Kerang Water — 2

ACT II

(In a parlour of high class and taste.  Four men dressed in black suits and dark glasses are seen standing like statues by the doorway leading to the inner room, one of them holding a cellular phone.  There comes an insistent knock on the entrance door.  A middle-aged woman of high class comes out from the inner room dressed in a white house-robe to answer the door.  She opens it and receives MARCUS.)

VANESSA: Oh Marcus sweetheart!  (hugs him completely and kisses him) How are you?  (They enter the parlour together) Please, give me a few minutes.  I’ll be right with you.  I just came out of the shower.  Let me just go and put something on.  (She returns to the inner room.  MARCUS watches her with utter disdain and hurt.)

MARCUS: She was the dancing queen at a certain big bash party I attended.  She was the Cinderella of the party night, dressed in provocative red.  What a magnetic colour it was on her!  She seemed to thrive in the cynosure she created that night.  Then, she came to me.  Imagine!  A whole me!  It was very, very surprising.  I, who borrowed my best friend’s old but strong three-piece faded grey suit with clumsily polished, dead leather shoes that night.  Oh God!  I thought I was in the skies when she confronted me.  Later, she consumed me and I her.  But now … now …

(VANESSA comes out of the inner room dressed in a white, transparent, body-hugging gown.)

VANESSA: Marcus, what’s wrong?

MARCUS: Vanessa, I loved you.  And the crazy thing is that I still love you.  But you lied to me.

VANESSA: (slightly nonplussed) I don’t understand how.

MARCUS: You honestly don’t know?

VANESSA: How could I know?

MARCUS: You told me, your voice so thick with emotion, that nothing is pure in Kerang except its water.  You said that you were ever-ready to maintain its purity.  You took me and my assistant on tour and I started the job you assigned to me, overwhelmed with that sense of duty to serve Kerang without any restrictions.  You told us that you were a philanthropist.

VANESSA: And I am.  I still am.

MARCUS: A philanthropist indeed!  Indeed!!  You employed people to maintain Kerang water.  You promised to preserve the purity of Kerang water even if nothing else in Kerang was pure.

VANESSA: So, what is your point, Marcus?

MARCUS: I am telling you now that all along, you have been lying to me, Vanessa.  You are nothing more than a forty-month-old drug baroness, obvious broken skeletons in your wretched cupboard, and never for one day were you caught.

VANESSA: What??

MARCUS: Except today.  Today, I have caught you, the love of my life.  You hide your evil under philanthropy.  In fact, you are more of a misanthropist.  You make promises you never fulfil.  I have caught you today, my love, and you will rot in hell for this!!

VANESSA: (laughs) I created you, Marcus, and you spit on my face??  Shit!!  (snaps her fingers)

MARCUS: (philosophically) Water is pure, Vanessa.  There were divine reasons why God made water so pure like that.  How dare you, His creature, His image, destroy His pure, natural creation at the peril of man!  How dare you, Vanessa!!  How dare you!!!

VANESSA: (slightly surprised) My God, Marcus!  What a spit-fire you are!!  (seductively) I know everything about you, sweetie.  Everything!  (ogles at him) The way you stimulate my sex glands so effectively well with your sexy, predatory body like that of Franco Soranzo the Milanese.  Lord, that can set a woman on heat!  Oh Marcus!  Please, do not let me look for a replacement.  You’ll be sorry if I do.

(She hugs him completely and tickles one of his ears with her tongue.  He seems to enjoy the sensation from that touch with his eyes momentarily closed.  But after some moments, he roughly pushes her away.)

MARCUS: (ruefully) I care less for your Graymalkin moves, Vanessa.  Why are you adulterating Kerang water?

VANESSA: Is that any of your business?  I put you on desk, not in the fields.

MARCUS: But my signature shows my approval on anything that maintains Kerang water.

VANESSA: And so?  Is that any business of yours?  All I want is your beautiful signature, that’s all.  Besides, what are you doing for Kerang that Kerang has not done for herself?  Tell me, hero of the century.  A common petit bourgeois you are.  And your mother, head-deep in the grassroots.

MARCUS: Keep my mother out of this!

VANESSA: Oh!  I forgot that you are mummy’s boy who cannot let her out of your sight for one minute.

MARCUS: Vanessa, I’m warning you!!

VANESSA: (off-handed) Shut up, Marcus, and take whatever you see.  It is the way of this noble nation.  Get used to it.

MARCUS: Unfortunately, Vanessa, I have a conscience mightier than anything you can possibly ever think of.  Your conscience, my dear, is almost non-existent, nearing extinction.

VANESSA: (viciously) Look here, Marcus.  For the mere fact that you warm my bed gives you no right to bitch about.

MARCUS: You’re the bitch!

VANESSA: Me??

MARCUS: Yes.

VANESSA: You will regret this, Marcus.  You will regret the day you said this to me!  You will regret it with your life, Marcus!!

MARCUS: (cockily) Will I?  (exits)

VANESSA: He dares to dare me???  (paces for a while, then stops.  A contemplative pause) Boys!!

(The men in black suits run and prostrate meekly before in unison.)

VANESSA: Go catch that fish that just jumped out of the pond!!  You know where he lives, don’t you?

MEN IN BLACK: (powerfully) Yes, madam!!!!!

VANESSA: Alright then!  Do not waste my bloody time, you hear???  (MEN IN BLACK exit in hot pursuit.)

(Moments later, she enters the inner room in a fit of ghoulish laughter.)

To be continued…

Related Posts via Taxonomies

• ONE BAD NIGHT — 4 and 5
• One Bad Night — 3
• ONE BAD NIGHT — 1 and 2
• WORTH THE WAIT — 2 & Epilogue
• Worth The Wait
• The Tape — 6
• The Tape — 5
• The Tape — 4
• The Tape — 3
• The Tape — 2

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