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drama
Sprout
By LAURA SOLOMON
Characters
MAN
WOMAN
KATHLEEN: Corporate high
flyer, dressed accordingly
SECOND MAN
DUVET
WOMAN (direct address):
By anybody’s standards it was an expensive duvet. It was
the best, a leader, a king amongst quilts. It was different
from the rest. It was the fluffiest, the warmest, the
finest. Fifty percent down and fifty percent large feather,
it was not dressed up to the nines, like many of the others,
the show-offs, in their gaudy coloured prints and their
florals and their tartan covers. It was plain, naked, but
it shone with potential. Once inside the cover he had
designed, it would knock the competition into a cocked hat.
It was a diamond in the rough.
Lights up on MAN and WOMAN walking together hand in hand.
Sign up on far wall ‘Benny’s For Beds’. MAN and WOMAN walk
past duvet after duvet, fluffing and plumping, shaking their
heads in dismay as candidate after candidate fails to
measure up. Finally, they find one duvet on its own, apart
from the others.
WOMAN (picks up duvet
that is by itself): Here it is. The one. All by
itself. Aw, poor little thing.
WOMAN snuggles her face
into the duvet. MAN looks at duvet’s price tag.
MAN: Jesus Christ! That’s
exorbitant.
WOMAN: Come on, darling.
Don’t be stingy.
MAN: That’s three days
wages, gone in an instant, on a duvet.
WOMAN: Not just any old
duvet. The duvet.
MAN (sceptically):
Whatever.
MAN and WOMAN walk with
duvet to counter. Check out duvet. Lights out.
Lights up on MAN and WOMAN in bed together, under duvet.
The duvet starts to glow. WOMAN props herself up on one
elbow and looks around for the source of the light. Is it
the moon, or a street lamp? MAN wakes up and puts one arm
around WOMAN.
WOMAN: Where’s that light
coming from?
MAN (patting duvet): It’s
this thing. It’s glowing.
WOMAN: Weird. Maybe
somebody’s put some of those awful glow sticks in there.
Like people take to dance parties. Or maybe somebody’s
implanted something electronic and cellular in there, that
can be switched on from a distance.
MAN: Hey, maybe it’s
genetically engineered. Like those fish with the
phosphorescent jellyfish genes.
WOMAN (awed): Spooky.
Woman
picks up one corner of the thing that covered them and
fluffs it about, as if the incandescence could be shaken
out.
MAN: I know. Maybe if we
switch on the overhead light we can stun it into submission.
WOMAN: Yea, give it a
try.
MAN walks over to light
switch. Tries switch. Duvet dims a bit. Tries switch
again. Duvet dims more. Tries switch for third time.
Light dies in duvet completely.
MAN: Ha! That sure
showed the damn thing who’s boss!
Lights out. Lights up. Man is holding a feather.
MAN: Another bloody
feather!
WOMAN: What’s wrong?
MAN: The duvet’s been
moulting. It’s got a plumage retention issue. The feathers
don’t even confine themselves to the boudoir, they migrate.
I’ve found feathers displayed amongst a bouquet of blooms in
the living room, neatly curled around a lemon in the fruit
bowl, spiked into a pound of butter which had been stored in
the door of the fridge. How come they’re never just on the
floor? Why do they always have to show off?
WOMAN: They’re not doing
it on purpose. It’s just coincidence that they come to rest
in such strange places.
MAN: It’s like they’re
trying to spite us. I wish I’d never screen-printed that
cover for it. All that work, you can tell that it doesn’t
appreciate anything.
WOMAN: O don’t be so
ridiculous. It’s as warm as toast.
MAN: How many duvets get
covers made for them by a top-notch, talk of the town up and
coming artist. ‘A painter of rare talent!’ That’s what the
Nelson Evening Mail called me. Pause. I think we should
take it back to the store.
WOMAN: We can’t do that,
it’s happy here.
MAN: Happy? How the hell
can a duvet be happy? You think the little fucker has
feelings?
WOMAN shrugs.
WOMAN: You know what I
mean. It’s full and fluffy.
MAN: And that in itself
is unnatural. How can it lose so many feathers and still be
fluffy?
WOMAN: It’s special.
It’s not like the others.
MAN: No good can come of
it.
MAN turns his back on
WOMAN, picks up paintbrush and begins working on his
painting.
WOMAN (direct address):
The cupboards that lined the walls of his studio were filled
with his creations. In the early days, he’d painted only
me, from the side, from the front, from the rear. Nudes,
mostly. When we’d lived in different cities I’d flown up to
see him one weekend and flown back with one of his versions
of myself tucked under my arm. The stewardess had made me
put the painting in the overhead locker and something had
fallen on it, crushing my right buttock, so that it looked
like I’d had a bad dose of liposuction. I’d been his
subject for six months and then I had grown tired of posing
for him; told him that he needed new material. As if out of
spite, he had started painting other women instead. Bank
tellers, mutual friends, a thirteen year old girl he’d paid
five bucks to take off her clothes so he could render her
immortal. He thought he was doing her a favour. But I was
what he kept returning to. I was the default. Although I
had stopped posing for him, he had not stopped attempting to
render me in paint. He didn’t show his work to anyone, not
even me. I was forbidden from his study. Occasionally I
would rescue a painting from the garbage and get a glimpse
of his interior world. Once, after a fight, he’d painted me
as a six headed monster, holding him up in a massive claw,
mouth open, ready to devour. In another he had shown me
giving a faceless man a blow job in a seedy bar. He signed
and dated nothing. These pictures could have been made by
anybody. Or nobody at all.
Lights out. Lights up on MAN and WOMAN lying together under
duvet. WOMAN is lying on her side with her back to MAN.
MAN props himself up and examines WOMAN’s back.
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