Directed by Colin Johnson
With Melissa Ortiz, Christian Haines & Laura Jane Bailey
Life is Unfair Like That
CAST
RED , a manipulative millennial hacker who loves fair trade chocolate, handcrafted marshmallows, and men who can code. She has long henna hair and wears a retro red dress.
JOHNNY a millennial techie loser, always getting the short end of the stick. Johnny wears a retro suit and a too-tight fedora.
EL PASO a private detective. Assigned female at birth, he now identifies and dresses as a male and uses male pronouns. Although he sounds British, he identifies as an American Cowboy from West Texas. He wears a suit and hat much like Johnny’s, though perhaps brown and crumpled.
SCENE
A retro diner in The Mission, San Francisco. Straight out of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Bright florescent light, yellow walls with green trim, huge panes of glass.
Johnny and Red sit together. El Paso sits apart.
ACTING STYLE
The lines should be delivered in the accelerated, deadpan, staccato, blunt, beat poetry manner of a noir film. Like Alan Ginsberg meets Philip Marlowe. There is a percussive rhythm to the lines that should be discovered.
BLOCKING
The actors remain seated until the end, when Red crosses to El Paso, Johnny stands, and Red and El Paso exit.
EL PASO
The green, florescent diner stabbed the intersection of Mission and Dolores like a flash drive sucking source code from a hot laptop. Sour music blew out the open door–the desolate wail of a muffled sax punctured by the tap, tap, tap of a bitter snare drum– oozing into the cold mist of San Francisco Bay.
JOHNNY
Five AM, forty-five minutes until the sun would shine dull grey through the marine layer, a full hour before the iPhone thumb tap, tap, tapping Google bus junkies, shuffled up to the Dandelion Small Batch Chocolate Factory for a morning triple fix of Euro–
RED
and handcrafted marshmallows, sliced into perfect squares.
JOHNNY
Johnny sat hunched at the counter, hawk nose buried in the tap, tap, tap, of his iPad.
RED
His fedora was two-numbers too tight,
JOHNNY
— safeguarding a premature millennial bald spot.
RED
Red slouched beside Johnny, her boney elbows framing creamy white cleavage–
JOHNNY
and the seductive thorns of a rose tattoo that cupped the crease of her right breast.
JOHNNY, RED & EL PASO
Johnny needed this woman like a laptop needs Wi-Fi.
RED
But Red was no frail. She just acted that way, twisting men around her sharply manicured nails, then dumping them, like a pussycat, after joyfully decapitating an unlucky mouse.
EL PASO
A Shamus named El Paso stared at the unhappy couple, nursing a twenty-five hundred IBU Flying Monkey IPA. El Paso was a downsized detective out of Mission Station, a cisgender woman presenting as a male and answered to male pronouns.
JOHNNY
He’s a transgender dick hiding a heavy midwest accent,–
EL PASO
the source of constant sorrow ever since El Paso self-identified as a Cowboy from West Texas. (In heavy midwest accent) Ya, in West Texas you accept a man for who he says he is, or he buries you in the Chihuahua desert, you betcha.
JOHNNY
Johnny schemed, how to win, Red, to bed.
EL PASO
El Paso was on the clock for a headhunter, dog-tracking Red past artisan food trucks and pop-up restaurants, then, finally, to the diner. She was born with a Playstationin her crib and could code apps as clear as absinthe.
RED
Red contemplated the blinking yellow LED on her Volcano vaporizor.
EL PASO
The aftermarket lithium-ion battery was dead.
JOHNNY, RED & EL PASO
Life is unfair like that.
RED
Red turned to snarl at Johnny with a deep disgust brewed from their failing, six hour relationship.
JOHNNY & RED
They’d met on Tinder.
RED
Red, swiped, right, to like, a flattering photo from a time when a leaner Johnny had a thick man-bun, lumber-sexual flannel and an ironic moustache.
JOHNNY
Johnny always swiped right, to like, anything.
JOHNNY & RED
The app wired them together–
EL PASO
In the too bright light of the all night diner,–
RED
speeding through half a dozen virtual years of bitter confrontation in as many hours
JOHNNY & RED & EL PASO
Life is unfair like that.
JOHNNY
Johnny knew just enough Xcode to bounce from job to job like a viral tweet. He had a talent for being fired just before an IPO.
RED
But not much else.
JOHNNY
Johnny tap, tap, tapped an unfiltered Camel on the polished wood countertop,–
EL PASO
a meek retro challenge to Red’s vaporizor–
JOHNNY & RED
the source of their yawning chasm of distrust,–
JOHNNY
and the catalyst for Johnny’s plan to hack a bottomless Dandelion Chocolate gift card for Red. He’d feed her–
RED
handcrafted marshmallow
JOHNNY
addiction until she slid into bed.
RED
(coughing) You gonna hack me desert or what?
EL PASO
coughed Red,–her voice rough from too much vaping and too much Red Bull and too much texting, alone, in her damp, nine-hundred-fifty thousand dollar basement condo.
JOHNNY
Will yah, Red, get off that one note!?
RED
Nix the gift card hack, Johnny, and it’s double nix on us!
JOHNNY
Johnny sucked his pride and a lungful of Red’s perfume. (Deep breath) Even her scent mocks my lack of hip.
EL PASO
It smelled like laser toner with thick notes of crisp twenty-dollar bills. Uber retro. No one smelled of cash any more.
RED
You don’t wanna know me, I get too low on sugar, snarled Red,–
JOHNNY & RED & EL PASO
Life is unfair like that.
JOHNNY
I got a hack from Tor proves I’m no loser, said Johnny,–
EL PASO
his spray-tanned fingers thump, thump, thumping the iPad like a horny, designer Labradoodle.
RED
Red plucked Johnny’s unlit Camel and sucked it hard, smudging the white cigarette with vegan lip gloss.
EL PASO
Red turned to El Paso with a Kickstarter smile, and asked,
RED
“Hey sister, got a light?”
EL PASO
Nix on sister, sister. It’s mister to you.
RED
You got me all wrong. I’m no transexist. I’m a cisgender woman and I answer to female pronouns. You?
EL PASO
Call me they or hen or he. Or call me El Paso.
RED
Red tugged lower the already gaping collar of her dress.
EL PASO
El Paso flashed her Tinder on his iPhone and swiped, swiped, swiped. (To himself, in time with his swipes) I, feel, good, I, feel, really, good!
JOHNNY
Johnny’s eyes popped open with panic, the whites reflecting his iPad full of black code. He’d hacked into the Dandelion gift card server, but a vengeful firewall chomped his code, like a hashtag HungryHipsterAtBaconFoodTruck!
EL PASO
Red shot a load of desperation at El Paso.
RED
Spring me! I gotta breathe!
JOHNNY
Alone? asked Johnny, his voice rising to an adolescent squeal, like an defeated dial up modem.
EL PASO
Red dismissed Johnny like a pop-up, and slid close to. He blew a zephyr in her ear, “Precious thing, breath.”
JOHNNY
Stick with me, Red! You’re all wrong for that shamus!
RED
Nix on that, Johnny. You hang here and muddle your rotten code!
EL PASO
Johnny stood, gaping angry, like an empty start-up garage.
RED
Easy, Johnny. We’ll always have our selfie.
EL PASO
Let’s drift.
EL PASO
El Paso and Red were arm
RED
and arm out the door into the brittle-cold fog.
EL PASO
He silenced the click, click clicking of the stainless steel handcuffs, hidden on his belt, as they walked
RED
past the Google bus junkies,–
EL PASO
into the Dandelion Small Batch Chocolate Factory and traded a forged loyalty card for a triple fix of Euro–
RED
and hand crafted marshmallows, sliced into perfect squares.
JOHNNY, RED & EL PASO
Life is unfair like that.
EL PASO
(In heavy Midwest accent) You betcha.
End of play
Art and Music in Our Souls 