On The "A" Train

[sd gross]

ON THE "A" TRAIN
(a play in one act)

by Stephen D. Gross

INTERIOR OF A SUBWAY CAR - DAY
Several People sit in train as it rattles through tunnel. One passenger, probably drunk, is slumped over in a pool of his own fluids, in an apparent state of unconsciousness.

FADE IN:
FOCUS ON: MORRIS and SAM (two elderly men from the lower middle classes)

MORRIS
(speaking all dialogue with Yiddish accent)
Phooey..What a stink!
SAM
(also speaking all dialogue with Yiddish accent)
So, roses you expect? This is the IRT, not a flower shop..
MORRIS
It's actually the IND but yeah, but breathing is nice - remember breathing? For years I practice, I get really good at it, but at the moment I wish I didn’t have to breathe.
SAM
Through your mouth, Morris, breathe through your mouth. You won’t smell it so bad.
MORRIS
It dries out my tongue, breathing through my mouth. Sometimes I wake up at 3 in the morning to go pee, my nose is stuffed from the radiator, I’ve been sleeping with my mouth open, and that’s why I keep a bottle seltzer by my side of the bed.
SAM
So?
MORRIS
So I ain’t got no seltzer so I’ll put up with the stink. Boy, what a smell!
SAM
Sometimes Blanche makes kishke, we have a little stuffed cabbage, a little rugullah - and then she makes with the prunes so she won’t be stopped up!
MORRIS
And den?
SAM
So all of this stuff lays around inside of her with the juices working away at it and soon it turns to gas...
MORRIS
And den?
SAM
So all of this gas has to come out from somewhere, so she gives a little greps but after she’s asleep it all creeps out from the other end.
MORRIS
Please Sam, I don’t want to hear from Blanche’s gas...
SAM
I wish all I did vas heard it - I should be so lucky!
MORRIS
Fui! This guy must of had some lunch!
(nods in Wino’s direction)
SAM
If you look by his feet you can still see most of it...
MORRIS
What a life, to get drunk and pass out on the subway in the middle of the afternoon.
SAM
For some people life is so rotten, it’s the only way for them to get through the day.
MORRIS
This you call a life?
SAM
At least he’s not in the park mugging someone. Did we pass 86th Street yet? Sometimes I forget and miss my stop...
DISSOLVE TO:
FADE IN ON: NAPOLEON and JAYJAY, two frisky, young Afro-American males wearing their “colors”.
NAPOLEON
Damn. (makes face-waves air in front of nose) A buck-and-a-fucking-half for this show?
JAYJAY
That pool big enough for kids to fucking wade in!
NAPOLEON
Look like pure Gallo port to me - least a gallon of it.
JAYJAY
With a couple hotdogs for body.
NAPOLEON
Why they fuckin’ come down here to pass out? Find some park or alleyway where they at least out in the open...
JAYJAY
The park or an alley they get picked up for D and D but down here they just somebody going somewhere. Long as they pay the fare they get to ride far as they want.
NAPOLEON
Wanna check him out? Check his pockets?
JAYJAY
He smell so bad! This as close as I’m gettin’. ‘Sides, someone probably beat us to it. He looks like he been out for awhile.
NAPOLEON
Yeah, he look like Kelvin’s uncle from Memphis who come up and took us to the ballpark and had nine beers and fuckin’ passed out.
JAYJAY
Nine beers?!
NAPOLEON
Yeah - me and Darnell and Kelvin and his uncle who come up from Memphis..
JAYJAY
Like you tole me....
NAPOLEON
Yeah, well, his uncle never been to see the Bigs before, he seen the Chicks play but he never been to a real ballpark..
JAYJAY
They got girls’ baseball in Memphis?
NAPOLEON
No, dummy, they got this minor league team called the Memphis Chicks but it’s dudes...
JAYJAY
Then why ain’t they called the Memphis Dudes...
NAPOLEON
Say, you gonna shut up or what? You wanna hear bout Kelvin’s uncle...?
JAYJAY
Yeah, yeah so?
NAPOLEON
So Kelvin’s uncle takes me and Darnell and Kelvin to the ballpark, to the Stadium, and we all sittin’ in the bleachers, in the first row ‘cause we get there real early, and his uncle downs four or five beers while we watchin’ batting practice, before the game fuckin’ starts...
JAYJAY
Did he buy you guys any ...?
NAPOLEON
Naw, we asked him but he said it was enough he was blowin’ us to the game...
JAYJAY
Who do the Yankees playing?
NAPOLEON
Say you wanna hear this or what?
JAYJAY
Yeah, so...?
NAPOLEON
The Red Sox ahead by two runs and we got second and third and one out and Rivera’s up and the guy’s got this beer in his hand and he kind of leans forward like he’s trying to see what’s goin’ on...
JAYJAY
An’ what he do?
NAPOLEON ..
.and his eyes roll up inside his head and he passes out. Drops his beer and it spills all over the edge of the bleaches and drips on a bunch of bald heads pissing off a lot of people who turn and look up and start screaming and pointing and cursing at him but he don’t hear nothing ‘cause he’s passed out.
JAYJAY
Uh huh...
NAPOLEON
So bye an’ bye this security guard come over to where Kelvin’s uncle is kinda slumped over with his chest and elbow on the rail and his head hanging over it?
JAYJAY
Yeah, uh huh...so he do what...?
NAPOLEON
You not gonna believe this...
(he laughs)
JAYJAY
What he do, what he do?
NAPOLEON
This fat rent-a-cop with ugly freckles and two teeth missing so he whistles when he talks? Shit, what a ugly dude, he hollers at Kelvin’s uncle, “okay, c’mon, on your feet”, but Kelvin’s uncle he don’t hear nothing, so the cop yells, “let’s go fella”, but it comes out “lesh” cause he whistling through the gap in his teeth, and he goes to grab Kelvin’s uncle’s arm and guess what happens?
JAYJAY
Fuckin’ A, guess my ass...
NAPOLEON
His elbow and chest kinda slip over the rail real slow and his whole body gets to sliding over it and the cop’s piggy eyes are about to pop out of his skull but he’s together, you know, so he goes to grab the his belt....but Kelvin’s uncle, I guess he was feelin’ fat from all those beers, had unbuckled his belt, so he just slides over the rail and falls all the way down to section 28 in the Upper Reserves leavin’ the cop standing there with Kelvin’s uncle’s belt in his hand and one of the dumbest looks on his face I ever seen...
JAYJAY
No shit?!
NAPOLEON
So there’s all this screaming and we look over and there he is layin’ there on top of some fat bitch who’s yelling and screaming so loud half the players stop what they’re doin’ and turn around to see what all the hollerin’ is about...!
JAYJAY
Did he dead?
NAPOLEON
We thought he musta been but they took him to ‘mergency and worked on him for awhile and patched him up and a few hours later he finally came around and opened up his eyes and you know what that dude says?
JAYJAY
Gimme a beer?
NAPOLEON
“Who ahead?”, can you fuckin’ believe it? We all thought he was dead but he thinks he still at the ballpark and he wants to know who’s ahead...
JAYJAY
So, didja tell him?
NAPOLEON
Asshole! We don’t know who ahead, we come with him to the hospital...! He’s our ride, man, we don’t want to have to take the train out to fuckin’ Jackson Heights from the ballpark...!
JAYJAY
Wonder what that guy’ll say when he comes to...?
(looks over at Wino)
NAPOLEON
They told us what saved him was, he was so relaxed when he fell hardly any bones got broke....Mr. Smelly over there look about as relaxed as Kelvin’s uncle...
JAYJAY
Like he asleep in the deep....
DISSOLVE TO::
FADE IN:
Lights come up on two well-dressed, elderly women with blue cuetip hairdos, doused in perfume and wearing an excessive amount of makeup...
CELIA
(crinkles her nose and waves a gloved hand back in forth in front of her nose)
CELIA
I told you we should have taken a taxi....
RUTH
You always tell me you told me after it’s too late. Besides, you can walk from Bloomindale’s to the subway without having to go outside...it’s too cold to be standing in the street trying to wave down a cab.
CELIA
But I’m choking, I’m telling you, I’m gagging from the stink...
RUTH
Outside smells too, so what’s to do? Anyhow I don’t want to stand there freezing, fighting half of New York for the last empty cab in the world...
(Celia bobs her head in the Wino’s direction)
CELIA
Look at him, he should be ashamed of himself!
RUTH
What, ashamed? You think that kind knows from shame? You think he cares? His mother, may she rest in peace, a mother should never have to live to see her son like that...
CELIA
Maybe that’s his problem. Maybe he no longer has a mother...
RUTH
Well, for her sake, I hope he doesn’t, God should forgive me....
CELIA
So how’s your Stanley? He’s still liking studying to be a dentist?
RUTH
It’s not something you have to like, it’s just something you do so you can make a living, like a butcher. You don’t have to like chopping heads off chickens to be a butcher.....!
CELIA
Medical school he doesn’t like?
RUTH
I think he likes it... you know how kids are. One day he’s bouncy-wouncy the next day he’s miserable.
CELIA
You see him every day?
RUTH
I didn’t say I see him every day....
CELIA
So how do you know how he feels from one day to the next?
RUTH
I’m his mother, I know. A mother doesn’t have to see her son every day to know how he feels....
(CELIA indicates wino with a a bob of her head)
CELIA
So you think his mother knows how he feels?
RUTH
For her sake, I hope not....I can’t even tell by looking how he feels. But from the smell, he could feel worse...
CELIA
From the smell? Like rotten eggs he smells, like from the garbage strike when it was piled up in the street in that awful heat last summer....he could feel worse.
RUTH
You know how it is when you’re plugged up, like when you’re trying to go in a strange place how bad you feel?
CELIA
So?
RUTH
So that’s what I mean ‘he could feel worse’. From his stink I would say the plug got pulled a few stops back before we got on.
CELIA
Oy, I wish we should take a taxi next time, we shouldn’t have to put up with this kind of thing that makes you want to vomit...
RUTH
Come on Ceil, you’ve seen worse, like when Solly pushed that cat off from the window sill....
CELIA
I didn’t look...
RUTH
Yeah but you heard...
CELIA
What I heard? I heard Solly yell when the cat clawed his hand trying to hold on....
RUTH
Do you think the cat knew it was the eighteenth floor you lived on?
CELIA
I don’t think so, cats don’t know from counting...besides this is a stink I’m talking about here, a terrible stink, not a noise...
DISSOLVE TO:
Young JAPANESE COUPLE, neatly dressed, obivously tourists
KIMO
(disgustedly)
Americans keep their subways so filthy!
TOSHI
But they are so rich with character - so Western!
KIMO
I cannot believe the awful smell. Where are the janitors? The caretakers? I don't understand why unemployment is so high in America when so much is in need of attention!
TOSHI
I love the smell! You never smell anything like this in Kyoto. How acrid it is...what rich putrescence!
KIMO
When I was a little girl wintering with my parents in Hokkaido, Mt. Fukuenmi erupted spilling lava and sulphuric acid into the sea and killing millions of fish...
TOSHI
I remember seeing it on TV. A cameraman from channel three choked on the gases but he managed to transmit some very excellent shots even while he was dying. He died a very noble death.
KIMO
They washed up on the beaches but we couldn't eat them or use the oil so we just left them there...
TOSHI
I would not mind dying such a death if I could bring honor to my family....
KIMO
For days, weeks they lay there, glittering in the cold winter sun...
TOSHI
Like leaping on the back of a maddened ox in order to save some village elder or a poor peasant farmer...
KIMO
...looking very beautiful, but then the weather warmed up and they all began to rot...
TOSHI
...or rushing into a burning temple to rescue some treasured, ancestral relic...
KIMO
...and the stink became so bad we all had to walk around with handkerchiefs over our faces...
TOSHI
Yes, I remember he got some really excellent shots of the eruption...
KIMO
...and when the breeze blew fresh off the sea in the late afternoon, people in hamlets in the next prefect could be heard to be wailing....
TOSHI
Do you have a cigarette, Kimo...?
KIMO
The smell in here now reminds me of that winter in Hokkaido....only worse.
TOSHI
But here it's all concentrated in a very small space...
KIMO
Is your handkerchief clean, Toshi?
TOSHI
...and there sits the source
(nods his head at wino)
...the vortex, the very core...
KIMO
And this is meltdown, American style...?
TOSHI
This is the essence, the spirit of Yankee individualism..! Isn't it wonderful how everyone here is permitted to be themselves, to seek their own level, to pursue their own special destiny.....
KIMO
I need a hot bath Toshi...
TOSHI
...without interference from others. How splendid that they leave him to his own devices without embarrassing him....
KIMO
Please, your handkerchief...
TOSHI
His family will probably never learn how he dishonored them before the public...
KIMO
Toshi, I feel sick...
TOSHI
Why is it so hard for you to be around people who are different from you...?
DISSOLVE TO:
ELLEN STRINGFELLOW - late thirties, shy, incurably romantic, inclined to fantasy...
(to herself)
ELLEN
Oh God, I should have walked...I knew it...
Learn to trust your instinct, Ellen, your gut feelings....
(she looks over at floor near wino)
Guts!...yecch! What a choice of word.. Oh, that poor man...he looks absolutely miserable...I feel so-o sorry for him....to have so little self-respect...
He must be very unhappy to allow himself to fall so low, to appear that way in public....Maybe he lost his job, or his only child fell off her bike and struck her head and....perhaps he's coming from his doctor's office where he just learned he has an incurable disease and has only a month to live...Oh, how sad...!
God, what a perfectly dreadful smell....subway air is so awfully stagnant...
Perhaps his wife just left him or, worse, his entire family was wiped out in a car crash...Now he's suddenly all alone in the world and utterly miserable, used to having everything his way and now totally destitute. His life shattered, reduced to the rank dreariness of the subway...! Maybe he just needs somebody to talk to, to be with...he doesn't look very old...maybe if he were to clean himself up...? It's hard to tell...he looks so peaceful, you could never imagine the true measure of his suffering....I wonder if I should go over and....Maybe he just wants to be left alone. People have a right to wallow in their misery, if that's what they want to do....Here I sit trying to decide what's best for him but he'd probably just think me meddlesome......
(contemplative pause)
Look at the cocky sonofabitch stretched out over there like he owns the damn subway... I bet he's just another damn macho asshole...most of them are....who needs the agravation, anyway...?
DISSOLVE TO:
PEARL and OATS, an Afro-American couple in their 70s, fuss about, trying to get their old bones comfortable.
PEARL
(looks over at Wino and wrinkles nose in displeasure)
Ain't it a shame, ain't it a damn shame...!
OATS
Sometime I'm glad my nose don't work so good no mo'...
PEARL
Used to be not so bad down here, now look at this copper-nose here...
OATS
Yessir, yessir...
PEARL
Never was what I call clean mind you, but 'least you could keep down your lunch...
OATS
He look like he done moved to Marble Town..
PEARL
Sadie's boy don't look out he gonna end up like that....
OATS
What you mean...? Little Carnel?
PEARL
Yeah, lucky he don't end up like that the way he carry on, gettin' in trouble and stuff...
OATS
Who..? Little Carnel...?
PEARL
You heard me Oats...yeah, little Carnel, hanging out under the bridge, up in the park with them Bad Boys from the Heights...
OATS
Doin' what?
PEARL
Suckin' up joy juice...that cheap T-Bird, Whiteport, all dat shit...!
OATS
(points chin toward Wino)
Dis boy here look like a whole beer truck done run over him...
PEARL
Yeah, he pretty ripe. That's for sure...
OATS
Say, ain't Carnel but nine years...?
PEARL
Yeah but you know how fast kids grow up these days hanging out on the corner, seein' all dat shit goin' down with whores and dope...
OATS
That's right, that's right...
PEARL
You know what his brother Eli say about him?
OATS
What do Eli say?
PEARL
That Carnel was ate before he was seven...!
OATS
(laughs-then remembers something)
Oh, sheet...
PEARL
What's wrong Oats?
OATS
Forgot to take my insulin 'fore we left the house..
PEARL
Don't worry...I know you always does that so I brought along an orange.
OATS
You a good woman, Pearl...
Pearl opens her handbag and removes an orange which she drops as she's handing it to Oats. It rolls over to the Wino and comes to rest in the messy wet area around his feet.
OATS
(con't)
...but you still a butterfingers..!
PEARL
(defensively)
Least I ain't no Butterhead...!
OATS
You ain't no butterfly, neither...
PEARL
I ain't goin' over there...I ain't goin' near that Jick head shit....
OATS
Doan worry 'bout it - you got any of those
Jujubes from the movie las' night?
PEARL
(rummages through crowded handbag - pulls box of Jujubes out).
PEARL
What color you want?
OATS
Any color at all long as it's red...

DISSOLVE TO:
Blind man with (harmonica, saxophone) enters car wearing dark glasses, tapping with his cane as he walks. He's got a sign around his neck that says"I Nead A Operashun on My Eyes". He stops next to Wino, sniffs, wrinkles his nose, sniffs again. Lifting his glasses he looks over at Wino and quickly exits through door leading to next car.
COP enters walking through car looking about himself. He sees Wino and walks over to him then repulsed by the smell, backs off a step.
COP
(rapping Wino's foot with his nightstick)
Okay, fella, rise and shine...
(continuing)
Up and at 'em buddy, nap time's over...
(raps vigorously on sole of Wino's foot)
(continuing, leaning closer and shouting)
Let's go! Let's go! Move out!
(grabs Wino's shoulder and shakes hard - Wino lifelessly slumps against side of car)
COP
(muttering, sotto voce)
...damn shit I have to put up with...
(looks more closely at Wino and takes wrist in hand to check his pulse)
COP
(sneezing, blowing nose)
In springtime it's not always easy to tell the living from the dead!
(takes walkie-talkie from his belt and says something unintelligible into it - looks at Wino again, shakes head in disgust and exits.)

The End