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Danny And The Deep Blue Sea
By John Patrick Shanley
Scene 1
Two tables, each illuminated by its own shaded light. Roberta sits at one in a vacant sulk, nursing a beer and picking at a bowl of pretzels. Enter Danny, with a pitcher of beer and a glass. He sits at the other. His hands are badly bruised, and one of his cheeks is cut. He pours himself a beer. A moment passes.
DANNY. How ‘bout a pretzel?
ROBERTA. No. They’re mine.
D. You ain’t gonna eat all of ‘em. Lemme have one.
R. Fuck off.
D. All right.
R. You wanna pretzel?
D. Yeah. (Roberta picks up the bowl, takes it to Danny’s table, and goes straight back to her seat.)
R. You can have ‘em. I’m finished with ‘em.
D. Thanks.
R. You’re welcome.
D. You want some of my beer?
R. No.
D. Some fuckin bar. Nobody here.
R. That’s why I like it.
D. What’s the matter? You don’t like people?
R. No. Not really.
D. Me neither.
R. What happened to your hands?
D. Fight.
R. Who’d you fight?
D. I don’t know. Some guys last night. Tonight too.
R. Two fights?
D. Yeah.
R. How come?
D. I don’t know. Guys bother me, I start swinging.
R. I don’t get it. Did they say something to you?
D. (Exploding) Who the fuck asked you to get it! Ain’t none of your fuckin business I lock horns with anybody! Nobody crosses my fuckin line, man! They can do what they want out there, but nobody crosses my fuckin line!
R. All right.
D. They asked me where I was going.
R. Who?
D. The guys I was fighting tonight.
R. They asked you where you were going.
D. That’s right. So I decked the first guy. Hit him in the nose. You hit ‘em in the nose, they can’t see.
R. Why not?
D. I don’t know. But it’s true.
R. All right.
D. But while I was hittin on him, the other guys got me with his belt.
R. That musta hurt.
D. Yeah. I made him eat that fuckin belt!
R. Where you from?
D. Zerega.
R. Yeah? I used to catch frogs from over at Zerega.
D. Ain’t no frogs ‘round Zerega.
R. Not now. When I was a kid.
D. Ain’t never been no frogs ‘round Zerega.
R. Yes, there was. There used to be a little like marsh over on Zerega, and it had frogs in it.
D. When?
R. A long time ago.
D. How old’s that make you?
R. Thirty-one
D. I’m twenty-nine. When I turn thirty I’m gonna put a gun in my mouth and blow my fuckin head off.
R. Do it in the bathroom. It’s easier to clean up.
D. I’m gonna do it!
R. Why you say a thing like that?
D. I don’t know.
R. Ain’t no different to be thirty.
D. It’s gotta be different.
R. I’m thirty-one.
D. I heard ya. That’s you! Me, I’m twenty-nine and I can’t stay the way I am for too fuckin long.
R. Why not?
D. Cause I can’t!
R. You from Zerega whaddaya doing here?
D. There’s nothing goin on over Zerega.
R. Nothing going on here.
D. Yeah, well maybe I like that. Peaceful.
R. You don’t look peaceful to me.
D. I’m peaceful. But people fuck with me.
R. Why don’t you come over, sit with me.
D. I don’t wanna. This is good where I am.
R. All right.
D. I’m sorry.
R. That’s all right.
D. Is that guy looking at me?
R. Who? Fred? No, he’s sleeping. He’s drunk. Can’t you see, his mouth’s open.
D. Oh, yeah. There’s light on his glasses. I couldn’t see his eyes. I thought he was looking at me.
R. What if he was?
D. I’d beat his fuckin face in. (They both laugh.)
D. You from here?
R. Yeah.
D. Where?
R. Right up the block.
D. What, you married?
R. Divorced.
D. Gotta kid?
R. Yeah.
D. Who’s takin care of the kid?
R. My mother. My mother always takes care of the kid.
D. That’s a good deal.
R. Yeah. You gotta friend, you know, a girlfriend?
D. No.
R. No?
D. We broke up.
R. What was her name?
D. Cecilia.
R. Italian?
D. Yeah.
R. I’m Italian.
D. She gave me a pain in my ass! She was very fine, but she’d make me go to her house. Sit around with her fuckin parents. And she’d talk in this totally fuckin phoney-ass way when her parents were around. Would you like a glass of soda, Danny? Oh, please be careful with your cigarette, Danny. Like she wasn’t the same one I humped inna pay toilet! I’m sorry. I gotta bad mouth.
R. Maybe she had to play phoney cause her parents were drivin her crazy?
D. I don’t think so.
R. I hate my father. If I thought I wouldn’t get in bad trouble
I’d take a big knife and stab him in the face about fifty times.
D. I hate my father, too.
R. Yeah?
D. He’s dead, but I hate him anyway. He was a meatpacker. He used to get real mad all the time. One time he got so mad cause somebody did something, that he just fuckin died.
I wish my father would die. He was the one who made me get married. This guy I knew got me pregnant. I was like eighteen. And my father made me get married to him. He wasn’t a bad guy. We moved into this apartment. I was scared. But it was nice, too. I started, you know, to decorate. And then my parents started comin over all the time. This is how you put up curtains. This is how you wash the floor. My fuckin mother started cookin the fuckin meals! And this guy, my husband, he was like, What the fuck is goin on? His parents were cool. Just li8ke called once in a while on the phone. I felt so bad. Sick in the morning. Mother knockin on the door by twelve o’clock. My father comin in after work. And the guy, my husband, when he got there. It was like, Who the fuck are you?
D. What’s your name?
R. Roberts
D. Mine’s Danny.
R. Sometimes I just start screaming, you know? For no reason at all. My mother thinks I’m crazy. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I shoulda shot myself in the head when I turned thirty.
D. You want some beer?
R. Sure. (Danny brings over pitcher, pours some beer, and then goes back to his table.)
R. You waitin for somebody?
D. No.
R. Me neither.
D. I don’t know anybody anymore.
R. I got a girlfriend. Shirley. She lives next door to me. Always has. Never got married. We used to have good times when we were kids. We both had long hair and we’d go bicycle riding. I have a picture home. We looked great. She’s a pig now. She goes to these bars up in the two hundreds. They got live bands. Guys pick her up. She goes in cars with ‘em. She’ll get in any guy’s car. We used to sniff glue in my bedroom and get fucked up. She uses a lotta dope now. I use some, but she uses a lot.
D. I think I killed a guy last night.
R. How?
D. I beat him up.
R. Well, that’s not killing a guy.
D. I don’t know.
R. What happened?
D. I was at this party. A guy named skull. Everybody was getting fucked up. Somebody said there was some guys from another neighborhood outside. I went out. There were these two guys from another neighborhood out there. I asked ‘em what they were doing there. They knew somebody. One of ‘em was a big guy. Real drunk. He said they wanted to go, but something about twenty dollars. I told him to give me the twenty dollars, but he didn’t have it. I started hitting him. But when I hit him, it never seemed hard, you know? I hit him a lot in the chest and face but it didn’t seem to do nothing. I had him over a car hood. His friend wanted to take him away. I said okay. They started to go down the block. And they started to fight. So I ran after them. I hit on the little guy a minute, and then started working on the big guy again. Everybody just watched. I hit him as hard as I could for about ten minutes. It never seemed like enough. Then I looked at his face…His teeth were all broken. He fell down. I stomped on his fuckin chest and I heard something break. I grabbed him under the arms and pushed him over a little fence. Into somebody’s driveway. Somebody pointed to some guy and said he had the twenty dollars. I kicked him in the nuts. He went right off the ground. Then I left.
R. You probably didn’t kill him.
D. I don’t know.
R. I seen a lotta people get beat up. They looked real bad, but they were all right.
D. It don’t matter.
R. You ever been in jail?
D. No.
R. I wonder what it’s like. Maybe it’s crazy, but sometimes I think I’d like it.
D. Why?
R. I don’t know. Just a change of scenery to keep me from going off my nut.
D. I don’t get it.
R. What?
D. You don’t make me mad.
R. So?
D. Everybody makes me mad. That’s why I don’t ever talk to nobody. That’s why I’m sittin in this fuckin bar. I don’t feel like walkin home. I feel like I’m gonna have to fight everybody in the whole fuckin Bronx to get home. And I’m too tired to fight everybody.
R. You live with your mother?
D. Yeah.
R. Think she’s worried?
D. My mother’s a fuckin dishrag. Dishrag’s don’t worry.
R. Is she stupid?
D. I don’t know.
R. Well, what’s she like?
D. She works in a bakery. She gotta get up real early. When she comes home, she throws up.
R. Why?
D. From the sweetness. The smell of sweetness is too much, and it makes her puke.
R. My mother’s nervous. There’s something wrong with her thyroid.
D. Why don’t you rip her fuckin thyroid out?
R. I don’t know (Roberta comes over and joins Danny at his table.)
D. What are you doin?
R. I’m lonely.
D. I think you’re makin me mad.
R. Cause I’m sittin here?
D. Cause you want something, and I am definitely not up to fuckin nothin! You don’t understand! I’m jumpin out of my fuckin skin! Everything hurt! I could bite your fuckin head! Leave me alone! Everything hurts! (She grabs him buy the shirt.)
R. You’re crazy, you know that?
D. Yeah, I know.
R. You’re lucky you don’t stutter. You’re lucky you don’t bite your fuckin tongue! You’re a lucky guy!
D. What the fuck are you sayin?
R. Nothing you could understand, alright?
D. You calling me stupid?
R. I’m calling you crazy, Crazy! But what you don’t know is I’m crazy, too! Yeah. You don’t know me! I could do anything. I did something so awful. I ain’t even gonna tell you what. If I told you, you wouldn’t even look at me. (She lets go of his shirt.)
D. There ain’t nothing you coulda done would seem like anything to me. What’d you do?
R. I’m not gonna tell you.
D. Look, I think I killed a guy. What could be worse than that?
R. Suckin off your father.
D. What?
R. A daughter suckin off her father. That’d be worse than killin somebody, wouldn’t it?
D. Did you do that?
R. Answer me!
D. I don’t know. No. Did you do that?
R. Yeah.
D. I thought you hated the guy?
R. Yeah, I always did. I always hated him and wanted to run away. But then, after, I hated him different. So I wanted to stick a butcher knife in his nose. Ja! Right in the middle of his nose. And then pull it out slow till I got to his mouth.
D. That wouldn’t kill him. I don’t think it would.
R. It’s be good. People’d ask him why I did it, and he’d say, I
don’t know. But he’d know.
D. I’m havin trouble breathin.
R. Why? What’s wrong?
D. I start thinkin about it. Whenever I start thinkin about breathin, I can’t breathe right.
R. So forget it.
D. A guy told me, if you think you’re going to have a heart attack, if you keep thinkin about it, even if your heart was alright to begin with, in the end, you’ll have one. You can make your heart go bad.
R. That’s bullshit.
D. It’s true!
R. How do you know?
D. I can feel it happening! I don’t wanna die like that! I don’t wanna die from my own mind. I gotta think about something else. Davy Crockett. (Sings.) Davy! Davy Crockett….!
R. He came into my room. He was drunk. It was real real dark. He was mad cuase I’d gone out partyin and my mother was away and nobody’d been watching the kid. He was yellin at me and I was sayin I was sorry. He put his hand on my face. I put my hand out and touched him. There. He got quiet. That’s what did it. I made him quiet. I could never make him do anything. That’s why I did it. So I could make him do things. That was the only time. There was one other time after that when he wanted me to, but I wouldn’t. And that was good, too. Right then.
D. I was supposed to marry this girl Cecilia. I called her Sissy. She liked that, but she wouldn’t let me call her that in front of her parents. I don’t know what was with her and her parents.
R. Did you hear what I told you about me and my father?
D. Yeah, I heard.
R. Would you be able to kiss a girl who’d done that?
D. It don’t mean nothin to me.
R. Really?
D. Sure really.
R. Would you kiss me?
D. What, you don’t get kissed?
R. Nobody knows but you.
D. What’d you tell me for?
R. I don’t know.
D. Well, I won’t tell nobody.
R. That don’t help.
D. What d’you want?
R. How am I gonna get rid of this?
D. What?
R. What I done!
D. I don’t know.
R. I can’t stay like I am! I can’t stay in this fuckin head anymore! If I don’t get outta this fuckin head I’m gonna go crazy. I could eat glass! I could put my hand inna fire and watch the fuckin thing burn and I still wouldn’t be outta this fuckin head! What am I gonna do? What? I can’t close my eyes, man. I can’t close my eyes and see the things I see. I’m still in that house! I wouldn’t a believed it but I’m still in that house. He’s there and I’m there. And my kid. Who’s nuts already. It’s like, what could happen now? You know? What else could happen? But somethin’s gotta. I feel like the day’s gonna come when I could just put out my arm and fire and lightning will come outta my hand and burn up everything for a thousand miles! It ain’t right to feel as much as I feel.
D. What you tellin me for?
R. No reason, all right?
D. You want something.
R. So what. Don’t you?
D. No.
R. Liar.
D. Hey, you wanna smack? I don’t lie!
R. So, what if you did, it ain’t so terrible.
D. I don’t lie!
R. All right.
D. I’m tellin you the truth. I don’t want nothin from you.
R. I got a good deal in my house. I got somethin it’s like almost my own apartment. When you get to the top of the stairs, there’s a separate door to the room I sleep in. Don’t have to deal with my parents at all if I go right in that room. I’d never deal with ‘em if it wasn’t for the kid.
D. I’m not goin anywhere with you.
R. Who asked you to? So what are you goin to do?
D. Stay here, drink my beer.
R. All night?
D. That’s right.
R. The place closes.
D. So when it closes, I’ll go someplace else!
R. All the places close.
D. I’ll go someplace else!
R. And get in a fight, right?
D. Maybe. If people fuck with me!
R. Ain’t no maybe. You’re gonna haveta fight. Because you were right. You’re goinna haveta fight every motherfuckin body in the Bronx. And even it probably won’t get you home.
D. You don’t know.
R. I know.
D. Get off my case, bitch!
R. Come home with me.
D. What for?
R. Cause you’re the one I told.
D. That ain’t no reason.
R. Oh, yes it is! It is to me.
D. No.
R. Let me ask you something.
D. I ain’t tellin you shit.
R. Tell me why your hands are all ripped up.
D. I gotin a fight!
R. And that mark on your face.
D. I got in a fight, I told ya!
R. Yeah, you told me.
D. That’s right.
R. And you think you killed somebody.
D. That’s right, too.
R. Why?
D. Shut up!
R. I wanna know.
D. What are you, a fuckin social worker! Shut up I said!
R. Why don’t you tell me before somethin happens and you can’t tell me no more?
D. You’er tryin ta cross my fuckin line, man!
R. That’s right! I am. I’ve been sittin here starin at a spot on the wall for about a thousand years, and if I don’t talk to somebody about somethin, somethin that means somethin, I’m gonna snap out! You understand? I’m gonna snap the fuck out!
D. Don’t you work no shit on my head or I’ll kill ya, understand?
R. I understand, okay? I just don’t give a flyin fuck.
D. You can do what you want out there, but don’t cross my line or you’ll be dead!
R. Then I’ll be dead. That scares me about as much as Halloween.
D. Don’t push me.
R. Why not? What else I got to do to pass the fuckin time?
D. Don’t, I’m tellin ya!
R. I know. I know. You’re a cold killer with a hair trigger and I better tiptoe outta your way before I get wasted. Pardon me if I don’t faint.
D. Please!
R. You don’t scare me, asshole. I see worse than you crawlin around in my sink. You’re about as bad as a faggot in his Sunday dress! Your mamma probably still gives you her tit when you get shook up! (She starts slapping him.) What the matter, badass? Somebody get your matches wet? This your time of the month? Huh? Huh? You don’t remember how to pop your fuckin cork? Huh? Or do you get off on pigs rubbin their shoes on your ugly dick-lick face, you lowlife beefcake faggot! (Snapping out, he roars and chokes her. She doesn’t struggle.)
D. I told you! I told you!
R. I….got…
D. You can’t push me!
R. Harder.
D. (Lets her go in horror.) Jesus!
R. Why’d you stop?
D. Don’t talk to me.
R. Who am I gonna talk to if I don’t talk to you?
D. (Starts to cry.) Leave me alone.
R. No.
D. Everybody leave me alone.
R. Why you so quick with your hands?
D. I don’t know.
R. You know.
D. I’m too full.
R. What?
D. I’m too full….for anything…to move right. I can’t…Watch out.
R. Talk.
D. Watch out. Listen. I can’t stop myself if I hit you.
R. That’s all right. I don’t care and I’m not scared.
D. People can’t talk to me anymore.
R. I hear you.
D. I can’t work anymore. They don’t want me on the truck.
R. I hear you.
D. It’s like they don’t listen to what they say to each other. If they was listenin, they’d have to start swinging. They’d have to.
R. But you listen.
D. I don’t want to.
R. But it ain’t a question a want.
D. No.
R. It’s how you are.
D. I start to think. I’m breathin, I’m breathin, and then that gets hard to do cause I’m thinkin about it, and I start to think about getting a heart attack, and I feel pain, O NO, everything hurts! Everything hurts! Why does it keep on when I can’t do anything. Somebody help me!
R. I’ll help you.
D. Somebody help me.
R. I’ll help you, baby.
D. Everything hurts all the time.
R. I know, I know.
D. The only thing that stops it is when I hit on somebody. Then I’m nobody and it’s just the other guy I see. I can just jump on him and outta me. Make it go out, out!
R. I’m gonna take you home, baby.
D. I don’t wanna
R. Yes, you do.
D. What for?
R. For love.
D. Love?
R. We’re gonna love each other.
D. I can’t do that.
R. We’re gonna love each other. I hear the birds in the morning at my window. It always hurts me. We’ll hear the birds in the morning.
D. I gotta go home.
R. You got no home.
D. Yes, I do.
R. You got no home. Just like me.
D. I gotta go home.
R. My poor sweetheart. He’s gotta go home but he’s got no home.
D. No. You’re right. I don’t.
R. Me neither. I got no home neither. But I’m gonna take you home, baby, and it’s gonna be there.
D. The guys I work with. The guys on the truck. They call me the Beast.
R. Come on. Let’s get outta here. Let’s go home.
(They exit, slowly and quietly. The lights go down.)
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