The Legend of the Gift Turned Loan

A man, Trent Cicino Florent, Down Stage Centre, ‘lights’ a cigar and begins puffing it. If the House’s imagination is in high gear, they’ll perfectly picture the bright orange glow at the tip as he inhales and shakes the unlit (if not nonexistent) match to put it out.

TRENT CICINO FLORENT

It was quite a day. Orders, contracts, a few very useful meetings in the club and over eighteen holes. And how was your day, dear?

ANJANETTE STONE(off right)

I could tell you in detail but it would go in one ear and out the other. You never concentrate well on the concerns of others at the best of times, and after a day of niggling business, head all stuffed with figures, projections, new worlds to conquer or whatever, you’re unreachable.

She enters Up Stage Right, rubbing lotion into her hands.

ANJANETTE STONE

You’re lucky I understand men so well. A woman who doesn’t won’t get anything useful out of them at all.

TRENT CICONE FLORENT

It has been a trying day.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

Is that my wife I hear? Anjanette Arcane?

ANJANETTE STONE

Stone, I never took your last name.

Adam Tarrant Arcane enters Down Stage Left.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

Grandfather never forgave the insult to an old and long established name. Who were the Stones after all, new money and precious little of it, truth be told.

ANJANETTE STONE

He never forgave my ‘misunderstanding’ one of those full body gropes he called a hug either. I hope I left a bruise on his balls that never healed.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

I wouldn’t know about that, he never shared information with his heirs about private matters.

TRENT CICINO FLORENT

What are you doing hear at this hour, Adam? We hashed out all our business at the club hours ago.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

A club where it’s frowned upon to poach other members’ wives. Spouses I should say, now that women of prominence can enter its doors.

ANJANETTE STONE

Not me it seems, I’m only a wife, and yet I have my own enterprises wholly independent of my husband.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

As I see. Couldn’t you at least have avoided seducing a trade rival? Without a joint plan to use it for our advantage at least?

ANJANETTE STONE

I’m a free agent and so are you, that was spelled out liberally in the terms of our prenup which I found highly distasteful at the time. I was sure it was just an escape clause for you anytime an impulse and its corresponding erection struck and now I see I was right. A marriage of mutual love with perfect freedom he calls it! Did you ever give me voting rights on whoever you were taking up on the side?

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

We can discuss all that at home, Anjanette. I want you to come home. I have no pride in these matters.

ANJANETTE STONE

The singer whose career you were advancing took a powder?

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

The moment she’d signed the most lucrative contract of her short lifetime. She may find there are hidden terms within that document it won’t be so easy to live up to.

ANJANETTE STONE

Who says I’ve left you? Only maybe I don’t want to come back just this very minute.

TRENT CICINO FLORENT

You certainly gave me the impression you’d left him for good. ‘I can’t abide that man any longer!’ you were really quite passionate about it.

ANJANETTE STONE

If one day I walk out on you and say to somebody ‘I can’t abide that man any longer!’ which might be perfectly true in the moment—you won’t be satisfied if that means anything less than ‘I’m leaving him (you) forever.’? The mood I’m in and the headache I’ve got—the double headache I’ve got—don’t tempt me. Just don’t tempt me. Go away, Adam. Tomorrow or the next day—why don’t we say Wednesday. We’ll meet at the club I can only come to as your wife.

TRENT CICONE FLORENT

Or my mistress.

ANJANETTE STONE

For dinner? And we can map out in full the terms of a reconciliation if that’s what you really desire.

Trent Cicino Florent notices his cigar has gone out—looks around for somewhere to stow it, which is difficult as the stage is bare.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

I made you and I can break you. As a matter of fact I think that may be what’s best.

In exasperation Trent Cicino Florent throws cigar to the stage floor and crushes it underfoot.

ANJANETTE STONE

You’d start a trade war with your own wife? I know you keep divorce papers in a secret drawer you think I don’t know about just in case, but I know for a fact you hadn’t signed them the last time I looked and even then—you’d start a trade war with your ex-wife after all we’ve been and haven’t been to each other?

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

I wasn’t speaking of you.

Arm extended at full length, points finger.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

HIM. You remember perfectly well what he was and whose unintentional helping hand lifted him out of the gutter. I thought he’d be an object lesson how the poor and especially the homeless won’t know what to do with money if you give it to them. Nevertheless.

TRENT CICINO FLORENT

Will someone clue me in on this at least? There wasn’t much money in our family but we were never destitute and I was certainly never homeless, then or since.

ANJANETTE STONE

You don’t want to open that can of worms, Adam. I certainly don’t remember and on top of that it was the first time I thought of seriously leaving you. Looking back, what a slow learner I was.

TRENT CICINO FLORENT

At my lowest ebb there was the rusted automobile in the junkyard until they sold it under me for scrap. I wouldn’t fetch any money so they chased me away. It wasn’t a suite at the Dakota but it was home to me if it had ever happened which it didn’t.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

You were quite a sight, too ragged a clown even for a sentimental songwriter and the smell! It seemed likely you’d done your business at both ends in clothes you hadn’t changed or cleaned at all recently.

The Legend of the Gift Turned Loan 7

TRENT CICINO FLORENT

They look at you funny even if you have the change for the laundromat if you try to wash your one change of clothes, they should have a booth with a curtain at least to hide your nakedness while they run through the wash, spin and dry cycle. But that didn’t. . . I never. . .

ANJANETTE STONE

Of course it didn’t happen, sweetheart.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

Unless you put yourself through the cycle too, it would hardly do much good. Clean clothes on a dirty scab-incrusted body, they won’t stay fresh long. My wife and I had an argument about you

TRENT CICINO FLORENT

Not me. Somebody else, I see them all the time on the street, what’s to be done? I’d help if I could but it’s like pouring sand down a rathole.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

That’s about the size of it as I was trying to persuade my lady bride who insisted on dropping a fifty in your miserable bleary-eyed lap. Object lesson I thought, so I dropped a little flurry of thousand dollar bills, seven or eight I think.

TRENT CICINO FLORENT

Nine. Why are you two looking at me like that? I’ve heard the story many times, it’s a kind of legend. I wonder what ever became of that beggar if he ever existed?

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

You’re best positioned to know ‘Am I a good person?’ I said to my bride who was actually blushing she saw how foolish she had been.

ANJANETTE STONE

It was a flush of anger. You’ve never been good at reading women.

Looking from one to the other.

Neither of you.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

‘He’ll probably drink himself to death and end his misery at last, so I suppose I have done some good.’

ANJANETTE STONE

Cleaned up and in a proper suit he’d be presentable on any Board of Directors, he’s proved that many times over since.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

With whose money? Well I want it back, all of it, there isn’t a penny you made that isn’t directly traceable back to that initial loan, so I want it all. I bet you don’t even pay taxes on it.

TRENT CICONE FLORENT

No more than I have to, same as the rest. Same as you.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

Well I can pay a minimum of taxes on it as easily as you can and it’s my money by rights. I want it back with interest. We’ll see how a woman as beautiful and naïve as my wife, which doesn’t stop her having expensive tastes, feels about seeing and sleeping with the likes of you in the penniless condition you were born in and deserve to die in. Come home with me now, Anjanette, all is forgiven. Where did she go?

Sound of door slamming, as if from below, Off Right.

TRENT CICONE FLORENT

You know perfectly well money given on the street to a beggar isn’t a loan whoever it was you gave that to. I think it’s just a fairy tale we tell each other to feel important, sudden wealth by a few shrewd investments while continuing to live in a rusty automobile until you can afford first and last month’s rent.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

I applaud her taste at least in finally leaving you.

TRENT CICONE FLORENT

Finally after five days? And what did you get out of it? Anjanette’s headed off somewhere but not with you.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

She’ll never leave me forever ‘til one of us dies and even then—reincarnation who really knows one way or the other? I give you fair warning I’m working on retroactive loan papers you wouldn’t remember signing in your miserable condition at the time. I have an expert team of lawyers, this isn’t over yet.

TRENT CICINO FLORENT

I’m going to have to call someone in for the night from a service.

Exits Wings Right, dialling on cellphone. Off Right:

See yourself out, I’m going to fire whoever let you in the door at this hour.

ADAM TARRANT ARCANE

(After deep breath in and out)

I guess I’d better. (Slaps forehead.) What am I doing I have a taxi waiting! It’s going to cost a fortune. (Exits Wings Left.)

A tramp walks across the apron of the stage, looks down and sees the partly ground butt of the cigar.

TRAMP

Look at that! My lucky day.

Picks up cigar. ‘Lights’ it with imaginary match as lights fade and he ambles at an easy pace to exit Wings Right.