(Prior exits.

BELIZE(To Joe, dropping scarf disguise): I am trapped in a world of white

people. That’s my problem. (He exits)

Scene 5

The next day. At the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. It’s cold, and as
the scene progresses a storm front moves in and the sky darkens. Louis is
sitting on the fountain’s rim. Belize enters and sits next to him.

BELIZE: Nice angel.

LOUIS: What angel?
BELIZE: The fountain.
LOUIS (Looking): Bethesda.
BELIZE: What’s she commemorate? Louis, I’ll bet you know.
LOUIS: The . . . Croton Aqueduct, I think. Right after the Civil War. Prior
loves this—
BELIZE: The Civil War. I knew you’d know.
LOUIS: I know all sorts of things. The sculptress was a lesbian.
BELIZE: Ooh, a sister! That a fact? You are nothing if not well informed.
LOUIS: Listen. I saw Prior yesterday.
BELIZE: Prior is upset.
LOUIS: This guy I’m seeing, I’m not seeing him now. Prior misunderstood,
he jumped to—
BELIZE: Oh yeah. Your new beau. Prior and me, we went to the courthouse.
Scoped him out.
LOUIS: You had no right to do that.
BELIZE: Oh did we violate your rights. (Continue below:)
LOUIS: Yeah, sort of, and, and—Couldn’t you have done this on the phone,
you needed to, what? Extract every last drop of, of schadenfreude,
get off on how unhappy I am, how—
BELIZE (Continuous from above): You walk out on your lover. Days don’t
pass before you are out on the town with somebody new. But this—
“Schadenfreude”? (Continue below:)
LOUIS: I’m not out on the—I want you to tell Prior that I—
BELIZE (Continuous from above): This is a record low: sharing your dank
and dirty bed with Roy Cohn’s buttboy.

(Pause.)

LOUIS: Come again?

BELIZE: Doesn’t that bother you at all?
LOUIS: Roy Cohn? What the fuck are you—I am not sharing my bed with
Roy Cohn’s . . .
BELIZE: Your little friend didn’t tell you, huh? You and Hoss Cartwright,
it’s not a verbal kind of thing, you just kick off your boots and hit the
hay.
LOUIS: Joe Pitt is not Roy Cohn’s—Joe is a very moral man, he’s not even
that conservative, or, well not that kind of a . . . And I don’t want to
continue this.
BELIZE (Starting to go): Bye-bye.
LOUIS: It’s not my fault that Prior left you for me.
BELIZE: I beg your pardon.
LOUIS: You have always hated me. Because you are in love with Prior and
you were when I met him and he fell in love with me, and so now you
cook up this . . . I mean how do you know this? That Joe and Roy
Cohn are—
BELIZE: I don’t know whether Mr. Cohn has penetrated more than his
spiritual sphincter. All I’m saying is you better hope there’s no GOP
germ, Louis, ’cause if there is, you got it.
LOUIS: I don’t believe you. Not . . . Roy Cohn. Joe wouldn’t—Not Roy
Cohn. He’s, he’s like the polestar of human evil, he’s like the worst
human being who ever lived, the, the damage he’s done, the years and
years of, of . . . criminality, that whole era, that—Give me fucking
credit for something, please, some little moral shred of, of, of
something, OK sure I fucked up, I fucked up everything, I didn’t want
to, to face what I needed to face, what life was insisting I face but I
 don’t know, I’ve always, I’ve always felt you had to, to take action,
not sit, not to be, to be trapped, um, stuck, paralyzed by—Even if it’s
hard, or really terrifying, or even if it does damage, you have to keep
moving, um, forward, instead of—I can’t just, you know, sit around
feeling shit, or feeling like shit, I . . . cry way too easily, I fall apart,
I’m no good unless I, I strike out at—Which is easy because I’m so
fucking furious at my—So I fucked up spectacularly, totally, I’ve
ruined my life, and his life, I’ve hurt him so badly but but still, even
I, even I am not so utterly lost inside myself that I—I wouldn’t, um,
ever, like, sleep with someone who . . . someone who’s Roy Cohn’s . .
. (He stops himself)
BELIZE: Buttboy.
LOUIS (In complete despair, quietly): Oh no.
BELIZE: You know what your problem is, Louis? Your problem is that you
are so full of piping hot crap that the mention of your name draws
flies. You don’t even know Thing One about this guy, do you?

(Louis shakes his head no.)

BELIZE: Uh-huh. Well ain’t that pathetic.

Just so’s the record’s straight: I love Prior but I was never in love
with him. I have a man, uptown, and I have since long before I first
laid my eyes on the sorry-ass sight of you.
LOUIS: I . . . I didn’t know that you—
BELIZE: No ’cause you never bothered to ask.
Up in the air, just like that angel, too far off the earth to pick out
the details. Louis and his Big Ideas. Big Ideas are all you love.
“America” is what Louis loves.

(Louis is looking at the angel, not at Belize.)

LOUIS: So what? Maybe I do. You don’t know what I love.

You don’t.
BELIZE: Well I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It’s just big ideas,
and stories, and people dying, and people like you.
 The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he
was doing. He set the word “free” to a note so high nobody can reach
it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to
me.
You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I’ll show you
America. Terminal, crazy and mean.

(A rumble of thunder. Then the rain comes. Belize has a collapsible

umbrella, and he raises it. Louis stands in the rain.)

BELIZE: I live in America, Louis, that’s hard enough, I don’t have to love it.
You do that. Everybody’s got to love something.

(Belize leaves.)

LOUIS (Quiet, resolved): Everybody does.

Scene 6

Same day. Hannah sits alone at the Visitors’ Center reception desk. It’s
dark outside, and raining steadily. Distant thunder.
Joe enters.
They look at each other for a long moment.

JOE: You shouldn’t have come.

HANNAH: You already made that clear as day.
JOE: I’m sorry. I . . . I . . . don’t understand why you’re here.
HANNAH: For more than two weeks. You can’t even return a simple phone
call.
JOE: I just don’t . . . have anything to say. I have nothing to say.
HANNAH: You could tell me so I could tell her where you are. You’ve been
living on some rainy rooftop for all we knew. It’s cruel.