DEAR MADAM CITY ATTORNEY McLEAN A political drama by RICHARD W. WHITE based upon discussions with Donald McLean, City Attorney City of Santee, California (c) 1997 by Richard W. White Post Office Box 710004 Santee, CA 92071-0004 Ph. 619-697-2104 Caution: Amateurs in community theater or classroom are hereby granted permission to use and copy this play. This play may not be used for professional stage production without written permission of the copyright owner. Contact R. W. White, for information concerning license to dramatize this material. DEAR MADAM CITY ATTORNEY McLEAN CHARACTERS RICK TAX LADY McLEAN With the curtain closed, RICK, a thin, clean but worn man near fifty, hurrying toward old age, appears at the center of the stage. RICK: I'm going to start with the speech I gave to the Santee City Council in April 1995. Then, I'll get on with the play. (Rick walks to the side of the stage and takes his place behind a small podium.) RICK: Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Santee City Council. (Pause a beat) My name is Rick; I'm a former twenty year resident and business owner. And I came here this evening to tell you straight out, the City of Santee cheated me on the Prospect Avenue bridge project. Period. Plain and simple. The City engineer, Cary Stewart, concealed survey error from me and he concealed plan error from the surveyors. And the result was chaos. Piles weren't centered under the footings. Footings weren't aligned under the abutments. The bridge deck had to be lowered and reduced in thickness. Some alignments were off as much as two (2) feet. City Engineer Cary Stewart concealed the survey error because he didn't want to pay for fixing his mistakes. They were his mistakes because his plans were wrong and I should have been paid for fixing the accumulated errors. But I wasn't paid. I was cheated and Cary couldn't have cheated me without the help of City Attorney McLean. Period. Plain and simple. Cary also requested extra work which he didn't pay for. The asphalt bikeway; lowering the bridge deck and cutting off the rebar; extra rip rap; changes in the manholes. Cary kept a 'log of extras', but when the project was finished, Cary wouldn't pay for any of it and he wouldn't give us any reason for not paying. Nearly a year after we finished the work, we demanded arbitration before the State Board. In answer to our demand, City Attorney McLean sued claiming the State didn't have authority to hear it. But Cary and Attorney McLean weren't satisfied to see me cheated. And they weren't satisfied to see me wasting my time and money playing lawyer games. They decided to destroy my business with a bogus default resolution voted on by this city council without advance notice to me. The State found 100% in my favor two months after Santee defaulted me. It's been seven years: Why hasn't the Santee rescinded the default resolution? Why haven't I been paid? Why was I cheated? Thank you. (Rick walks behind the curtain, which opens to reveal an early morning scene. He is seated on a folding steel chair at a folding table, which serves as his desk, facing the audience. He is under the glow of a desk lamp, typing at the green haze of his small computer monitor. A dead, very small plant is in a glass jar full of soil on the edge of the desk/table nearest the audience. Books are stacked on either end of the desk, which is set between two (tall) old steel filing cabinets. The walls of the room behind the desk are primarily old scaffolding and two-by-four wall studs with no plaster covering. The house has been gutted by reconstruction, Framed pictures hang about on wall studs. A door is at the back of the stage. A wooden plank on saw horses serves as a countertop on stage right. A electric coffee pot is set upon the plank, together with coffee cup, a jar of instant coffee, a pill bottle and a grocery bag. Two cardboard boxes of clothing are on the floor at the back of the stage and a sleeping bag. Drying laundry hangs on clothes hangers. Books are stacked about the room. A departing jetliner passes over, loud and so low that the sound rattles the stage.) RICK: (RICK replaces a hard cover book onto one of the piles on the desk. He then begins reading aloud in monotone from his computer monitor.) Opening scene. At his desk in his sparse premises, Rick is reading from his computer screen, making a stern pronouncement: (Announcing, narrative style, reading from the computer screen.) Since the beginning of history, productive people have organized themselves ... (The green glow of the computer screen becomes tinged with orange, causing RICK to stop reading.) RICK: McLean, move off my computer screen. I can't see to read it. MCLEAN: (A demanding, but distant sounding man who is used to giving orders, speaking from high off stage.) It's cold over here. The warm feels good. RICK: Then go to hell: It's warm there, I hear. (The orange glow fades from the computer screen as a glow of light appears on the small gray cloth screen that is above and in front of Rick.) MCLEAN: That little exercise before the city council last night was a waste of time. RICK: I know. MCLEAN: So why did you bother? RICK: Because you're not the only crooked government lawyer. People need to see that it is a disaster when the government cheats. MCLEAN: What people? I don't understand who you are talking about. You should be working. RICK: Michaelanglo once told the Pope, 'A man doesn't work with his hands alone.' My heart is too troubled to work. MCLEAN: Your soul is troubled. RICK: Look who's talking. MCLEAN: I was surprised how good you looked last night. RICK: Appearances is the cheapest of modern life's necessities. It's the one perk I allow my pride. MCLEAN: Pride? You don't even own a bed. RICK: When all my bills are paid, I'll buy a bed. (Softly speaking to McLean) Now please, I'm trying to work. (After a slight pause, starting again with the narrator voice.) Since the beginning, productive people have organized themselves into governments for the purpose of mutual benefit. Where government is honest and without corruption, society prospers. Where government is dishonest, society fails to thrive. For those living it, the correlation between the ethics of government and quality of life is obscure, but it is observable, by a stroke as brief and brilliant as the flash of lighting which unites the earth and sky in the night. I have seen this coruscation as its power passed through my existence, vaporizing my life's work. And I come before you as a witness, for having lived through it, (a pause, then the dialogue flows quickly) I know that the great unseen danger that America faces today, (slowly) is the ethical depravity which is creeping into the ranks of our government lawyers. MCLEAN: That indictment is a little enthusiastic. RICK: (Quietly to McLEAN): I am still editing. Now hush, I want to finish this. (Narrating) For America to prosper, we need to publicly condemn the crooked government lawyer. MCLEAN: What is all this? RICK: You have inspired me, actually. I'm writing a play about us. MCLEAN: Us? Doesn't seem very productive. (RICK types during the following dialogue, as if he is saying it as he types it.) RICK: (Slowly) Realistically, my options are extremely limited. My only asset is experience, which would count a negative in any other enterprise, but in this play writing business, it may be an advantage. And the risk in this undertaking is minimal, which makes it attractive. Moreover, my faith in government has been shaken to the point where business in the normal course is not possible. (Rick stops typing) Read this. McLEAN: (Poetically): In search of understanding, you trespassed into timeless contemplation, and for this offense, fate has cast you adrift upon a cosmic tide, where the jetsam of humanity twines with dybbuks and bobbing ossuaries in a slick of black ink on a windless white page, to await Dies Irae. RICK: (Narrating as he types the dialogue): The very fiber of me screams to contribute, but all I have to offer is my experience. What else might I do? (Rick stops typing; looks toward McLEAN): Take to the street, collecting secondhand integrity and slightly worn ethics for you and your law partner wife? MCLEAN: Where do you get these ideas? RICK: I asked you that question while you were still living and you did the same thing: Why don't you answer me? Should I write Mrs. McLean a letter, setting out my concerns for America's future? Perhaps offer her a chance to redeem you and her, even at this late date? Or should I simply write this and let these characters play their parts? MCLEAN: Reading old books again? Is that why you think that you can write a play? RICK: My experience is a somber treasure. For it to have value, it must be cast into the pool of literature, where in the ageless waters of humanly acceptable conclusions, all the obtuse, precisely objective, impersonal phenomenons of science and law blend together, to become understanding. (RICK types the words that McLEAN is speaking.) MCLEAN: (Conciliatory, condescending): It's these old books, isn't it? These used up, very old books. RICK: (RICK stops his typing and looks at McLEAN): George Bernard Shaw was self taught. MCLEAN: And he was a failure, painting his ideological graffiti in other peoples' minds. (A pause) This idea is lunacy. Why don't you get back into business? RICK: (Looking to McLEAN): Lunacy is inspiration in disguise, since a man with many more brains than his fellows necessarily appears as mad to them as one who has less. MCLEAN: And cynicism is the last refuge of a quitter. RICK: Roosevelt said, 'No man is above the law'. Did you ever read my letters? MCLEAN: Your little ethics lessons were misdirected: I was the law. RICK: And that is precisely the problem: You were the government of my part of America, functioning with the ethics of an open pit toilet, a putrid, infected zit on the economic hull of America. MCLEAN: If America has a problem, it's people like you, failing to contribute their talents. RICK: One more man on the oars won't save a leaky boat. MCLEAN: You're pumping bilge water onto the deck of the sturdiest liberal democracy ever to set sail. RICK: I'm simply trying to call attention to some of the rot below the waterline. MCLEAN: If this country sinks, the fatal damage will more likely spring from the infectious negative mentality of your ilk, rather than from structural damage, legal or otherwise. RICK: The economic hull of the ship America is taking on water, but you are still loading lawyer ballast. Don't you realize, each business lost is another hole in the ship of state? MCLEAN: What ken your intellect brings to the American political discussion is as shallow as this so-called play. RICK: The greatness of America comes from the diversity of its entrepreneurs sailing in the shallows; the innovators; the small shops; individuals working alone who aren't swimming with the main stream. Ben Franklin with his kite. The Wright brothers in their bicycle shop. Ford, with his first gasoline motor on his kitchen sink on Christmas eve. MCLEAN: You agree with me then: you need to get back into business. RICK: This country is at a very dangerous crossroads. MCLEAN: (Enunciating sternly) I see the base problem here: you imagine yourself a sort of mental ventriloquist who can cleverly project his thoughts into other people's minds. That's what you used to do with your letters to me, isn't it? Well, you should know, your constant little lessons in good citizenship were a waste of postage stamps. RICK: The drama of life isn't played out with thoughts alone, lawyer McLean. (The telephone rings and RICK answers it.) Hello. (He smiles proudly, then listens carefully for a moment.) Slow down, you're talking too fast. (Gently) Mommy is driving on the little tire? (A pause.) Oh, gee. We'll have to do something about that. (Pause a beat) Is Mommy at work? (Pause) Okay. Grampa will think of something. You better get ready for school. Grampa loves you. Bye-bye. (RICK hangs up the telephone and types McLEAN's dialogue as he speaks it.) MCLEAN: A rational man acting in the real world will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done. It is only in imaginary worlds that we can do whatever we wish. RICK: (Looking at McLean) (Typing the next line of dialogue): Then I imagine you gone. Go away. I don't need the philosophical counsel of a crooked lawyer. (RICK dials the telephone while McLean reads the following dialogue.) MCLEAN: Choose your friends on moral principles and you'll soon have less company then you have now. RICK: (Speaking to the telephone) Is the boss there? Tell him it's Mr. Rick. MCLEAN: I am here as the voice of reality. You can't continue to subsist like a Brahmanistic tramp. (A noisy jet passes low, shaking the house.) RICK: (Speaking to McLean, offhand.) Reality in practical affairs is simply a series of tradeoffs. I choose to survive without material flourish. (Speaking into the telephone.) John, it's Rick. Yeah, good. Hey, do you still want a concrete slab behind the shop? (A pause.) I'll make you a trade. Send your tire guy over to Dr. Smith's. My daughter's little Honda is over there. Four tires for the slab. You buy the mud. (A pause.) Thanks. (He hangs up the handset.) MCLEAN: You have turned your life into a modern tragedy. RICK: (Typing as he speaks): You turned my life into a tragedy. I am simply living it. MCLEAN: It's been years already. Have you lost all sense of time? RICK: Contemplation is the timeless sense and best practiced in isolation, for as Emerson said, 'alone is wisdom'. Leave me. MCLEAN: You are not happy in this state. RICK: Emerson said, 'alone is happiness'. Leave me. MCLEAN: You need to get out among normal people. RICK: Emerson said, 'the crowd that you are obstructs my contentment'. Leave me. (A moment of silence.) MCLEAN: You're a talented fellow. You should contribute. RICK: I am contributing. Political drama is a grand traditional way of bringing about political change. MCLEAN: Change? American democracy is the finest social institution ever devised. No change is necessary. RICK: Government lawyers shouldn't go around cheating poor businessmen. MCLEAN: I'm dead in my grave and you would affront me for being a government lawyer? I should have you arrested for violation of propriety. RICK: (Typing his own dialogue): First of all, you are not in your grave. But as long as you are here, why did you cheat me? MCLEAN: Oh, for the love of God. It's unethical for me to violate the attorney/client privilege. (The following dialogue is argued, sans the typing.) RICK: (Looking to McLEAN): You're dead: you have no attorney/client privilege and no real sense of ethics. MCLEAN: You should be doing something for yourself. RICK: I am: I'm writing a play. Why don't you go back to doing whatever it is that dead people do and leave me alone. MCLEAN: Circumstance requires I delay my departure to the hither realms until certain tasks associated with the yet living are fulfilled. RICK: So take care of your tasks and then go to hell, or wherever, but leave me alone. MCLEAN: It's a sin for man to bury his talents. RICK: You didn't bury your talents: you used them to cheat me right out of business. MCLEAN: I was protecting my client. RICK: Liar. Your client was the taxpayer, not Cary Stewart. Your duty was to the law, not your fat wallet. ABA Rule one point two D: 'A lawyer shall not ... assist a client in conduct that ... is ... fraudulent.' MCLEAN: I refuse to respond to your egregious slander, but I assert it was my job to protect the City. RICK: What were you protecting the City from? MCLEAN: From lawsuits. From malcontents like you who would sue the City just to make money. RICK: You cheated me without ever telling me why I wasn't paid for the work that Cary ordered. When I demanded arbitration, you sued to fatten your own wallet. MCLEAN: I love the law; I was top of my class at Cal Western in sixty-two; but I'm not being paid to argue with you and I won't do it. RICK: So then leave. MCLEAN: I see you better than you realize. You turned your anger inside and now it is coming full circle, inside out, until it's directed against those who would help you. RICK: You are not helping me. MCLEAN: You're bullied by your own ego; you're trying to undo what happened with shear will power. It can't be done. You can't shift a single grain of sand with will power. You should start a new business. You have the ability to create jobs. RICK: (Typing as he speaks): I have created a new job: I am a prospector, panning the sands of my experience, (gesturing to the books) exploring the veins of these old pages, in search of understanding. MCLEAN: (Laughs): Look around you. You made a better brick layer. RICK: Bricks were hobby, something for me to love: nothing more. MCLEAN: Your hobby made a splash at City Hall when they featured your home in the newspaper. RICK: Cary used to walk his dog by every night, after Santee defaulted me, to make a splash on my bricks. MCLEAN: I'm not surprised. You put him on the defensive. He needed to do something to assuage his ego. RICK: Your loyalty was misplaced in Cary. Shielding him from the Engineer's Board investigation was a disservice to the community and a breach of your professional ethics. MCLEAN: For me to comment would be a breach of the attorney client privilege. RICK: Cary wasn't your client. MCLEAN: What's the point? It's been eight years. RICK: (RICK puts his hands to his forehead and looks to McLean through his fingers) Eight years of lawyers; eight years since I spent the last of my pride; eight years since I could afford self respect. I am still staggering, still fighting off the demons like some people struggle with a pesky cold. MCLEAN: (After a long pause.) Have you read this thing through? You sound stilted, on artificial wooden words that will always be too long for your tongue. You need to get back into business. RICK: (Tinged with irony, his hands over his lowered head): The business I know has no sense to it, if government can cheat with impunity. MCLEAN: Government must put its own interest, the good of all, before that of any individual citizen. (Rick rises and pours himself a cup of coffee while speaking the following dialogue.) RICK: 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly'. Martin Luther King wrote that in his letter from Birmingham City jail. MCLEAN: And what did it get him? He was dead within six months. RICK: What hope do any of us have, if our government cheats? (Someone knocks at the door just as the approaching sound of a departing jetliner begins to rattle the scene. RICK answers the door with the cup of coffee in hand. A self-important overly dressed woman enters without being invited in. She brushes a large framed picture as she passes it and knocks to the floor, breaking the glass. The sound from the jetliner is shaking the stage, drowning out all other sound.) TAX LADY: (Ignoring the picture.) I'm from the internal revenue service. Are you Mr. Rick? RICK: RICK loses his grip on the coffee cup. It rolls out of control in his hand, spilling the coffee. RICK recovers quickly and doesn't drop the cup.) Yes. Good morning. (He ignores the spilled coffee.) TAX LADY: (Moving around the room, inspecting.) Is all of this yours? RICK: (Slight smile) All of this? TAX LADY: (Sternly) Are you laughing at me? You owe me and I am here to collect. Nothing funny in that. Pay up now or I will take it all. (She studies RICK's silence for a moment, then turns her attention to the framed pictures which are still hanging. She speaks sternly): Excellent piece of property. RICK: It's gone, along with twenty years of friendships and community roots. TAX LADY: (Indicating the picture) I see a home like this and I see a tax cheat. RICK: (Quickly) I got my first job when I was eleven; I bought that house when I was twenty two. (Emphasizing) It was paid for with honest sweat. TAX LADY: (Taken aback a beat) I was speaking in generalized terms. Obviously, the house looks like money. (Looking closely at the picture) The rose garden is incredible. RICK: My ex-wife loved those roses. TAX LADY: Who did all of this brick work? The pointed turrets? The twisted chimney? RICK: It took me twenty years, one project every summer. TAX LADY: (Studying a picture) This little lake is beautiful. You were lucky to have it. RICK: It wasn't luck. I made it: two hundred eighty feet long; one hundred seventy feet wide; eighteen feet deep; I drilled two wells to keep in full; I planted over four hundred trees; I brought in free-wing wood ducks, teal and Canada geese, and no kid who asked was ever denied fishing rights. TAX LADY: (Incredulously) No wonder you have tax problems. What an incredible waste of money. RICK: When I was a little boy, my dad died violently. There was a pond near where I grew up and for me, it offered the only peace in the world. TAX LADY: Peace? You probably made an awful lot of people jealous. Didn't your mama ever warn you about lookin' too good? RICK: All I have left is the pictures. TAX LADY: (Studying a picture) Nice swing set. Big. I like that. RICK: I built it to last for my grandchildren. Of course, they've never seen it. TAX LADY: Life is full of surprises. (Grimacing) What about these old books? They are an extravagant waste of space. Why don't you burn a few of them and warm this place up? (She opens a filing cabinet and inspects some of the files) These are your business records? RICK: Yeah. The file cabinets are mine. And the computer. TAX LADY: It's not worth taking. (She turns her attention to the files. Casually.): You had some good years. Quite a few of them. (She looks at him for the first time): What happened? RICK: The end started when the City of Santee cheated me on a bridge project. TAX LADY: You probably pissed somebody off. But not getting paid on one project doesn't destroy a viable business. RICK: They defaulted me on the contract, which prevented me from bidding new projects. TAX LADY: How did you lose everything? RICK: My bonding company seized my accounts receivable before we could settle with the city. It turned my life's work into a lawyer hog wallow. The next thing I knew, I was moving with my wife of twenty four years into an old field office trailer, (a pause) a box, with no shower and no hot water. TAX LADY: Sounds comfy. RICK: It wasn't, really. We were reasonably dressed, but paupers and not functioning as a couple. Losing so much, there simply wasn't enough emotional fuel left in either of us to warm a half hearted smile. TAX LADY: What happened to her? RICK: When we first lost everything, she helped me on a couple of construction jobs. She was a grandmother by then, still skinny as a fifteen year old and willing to do construction work just to make grocery money, but it was all so inappropriate. The couple that we were, simply didn't exist where we were living. Life was a macabre stage play, with familiar players standing in for all the wrong parts. The last day of our marriage started out simply enough. She had gone to stay with a sister for a month and it was a surprise when she called to say that she was coming back. The morning after she arrived, she told me, 'I think I will move in with (our daughter).' We weren't paying any rent in the old office trailer and so my first thought spoke out, 'Can you afford it?' She said, 'We'll think of something,' and then she bit her lip and I knew. So I asked her, 'Does that mean you want a divorce?' She smiled and told me, 'I guess when I can afford it.' We did the paperwork and filed it the same day. And then, I remembered that I had prepared a little surprise for her homecoming. I had tickets to Paint Your Wagon at the Starlight Opera for the same evening. And so, one hour after filing for divorce, she agreed to accompany me to the opera. On the way, we stopped at Mr. A's for a shared glass of wine and a happy hour snack. We were acting out the old times and it was a wonderful, fleeting look back. The play was only fair and when it was over, we waited until the crowd had cleared to avoid the shoving that neither of us had the energy to endure. When we stood, the evanescent joy of the play had left the place, just like when we had moved out of our house. We held hands for the last time when we climbed those stairs to leave the Star Light opera, leaving a silent epitaph behind us, that said it all. TAX LADY: What about this place? Is it in your name or are you playing games with the deed? (She looks out the window, to the audience, announcing for effect): Great view. Pay me today or I will sell it out from under you. RICK: I own nothing but the books. Everything else belongs to the landlord. TAX LADY: You have a bank account? Any vehicles? RICK: This is all there is of me. TAX LADY: (She turns with new interest to the surroundings, then looks at him squarely): Then why does it show that you owe minimum corporate taxes for the last seven years? RICK: I have a civil case against the city. They beat me on a summary judgment motion which took until now to get through the appeals courts. Now that we are getting close to trial date, I had to revive my old contracting corporation so that it would have standing in court. In order to do so, I had to agree to be liable for the corporate filing taxes. TAX LADY: So when do you go to court? RICK: The city has money for lawyers and I don't, (He smiles a self depreciating smile) so they are beating me up on a new round of motions. TAX LADY: I don't like smiles. You need to understand that. A smile is what you wear when you look at a fool. A grin is what you wear when you've played a joke on someone. I don't like either conclusion. RICK: I'll try to remember. TAX LADY: (Gesturing): I look around here and I wonder, 'can this be how are you living?' No T.V. No refrigerator. No stove. What do you eat? How do you cook it? (She inspects the popcorn maker and peers into a grocery bag.) Popcorn and apples. That's it? (Looking through a unseen window on stage right): And grapefruit from the tree. (She pauses to study RICK): Am I supposed to believe this? RICK: (Stepping forward; speaking to the audience.) The reality is worse than this, but I am ashamed to write it. (Returning to the dialogue with the TAX LADY.) The mien tends to manifest itself in the physical. It would be incongruous for me to live at any other station. TAX LADY: (Smoldering anger) Is this then a refinement of traditional poverty? A hubristic celebration of it, without the vulgarity or rudeness of the street? RICK: (Gesturing toward the book shelf, instructing): That's an interesting observation. Hook anticipated genteel poverty to be a cost of defending freedom against the bureaucrats, in Philosophy and Public Policy. It's here somewhere. TAX LADY: You are obviously not lacking in intellectual resources. (She spies the pill bottle on the bench) I just need to see one inconsistency here, one little deception and the gig is up. For instance, why diet pills?(She slams shut the filing cabinet drawer, knocking books and pictures to the floor): How do you buy things? RICK: (A pause, pregnant with anticipation) After a while, you discover that you don't need things. TAX LADY: Are you on unemployment or some kind of relief? RICK: (Taken aback) No. TAX LADY: (Angry) But what do you do? Do you have a job? RICK: No. I've always been in business. But before I can start again, I need to understand what happened the last time. Otherwise, it could happen again. I couldn't stand it, to lose so much a second time. TAX LADY: How do you pay your rent? RICK: I'm the watchman. My pay is the rent. TAX LADY: I pay my rent by collecting taxes. You are personally responsible for the corporation's withholding taxes: they are non- dischargable, ever. I can haunt you to your grave. RICK: I know. And I know I'll never have a cent that you can't take any time you want, until the whole three hundred thousand is paid off. TAX LADY: Plus the interest. RICK: I know. TAX LADY: How much can you pay me today? RICK: A guy owes me fifty bucks for a shop drawing. When it comes, I could give you half. TAX LADY: What if I decide to take it all? RICK: I'm not your enemy. If you take it all, I won't be able to pay my phone bill. TAX LADY: People like you make me sick. If I had the power, I'd recommend to euthanize you. (She leaves quickly and after a pause to study the door, Rick returns to his desk.) MCLEAN: She impeached you with those diet pills. RICK: For me to volunteer that I use them to supplement my grocery budget would have been just as damning. (Rick returns to his chair. Repeating the dialogue from the computer screen as he types the words.) Dear Madam City Attorney McLean. I have decided to write you because I am afraid for America. These are dangerous times ... MCLEAN: You are a dangerous man, Mr. Rick. (The telephone rings and RICK answers it) RICK: Hello. (A long pause.) Yeah, in a little while. I'll catch the bus. I just need to wash up. Love you. (RICK hangs up the telephone and walks off stage right.) MCLEAN: You embarrass me, bathing out of basin. RICK: The ability to keep up appearances is all the human dignity I have left. If there is shame here, it is on you. The stage darkens. CURTAIN ACT II The curtain rises as landing lights of a jetliner on final approach ignite the foggy air in front of the stage with an orange glow. The jet noise is not as loud as one taking off. RICK comes in, obviously troubled. The scene is the same as the first act, except that clothing, wet from the shower/washing, is suspended from clothes hangers. MCLEAN: Your little mission didn't go well? (RICK sits at his desk. Turns on the computer.) RICK: My son is so angry. He was in another fight, this time with an off duty cop. (RICK types as McLEAN speaks the following dialogue.) MCLEAN: Let's talk about this play. What do you hope to accomplish? It can only hurt the country you profess to love. Moreover, an individual at the very bottom of the social ladder has no hope of impacting the democratic process. RICK: (Still typing) We shall see. MCLEAN: Politics in America has always been a contest between personalities rather than principles. You need to face the fact that you are politically impotent. RICK: (Stops typing. Looks toward McLEAN): Truth is good for its own sake. MCLEAN: (Instructing) Your truth confuses morality with legality. It's a harmless mistake until you mix them, whereupon the concoction becomes a form of violence (emphasizing) against the whole community. RICK: The ideal of a perfect America has become its religion. We've become a theocracy. Anyone who speaks against the bureaucracy is quickly branded a malcontent. I love America. Show me that exposing you will do more harm than good and I will give it up. MCLEAN: Your logic reeks like the breath of a dog who has been licking itself. You must get on with life, you must contribute while there is still time. This is a waste and a shame. RICK: I agree with you: It is a waste and a shame that this is the most productive thing I can do. But hush a moment, I have other work to do. (RICK begins typing.) MCLEAN: What work are you doing? RICK: (Typing as he speaks) Finishing this little letter to the Mayor. MCLEAN: All of us view our political appraisals through the prism of our own experience, peering through from the side labeled 'our status in society'. The mayor has his own view. Elected by popular vote, his expertise tends toward his own perpetuation. You are wasting your time. RICK: (Typing, reading the words aloud and slowly for effect, as he types): Taming the bureaucrats obsessive instinct to abuse power is the essential element that is missing in our bureaucratic structure. The mayor must be made to understand the importance of his duty to the ideal of public ethics. If the people lose faith in their local government, America is done. MCLEAN: He will ignore your letter. RICK: (Thinking aloud) I am offering him a chance to come down on the side of right simply for the sake of honesty in government. The City cheated: the mayor has a duty to make it right and the opportunity should be afforded to him. (Looking toward McLean): I literally bumped into His Honor today. We talked for a few minutes. MCLEAN: (Incredulously) You did? RICK: (Enjoying a slight victory) He expected me to be a lot more indignant. He told me that he was surprised I hadn't taken a gun and shot everybody. MCLEAN: Indignation may be the noblest of the passions and necessary for righting wrongs, but it is the most inimical to reason. RICK: The mayor told me that I expect too much from the system. MCLEAN: He can't help you. He owes his job to the bureaucracy. RICK: Maybe I will catch him at a weak moment during his last term. MCLEAN: Get back into business and make some money. RICK: Is life some sort of contest? Is the one who dies with the most money in the bank the winner? Is that how it works? MCLEAN: Productive achievement is mans' noblest activity. You are wasting your life. RICK: The pleasures of earning I understand, but for me to trade my time for coin when I have the opportunity intellectually stimulate the community, would be a greater waste of my experience. MCLEAN: Wouldn't you like to leave something for your grandchildren? RICK: (Pausing a moment to read from the computer, then speaking to McLEAN): You never read my letters? MCLEAN: Just to laugh at them. RICK: (Speaking insightfully) You did read my letters and you would have changed things, but death surprised you. MCLEAN: No. I had sufficient time to conclude my affairs. (A pause) And then you faxed me that outrageous letter, right into my home two days before I passed, threatening to go door to door collecting used integrity for me. Coming when it did, the letter troubled me, I'll admit it. RICK: Is that why you called me? To assuage your conscience? (RICK types the following dialogue as McLEAN speaks it.) MCLEAN: No. I called to encourage you to be productive. Then as now, I believe that you need to get back into business and on with your life. RICK: It took me twenty years to build the business, only to see it ruined with that bogus default. I lost so much, not just marriage, property and friends, but everything, even my self respect. It left me with no heart. MCLEAN: I had no choice. I had to protect my engineer. RICK: There was no truth, no fairness in the default. MCLEAN: Effective government finds its own truth. Fairness, frankly, isn't an essential factor. RICK: (After a long pause) Read your lines. MCLEAN: (Authoritatively) I cautioned the council to avoid discussing this matter, to let it settle in the courts. (Taken aback slightly) This dialogue is a violation of the attorney client privilege. Who is providing you with this information? RICK: A council member who remembers your monition. Please, read your lines. MCLEAN: I cannot. It violates the privilege. RICK: No, Sir! This is a play and you are simply reading your lines. Would you deny me even the hope of making America a better place? MCLEAN: I am dead and you might as well be. RICK: Please, we need to move along. Was the Santee City Council aware that defaulting me would bar my business from getting new contracts? MCLEAN: (Offhand) I was dealing with inflated egos: they pretended to know what was going on, but they were primarily interested in results: in this case, defeating your claim. RICK: I didn't file a claim until we went eight months without being paid! Until, when I was clearing up Cary's bogus labor complaint, I discovered that Cary had been cheating on surveys. MCLEAN: The claim was a poison pill. End of discussion. RICK: But there was never any discussion. Why wasn't I paid? How could you legally ignore Cary's professional malfeasance? MCLEAN: End of discussion. Defeating you became the goal once you filed a claim. The default had the intended effect. RICK: But what was the cost? What did you win? Have the social economists created some sort of scale by which to measure victories? You saved the city "X" dollars by cheating me, but the jobs that my business created are gone. I've been in court for eight years. Lawyers have sucked the blood out of me. The government lost three hundred thousand in taxes that I still owe. What was the cost of the victory? MCLEAN: (Offhand, but pridefully.) Keep your chin up. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You simply need to realize that our adversarial legal system is war. We had the superior resources, we attacked what you couldn't defend and so we won: The complaints from the health department for mosquitoes in your lake and for fly larva in your horse corrals were harassing strikes against your perimeter defenses. The complaints from the fire department for weed abatement and from the street division for trees hanging too near the sidewalk were meant to keep you off balance, like a team of snipers zeroed in on your general staff. The labor complaint was calculated to evoke aversion and contempt, to turn your pride into shame. The zoning complaint for the illegal barn was our equivalent to a strategic bombing raid on your capital, i.e., your wife, your center of gravity. RICK: (Rick lowers his head, his hands over his forehead.) It was all bogus crap: a game for you, but not for us. By the time we were in court for that old barn you called illegal, we were so broke, we didn't even own a car. My wife thought we were going to jail. We couldn't afford a lawyer. MCLEAN: Our goal was to break up your ranks. RICK: (Looking up; bitterly.) You imagine yourself a noble crusader, but in reality, you are a mugger of justice: the court is your dark alley and the judge is your mask: calling the zoning case at five o'clock in the afternoon, holding court until late at night with the courthouse doors locked so our witnesses couldn't get in. When we got out of court that night, my wife left for eight months. You won your objective. You broke my ranks. MCLEAN: It wasn't personal. We had a global strategy: you didn't and so you lost. Defaulting you, not paying you, we denied you resupply. Jailing you, we destroyed your morale. RICK: Jail is the worst social event a civilized person can suffer. The whole neighborhood heard your cops kicking down my front door. They didn't know I wasn't charged with anything, even after ten days. They didn't know it was just a game, but ever afterwards, they looked the other way when I passed. And of course, it scarred me with a wound that won't close. MCLEAN: (Offhand) Don't blame me for your troubles. You set yourself apart from the community, with your lake, your swans, your castle house. You made yourself a target, not I. RICK: The right prosper is guaranteed me by God and international treaty. I am proud of my immunity to the herd instinct. MCLEAN: Freud opined that cultural development is possible only at the price of instinctual frustration, sated, quite naturally, by aggression. It is you who are the aggressor, Mr. Rick. RICK: No. The problems started in earnest when Cary Stewart decided to conceal his plan errors by moving survey stakes. MCLEAN: I saw no evidence of survey stakes being moved. RICK: You were at Cary's deposition. You saw the pictures; you saw the surveyor's notes; you ignored facts and your duty under ABA Rule 1.13(b) to rectify a wrongful official act, because like Cary, you hated to get caught in a lie. (Speaking slowly): When I think of cheats like you, governing our communities, I fear for America. MCLEAN: (Condescending): Your fear has manifested itself into a unique case of entrepreneurial claustrophobia. RICK: Enough. We need to get back to the script. (Pausing a moment, then typing and reading the dialogue) From the lonely isolation of my present station, I fear that I do not possess the eloquence to adequately describe the moral devastation I see in the ranks of the government lawyers of America. MCLEAN: So get back into business. Help America, don't wail against her. RICK: Hush! (Typing and reading the dialogue): America is an intimate part of my identity, but she is sick. If I am to help her, I must separate myself, intellectually and spiritually from reality. (Pausing to think): I've made myself into two people, with one living the life that the other is only observing in the abstract. MCLEAN: Why are you doing this? RICK: (Typing, speaking slowly, purposefully): My hope is in the creative potential of what on the surface seems to be destructive forces. (RICK types McLEAN's next turn of dialogue as McLEAN speaks it.) MCLEAN: Preach, my budding playwright and this will never sell, this lame attempt at didactic allegory you insist on fingering into the wet cement of your future. RICK: This dialogue isn't the play. A play is what happens between stage and spectator. What counts is what the audience is thinking. MCLEAN: I reject the whole premise of this so called play, even if your motive is noble. You've cast me like a fairy, a Peter Pan, a make believe sparkle of light hung from the stage rafters. RICK: (Turning to McLean): If you refuse to participate, the loss is yours. The play will survive. I'll describe your racy cowboy hat, your expensive duster trench coat. (pausing): I'd never cast you as a fairy or embarrass you in front of an audience, I promise. I am working only with the facts and with our dialogue, but the play must be staged: make believe. MCLEAN: You boast at being a fraud. (RICK reads the following dialogue from his computer monitor.) RICK: A staged realism is fraud, just as the law you practiced was justice, except on the stage, the convention is make believe, whereas in your court, justice was fantasy and the convention was fraud. MCLEAN: I object to this entire proceeding. RICK: If you continue to fight this play as if this argument were in real time, you'll be here for as long as these words exist on any page, fighting an illusion, imitation men, art forms who live only on the breath of strangers. MCLEAN: (Thinking a moment): Stop then, I beg you for your sake. Burn these pages, go back to your life and let me go. RICK: (Looking at McLEAN): I haven't called you from your sepulcher: You came on your own. As for me, I have no life to go back to. This play isn't a Chinese fortune cookie. There isn't a juicy little proverb in the center that will make all of this better. Clocks can't be turned back. Bells can't be un-rung. As I type this page, the moment becomes history. MCLEAN: You cannot do this. That's all there is to it! RICK: (Taking a book from the shelf, turning the pages quickly) You have quoted Suslov, the single Communist party official who squawked in opposition to publication of Solzhenitsyn's work in Russia. Khrushchev wrote of it, (presenting the passage to McLEAN, then reading it): 'Solzhenitsyn's writing was well described and deeply disturbing. This is the main quality required in a work of art. It evokes revulsion toward ... the conditions under which the writer lived.' MCLEAN: Nobody gives a damn how you live. RICK: (Reading aloud from the book): 'Readers devoured it with pleasure, searching for an explanation of what happened. They were trying to find an answer to how Ivan Denisovich, an honest man, could find himself in such conditions in our socialist state.' MCLEAN: What good can come from this slander against America? RICK: (Still reading from the book): 'The evil inflicted on the people had to be condemned. Show the conditions and provoke anger against the cause of it. Brand it with shame, so that it cannot be repeated.' (Looking squarely at McLEAN, with one finger holding on the passage): Even in Russia, evil had to be condemned. Khrushchev wrote 'the strongest trial is to brand the criminal in literature.' Lawyer McLean, your very existence is an astonishing Americanization of the Communist pathos. MCLEAN: Write this and you will make yourself naked before the world. RICK: The more private the word, the more public its life. (The light glow on the overhead cloth screen dims) RICK: (RICK types his dialogue as he reads it) Don't fade on me. This discussion is good for you. By participating, you have harmlessly expended potentially dangerous psychic energy in a release of tension and guilt. (The glow of McLEAN brightens somewhat as RICK replaces the hard cover on the shelf.) MCLEAN: I'm supposed to feel good about this? RICK: (Opening a worn paperback, thumbing pages): Aristotle analyzed the dramatic forms. Catharsis, (purgation), suggests tragic drama is psychotherapeutic, depending upon the level of emotional involvement as it relates to the moral and psychological plausibility of the character. In this case, your interest is strong, since you are the essential character. (RICK pauses moment, inspired.) Hold it, I almost forgot. (RICK takes a small hand held recorder out of his brief case.) MCLEAN: What are you doing? RICK: Recording or not recording, depending upon what we hear next. He plays the recorder. THE TAPE RECORDER IS PLAYED BACK: (After a moments pause, we hear): Recording or not recording, depending upon what we hear next. MCLEAN: Answer me. What are you doing? RICK: Proving you don't exist. Go away. MCLEAN: The fact that you are telling me to leave proves that you believe that I exist, but it isn't reality. RICK: This is what it is. It imitates reality. I'm not here with a tape recorder trying to capture your words in actuality. Even if I could somehow trap you into appearing before witnesses, such evidence wouldn't affect this play. (RICK types the following dialogue): These words are an art form, a deliberate arrangement of images and ideals that attempt to make up a whole, humanly relevant course of events, the sum of which demonstrates our changeless humanity. MCLEAN: You are mad. RICK: Plato would agree with you. He thought dramatic poetry was the product of the kind of madness people call inspiration. He saw the excitement of peoples' passion as a threat to the order and stability of the state. MCLEAN: So, (deep with foreboding) now finally, we see your sinister goal. RICK: If it is somehow sinister to expose you, how much worse must have you been? You sir, turned the noble ideal of our democratic law into an absurd, pathetic, money sucking beast. MCLEAN: You are ripe for death. I'm surprised that you haven't killed yourself. You have a gun. Don't you have the guts to use it? RICK: Living this life takes more guts than leaving it. MCLEAN: This isn't real! You should be in business now. You are an entrepreneur, that rare breed that creates jobs. RICK: Just bare with me. Before I can move on, I need to understand, from your point of view, 'Why was it necessary to put me out of business?' MCLEAN: Your right to remain in business wasn't sacred. Society is fully entitled to abrogate any individual right for the good of the public. RICK: But the default denied me the basic human right to make a living. MCLEAN: Human rights; moral rights; legal rights; it is easier to label human wrongs. This fidelity you evoke to these higher principles amounts to nonsense on stilts. Show me the fruit of these rights. Show me the meat in this salad of illusions. Even I agreed with you, what is the point? My duty was to use every legal means available to defend my client. RICK: Defend? You knew that Cary's labor complaint was bogus: why did you try and drag other agencies into it? MCLEAN: Normally, we would expect some violation of the labor code to turn up, if a company is subjected to close enough scrutiny. We struck out in your case, but so what? RICK: It wasn't just the labor complaint. How can you justify the totality of methods deployed against me, a law abiding individual? It would take a whole book to adequately describe your dirty tricks. You treat the sweet breast of lady justice, brimming with integrity, like a pimple to be cruelly squeezed. MCLEAN: You can insult me, but what is the point? All of the actions I took to protect my client were legal and in conformance with the overall effort to enforce the will of the government upon you. RICK: No government resolved to destroy my business. It was all simply you, playing to win at any cost, because you were paying yourself to stay in the game. MCLEAN: Your arguments amount to nothing: if you choose to continue, fine with me. I have all of eternity. RICK: You knew that the State's investigation was based upon Cary's bogus complaint. MCLEAN: We didn't default you in support of Cary's complaint. We defaulted you in support of the State's investigation. RICK: But the State found me innocent! Where is the justice in all of this? The default prevented me from bidding any projects for three years. You raked the taxpayers for a hundred thousand in litigation fee bonuses, you wasted thousands in city staff time and my business ceased to exist. MCLEAN: You should have worked out something with Cary. RICK: Cary never told us why he wouldn't pay for the work he ordered. Your inspector Graves wrote a letter on the subject. MCLEAN: And what good did it do him? He marked himself as a traitor. We isolated him; alienated him; fired him. Democracy requires compromise. RICK: But government is supposed to play by the rules. MCLEAN: (A pregnant pause) The difference between expediency and morality is a fine line. Trading principle for political concession is necessarily a component of democratic politics. The player who shrinks from this reveals not his moral superiority but his lack of common sense. RICK: Compromise is possible only when there is a basic consensus among the contending interests to respect each other's rights to continue in the society. The record proves that Cary's goal was to destroy my business from the very beginning. He concealed plan errors; he wrote bogus letters to my bonding company; he filed bogus complaints with state agencies; he wrote the bogus default resolution. MCLEAN: Then you should have worked something out with Cary. RICK: You sir, are a personality with no ethical viscosity. MCLEAN: You need some counseling. RICK: I need justice. Don't you see? Democracy is an experiment, not a fixed doctrine. Unless we keep working to shore it up, America is done. MCLEAN: I'm already gone. I can't help her or you. RICK: You never answered my question, the one in my last letter to you: 'What kind of crook are you?' MCLEAN: (Shouting) Stop it! This play has no plot. RICK: Plot, sir, reveals character. If I can charge the audience with this view of a crooked government lawyer, who is more interested in winning than in right, they will leave here exhilarated with the experience of an enlarged understanding. They will see that the equilibrium of their own local government may be balanced on a lie, as it is in Santee. Moreover, this proposed alteration in their perception is a change in society. Ergo, revealing you is all the plot I need. MCLEAN: This is a sham! I no longer exist. RICK: So then, why the arguement? MCLEAN: I don't do fantasy! RICK: We are what we do. I'm writing this play: I am the playwright. You, sir, are a shiftless soul, a misdirected psychic energy destined to argue into eternity if we can't resolve this. MCLEAN: It isn't really happening. RICK: And yet, those who hear it will sharpen their perceptions of themselves by seeing this reversal of the equation that was our lives. And it works, if the audience finds its innate morality poised against the convention of society, Id est, the myth that was your righteousness. MCLEAN: Rick, for God's sake, get a grip. All of this is ideological compost. You can't live the rest of your life on a computer screen, shoveling it. RICK: (gesturing wildly): This drama is us, our world with us in it and it achieves its' end if I can convincingly illustrate that situations like this and crooks like you are avoidable. Can't you see the dramatic irony of the discrepancy that existed while you lived? (Pointing, accusing): Outwardly, you appeared an honest lawyer working hard for the public, but you lived with the haunted mien of a leach, sucking blood from the taxpayer while city council, trusting you, primed its tail feathers with self-serving news bites. MCLEAN: (Bitterly): Forensic recrimination. That's all this is. Vengeance. RICK: Then go away. Leave me. I don't need your help. MCLEAN: You know I can't. I must stay until I can somehow convince you that this uncompromising character you've made of yourself is a tragedy of wasted time and talent. (Foreshadowing doom): You must stop ... How can I convince you? (The telephone rings and RICK answers it.) RICK: Hello. (A pause while he listens.) I know ... we can't go to trial without experts ... We can't afford to do any discovery. I know ... it would be a waste to go to trial just to lose. (A pause): Settle for nothing? Move on to what? Move on with absolutely no assets? Move on with my reputation wrongly in the trash can after twenty years as an honest and fair businessman? What about my pride? It is an essential component of my humanity: should I move on without it? (A pause): I won't settle. Let the court dismiss it then. (RICK hangs up and the telephone.) MCLEAN: You deny your own humanity, living like this. Why don't you get yourself a woman? (The telephone rings and RICK answers it.) RICK: Hello. (A pause) Oh, gee. I'm sorry. Oh, no. Oh, damn it. Ohh, damn it. (He looks at the receiver a moment and then returns it slowly to its cradle.) My landlord has flipped. He's throwing me out. The tax lady filed a lien against the property. (RICK hangs his head and the light glow of McLEAN brightens and pulsates for a few seconds.) MCLEAN: It's time, Rick. Two telephone calls and two shoes have dropped. You have no objectivity: you can't write this and you can't go on living like this. It's time to move on. RICK: (Looking toward McLEAN, bitterly): Get that horse the hell out of here. MCLEAN: Keep this up and I'll be here, galloping in your head, herding the maniacs and demons across your sleepscape every night for the rest of your natural life. (RICK hangs his head and the light glow of McLEAN pulsates again for a few seconds) MCLEAN: I should warn you of something: this could cost you a son. He's just like you, but hot tempered in his youth: Is it worth the risk? (RICK slouches lower in his chair as the stage begins to darken. The telephone rings again and RICK answers it.) RICK: (Very tired) Yeah. (A pause, then speaking very tired, very slowly.) Yeah, I know we can't win the case without some money to work with ... No, I don't want to hurt you guys ... I know you did everything you could. I know, it's been years. (A long pause.) Sign a settlement for nothing just to end it? (RICK hangs up the telephone. The back stage goes to black as RICK takes a liquor bottle in hand from under his desk. He drinks from it as he walks into the darkness, to where his sleeping bag lays on the floor.) MCLEAN: Your attorney is giving you good advice. Your case will never get to court. Have a drink Mr. Rick and get this over with. (The stage goes completely black and the curtains come down as McLean is speaking the following dialogue.) MCLEAN: You should get out. If for no other reason than to save your son. He is your future, your hopes, your dreams. A little white lie will save him: Tell him you cheated on payrolls and got caught. Tell him you got what you deserved and he will be able to live knowing that justice was served. Tell him in a letter: I will help you write it and then kill yourself. It would be well worth it to trade your useless existence for his future. Get your gun out. Shoot it! Bring your pan, Prospector, stake your claim along the shore of the River Styx. (After a long pause, a gun shot sounds in the darkness behind the curtain.) ACT III (As the curtain rises, a gun shot sounds. The cloth screen upon which McLEAN has previously appeared is lying on the floor. The light beam illuminates it in its new locality.) MCLEAN: (The tone of McLEAN's voice has changed, to that of a tinny sounding 'small speaker'): You've shot a hole in me. This is the last straw. If you think any person with the mental capacity of a seedless grape will believe this, you're nuts. Hang me up or turn off that light: one or the other. I won't lay here like this. RICK: Is that what you told those who laid you to rest? MCLEAN: Did you hear me? RICK: Did I scare your horse? MCLEAN: (Ordering) I want out of this play now. RICK: I'm giving you a chance to do some lawyering here. Bring a motion to suppress this play. Demurrer it on the grounds that you're not a real party in interest. Or maybe you can get a summary judgment ruling that this isn't a play. Or perhaps you can get it dismissed on the grounds of uncertainty. MCLEAN: I was only doing what needed to be done to protect my client. RICK: You are disqualified as an objective observer. In life, you were a subjective liar. A moment ago, you were trying to get me to kill myself. What the hell are you doing here anyway? I thought you were supposed to help me. MCLEAN: You are free to think whatever you please. I am only here to settle how I feel about this matter. If you decide to kill yourself, it's no -- RICK: Stop! This is a play: it mirrors our relationship: nothing more; nothing less. You can't use this vehicle to accomplish such a goal. MCLEAN: Show me the law or stow your argument: there aren't any cases on point. RICK: Please, let me explain: So far as this play is concerned, you have no existence outside of it. What I know of you, my experience with you, is what you are. You can't affect the outcome of this since it begins and ends with our history. MCLEAN: (After a long pause) In life, I may have taken some actions that you haven't been able to understand. I may have made some mistakes, but now I am ready to negotiate. Let's settle this matter. Put me back up where I belong. RICK: No. (Presenting a piece of paper for McLEAN to read): Shut up and read this. MCLEAN: I refuse. RICK: (Shouting) I'm the playwright here. Read your lines or leave. MCLEAN: Why are you making me do this? RICK: (Evenly) Read it and you will know why. MCLEAN: (Flippantly, after a pause): The lawyer assumes high duties and has imposed upon him grave responsibilities. He may be the means of much good or much mischief. Interests of vast magnitude are entrusted to him; confidence is reposed in him; life, liberty, character and property should be protected by him. He should guard, with jealous watchfulness, his own reputation -- RICK: That's from People ex real, Cutler Vee Ford, 54 ill, at 520. Good law since 1870. (Softly) If you had taken it to heart when I sent it to you, you wouldn't have to be here now. MCLEAN: What you don't know about the law would make a better play. RICK: I know one thing. If there is any value in my experience, if there is any good to come from it, then it needs to be put out there. MCLEAN: For what purpose? In the context of my career, this affair was a few drips of coffee spilled on the deck of a very large ship. It was nothing: a piddling little contractor building a piddling little bridge in a piddling little city. RICK: All of it piddling? What happens if every piddling city attorney destroys just one business as big as mine each year? What happens if you become the norm instead of the spastic aberration? Your species of lawyer deserves to be vilified. If nothing else, we, you and I, need to demonstrate for the public that lawyers trained to be adversarial simply can't make everyday business decisions while working in a vacuum devoid of public ethics. MCLEAN: The concept of public ethics is obsolete. Ask any Santee citizen for the dollar we saved him by avoiding payment to you and he will tell you to go to hell. RICK: I don't believe you. Given the facts, the people wouldn't let you cheat me. MCLEAN: It's the peoples' complaisance with the system that you should be raging at, not the lawyers. Accept this dictum and this wasted exercise will have been worth it for you. RICK: (Typing, reading from the computer monitor as he types the dialogue): This play will test your premise, but it suffices, if only to revitalize my faith in America. MCLEAN: Revitalize? You warm your faith by burning my reputation at the stake. RICK: Your reputation is like a dead frog. I'm sparking it with this computer to make it twitch, to draw attention to the stink of it. If I wanted to burn something, I would burn your secrets, your cover- ups, your billings: there would be more light at city hall. MCLEAN: Good government is like sausage. Seeing the process that brings it into being is likely to destroy the appetite it is intended to sate. You need to get back into business. RICK: This play is business, believe me. With only the spirit of enterprise in my wallet, I'm taking the assets I have available, my experience; these old books; a few blank pages and I am creating something that might sell. And it contributes to the ideal of a more perfect America. MCLEAN: If you won't give this up, I demand that you strike all of my original dialogue. Our discussions were on a personal level and should remain private. RICK: Democratic society cannot exist without free, informed discussion, which isn't possible when government is conducted in secret. Consider the thought while I finish this letter, please. (A pause, then reading quickly from the computer monitor) Dear Madam City Attorney McLean, ... I am writing you because I am afraid for America. These are dangerous times. This country has arrived at a (typing, correcting a word) hazardous crossroads. (A slight pause) The future of America is riding upon our collective faith in our government. If Americans come to believe that government cheats, then the fragile fabric of trust that holds our democracy together will evaporate and America will disintegrate. MCLEAN: Rick, my boy, stop a minute. Look at me. (RICK pauses in his typing and looks squarely down at McLEAN) MCLEAN: (Sternly) Where did you get this idea, this concept, 'a hazardous crossroads'? RICK: (Gesturing) From these books. (Rising, picking up a small paperback) In 1969, when Andrei Amalrik, the Russian historian and playwright, first posed the question in this book, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984, everyone thought that he was a vodka soaked Russian fruit cake. (Gesturing to all who would listen) Amalrik's prophecy was more a private perspective than a detached scholarly analysis, but it was chillingly accurate. The question I wish Mrs. McLean to ponder, 'Will America survive until two thousand twelve?', is the same as Amalrik's. That's fifteen years. My point being, if government cheats, what chance have we got? MCLEAN: (Exhausted) Used books. Burn them, warm up this place. It's like a tomb. RICK: There's more. By 1982, (finding another volume while he is speaking, a small hard cover) Konstantin Simis, another Russian, was publishing USSR, the Corrupt Society. (presenting it to McLEAN) It's a detailed account of a political system that encourages predatory seduction of every public servant. MCLEAN: I remember that book. Simis admits to bribing store clerks to buy meat, while bemoaning the corruption of everyone else in the country. Is the man who pays a bribe any less corrupt than the one who accepts it? RICK: You put yourself into an isolated caste on top of the bureaucratic compost heap, out of touch with the day to day reality of American society. MCLEAN: I am not yet elevated to sainthood, nor was I immoral in life. (Pridefully) I earned the caviar on my table from a system which I didn't create. RICK: It's that smug, uniquely bureaucratic indifference that makes the modern day patriot so justifiably angry. The intercity masses are driven to riot by the same instinct. Like too many bureaucrats, your specialty was mutual back scratching. Three hundred thousand a year, you paid yourself, to live a lie. MCLEAN: Conceptions of truth and morals are not absolute but are relative to the experience of life. I warn you, my necromantic friend, you could end up like me, too troubled to cross over. RICK: Consider this: both Russian authors were dismissed as heretics and parasites and yet by 1985, Gorbachev was setting Russia on a course for dismemberment in order to avoid civil war. MCLEAN: The United States isn't Russia. RICK: Russia trained it's functionaries to be indifferent to the innate human dignity of their charges. Wouldn't you agree that Santee's treatment of me was equally dehumanizing, managed as it was by a matched set of ethically depraved government lawyers doing whatever it takes to keep their snouts in the trough? Twice your storm troopers kicked in the door of my beautiful home and jailed me on bogus charges: How is that different from Russia? You defaulted my company on a sham with no advance notice, putting me out of business: How is that different from Russia? You dragged my wife and I into court on trumped up zoning charges. You sued me and then told the mayor not to let me address city council because the matter was in litigation: How is any of it different from Russia? MCLEAN: You lay a national phenomenon at my door step for no purpose. I was simply doing my job. I gave the city council choices. They were the villains, not I. If you insist on taking to the streets to collect used integrity, collect for them. RICK: Jefferson said, 'The whole art of government consists of being honest'. In local government, the ethical parking brake must be the government lawyer. You had the duty to tell the city council that the city can't cheat. But you didn't. You gave them the option to cheat, as if it were a fair and reasonable option. You cheated, you covered up, you lived a lie. Making you as famous as Shylock is the best thing we can do for America. MCLEAN: You want to improve America? Where would you like me to start? Should I fire every traffic cop who has lied to win a conviction? America would become a raging riot, from sea to burning sea. Should I discharge every junior grade bureaucrat who has ever abused his power? The social order would evaporate in an instant. Should I dismiss every government official who has ever ignored his ethical duty? America would cease to exist. RICK: When people see the government cheating to win on a minor item, like a traffic cop lying to win on a ticket, they lose faith that their government will act ethically on the major issues. MCLEAN: Minor corruption in America is the unchangeable essence of local bureaucracy. RICK: (A pause. Musing.) Unchangeable? America isn't a cesspool where every citizen shares your ethics. Writing this play is a step toward changing it. MCLEAN: You are relieving yourself into the wind, Mr. Rick. RICK: (Smiling, RICK pours himself a cup of coffee) Then I'm having some coffee so I can do a good job of it. MCLEAN: What do you have to smile about. RICK: (Sipping the coffee. Slight pause) The coffee is good and I feel good, content in fact. (The curtains begin to close very slowly) McLEAN (Incredulous): Content over a cup of coffee? You can't afford contentment. It's beyond your means. RICK: Trivial pleasures are best when enjoyed en passant. Don't you agree? MCLEAN: You have the assets of a street person without a cart; you subsist on popcorn; you sleep on the floor like an alley rat. The sum of you is nothing. RICK: Luke said, 'sometimes nothing is a mighty cool hand.' MCLEAN: (Threatening) If you publish this, I won't leave, I swear it. RICK: Then prepare to spend eternity raging against those innocent thespians who may someday read these parts. We have a duty to do something. American free enterprise isn't dying on the vine: it's rotting at the grassroots level from too much government lawyer manure. MCLEAN: Can't you see yourself well enough to be at least a little bit worried? You are talking to a rag that's laying on the floor. RICK: Do you feel safe over there? Is that it? MCLEAN: (Bitterly) Publish this and the kindest critic will brand you a coward 'kicking the dead lion'. RICK: I invite the critics to read our correspondence. MCLEAN: A waste of time. I am immune from prosecution. RICK: You owe the taxpayers of Santee an explanation. MCLEAN: I owe them nothing. I merely played my part, dressing stray hairs on the community coiffure. If you show them the lice nest underneath it, they will despise you for it. I am the necessary aspect of them they care not to observe in the community mirror. Anyone that denies it is a liar. RICK: (Firmly) Every mirror you ever looked in was a liar. You are the evil reflection of all that is good in the law. Your words are the vomit of justice, but you speak the puke with a lyrical logic of sweet lies which sounds nourishing enough for bar luncheon soup. You disgust me. You've shamed America. The curtains begin to close very slowly. MCLEAN: (Surprised) Why are you closing the curtains? RICK: I'm sick of you. I want you to leave me alone. MCLEAN: At the least, you must change my name. RICK: It's your record, McLean. MCLEAN: (Extremely agitated) You have your pound of flesh! My wife resigned when you circulated your first draft. You can stop this now. You've won! RICK: (Broken phrases.) This wasn't a fight to be won or lost. There's no passion here. You're already dead and I have no blood left in me. This is a cold dry slice of our lives, our words, freeze dried in time; it's not the fruit of your victory; it's not the terms of my peace. MCLEAN: Publishing this will accomplish nothing. It proves nothing, but your own insignificance. RICK: Carl Sagan said 'We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.' These words are the last droplets of our humanity, turned into ink on paper by fate. (The curtains have completely closed) MCLEAN: (Excited.) Motion to strike this entire proceeding. This play is non-responsive to my admonition that you contribute. (A pause. Still demanding, but slightly frightened): What are you going to do? RICK: (Softly) Don't worry. I won't embarrass you. The curtain has closed. MCLEAN: (Indignant) What are you doing to me? RICK: I'm wiping up this spilled coffee.