“I’m sorry,” Kelly said, smart enough to sense that anything else would be ping-ponged back to her, that I didn’t want empathy or understanding—I wanted tar and feathers and pitchforks; I wanted the Captain’s voice on the intercom telling everyone they were free to move around the cabin and beat the hell out of the guy in 14-D. I’d been through years of unsuccessful therapy and attended enough overpriced Buddhist retreats to know that what happened to Sarah wasn’t my fault. But of course it was. I felt grateful for Kelly’s silence, her eschewing the word “closure” and all its smug assumptions.
The plane swiveled and dipped, the descent underway.
“Hang on,” Kelly said, our fingers clasped as the tarmac loomed, the plane headed straight toward that most complicated word in my vocabulary: home.
-3-
The moment we landed, I headed for the restroom, eager to check on Amy but determined to seem cool for Kelly’s sake. While Kelly waited for our bags, I grabbed an empty stall and pulled up Amy’s number. No answer, so I texted twice—no response. Immediately I imagined the worst—she’d mouthed off one too many times and been prescribed a bout of electro-shock. My ruminations were junk—I’d seen too many B-movies over the years—but with Amy I always felt responsible, an instinct both noble and limiting, a kind of extended adolescence certain to muck things up with Kelly. As I waited in vain for Amy to return my text, I couldn’t ignore the obvious: using a bathroom stall for anything but its intended purpose is a good sign you should do something else.
I hurried back toward Baggage Claim, where Kelly leaned against her suitcase, reading, my battered bag M.I.A. as the carousel grinded along its methodical circuit.
“Shouldn’t our bags have come out at the same time?” I said, then froze, the world coming to a sudden stop when I saw what she was reading.
. . . . .
Imaginary Interview: City Beat, PBS (Sometime in September, 20XX)
Q: When you began writing The Revolving Heart you hadn’t written anything for almost five years. What made you start again?
A: I don’t know. I was sort of like a cat. When a cat is upset, sometimes he’ll start grooming himself to self-soothe. My ex-wife had just left me, and I was miserable and didn’t know what else to do. So I started writing a play, sort of like a cat licking himself.
. . . . .
“Um, where did you find that?” I asked.
Kelly folded the page top, marking her place before closing the manuscript. “In the freezer where you put it, I assume.”
“You shouldn’t have taken it,” I said.
“I asked. I was in the kitchen and you said, ‘Help yourself, take anything.’ I wasn’t snooping around. I was looking for the frozen strawberries. How was I supposed to know you keep manuscripts in the freezer? Most people use a desk.” She tucked the pages under her arm and smiled, ready to play. “Why didn’t you share that you’d started writing again?”
Kelly was big on sharing.
“It’s nothing—just something I worked on before we met. It’s crap.”
“I see. Do you always store crap with your frozen food?”
It was a good quip—something Amy might have said. Kelly unzipped the side pocket of her suitcase and slipped the manuscript inside. “Come on, if you really thought it was crap you would have done something rash like shred every page and burn the scraps.”
She knew me well. “It’s just a draft. No one’s supposed to read it. It’s rough …can I have it back, please?”
“The title page says Draft Seven. It can’t be that rough. Honestly, I wasn’t going to read it, Donnie—I do respect your privacy—but the title sucked me in. The Revolving Heart. I was curious. Does your friend Amy know about it?”
“No one knows …”
“Except me,” she smiled. “Actually, this is my second time through. I’ve had it for a week. You need to check your freezer more often.”
She was having fun. My intestines felt like piano wire, ready to snap. “You’ve read it?”
“Yes, and I loved it. You’re very talented, Donnie….”
“No, I’m a washed-up hack. It’s crap…”
“The sensitive artiste cannot accept a compliment,” she said. “Fine…tell yourself I’m some unemployed music teacher who doesn’t know a damn thing about ‘the theater’. But I thought it was great. Funny, moving…you should send it to your agent.”
“I don’t have an agent anymore. George wouldn’t even remember my name.”
“No one forgets a name like Donatello Marcino,” she said, but on that point, she was wrong. I’d had my chance, and like so many other things, I’d blown it.
. . . . .
From “Family Farce Brings Buoyant Chair to Life” by Frank Rich, New York Times, (4/9/XX)
Donatello Marcino shows great promise, exhibiting a sharp ear for lively dialogue and an instinct for impeccable timing. The playwright grounds the show in a tense family drama while interweaving absurdist flights of fancy through each of the three acts. For Mr. Marcino, the future is vast.
. . . . .
During my junior year in college, I wrote a play that was produced off-Broadway and for a while I was special. Confessions of the Midnight Chair by Donatello Marcino debuted at the New World Theater and ran for nearly a year. The New York Times and The Village Voice gave it glowing reviews and the weekend performances always sold out. I was nominated for an Obie for Best Playwriting, and though I lost to Eve Ensler and The Vagina Monologues, it seemed clear I was about to emerge. Yet I didn’t. After Midnight Chair I wrote five other plays but only one was produced, if a staged reading by semi-professional actors in a church basement even qualified as “produced.” I wasn’t sure what had happened except that everything I wrote was never quite good enough. I kept working, thinking that the next one might hit, but it never did.
Eventually I moved to Los Angeles and tried screenplays for a while,
