Everything had the quality of being broken. A leg of a chair, a bric-a-brac table; even Claude Aubert’s half-completed novel, titled “2 AM”, was moth-eaten on the sofa.
In the face of the ascribed protagonist, Claude, living forty lashes, one for every year of being inhibited from the world – Claude could not believe his condition. He was once a handsome dandy who would walk at dusk in South Beach, surrounded by admirers, gigolos, bourgeois bargain hunters, boorish talkers, free beer enthusiasts, Bible belters – even the kindly “bagel-playing” ladies who offered Claude a boarding-house room after devastating Hurricane Andrew, which would make him give up on his writer’s life.
He had hoped for a legacy and inheritance, but his realtor father turned on him in anger. His only family was his daughter, Diane, who had lived with Claude until she ran off with a skateboarding champion.
Here in Florida, Claude felt he had lost his youthful fountain. He became an insomniac and started to take absinthe and read Baudelaire.
One day, Amanda Hill, a young woman from Manhattan took the room next door. When Claude heard jazz and smelled pot, he banged on her door and demanded a smoke. Suddenly, his life took on new meaning. Amanda was working on the script for an independent film she planned to direct, and she there and then offered Claude a role in her film. It seems she had heard him reading aloud from her favorite poetry collection, “Flowers of Evil”.
They quickly became more than friends. The next week Diane mysteriously returned without her skateboarder, and caught Claude and Amanda in the act. When she heard it was Amanda Hill, the underground director, making a movie, she demanded a part to play in it.
Claude, in the midst of coitus, shouts out, “This film is about my life, not yours, Diane.”
And Diane says, in her own tough, sexy way, “Daddy Dandy, I deserve to be recognized too.”
“It’s up to Amanda.”
Amanda says, “Sure thing.”
With her camera in tow, Amanda follows their reality of a life-long screaming match until Diane falls asleep on the floor. Diane tells them that she will never be separated from them, except in bed.
Claude becomes increasingly worried about the situation, but does not want to drive Diane away again.
After six months, the film, entitled “2 AM”, is completed and entered in a New York competition. Amanda receives a telegram saying her film is the winner, and she’s offered an independent film making grant. She loves Claude, but only offers him and Diane bit parts in her next production – but they are taking her up on it.
"O.K. I am a vitamin freak."
Janie takes the vitamins but her father drops the bottle on the floor. He is bald with a red face and drops the bottle on the floor.
"Before that it was nuts and grains. Then you wanted to be a rock star and a Jesus freak."
"Leave me alone."
"Before that it was Vietnam, Cambodia, always the Contras, and now you are the oldest hippie on the block."
Janie looks down at the table. Her eyes and face are red.
"I let five kids from five different men live here and you call me a bad father -- who supports them, and I can't even pronounce their names."
"All right, I'll go."
"You always come back."
"And don't you swear at me. The door swings two ways."
Now Mrs. Lynch in her wheelchair buttoned up in her warm sweater starts to get angry too.
"I won't put up with the fighting anymore. None of the neighbors will even look at us; and Father Manton can never forgive you for wearing the rosary as a necklace to the prom and then asking that gay boy to go with you."
"I didn't have a date."
"You had Roland."
"He broke it."
"Of course, he was too normal, too straight shooting for you, so you go off to that California commune that night without calling; then you join an Indian reservation, live in Greenwich Village and Provincetown. You send the kids here for Christmas and your father and I are not well. We lost your brother, don't forget. He was the good one."
Janie starts to leave and her father won't let her move. She is tall.
"Those cats should be spaded."
"But Salt and Pepper are all I have."
"A brilliant student who could have been a nun, and this is how you treat your parents... If it wasn't for those alimony checks and our welfare you'd have starved all those years, and most of those so-called fathers are dead or deadbeat dads, anyway."
"All you do all day is work on your computer. What are you doing, finding another man?"
"I'm writing fiction."
"Get reality -- the way Tom was. He knew he had to serve his country. Two purple hearts, not one but two."
"She's about to swear. Remember Janie, one swear word and your soul gets blacker."
"Janie, we didn't ask you to be Cinderella when you were younger but we knew you were a whore and a stripper even before they took you away for those bad movies you made."
Suddenly there is a knock at the door.
"This is my friend Toure. He is from Africa. I can't tell you where."
"I don't care where he's from. We have enough troubles without him. Remember, the man without a green card who promised you $2,000 after you married him and he left after a weekend."
"Do you always have to embarrass me in front of my friends? I have a political meeting. Toure's father is a guerilla leader."
"Get that guerilla out of here."
"Forgive me, Toure, I'm never coming back."
"And who will support your brats?"
"The door swings two ways."
"Where are you going?"
"I can't tell you."
"Always secretive, not like Tom who always came home early."
Out in the car, Janie starts to cry. Toure can't seem to help her and she runs out of the car.
A police cruiser spots her and goes after Toure for no reason. Toure starts to run and is shot and killed. Janie asks the police for a quarter to call home.
B. Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright and teacher. His work appears in Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry, Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, International Poetry Review, Hawaii Review, Prism International, France's Le Guepard, and the Czech Republic's Jejune. He will soon be featured in The New Novel Review. A new collection of his poetry, Crucifixion Times, has just published by University Editions.