Free Murder Mysteries a Play for Voices (9781466109827) by Neil Gaiman Page B

English. I said, no offence hon, Jack the Ripper was
English.
     
    NARRATOR -- LIVE
    (amused) Thanks. How far away is her house?
I’m afraid I’m lost already.
     
    FRIEND
    It’s a big city.
     
    NARRATOR -- LIVE
    Well, yes, but so’s London, or Paris, or New
York, and I never seem to get lost in them. I suppose it’s because
you can walk around them, or catch a subway. But LA doesn’t seem to
work without a car.
     
    FRIEND
    They’re building a subway. I don’t know
who’s going to take it.
     
    SHE STARTS TO SING A SONG WE CAN GET
PERMISSION FOR THAT MIGHT BE APPROPRIATE -- PROBABLY “HARK THE
HERALD ANGELS SING...” AS IT’S NEARLY CHRISTMAS...
     
    /SFX/THE CAR FADES INTO THE BACKGROUND,
UNDER...
     
    NARRATOR
    Los Angeles was at that time a complete
mystery to me; and I cannot say I understand it much better now.
Memories of LA for me are linked by rides in other people's cars,
with no sense there of the shape of the city, of the relationships
between the people and the place. The regularity of the roads, the
repetition of structure and form, mean that when I try to remember
it as an entity all I have is the boundless profusion of tiny
lights I saw one night on my first trip to the city, from the hill
of Griffith Park. It was one of the most beautiful things I had
ever seen, from that distance...
     
    FRIEND
    (finishes singing)
    “... you got your good things and I got
mine...” Hey. Hey, Jack the Ripper. See that building?
     
    NARRATOR -- LIVE
    That red one?
     
    FRIEND
    (with respect and pride)
    Art deco. Built in the 1930s. Hard to
believe it’s still here today, huh?
     
    NARRATOR -- LIVE
    (drily) 1930s? Gosh.
     
    FRIEND
    Wish I’d been around back then.
     
    NARRATOR -- LIVE
    You’ve never been to England, have you?
     
    FRIEND
    No. Why?
     
    NARRATOR -- LIVE
    No reason.
     
    NARRATOR
    I said something polite, trying to
comprehend a city inside which fifty years could be considered a
long time.
     
    FRIEND
    That one there, that’s one of my favorites.
It’s the original Brown Derby building.
     
    NARRATOR -- LIVE
    It’s shaped like a hat. How far to Tink’s
place from here?
     
    FRIEND
    No more than 15 minutes. Tink's real
excited. When she heard you were in town. She was so excited.
     
    NARRATOR -- LIVE
    I'm looking forward to seeing her again
too.
     
    NARRATOR
    Tink's real name was Tinkerbell Richmond. No
lie. She was staying with friends in small apartment clump,
somewhere about half an hours' drive from downtown LA. She was ten
years older than me, in her early thirties; she had glossy black
hair and red, puzzled lips, and very white skin, like Snow White in
the fairy stories; the first time I met her I thought she was the
most beautiful woman in the world. Tink had been married for a
while at some point in her life, and had a five-year old daughter
called Susan. I had never met Susan - when Tink had been in
England, Susan had been staying on in Seattle, with her father.
    (beat)
    People named Tinkerbell name their daughters
Susan.
     
    /SFX/ SOUNDS OF THE CAR FADE OUT SLOWLY,
UNDER...
    /MUS/ SCATTERED MEMORIES, DARK RECURRING
THEME, UNDER...
     
    NARRATOR (CONT’D)
    Memory is the great deceiver. Perhaps there
are some individuals whose memories act like tape recordings, daily
records of their lives complete in every detail, but I am not one
of them. My memory is a patchwork of occurences, of discontinuous
events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember
precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished
completely.
    (BEAT)
    I do not remember arriving at Tink's house,
nor where her flatmate went.
     
    /SFX/ INT. OF TINK’S HOUSE; RADIO IN
BACKGROUND, UNDER...
     
    NARRATOR (CONT’D)
    What I remember next is sitting in Tink's
lounge, with the lights low; the two of us next to each other, on
the sofa.
     
    TINK
    You look wonderful.
     
    NARRATOR -- LIVE
    Well, so do you. You look amazing.
     
    TINK
    Jesus. How long has it been? Oh, never mind
that, let me look at you...