Banging Denmark, page 8
ANNE: I’m sorry, but that wouldn’t be – appropriate. [Beat] I have a boyfriend. He’s just asked me to marry him. It’s a very personal time.
Beat.
JAKE: I understand.
ANNE: My name’s Anne, for when you’re in next time. Be sure to say hello.
JAKE: I’m Jake.
They shake hands.
ANNE: Jake. I’ll remember it.
He walks off.
Jake – are you … are you that friend of Ishtar Madigan?
He doesn’t know how to answer the question.
Can you pass on a message?
Can you tell her –
Beat.
My boyfriend – he came over, from Denmark, and surprised me.
It’s probably for the best – if she … If she doesn’t call.
He nods. She leaves.
SCENE TWELVE
Finally, a love scene.
TOBY is in ISHTAR’s office.
DENYSE: Hey.
TOBY: Hey.
DENYSE: Thanks for – agreeing to meet.
TOBY: Why are we in Ishtar’s office?
DENYSE: No one comes in here. And, you know – private conversation space is … good.
TOBY: Is this conversation going to be awkward?
DENYSE: Pretty much, yeah, I think so –
TOBY: Have you and her reconciled?
DENYSE: Yes. How’d you know we were fighting?
TOBY: I worked it out. In a world of chaos, the patterns of your friendship are reassuringly predictable.
DENYSE: Did she tell you what it was about?
TOBY: She’s as loyal to you as you are to her, you know.
DENYSE: I mean, I can tell you about it, if –
TOBY: – Evidence suggests she was trying to protect you from yourself.
DENYSE: So you know.
TOBY: I concluded – I was not told – you got yourself involved with that Jake guy. How’d that work out?
DENYSE: It’s none of your business.
TOBY: You’re right. And I’ve thought up a cure to my intrusive curiosity.
I’m breaking up with you.
DENYSE: You can’t break up with me. We’re not going out.
TOBY: I ran some calculations. Discounting the hours devoted to sleeping, pure maths and jiujitsu, we spend more time together than the six closest couples I know.
DENYSE: Toby, that’s just – heaps unscientific. The sample dataset is much too small.
TOBY: Denyse –
DENYSE: You haven’t even run a control.
TOBY: To furnish my assumptions, I reviewed some journals and obtained hard data that affirmed what I’d concluded.
DENYSE: You have to name the journals!
TOBY: Denyse, I can’t do this anymore! I am in love with you. Me and my stupid big moony face, my faulty datasets and my bullshit journals are in love with you and while it’s totally fine – it’s understandable – it’s even mathematically fair – that you are not in love with me, I cannot chart the trajectories of thrown stars or propel rockets on a course past meteors if I’m thinking about kissing you all the time.
DENYSE: You’ve never asked me out.
TOBY: I picked you up from the bloody airport!
DENYSE: Can someone PLEASE EXPLAIN how that’s supposed to be some kind of signal?
TOBY: The airport is far! The airport is hassle! The airport is very, very expensive!
DENYSE: You’ve never even tried to kiss me.
TOBY: We don’t have that physical rapport.
DENYSE: You don’t have that physical rapport. I touch you all the time.
TOBY: Yes, Denyse: my god, you do.
DENYSE: You do know what to do, right? You have been with girls before?
TOBY: You are a feminist who knows martial arts, I’m not doing anything without an explicit ‘go’.
DENYSE: How is touching you all the time NOT a ‘go’?
TOBY: How is paying for airport parking not ‘I’m interested’?
DENYSE: You couldn’t say it’s blatantly seductive move.
TOBY: No. I’m not gonna do a seductive move. I don’t want to ‘seduce’ you. I maintain, despite everything – Doctor Jujitsu Blackbelt Maths Genius – you are actually better than that.
DENYSE kisses TOBY. He can’t believe it.
Beat.
DENYSE: Your face isn’t that moony.
ISH, in the street, belts out a few bars of ‘Mood Indigo’, drunk as a pirate.
TOBY: I can hear singing. Actual singing. Can you hear it?
DENYSE: Singing?
TOBY: It’s a cloud of numbers, storming through infinite space. Probabilities, flicking their binary lights on, and off, crystallising as the suddenly possible.
TOBY kisses DENYSE.
TOBY: Come on.
He takes her hand and the young lovers run out into the street.
SCENE TWELVE A
In which those who lie under heaven give thanks for the roundness and light of the moon.
ISH is staggering down the street where JAKE lives, quite drunk. She has a six pack of beer that she’s carrying but she’s swigging from one bottle and has another under her arm. She’s singing.
Neighbours will yell at her.
ISH: [Singing lines 6–9 of Duke Ellington’s ‘Mood Indigo’]
… hear that, world?
ISH continues singing lines 10–13 of ‘Mood Indigo’.
She calls to JAKE’s window.
Hey, spudwank! Wake up!
Maybe she hurls a bottle.
What’re you doing? Fucking someone? Get down here.
JAKE: [At the window] What are you doing?
You’ll wake up the entire street!
ISH: I know, right?
Come downstairs. It’s a magnificent celebration and I have six plus two beers.
JAKE: Are you drunk?
ISH: Ho ho ho, am I drunk?
JAKE: Come inside – I’ll let you in.
ISH: NO. I have been trapped in this sticky trap before. I want to talk to you, and I want to talk to you outside.
Beat.
JAKE: Do you promise to keep it down?
NEIGHBOUR: Yeah, do you think you could KEEP IT THE FUCK DOWN?
ISH: Did I hear someone calling for an encore? Ahem!
JAKE: Just keep quiet. I’ll be out in a second.
He disappears.
She admires the moon.
Finally, he appears.
JAKE: What’s this about?
ISH: Shh! See that?
JAKE: The moon?
ISH: YES, the moon! Big stupid shiny thing, being big and stupid shiny in the sky. When I was a kid I used to think it was following me. Over one shoulder, there’s the moon. Run somewhere else, there she was.
JAKE: How do you know the moon’s a woman?
ISH: Fucking look at her.
She shoves a beer at him. He takes it. They will both drink until the end of the scene.
JAKE: When did you get so drunk?
ISH: Not long after I went to the bank today. Which is not usually the most joyous of experiences for me personally, but imagine my surprisedness when I discovered something like fifty thousand dollars had been put into my account.
JAKE: That.
ISH: That, yes, that, you sentimental old fool.
JAKE: I felt it was the least I could do.
ISH: The least? It is more than three times than every cent you took from me in the defammmmmation settlement. You should totally sue me more often. Although it will push me into a different tax bracket, which is – you know – always a serious consideration. I’m not giving it back, there’s no ‘I don’t need your money’ at the end of this story. I told you, I’m not that noble. And I treated everyone in the department who’s lent me a dollar these past couple of months to a drink at the bar.
JAKE: How’s Denyse?
ISH: She and Toby were finally making out when I chanced to see them through my office window so the universe unfolds as she should. Impossible things have a habit of coming together, merely by virtue of their being impossible.
JAKE: If you want me to explain why I did those things to you –
ISH: Oh, SPOILER ALERT: I already know why you did them. I represent a threat to male power. I’m writing a fucking thesis on it.
Were you the troll I thought you were?
JAKE: No. If I was once. I’m not now.
Can you forgive me?
ISH: For fifty thousand dollars, fuck yes. Wait – are you drowning your books, Prospero?
JAKE: ‘Breaking my staff, burying it certain fathoms in the earth.’ [That he knows the reference visibly stuns ISH] With my podcast and website and manuals and tapes and a bunch of other useless shit. I’m thinking of buying an actual boat.
ISH: Are you Jake now, or Guy? Which one were you first?
JAKE: Jake.
ISH: Let’s hope that he turns out OK. I’m sorry I shagged that girl you like. I’m not even particularly into girls. I’m just sort of carelessly bisexual – like, oops! I tripped and fell into some vagina again!
She was into it, though, I can tell you. My Lordy.
JAKE: I saw her today. She had a message for you.
ISH: Really?
JAKE: She said she was back with her boyfriend from Denmark, they might be getting married, please don’t call.
ISH: No problem, lady. No problem at all. Sounds like a really uncomplicated situation, where absolutely no one will possibly get hurt.
JAKE: To the moon, and the light she shines on how other people’s problems are always much more messy than your own.
ISH: [Clinking her bottle to his] To other people’s problems!
A lovely pause. She rests her head on his shoulder.
Do you know why I got into games, Jake? Did I tell you? Because when I was a kid I always wanted to be part of the fantastic story. I always wanted to know that my actions, however small, could affect the outcome.
He touches her face.
She moves his hand away.
ISH: None of that, Giacomo Casanova. None of your sexy ways. I’m not engaging that business with you.
JAKE: You know every time a woman has said that to me, I’ve always got to fuck her later on.
ISH: Yeah, but I’m going to give you something better than that, buddy. Something bigger and brighter and more fantastic.
JAKE: The moon?
ISH: Pfft, the moon. No.
A beat.
A friend.
She rolls her head onto his shoulder again, and now he leans his head into hers. These two ancient, worldly humans are transformed into children, and the moon passes over their heads.
Curtain.
THE END
Van Badham, Banging Denmark
