsica, Louis, or your grandmother in Mongolia, Emily, or my grandfather who escaped a hanging from Scotland, they saw how do I overthrow the local chief and kick the priest into the river, and they realize it is easier to disappear one night with their family and show up in the bottom of cargo ship somehere on the docks of an American city. It’s harder to start a revolution than to get here and they come here, millions of them; they will keep on coming no matter what they do. They will want what our ancestors wanted: a life as far from where they were as possible. As long as we travel down that American country road we will give it to them.
It isn’t much but it sure beats living in the old places. Until the whole world changes and most of it is as sell off as we are it isn’t going to change here. We are going to keep on walking.
It means that every time you start thinking you want something else besides a little more money or seconds at the chow line you are going to have make a very private, secret decision which nobody else is going to understand. That’s said but interesting, isn’t it?
 
Louis- You could take us out of Vietnam. We don’t need it; it’d be better off with all the foreigners out of there, Lyndon. You could move out of colonizing most of the world too. We can bring back the schools system and drop Welfare though it won’t be easy. We don’t need to support all the rightwing and left wing Orlandinis; they’ve made enough money off us.
 

Lyndon- I made my deals, Louis; I wish I could. A politician lives on his word. He doesn’t go back to the people he’s put into place and say, gentlemen, I thought with all my heart on Tuesday this was how things should go but today is Thursday. If he says that, they all either kill you or call up their lawyers and you need a battery of legal counselors to buy chewing gum. I’m working with a bunch of people who are businessmen, not politicians. They run everything like a tight corporation. If you don’t come through for the, they fire you. If you do what they want they give you money but not power. It works for selling canned peaches but not running even a small town volunteer fire department.
They don’t understand the art of government at al, Louis. Managing a country means you have a few people working for you that you can count on, a few that are better off locked up, and everybody else out there an army of mediocre incompetents needing a safe place to eat a few cold hot dogs and stay out of the rain. You work mostly with them if you’re a leader. You can't take them any more than one step or even a half step either; they won’t follow you. They lead you; you don’t lead them. Nobody wanted this war but a few honchos; all those bums I have out there I have to rule aren’t going to be happy when I tell them they have to go to Saigon, eat noodles, sleep with children and shoot at people who eat dogs they never even knew existed. People don’t like to travel. It’s not wrong or evil to them; it’s uncomfortable, like a splinter in your foot. They won’t do if because they just don’t feel like it; they’d rather sit in a chair and watch television. I can understand that; I’d feel the same way myself. If I tell them to do it they’ll ignore me or worse. That’s power, Louis. Yeah I can print money and kill people with impunity as a consolation, but it ain’t much when you think of what I wanted to do.
 
Emily- You could blow up the White House and Congress and say they did it. You could get real Vietnamese to do it too; organize a group of them to kill off most of the American government including yourself; you are the enemy after all. Make the attack on America legitimate or seem legitimate. Then people would have reason to fight these bastards.
 
Lyndon- We thought of that, believe me. All we could come up with was Quemoy and Matsu, these damned dinky little islands you wouldn’t want to sit on if you were a tired old tern. Nobody in Congress wants to die; I don’t either. We used to be people who would take more risks than we do now, Emily. I live by my word, honey;; my power comes from being wrong and sticking to my mistakes. Maybe the next president can do what you say; I can’t.
 
Emily- Then why don’t you quit?
 
Lyndon- I can’t resign; this isn’t a chess game or a corporate disaster. A president doesn't say, I’ve had enough; that’s it, folks. I am on my way to the ranch. I am going to be the biggest stud and honcho in my little adobe hacienda and wait for the Angel of Death come for and get me riding a pale horse. He waits till other people say that to him and mean it.
 
Emily- You could say I’m not running again.
 
Lyndon- I think I will say that. Then I will mosey off to the old corral.

Maybe the next guy will do what I can't do. He’ll have been bought by different people who are unhappy with me, why not? I don’t know who the hell that might be though. We don’t have too many politicians anymore with a sense of history. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln have come and gone. My political pappy FDR had it but I only got it after Jack got bashed. It didn’t do me any good though; I’d made my deals.
Maybe I’m better off being a failure as president though, Emily. In Congress you don’t do anything really tragic even when you are pushing for his and that; you are one of a crazy crowd. You never fall on your face and you never get any understanding. Knocking off Jack and running this country has been good for me. I got a little sense in me I never would have had if I would have stayed in the Capitol building.
I do have a plan though. It might work for us if it won’t do much for America. Louis, I think the Orlandinis have been lying to us; I don’t think your brother is dead.
 
Louis- Really.

Lyndon- Only you would know. You both dream of each other. You can help me find him.
 
Louis- If I can, what do you want him for, counterfeiting?
 

Lyndon- No. He’s a rogue. He may have better ideas on how to lead America than I do. I want to bring him into my cabinet.
 
Emily- Louis, do you know where Lucien is?
 
Louis- I am concentrating. He is somewhere. He’s alive. I’m looking at a place through his eyes that I’ve never seen before.
Emily- He’s not making love to somebody, is he?
 
Louis- No. It’s a public bathroom. He’s defecating.
 
Lyndon- What does it look like?
 
Louis- Porcelain. Very clean. It smells bad.
 
Lyndon- we need it find him. Can you locate him spatially?
 

Louis- I’ve never tried; now that I know he exists I think so. Let me take this plastic pecker and see whether I can locate him. (He walks around the room like a dowser with the plastic pecker.) He just left the bathroom. He’s walking into a rather dingy room with pictures of porno stars on the wall. I can hear rock and roll music. He’s strolling over to the phone and dialing a number. It’s my number. (The phone rings. Louis picks it up.) Hello, Lucien.... Didn’t know either. I think Lyndon guessed but didn’t tell us. Politicians are like that; one of their chief virtues is discretion....No, I don’t think it’s Dolfigure’s disease, whatever that is. Not every characterological quality in life is pathology, Lucien, just most of them...No, I won’t tell them...Let’s meet very soon. I’m sure we have a lot to share with each other besides our inner life and lovers....You what?...You made love to Emily too when I did?..Well, that’s good to hear; she’s am real woman...she wouldn’t want to betray you with another man...yes, we do so many things by proxy; you’ll enjoy the restaurant I’m going to tonight, I think...Do you like to drink; I’ve just come across a shipment from France of a vintage year of Armanac that I think might amuse you...yes, I’ve been sleeping with Emily too, long before I actually met her. Some experiences are beyond language, Lucien. We can only talk about banalities. We don’t have any room for two headed people in America. Anything that’s really idiosyncratic to us is beyond English really; maybe it makes more sense in Chinese...Yes, I know, we’ve been voting twice too...(He hangs up the hone. )I know where he is. Since we are talking about private solutions here, none of what he’s done or thought is going to help you, Lyndon.
 
Lyndon- I think I can appreciate that.
 
Louis- He says not to worry about sleeping with me. I’m relay acting by proxy for him in a very literal way, Emily.
 
Emily- I don’t know whether I like that. I only slept with two men at once when I was a Marxist.
 
Lyndon- I sure as hell wouldn’t enjoy going to bed with two women. For all I know I do, of course. they show up, they look the same, but with cosmetics being what they are these days, who knows; I might have been in the sack with armies in disguise. It happens when you wear uniforms.
 
Louis- I’ve been intimate with you for a long time, Emily. Maybe you’ve never had the feeling you’re haunted by Corsican ghosts. The most clever spirits are the ones you never know are in the room.
 
Emily- I might want to sleep wit the two of you physically. It would be a change.
 
Lyndon- Keep me out of the bedroom, folks; I’ve got Rita. One is more than enough for me. I had the feeling when I was in bed with my wife that sometimes I was also making love to her mother. And her grandmother. I also had that last week with Rita. Maybe it isn’t the same thing.
 
Emily- Would you like to be in bed with me and your brother at the same time?
 

Louis- That would be one of life’s more extraordinary miracles, wouldn’t it? He doesn’t want to see anybody. As you say, Lyndon; our solutions in this moment in history have to be private and secret. I am going to see my brother very soon. I don’t want to be followed.
 
Lyndon- As a politician and American, I can respect that. Louis, I just need you to double as him for about a year and a half till I change some corporation and loony bin connections. I have no problem accepting your brother’s choices, Louis. Of course, the next guy might feel a little different. I think this country is going to move to the Right, don’t you? The army’s getting strong, knocking off Jack was like closing down a big party. Agaccio Insane Asylum as a planetary vision is definitely going to be something he is going to have to back or try to destroy.
 
Emily- Mr, President what happens if the next fellow doesn’t have a better plan for America?
 
Lyndon- I don’t know. The problem is, Emily we have no real enemies. We can go as crazy or got as bloody as we want to. The only thing that stands between most people and their excesses is somebody or something else. Who the hell is coming up to challenge us if we want to get really nuts or warlike? Europe is a tired fossil. They still think they have kings and high priests and it’s the Jurassic Age. Communism is an insane asylum without tranquilizers. Japan’s been imitating us, Asiatic empire and all but they don’t have an army; neither does Germany. China might give us a tussle but I don’t see how anybody from there can rule the world. Darwin thought we were monkeys but these crazy Reds think we’re insects. We’re too damned successful, Emily; unless we get a statesman with his own private army following me it’ll just get worse.
 
Louis- What about aliens from Mars?
 
Lyndon- Louis, we can always hope.
 
Emily- You can make them up too. They can attack the White House.
 
Lyndon- Nobody would believe it. (Exit Lyndon. Emily and Louis.)
 

 
Act Two
 

(The set is a little different. The office is replaced by a 60s looking lair as one might have seen in apartments in the Lower East Side of New York or Haight Ashberry in San Francisco. At the side and slightly apart from the main set is the same shard of the Oval Office, spot lighted. This could also be done on an empty stage with lights.
Enter Lyndon Johnson. He sings.)
 
A cowboy ain’t lonely near the Rio Grande
He goes to Mexicali for a one night stand
Dances with a floozie to a whorehouse band
Yippie-ay-oh-kay-ay!
 
I love Apache women with their caramel skin
Mexican bitches; I like them thin.
I don’t know where I[‘m going; I know were I’ve been
Yippie-ay-oh-kay-ay!
 
(The phone rings. Looking glum, he picks it up.) Monsieur de Chateau Renaud. I’m honored. I never thought I’d ever get a direct call from you. I’ve heard from your go-fers, of course. Most of them seemed to be named Orlandini. What can I do for you?...You’d like me to say I’m not going to run again?...I’d be happy to, believe me...you go somebody coming in that can fix the mess I left behind me here in America?...Who?... Richard Nixon?...Well, he’s a poor boy like me; I hope you’re happy with him...I’ll do it tonight...yeah, I’m going to miss being President. Most of all I’m going to be really sad because order people to be killed and I can't print money...yeah, I was always easier to talk to than Jack...I’m a politician.
I get along with everybody...That’s what FDR always said to you? Well, I guess I learned a thing or two from him along the way. You’ve taught me a few things too...Don’t hesitate to drop by Monsieur; we have some good Texas cooking here; lobster and marshmallows mostly. I just get enough of my mammy’s Texas recipe; you won’t be unhappy with the wine either; I stomped on the grapes myself...sure, I took off my shoes.....Talk to you later. (He hangs up and dials a number. (Hello Rita.. You can watch me on television; I’m quitting tonight...
No, I’m not resigning; presidents don’t resign. They stay in there and get tarred and feathered until the Inauguration Day of the next fellow; you’d have to be caught in burglary or something to resign if you had this job, believe me; Americans like a president to hang in there....they like to beat on the same fellow for four years....yeah, we kill them occasionally but we never fire them...,look, I want toe celebrate getting the ell out of here big time if you can join me at the motel...yeah, good Chinese take out, bourbon and lots of ice. Ten o’clock. See you then. (He hangs up.) Hot dog!

(He exits. The phone rings in the apartment. Lucien enters. He is dressed as a 60s hippie, is smoking a joint; he looks very confident in a way he didn’t in the Agaccio Insane Asylum.) Peace....Emily?...Hi, been a while...You’re downstairs? How’d you find me? Louis help you?...No?... that”s good; I told him I need to be left alone by my old life for a long while...You saw me in a porno movie and guessed where I was? That’s right; I was an extra for a goof one of them; I didn’t have to do anything; I was just furniture...sure, come right up. No problem. (He hangs up the hone. LBJ enters and dials a number. Lucien’s phone rings again. He picks it up.)
 
Lyndon- Lucien? We had you followed. We spotted you by accountant, really. Nobody should be on the lam and play the lead in erotic movies. Yeah, we saw you at J. Edge Hoover’s house; he’s got the biggest porno collection in the country. He and Clyde Tolson like to watch them and then disappear into the bedroom.
 
Lucien- Really.
 
Lyndon- They tape everything. They have a sense of history. God, there’s nothing I hate more in this world that right wing fags; I think queers should all be communists and vegetarians, but I put up with them. They’re dong a good job for cocksuckers, don’t you think? Anyway, there you were rolling around with seven little girls about twelve in the mud; I’m sure you remember the film.
 
Lucien- It was just a hobby for me. I think of it a an episode, like a sudden craze for spaghetti.
 
Lyndon- Yeah, I had one for marshmallow brownies myself. I’ve been there, Lucien. Look, I need you to come to Washington and help me write my speech; I’m telling the American people tonight I’m not going to run again; I want them to know why.
 
Lucien- Really? Why? I don’t know, Lyndon. Looks as if you got a good set up there to me.
 
Lyndon- It isn’t paradise. The army is unhappy because we don’t have any military objectives to win the war; they want to pulverize the gooks and get out. I tell them if we do that we’ll have a Depression but they don’t care; they can't keep on telling their soldiers to run up hills and die anymore. They aren’t going. They’re sitting in Saigon and sleeping with little girls like you, shooting heroin and killing any officer who tell them to do otherwise. You ought to make a movie set in Vietnam.
 
Lucien- I’m out of that business. Anyway, it was just a goof, like bubble gum. I like mature women now. Look, why don’t you start another war? You could always fight Cambodia? Who’s there, Cambodians?
 

Lyndon- How the hell do I know? I suppose Cambodians live in Cambodia, unless they’ve come here and opened up restaurants. Our soldiers would do the same thing there. If there are Cambodians in Cambodia, they’ve got twelve year old girls and heroin too. That’s why our infantry wants, not war. You’ve got to think of something else, Lucien.
 
Lucien- Well then, why does a war have to be real? You could march them all around the South Pole, looking for bad guys.
 
Lyndon- Well, maybe. We’re scot of accustomed to the Vietnam War. I guess we could do something in Antarctica, maybe. It’s cold there, isn’t it? Look, it isn’t just the war. I had this idea for making an assault on poverty. God knows I had personal reason to take this up, I know. I was a bottom dog myself once, out on the street. Then I discovered politicks. I was going to make everybody rich ad happy. That turned out to be a bust, I can tell you. People have a few bucks but they’re still miserable. What am I going to tell them, we’ll give you even more money?
 
Lucien- What makes people happy?
 
Lyndon- I don’t know; I thought you knew; you’re the psychologist.
 
Lucien- Look, even sex doesn't make people feel good. It just quiets them down for a while. They keel over and go to sleep. Food doesn't do it either. Otherwise nobody would ever leave a first class pancake house. Death might make people absolutely delighted; we don’t know, Lyndon. We can't ask them. They’re beyond us.
 
Lyndon- You want me to run for president and offer people death? Lucien, I’m a politician, not a general. People have to believe I have remedies for their headaches, that I am going to do something good for them or they’ll find somebody else who will make them a hell of a promise they can’t turn down. I need a new program or it is time for me to make my way to the last roundup. What have you got? I don’t want to be sedated.
 
Lucien- Lyndon, my goal as a psychologist was to make lunatics quiet. I will tell you the truth; I never promised even myself anything more than that. My hope is to be a long way from a crazy house and feel maybe tolerably not so lousy. I have some ideas about how to make a business out of insanity, that’s all. You lock people up, sedate them, and get a cut from the caterers. You’re brother in law makes the cole slaw and potato salad. What good is that to you?
 
Lyndon- Nothing. This is what you went to school for?
 
Lucien- That and the hazelnut flavored coffee at the Student Union.
 
Lyndon You got any fancy pills that can make people feel good? Maybe I could give them out by the millions. If I could put a smile on the faces of Americans they’d love me, war or no war, Depression or no Depression; I wouldn’t have to quit.
 

Lucien- I’ve got pills like that, all experimental stuff of course, but I could put them into production in a week if I called people in pharmaceutical companies I know. I own part of them too. Of course, there are side effects. The best of them give diarrhea; they’ll spend their life happy but on the can. After that it’s weird hungers for pasta. Sometimes in the terminal stage they can't get enough pizza with extra pepperoni.
 
Lyndon- I’ve heard enough. I’m quitting. I’ll send the presidential plane to pick you up. You’ll be here in a few hours. This is about patriotism, Lucien. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.
 
Lucien- Nothing I can't do better tomorrow. This Bohemian life is all about facing eternity and having patience with it. I’m entering a world without borders, Lyndon.
 
Lyndon- Maybe I’ll join you. After the Senate anything looked good. I don’t know what a guy does after he’s president. I’m not much good at the old corral, I can tell you that. Cows don’t like me. They’re always pissing on my shoes.
 
Lucien- we could use you in porno movies. We’ll talk later. I’ll be at the airport in a couple of hours. Where are you, by the way, Washington?
 
Lyndon- No, I’m at my ranch in Texas. You’ll be able to fly here in an hour. I’ll show you around the corral. I’ve got more cattle on it than I can eat, godamn it. I’ve got a steak and marshmallow recipe that might change your life.
 
Lucien- We used to eat steak and marshmallows in Corsica, my mother used to tell me.
 
Lyndon- Really. I thought it was a Texas thing. I guess you never knew. Maybe all our cooks are from Corsica.
 
Lucien- Nobody eats it in Corsica anymore. They discovered catsup.

London- Well, we had catsup. We discovered marshmallows.
 
Lucien- I guess that’s the different between the United Stats and Corsica. See you later, Lyndon.

(Lucien hangs up the phone. LBJ shrugs, hangs up his phone, and exits. Lucien looks around, adjusts some of the magazines on the table and takes down a few of the pictures on the wall of naked porno stars, replaces them with portraits of Asian gurus. The phone rings again. He picks it up.) Louis... you’re in town? Close by? That’s wonderful. Guess who just called me up. Emily. Yeah, she found me in a porno movie; I got careless, I guess. I was in disguise; I was wearing a golden mask. Obviously Emily recognized me. I forgot what women remember.., You’re tired of being both of us? Yeah, I can appreciate that. Well. Lyndon is going to get out of power soon; my guess is the big boys will pick Nixon. They sure as ell didn’t want Bobby; they knock him off quickly enough, didn’t they?
God, those Kenenedys are taking a beating from the people who run this outfit. I heard they took out Joe Junior in World War Two. That’s a lot of dead Kennedys.
I wouldn’t issue a life insurance policy on Ted, would you?...You’re really tired...well, look, why don’t you take my place here for awhile...I could use a vacation from living like this. You’d be surprised how quickly you get accustomed to armies of garages women, grass, rock and roll, and talking to the close messengers of God...it might be addictive; pleasure can make you a slave...the clothes are in the closet; the LSD and cocaine is in the bottom drawer.
You dress like me and nobody will know the difference; there is no difference. We’re the same. You’re already dressed like me, you want to be a hippie too? That’s funny.
Yeah, as Lyndon used to say, we need a private solution...He’s okay; he’s going to retire to his ranch and watch the weeds grow. He’s had some tough luck as president. He wanted to be another FDR; he’ll be lucky if they match him with Calvin Coolidge... Yeah, at least he wasn’t a Kennedy. Things can always get worse, can’t they? No, there’s nobody even near here named Orlandini. (The bell to the door rings.) Talk to you later. He goes to answers it. Emily comes in. He gives her a quick kiss.) How are you, honey? You look terrific. Did you get nose job, a chin tuck or something?
 
Emily- No, I’m just older; it’s character.
 
Lucien- I can never tell the difference between progress and decay. It a kind of irrational optimism. That’s what makes me left wing, honey.
 
Emily- I know you very well, Lucien. Are you happy living like this?
 
Lucien- Happy? I don’t know about that. I’m lighter, Emily. I’ve been on an ideological diet. I don’t’ believe in a thousand things I used to think weren’t arguable.
 
Emily- You don’t suspect I have any diseases anymore, do you?
 
Lucien- I think you’re beyond my diagnosis.
 
Emily- I’ve been questioning myself lately, Lucien. I think I might be nuts.
 
Lucien- Really. You’re walking the Earth, competing with tigers, Venus fly traps and cockroaches. You’re doing okay.
 
Emily- Am I? I’ve spent my life doing things for money.
 

Lucien- You must think you need it.
 
Emily- I don’t.
 
Lucien- You’re not here for garnering a few bucks, Emily. You really like me, I think.
 
Emily- I don’t know why I’m attracted to you, Lucien. You want to diminish me by telling me I have all kinds of lunacies.
 
Lucien- Not anymore. I don’t need that kind of protection though I wouldn’t turn down an army of bodyguards. Look, Emily, suppose I could have imposed by force, cunning and guile a world hospital. What would I have achieved? Was I happy directing a loony bin? Suppose the whole universe were a cosmic bug house, would it be any different?
 
Emily- No, it’d still be the Agaccio Insane asylum.
 
Lucien- Right. I’[m not entirely stupid, Emily. They can't get me twice. Do you think after being Lyndon’s man running the American left, I would be fooled again? I know sex, drugs and rock and roll are going to be fun but they aren’t going to solve anything. It’s just going to make us tired.
 
Emily- I don’t want to spend my life making life, dancing and getting high, Lucien; I’m glad to hear you say that.
 
Lucien- Are you planning to move in?
 
Emily- I was thinking of living domestically with you for awhile, nothing formal, Lucien.
 

Lucien- That’s good. Marriage these days is like inviting a ghost into your bedroom named Washington. Not the president, he’s dead; the whole damned government. Next thing you know I’ll have to show papers to take a dump. I didn’t need a license to be born; I sure as hell won’t have to get one to die. No paperwork, please, honey; it’s hell on trees.
 
Emily- I couldn’t marry you anyway even if I wanted to. We’d have to get Louis in on the certificate. There’s no room for two husbands on the form; believe me. I know; I was married three times and I looked.
 
Lucien- I’[m glad to hear that. It’s hard being a two headed being, Emily. I’ve kept it within me long enough, my whole life maybe even more. At least there’s some perks to it; I can never really be married even if one of us signs a certificate. I could never really die either. Whoever goes first, one of us will still be walking the Earth.
 

Emily- You know, we could have an interesting menage a troi, Lucien. One of you could be my husband; the other my lover.
 
Lucien- What if we both wanted to be your husband or lover; that’s more likely.
 
Emily- You could take turns I wouldn’t know the difference.
 
Lucien- We would. Whom you think you’re sleeping with is irrelevant.
 
Emily- You’re still pretty dismissive; at least you’ve given up telling people they have imaginary diseases.
 
Lucien- Didn’t my brother do the same thing?
 
Emily- I guess he did in way He was always offering people a plastic pecker.
 
Lucien- That was his business. Diagnosing people as nuts wasn’t just my profession, Emily; it was a way of socializing. I’ve given that up; I just smoke grass now and think of a universe without borders.
 
Emily- You haven’t become some kind of Asiatic fundamentalist, have you?
 
Lucien- No, I don’t think much of Asia religions really. What did they produce? A lot of naked poor people. What good are they? If they ever become popular here they’ll just make Americans impoverished. Don’t sum me up with a banality you take out of the magazines, Emily. I might be on a path beyond thought or language.
 
Emily- I’ve heard enough. (She embraces him.) Let’s make love.
 
Lucien- I don’t know whether we have time for a session in bed worthy of you, Emily. I have to meet a plane and go to Washington in two hours. Lyndon’s quitting.
 
Emily- Resigning? No president resigned. They’d have to commit treason or maybe run a major safe cracking ring for that. Or sleep with a boy scout troupe. They stick it out for years, take their lumps and then go home, unless they get killed like Jack.
 
Lucien- Lyndon’s not arcking off from the punishment; he can take it. He’s just not going to do it another four years. He wanted to make a speech to the American people about retiring. He trusts me as a word slinger; he wants me to write his speech for him.
 
Emily- That’s very flattering. Why doesn't he rite his own speech? He’s a lawyer. They have to be passably literate.
 

Lucien- He’s a politician now. They don’t think their own thoughts or write anything they say. Otherwise they be voted out of work.
 
Emily- You are one of the worlds great hucksters; he’s got the right man. Well, let’s make love anyway. I wouldn’t be unhappy with a quick one. Where’s the bed? I can't make love on the floor anymore; I have a strained back.
 
Lucien- I don’t have a bed. I sleep on the floor. I revel in the austerity.
 
Emily- Are there any cushions around here?

Lucien- Yes, of course, I’m a civilized person. Do you think I don’t have cushions?
 
Emily- I suppose you’ll want to smoke some grass so you’ll be able to enjoy sleeping we me more intense. Go ahead.
 
Lucien- Actually I’ve come to value sobriety. A little hash doesn’t hurt over breakfast as I read the morning papers of course.
 
Emily- You’ve probably studied all the positions in the Karma Sutra. I hope you don’t expect me to do all these crazy positions; I’m not that limber.
 
Lucien- I only like them missionary position these days. I’ve always been a missionary. Emily. My faith was to promote insanity, of course. I was a preacher in training of sorts.
 
Emily- You’re probably against the war; I don’t know how Lyndon puts up with you.
 
Lucien- No, I’m for a war so stupid that only fools go to fight it on both sides. I don’t blame the Vietnamese for trying to get rid of us. I think any of us that are nuts enough to go there are beyond anything I could have conjured in the insane asylum. Let them go. It’s cheaper than locking them up and keeping them on saltpeter.
 
Emily- I suppose you’ve been indoctrinated into the youth culture. I don’t know whether I can male love to a man that wants to be an acne colored adolescent.
 
Lucien- My ambition is to be middle aged. Even senile I’m tried of attracting people to me because I’m virile and good looking.
 
Emily- I hope you don’t want me to go to a light show revel and dance all night under the strobe lights afterwards. After we make love I just want to keel over in a heap and go to sleep.
 
Lucien- I don’t dance much anymore. It hurts my feet.
 

Emily- I suppose you’ll be meditating on eternity and infinity as I have my orgasm. You’ll be a long way away from me.
 
Lucien- I’d rather think about something less vague.
 
Emily- Well, okay, honey, let’s make love. Where are the cushions? Even the back seat of a Chevrolet has cushions.
 
Lucien- They’re in the closet. I’ll get them in a moment, Emily; just got comfortable in that chair and have some of those macadamia nuts. (The phone rings. Lucien picks it up.) Hello...Robin?...Yeah, I’m in good shape. It’s a nice warm day, the sun is out, I’ve had a good breakfast, I’ve got an old girlfriend here visiting me; we are catching up on a few things...what?...Jim Wrangler quit because the lines were too poetic for him; you want me to star in your new movie?...You should give him some gay scenes; he’d like that... he isn’t really queer, you know; he just as a clot hunger for an ultimate high colonic from God... No, leave the bathhouse scenes out, Robin; I don’t sleep with men, dogs or pigs myself; nothing personal....Look, Robin, I’ve got tremendous respect for your talent, Robin; you’ve made porno into Art; you’ve redeemed even the lowest acts and thoughts from the taint of the gutter; I don’t know whether I have the energy to be the star of your movie these days...I might be limper than you think...Yes, of course I believe in you and your Art...I think you’ll go down in history with Orson Welles and Sam Peckinpaugh...I also think love is more ethical than violence...I’m proud to work with you; I might be in Vietnam killing people...I don’t know whether I can learn a script as easily as I did; I don’t think I can memorize black verse the way I can improvise pure naturalism....all right, Robin, I will take a cameo role; I have to talk to the president in a few hours...yeah, he’s quitting...no, not resigning, just not doing it anymore, letting some new guy take over...he needs me to explain his decision to the American people; call it patriotism...Yeah, I’m flying there in a few hours...You can flash the verse on the screen?...I guess I could stop off and do a few takes’ it’s not in Latin, is it?....whom am I making love to?....really...she’s luscious....yeah, I saw her in that donkey flick...it’s hard to follow any equine but I’ll try....all right, I’ll be by. (He hangs up the phone.) Wait for me, honey, I’ll fly back from Washington in by midnight. We’ll have a hell of a time.
 
Emily- You’re sleeping with whom in his movie?
 
Lucien- Constance Greenback. She’s relay voluptuous. I don’t know how a woman can be as beautiful as she is and only live seventeen years. It’s obscene.
 
Emily- You’d rather sleep with Constance Greenback than make love to me?
 
Lucien- I don’t have any desire for Constance. I hardly know her. We’re peers, colleagues, part of a guild. She’s a professional. We don’t have anything like intimacy.

 
Emily- You’re rather sleep with her than me, Lucien.
 
Lucien- I wouldn’t say that. I’d prefer you. Sometimes you have to do things for Art and history. Robin Finkelstein is one of the premiere movie makers of our age, Emily. His films will be remembered down the millennia as the singular vintage harvest of a decent republican empire. I am not making love when I act in his movies ever; I am an agent of God.
 
Emily- I guess we can forget about the cushions.
 
Lucien- No, we can have quick one, and then I’ll trundle over to Robin’s for the flick. Just don’t wear me out, honey. Maybe I’ll have a milk shake before I get to the studio.
 
Emily- I don’t’ want anything too hasty. You aren’t going to be all that quick with Constance Greenback, are you?
 
Lucien- I will do what Robin wants me to do. Finkelstein is the Rembrandt of the bedroom. It isn’t lovemaking; it’s Art done with flesh instead of paint. Real Art, not the trivial stuff I used to patronize when I was working for Lyndon as an insane asylum savant. I’m proud of my work with Finkelstein.
 
Emily- Forget it. Go get your milk shake.
 
Lucien- Do you want to be in the film ourself? You could always replace Constance; Robin would like you. You aren’t beautiful but you’re sort of intriguing. How are you at blank verse?
 
Emily- Just go. Ill be back here when you want me. I must be crazy. Maybe I spent too much time in an insane asylum.
 

Lucien- You were one of the doctors. It’s a good racket. Insanity isn’t contagious.
 
Emily- Maybe not right away. It kicks in, believe me. See you later tonight.

Lucien- See you later. (He exits. The phone rings. Emily picks it up.) Hello?...No, he’s not in...Who?...Robin Finkelstein?...You want him to bring a donkey?....He’s already gone; you’ll have to get your own donkey...I’m an old friend of his from his insane asylum days...no, he wasn’t crazy, he was the head psychiatrist ....he never told you about his old life?...well, sometimes the past seems irrelevant; that’s what this country is about...it’s like leaving your family... I don’t blame him for keeping it quiet...nobody wants to be known as the former head of a crazy house...it’s like supervising a pissoir....you can call yourself a latrine engineer but it still stops conversation cold pretty much....what’s this blank verse about?... Donkeys... It all rhymes too? What the hell rhymes with donkey?...klunky, monkey, funky...all right, have a good time...I’ve heard about Constance Greenback...I know she’s very mulish...artists are like that; I used to run the Arts program for the president; I know. We saw it as a variation of an insane asylum...look, I’d like to be in your films but I can't act; all I know how to do is tell the truth...he’ll be over in a half hour. (She hangs up the phone. The bell rings. She opens the rood. Louis enters. He is dressed in bohemian clothes but a slightly different garb.) You must have forgot something. Robin Frnkelstein just called. He seemed a little upset. He wants you to bring a donkey.
 
Louis- Where am I going to find a donkey in San Francisco? The only places for donkeys anymore are children’s zoos and porno movies.
 
Emily- You can borrow one from the zoo. As long as Constance Greenback is working for Robin you won’t be the first. You’ve changed your clothes; did you stop off at a thrift shop to pick up a different look for the film?
 
Louis- You might say so. You’re looking good, Emily.
 
Emily- Not enough to make you want to sleep with me instead of Constance Greenback, I’m afraid. I should know enough to avoid lovers who want to make history.
 
Louis- I want to sleep with you right now.
 
Emily- You’ll be late for Constance and the donkeys. There’s obviously monkeys too; it fits in with the rhyme.
 
Louis- I don’t care. The hell with Constance and her damned donkeys. The hell with the monkeys too. They’re all going to have to wait. You come first, Emily.
 
Emily- I wish you had said that earlier. You’re a complicated man. You really made me very angry, you know. I’d left the insane asylum and traveled across the country to see you. All right, forget it. Let’s get the cushions.
 
Louis- What cushions?
 
Emily- You told me you had cushions; I can't make love to you on the floor. My back can't take anything solid beneath me anymore. I should show up everywhere with my own from rubber; I could blow it up whenever I need it.
 
Louis- I need a cup of coffee. Let me sit down.
 
Emily- I’d thought you’d want a milk shake. You’re planning to make love to me, aren’t you?
 
Louis- Of course. Do we have a milk shake?
 

Emily- How should I know? I thought you had cushions.
Louis- This is a nice place. Very austere. It makes me think of infinity and eternity.
 
Emily- It should be whatever you want it to be; it’s your home...Wait am minute, You’re Louis, not Lucien aren’t you?
 
Louis- That’s right. I never said otherwise Emily.
 
Emily- I’m not going to get fooled twice. I slept with the wrong man back in my days in the insane asylum but that’s not going to happen again.
 
Louis- You didn’t make a mistake. Don’t you understand, Emily, it doesn’t matter whom you sleep with among the tow of us. You’re sleeping with both of us no matter what you do. Don’t’ you think I had made love to you a thousand times even before I met you? I always haunted him like a ghost. Hadn’t Lucien but with all my girlfriends too? We’re something beyond language, Emily.
 
Emily- If I make love to you while he makes that porno movie, will you also be sleeping with Constance, the donkeys and maybe even the monkeys?
 
Louis- Probably. I don’t think ether of us are into donkeys and monkeys. I don’t remember even a single poodle.
 
Emily- What are you doing here? You look a little haunted.
 
Louis- I left Agaccio Incorporated in the hands of my assistants and told them I was about to embark on a long trip. It might be at least forever. I am tired of being the clandestine brains behind corporate America. Once I used to think I could redeem everybody by making them rich. I never wanted to hurt people. I wanted to set them all in socially engineered suburbs. I had a theory of history I thought was irrefutable; I was armed with a confidence that was gaudy and absurd. Like must enthusiasts I was wasting my time. I can't help anybody. I’m lucky if I can make myself moderately comfortable. This is one species born to be mostly miserable.
 
Emily- Lucien says the same thing. He thought he could save the world by making them all thing they were terminally helpless and totally insane.
 
Louis- We aren’t as powerful as we thought we were, either of us, I think. Maybe nobody is or could be; I don’t know.
 
Emily- I can tell Lucien has the same resignation. You really are one two headed animal.
 

Louis- We’re lucky we appear to be separate, Emily. Otherwise strangers might think we’re a monster. We’d be on exhibit in a sideshow.
 

Emily- I seem to be the lover of both of you no matter what I do. I’m sort of beyond language too.
 
Louis- Maybe being a monster is contagious.
 
Emily- You look perturbed about something, Louis. What’s the matter?
 
Louis- I think Lucien is not going to give Lyndon the best speech for America. He’ got all that jargon from running a loony bin I’m worried that the American people wont understand that the Lyndon’s panaceas for the world and even for feeling lousy personally have failed; we haven’t cured anything or have the remedy for anything.
 
Emily- Why does that bother you? People have been selling snake old for years. People are used to it.
 
Louis- I think it might cause a Depression.
 
Emily- People get over them. They just go to the movies and eat popcorn.
 
Louis- I mean an economic collapse. We’re a great big bubble; there’s nothing inside us but a bad smelling murky vapor. Once somebody puts a needle to the surface it’s going to go pop and disappear.
 
Emily- That’s what an authentic bubble is supposed to do. Let it break.
 
Louis- Well I suppose they’ll always be another bubble.

Emily- Louis, forget about bubbles; I must have you right now, even though I’ll be making to two people at once. Maybe mules and monkeys too. Let’s look for those cushions. I know they’re here somewhere.
 
Louis- (opening a draw in the desk.) There’s a whole bunch of balloons here.
 
Emily- We could blow them up. Are they small balloons or large balloons?
 
Louis- It depends how much hot air we put into them.
 
Emily- we might broke them if we get passionate.
 

Louis- An authentic balloons is made to fall apart. (He walks to the other exit and looks into the room beyond.) There’s abut fifty eggplants here in a steel bin. There must have been a sale. We can sort of jump on them. (Emily walks over the to exit, looks into the room beyond.)
 

Emily- I’ve never made love on eggplant.
 
Louis- It’s all very purple.
 
Emily- I guess Lucien will be bouncing off eggplant in the donkeys and monkeys.
 
Louis- we’ll be smelling moneys and donkeys in the eggplant. (They exit. The phone rings. Lyndon Johnson comes on stage and picks it up. He seems quite drunk. He walks with a kind rigid, paralyzed sway.)
 
Lyndon- Rita?...Lucien and Louis will both be here. Louis has called me up; he’s flying a private plane here. He wants to have an input. It’s a matter of patriotism to him. He’s bringing their girl friend too, Emily; don’t ask me to explain. With tow Corsican brothers working for me, I’m going to have a hell of a departure, honey...yeah I’ve got the steak and marshmallows cooking; I can smell them right now. You know what I love about Texas? It’s close to Mexico. You get that cheap labor, the whorehouses when you get bored, and the feeling that no mater how rotten you feel, somebody is much worse off than you. Yeah, if it weren’t for Mexico, I would probably leave Texas...I want you here at midnight, naked and ready. I just got in a shipment of cheap California wine that will put some fur in your stomach. I’m tired of those expensive smooth French drinks. It’s all so degenerate...no, I’m not too drunk to make one more the speech, Rita; I might be a little inebriated, honey; a politician is never so soused he can’t talk...here comes Lucien now. He looks a little fatigued himself. Porno does that to you...Everybody I knew in Tiajuana looked like they needed a good night’s sleep....Get on that plane, baby; I’ll talk to you later. (He hangs up. Enter Lucien. He is carrying a tray of food and wine. He puts the tray down on the table.)
 
Lucien- Your servants told me to bring in these dishes. They told me they’re all too boxed to work; you must have given them the key to the wine cellar. They’re sitting on the floor of the kitchen, vomiting over themselves.
 
Lyndon- They do get rambunctious. It’s a lousy life, being a servant in America. Sort of undemocratic. Maybe I would
get as juiced as they do if I were somebody’s dog in a country were a mutt can be a prince.
 
Lucien- Still, you’re paying them to be look like cattle, Lyndon, not to steal from you like coyotes.
 

Lyndon- Hard to stop the wolves, rats and rice from raiding the larders, ain’t it? Everywhere you go in this world, you got termites, ants, mosquitos and raccoons; they’re all coming out of the shadows because they’re starving forever, they can smell the bread and the cookies sitting in the kitchen somewhere, they feel the salvia pouring down their wet jaws. You can lock it up and freeze it, you can put guards around it, but they’ll figure out a way to tick your army, hustle and ramble through the night and get through the plastic and the steel. It ain’t democracy; it’s God’s nature, damnit.
 
Lucien- You’re drunk, Lyndon. You sure you can make that speech tonight? You’re way on the wrong side of coherence.
 
Lyndon- You stink, Lucien. You smell like a stable of donkeys and a damned cage filled with monkeys. Where the hell have you been?
 
Lucien- Making history.
 
Lyndon- You’re been making porno. If I fall down and go to sleep on the floor I’m a hell of lot more sober than you and your damned brother ever were. You and your plastic peckers and Dolfingers Disease. How the hell could I ever have thought you two could give me ideas about how to run a country? Wars and Welfare ain’t good enough for a heap of spittle. You both belonged in an insane asylum; you were both nuts.
 
Lucien- I agree with you. That’s why I left it. Human beings are stupid but we’re pretty good at recovery. The price is, of course, we’re always hurting from our wounds. Louis thinks you’re right too; he’s quitting the corporate world. He’s had enough of power. We might both join you in the old corral if they’s enough room for all of us, Lyndon.
 
Lyndon- You just got to push the cattle aside, son. We get plenty of room here in Texas. I got a dossier on you, Lucien. You ain’t gonna bring down a heap of marijuana and make those damned porno movies on my ranch, are you?

Lucien- We’re dumb but we aren’t that stupid. I don’t know what we’re going to do next, Lyndon. Maybe we’ll take up knitting. What is this, steak and marshmallows, Texas style? That’s not how we make it in Corsica.
 
Lyndon- We use more cinnamon in West Texas than in East Texas. Down in Del Rio they use watermelon pickle. Look, Lucien, I’ve written a few versions of my speech here myself I’d like to try it out on you. One of them may remind you in passing of Nixon’s Checkers number; don’t gag.
 
Lucien- It may not be applicable; he was trying to stay in politics; you’re attempting to get out, Lyndon.
 
Lyndon- I guess there’s love me and leave me speeches; I wont them to love me as I leave them. Maybe if I leave them it doesn’t matter, does it?

 
Lucien- We all do that sooner or later, Lyndon. Sometimes we keel over; sometimes it’s a helicopter taking off from the palace or some heavy litigation. Take your choice of the Angel of Death,
 
Lyndon- I know what I am. I’m a bad lawyer. I’d always rather take a doctor over a lawyer as an executioner. Does it matter? Probably not; you’re still dead.
 
Lucien- You think maybe Bobby will replace you? He’s till mad at the way you killed Jack.
 
Lyndon- I never killed anybody. I[‘m a politician, not a hitman. I sit there and took orders, just watched it happen like everybody else on television.
 
Lucien- You’re just one of the boys, Lyndon. I guess they’ll knock off Bobby when he makes his move after you get on your horse and go west.
 
Lyndon- You bet. Hey, believe me, Bobby’s going to be offed too. He’s a nasty little son of a bitch; I can’t wait. You know who’s going to be our nest leader? Richard Nixon. They owe him one. He’s a poor boy like me; Jack had dough. They think they can run him.
 
Lucien- Nixon, huh? Don’t tell me who they is. They’ll kill me too.
 
Lyndon- it’s that Parisian son of a bitch, Monsieur de Chateau Renaud he calls himself. I don’t even think eh’s French. He just does that fog accent and he thinks he has me fooled. Maybe he’s got even heavier people behind him too, I don’t know. We got to know each other a little bit. Only on the telephone, of course. He doesn't want me to know where he is; people like that are afraid they might be killed, for good reason.
I’ve traced his calls with my intelligence crew, of course; he makes them from pay phones usually in the mountains somewhere in South America. We got one from Tiajuana last week. I could hear the moan of donkeys in the background. Of course my intelligence might be lying. He’s got some very interesting ideas about what’s next for us here. He wants Nixon to run it. He thinks he’s mean enough.
 
Lucien-Well, you’re a hard act to follow. Maybe Nixon can do it.
 
Lyndon- Nixon’s a mutt. That son of a bitch is the real Checkers. I was never a good dog, Lucien. I growl and bite a little too much.
 
Lucien- We’re not dogs; it’s built in, Lyndon.
 

Lyndon- What are we? We sure as hell ain’t sane or even peaceable or reasonable. I wondered about this Chateau-Renaud guy. Is he human? I figured he must be; he makes telephone calls, he has to be somewhere. He’s running things but he sure as hell knows much more than I do about how to be invisible.
 

Lucien- The real heavies aren’t just able to bend light; they’re unimaginable.
 
Lyndon- Maybe so. I’m a conventional guy, Lucien; I’d like to finish with an old fashioned Texas high colonic. It’s a north Mexican specialty. You read for this first version?
 
Lucien- I’ll be listening as I grab the steak with marshmallows. (He goes to the table and gives himself a portion of the creamy fare on paper plates and plastic spoons. He begins eating. He devours the food as Lyon makes his speeders.) No pickle.
 
Lyndon- This ain’t Del Rio. Listen to this, Lucien....My fellow Americans. I have been think a whole lot of things over..Vietnam, Welfare, marijuana, Elvis, sex, Buddhism and seaweed crackers, whatever. I’ve decided that everybody in the United States of America has some reason to knock me off. My intelligence people have been telling me that even some brown rice importers are fixing to take out your president with a bullet lunch as he sits eating pork chow mein with a bunch of Georgia crackers. Well, folk, as John Sebastian Bach put it in one of his really neat sounding cantatas, ich habe genug. That means both to big John and yours truly, I’ve fucking A had enough of your bullshit. You want to kill me obtuse I don’t like iodized salt? Well, fuck you. Goombye.
 
Lucien- That’s it?
 
Lyndon- Well, that was just a first draft. I revised it heavily, believe me.
 
Lucien- Let’s hear it.
 
Lyndon- My fucken fellow Americans.
 
Lucien- Well, it’s a departure.
 
Lyndon- Listen to this, Lucien. When a man is walking out the door he can tip his hat and say nothing or if he loves whatever he is leaving behind him, he can say a word or two of advice, even give a tip or two on a few horses running at the track the next afternoon. I love the American people; maybe I know something about what nag the jockeys are going to hold back for another time and what filly is galloping to the finish on a ton of benny.
 
Lucien- If you don’t know, nobody knows. I’m listening.
 

Lyndon- My fucken fellow Americans, it’s tough up here being your president. You can get killed doing what I do, folks. Look what happened to Jack. People will kill you over profits they don’t need, to make some war against counties whose names they can’t even pronounce or to start a revolution that massacres almost everybody on their side before they got to take out people they called their fucken enemies. Then there’s that other bunch of big babies who are just as certain the United States exists to put them on the dole so they can do nothing or write lousy poetry.
Now I call that nuts, cruel, and even suicidal, but you all out there probably think it’s better than starving. Maybe it is, but that’s what you’re hoping to be, violent or crazy. That’s what we’re all about here. I’m tried. I have had enough of this bullshit. I’m not running again. I’m not going to be in Washington any more either; the food is lousy.
So, in general, fuck you and fuck me. Fuck you because all you want to be is a legitimate serial murderer or an ordinary lunatic and fuck me because I was dumb enough to lead you to into a battle against imaginary monsters or an insane asylum. Lemme say this, I wasn’t so dense in the head as any of you guys. I did it for money. I was a poor boy myself, covering for the foolishness of a lot of people with guns and dollars. I never was as dumb as you are. No more, folks. It;’s time for sitting around the old corral, drinking Doctor Pepper, eating nacho chips and waiting to die. Goombye. That’s it.
 
Lucien- It’s honest. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad. Let’s hear the other versions.
 
Lyndon- You want to hear the Checkers one. It’s pretty soppy. I talk about wanting to sit by the campfire, drink Dos Ecces, feel sorry for myself and pet my dog. It has some nice moments where I’m pissing into the dark woods and listening to the tinkle in the lightless darkness. Also in the second draft I get to sleep with some ten year old Mexican whore before I go to sleep.
 
Lucien- No, that’s not presidential. You’re got a problem, Lyndon that can only be solved by leaving Washington and never coming back. You’re okay when you’re sober, which is almost never these days; when you’ve got a few belts of solid booze in your gut you’re always ready to say exactly what’s on your mind. You must have been a hell of a lousy lawyer.
 
Lyndon- I was the worst. I sent hundreds of my clients to death row. Most of them died by hanging. The rest expired from good Texas prison food. I’ll tell you one thing though; criminal law is the greatest profession in the world except for being a general or doing major brain surgery. When you make a mistake, you don’t get sued by your clients.
 
Lucien- You out to put some coriander on the marshmallows. That’s the classical Corsican style. Try it sometime.
 
Lyndon- This is Texas, Lucien. When I want steak and marshmallows, Corsican style, I will go to Corsica.

 
Lyndon- (taking a piece of paper out of his pocket, handing it to Lyndon.) You’re right. I was just thinking of my mama’s cooking. Try this one, Lyndon. I wrote it on the plane.
 
Lyndon- (looking at the paper.) My fellow Americans. Even a fool can get tired of spaghetti. You got mighty fatigued after a while with Milton Berle. I’m not even funny. You’re probably very weary of me but not as fed up as I am of you... You can't be serious...the American people won’t take this. They’ll kill me the way Chateau-Reneaud knocked off Jack.
 
Lucien- Sorry, I gave you the wrong paper; that was just a goofy little bagatelle I wrote over the rubber roast beef and the second martini.. (He fumbles around in his pockets and brings out another piece of paper.) Here it is. (He hands it to Lyndon.)
 
Lyndon- Constance I cannot get enough of your limber little body. I feel very uncomfortable following a donkey but I suppose unless you were a virgin I would have to be the next vaudeville act of lovers after something or somebody. At least I know that one day I’ll be replaced by a doctor. All I ask is you give up your donkey. At last when I’m around. I can hear the sound of him munching dry hay irritably and rather impatiently in the next room while we are most sonorous and audibly intimate...I can’t read this foul shit to the American people. What the hell is this?
 
Lucien- Nothing. Just a draft for ideas for selling some underwater Florida real estate. Forget it. (He fumbles in his pockets again.) Here’s the real speech. I know it’s what you’re looking for; it’s the only one I wrote formally on my old loony bin stationary.
 
Lyndon- You are never more than one step from a crazy house, Lucien. What the fuck is this; I have it upside down. All right....My fellow Americans, I have very sad news to tell you this evening. In the course of my selfless service for this country I have come down with an aliment that is both annoying and incurable, Dolfinger’s Disease. It is an illness that has no symptoms, no cause and no cure; it is all the more elusive for its utter invisibly. As a result, to wrestle with my devils as well as I can privately I must relinquish the power to run this great nation and retire with some discretion to my cattle ranch where I can take up a solitary straggle against the demons of Doctor Dolfinger and recover as much of my equilibrium as I can to take up more service to aid a republic that deserves my largesse with all the small power I can muster in after defeating a nemesis that may be something beyond even the most mercurial of ghostly bacteria...I can't tell the American public I’m sick of something that doesn’t have any symptoms; they’ll think I’m bugsy; they’ll bounce me from the White House immediately.
 

Lucien- That was only the first draft. (He pulls another piece of paper out of his pocket. ) Try this one. It has an elegance the first one lacks. You’ll sound like George Washington.
 
Lyndon- You sure you ever left that insane asylum?
 
Lucien- I completely repudiate everything I did and even thought there. I’ve purged myself of the odium of those days utterly, Lyndon. A man has a right to have a youth; it’s no accident it comes right after childhood.
 
Lyndon- All right. (He grasps the paper from Lucien.) My fellow Americans. As you know I’ve always been a warrior standing between you and the nasty hopes of godless communism. I’ve dedicated out country lately to protecting the free citizens of Vietnam from a bunch of fucken Reds, degenerates, pedophile and bums...I like this; what’s a pedophile?
 
Lucien- It’s what our troops do on rest and recreation in Saigon between heroin shots. It has a tradition; it’s very Romish. Sort of a sacred act.
 
Lyndon- Okay. I’m against it unless it’s done by American troops in Saigon. I don’t like any kind of priests getting mixed up with war and recreation. (He looks at the paper.) As you know I’ve been for Welfare, the Arts, civil rights for all our brethren except maybe a few people on Death Row and the mentally challenged. And they’re okay too. Let them vote; what’s the difference?...Yeah, I like that, do we allow people who are about to be hanged vote? I forget.
 
Lucien- If they can get to the voting boots, they can vote.
 
Lyndon- Okay. I’m for letting morons vote too, you know. I want every imbecile in my corner, Lucien. Hey wait a minute, I’m quite politics; I’m not getting into it. Where’s the part about saying goodbye like George Washington?
 
Lucien- You’re almost up to it.
 

Lyndon- Okay...My fellow Americans...I’ve been thinking many a lonely and cold midnight about the direction of my life. I don’t think I was really the sort of man who should have even taken up the harness of power. I really couldn’t help it; I was poor and I do a few people favors; before I knew it I was a senator. I was hungry and didn’t ask too many questions then, folks. Now I know that what I was really supposed to do with my life was to become a landscape painter of the western prairie. I know all you people are talking about abstract cosmic stuff; you think that’s what’s important in American contemporary painting. I know better. Abstraction is European degeneracy. There is nothing like sitting in front of an oil that offers you a look at the pale moonlight of a Texas winter evening. There is nothing prettier than a naked Texas cheerleader with thsoe thick hard thighs at a Dallas Cowboys game as the honchos beat up on some guys from Pittsburgh on the way to the Superbowl, maybe way even beyond, to some Superbowl in God’s paradise. Most of all, folks, there is a kind of pristine beauty in a single lone oil derrick with its ebony skeleton of black steel cleaving the labia of a buttermilk Texas sky.
 
Lucien- O my God, that marshmallow sauce!
 
Lyndon- What’s the matter? You look pale.
 
Lucien- I’ve got to throw up. Where’s the restroom, Lyndon?
 
Lyndon- Just walk out into that damned old corral yonder and vomit; we don’t use toilets for plain puke in Texas, you know that, Lucien.
 
Lucien- O My God! He runs out the exit into the outdoors and the corral. Lyndon shrugs, goes to the phone and dials a number.)
 
Lyndon- Rita? You on the way here; this is your car phone? Be here in how long, honey? Five minutes. Great. ...listen, you got any ideas on what I should say to the American people about taking off work?...What’s that?...Nobody wants to hear about my personal problems; I can't say I’m going through a messy divorce and I’m depressed. Anyway they’d see I wasn’t getting even an easy one because Ladybird would never get rid of me; I’m her cash machine...no, she couldn’t beat me out of anything, not with what I’ve got on her thanks to the FBI, CIA and what her old lovers have said to me; she’s some kind of Chinese communist too, I don’t know what kind...I can’t keep track of all the different kinds of communists that are running around here I’m lucky if I know where my pants are half the time... you don’t want to know what the inside story is on my wife; all you need to appreciate, honey, is she’s better off married to me than not married to me... sure I got the Fib and CIA after you too; I know all about you...you sure are hard on poodles but at least you’re not a communist....yeah, I got the goods on Marilyn too; she wasn’t a communist; she was a interested in hamburgers, root beer money...yeah, J. Edgar gave me the whole dossier; he’s going to have a hell of a national library when he retires; he’s got the biggest porno collection in the world, maybe even heaven and hell for all I know; yeah, interstellar stuff, he knows hat the spiders are doing on Neptune, not to mention a couple of bacteria I don’t want to talk about...Yeah, Mao Tse Tung is some kind of vegetarian; we’ve got the scoop on Bobby too. He can't stop eating mushrooms. (Enter Louis and Emily.) Talk to you later, baby, it’s speech making time. Lucien, you don’t look so bad. You get to try that marshmallow sauce again. The second time it stays run in your gut like a big weight. I see you found Emily out there in the coral somewhere.
 
Louis- I’m Louis. Where’s my brother?
 

Lyndon- Sorry, Louis. He’s out in the old corral puking up seem of the best sauce the good folks in Texas ever have had. You want some steak, Texas style?
 
Louis- Sure, sure, no problem. Okay. Emily?
 
Emily- Sure I’m always big on steak. We came here to help you with your speech, Lyndon.
 
Lyndon- That’s good. Lucien had all kinds of crazy ideas I don’t think the American people would be happy with. He wanted to make me out to be a lunatic or oil painter or something.
 
Louis- Well, I’ve got one for you that is gong to make a lot more sense to America. You are quitting politicks to go into business. You want to make big bucks and be the guy making those pithy telephone calls to toads like yourself.
 
Lyndon- Hey that makes sense. (Two shots pierce the air. The lights go a bit lower. Lyndon, Louis and Emily duck on the floor of the ranch. There is a long pause. There are to more shots, then silence.) You okay?
 
Louis- We’re still here, Lyndon. Who the hell is shooting at us?
 
Lyndon- I don’t know. Maybe Bobby. The son of a bitch never did like me. (He picks up a gun from the wall and shoots through the window. There is a piteous scream. Lyndon waits a moment. Then he pump for more bullets into the night. He hears nothing. Then he looks at Louis and Emily.) Louis, take that bazooka on the wall; we’ll go out there and look for them. There might be more than one of them.
 
Louis- Okay. Emily stay here and answer the phone. Don’t stand up straight. They won’t be able to shoot you through the window. (Lyndon and Louis exit furtively with guns, crawling out onto the back porch. The phone rings. Emily picks it up.)
 
Emily- Hello...Monsieur de who?...Look, we’ve had some nasty people shooting at us, Monsieur; would you mind calling back in the few hours?...What’s that? It was your people from Sardinia that were pepperng us?...Just a little warning?...Who are you, anyway?...Okay, Monsieur I don’t want to know....What’ve you got against a nice guy like Lyndon? He’s leaving office and you can do whatever you want...Nixon? Well, that’s a pretty audacious move. I think he’s a crook...look, right now, I’m busy; if you ever get tried to whatever it is you are and what you’re doing, you can reach all of us another time in San Francisco...yeah, we’re all quitting, they’ll have to find somebody else to diagnose people as nuts or sell them plastic peckers...what do you think we ought to do now?...Hey, I don’t know; ask that bastard Nixon. (She hangs up the hone. Enter Lucien.) Louis, where’s Lyndon.
 

Lucien- Lucien. I’ve been throwing up, Emily. Stay away from that marshmallow sauce.
 
Emily- They almost just killed the president.
 
Lucien- Who?
 
Emily- Some assassins working for some Frenchman. I don’t know.
 
Lucien- Well, we could survive that. They knocked off Jack and we’re still here. (They hear three more shots.)
 
Emily- What the hell’s going on out there? (Enter Lyndon.)
 
Lyndon- Come on in Louis, we got the bastards. Two more of them. (A car pulls up at the house.) Damned thugs. What you doing out there, Louis? You’re brother’s here; so’s Emily. Don’t be inhospitable.
 
Louis- (smiling) I know what my brother’s up to. Let’s go join him. You know who’s here at your front door, Lyndon? Rita.
 
Lyndon- Rita? Why doesn’t she come in? What’s the hell’s going on out there?
 
Louis- Lucien is kissing her. I’m kissing her too, She sure feels good in our arms.
 
Lyndon- Hey, stop that, Lucien. Rita’s my squeeze, damn it. (He runs out the front door.)
 
Emily- Let’s go out and take a walk under this Texas sky, Louis. I think I’d like to make love with you in a little arroyo somewhere.
 
Louis- Sure. I should tell you one thing, Emily,. I’m really Lucien. Louis and I switched places when we were out in the corral a moment ago. Louis is really with Rita. I’m Lucien.
 
Emily- Lucien? That’s okay with me. I don’t care.
 
Lucien- You know, you feel just like Rita.
 
Emily- Not Constance?
 
Lucien- No donkeys. (Exit Louis and Emily.)
 

The End

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