Free Soul of a Whore and Purvis by Denis Johnson

:             Well turn the damn thing off.
    VOICE ON RADIO : The president’s order has been disobeyed.
    Soft music on radio…
    BILL JENKS : All right. It’s time you left us, please.
    WILL : Don’t heal , or even touch , or even think
    About—Don’t—don’t…Don’t hurt him. He’s my brother.
    BILL JENKS :…No. I wouldn’t hurt him, Mr. Blaine.
    WILL exits.
    BILL JENKS falls and weeps.
    VOICE ON RADIO laughs hysterically — SIMON joins in.
    BILL JENKS quells them with a laying on of hands.
    SIMON : HEALER!…HEALER, NOLI MI TANGERE!
    BILL JENKS : All right. They’re gone. I’m here. Who are you, demon?
    SIMON : Et cetera non sequitur mon cher
    BILL JENKS : Is it you? Are you the same one?
    SIMON : E pluribus non sequitur tyrannis
    BILL JENKS : I saw this movie. Everybody saw it.
    Are you the demon who prophesies, or not?
    SIMON : O. This. Yes. That.
    Jack
    Sprat
    Begat Jehosephat.
    BILL JENKS : Cut it out. Get serious. You know
    I coulda had your ass in Huntsville—
    Coulda sent you to the Pit. You owe me.
    SIMON : Coulda shoulda woulda hadda oughta.
    BILL JENKS : God! There’s something wrong with me or something.
    There’s something wrong with me or something wrong
    With money. Anyhow, we tangle wrong,
    Me and the dollar…What a mess, what…All
    Those people on the money—can’t they see me?
    SIMON : I love you. Love you with a love that burns.
    BILL JENKS : If I’da lived a hundred years ago,
    I’d be riding circuit, I’d be praising God
    And healing hearts and saving souls
    And money’d never touch me long enough
    To suck itself inside me like it has.
    SIMON : I love you with a love that burns and smokes.
    BILL JENKS : OK, OK, you’re probably aware
    We’ve got a hearing set for Wednesday next
    To go and file for Chapter—I don’t know—
    Eleven, Thirteen, Twenty-one—they make
    The whole thing sound like Vegas, don’t they?
    They tap you out as quick as Vegas, too.
    But you know me: I’ll bet my shorts and socks
    And get back in the game, or hitchhike home
    As naked as my mama made me. Anyhow,
    The institute is broke, but the foundation
    Holds several thousand shares of Motorola.
    Here’s the thing: This Freddie Spendersnap,
    The NASCAR racer, wants to make a swap,
    My Motorola for a razor-thin
    Controlling interest in his hot-dog thing,
    His vending franchise thing. It sounds superb,
    It’s very liquid, totally set up—
    I mean, you figure hot dogs are forever—
    But Motorola’s flirting with Verizon,
    The big fat cell-phone company; O, yeah,
    Verizon makes my Motorola pretty—
    But if the feds resolve to yank tobacco
    Sponsorship of NASCAR, man, the brokest
    Sucker in the South is gonna be
    The guy with fifteen hundred red-and-white
    Stripèd hats and fifteen hundred hot-dog carts.
    But. Cell phones give you cancer. They could tank.
    SIMON : “Spendersnap.” I think you made that up.
    BILL JENKS :…Why can’t I be like simple John and stand
    My cross in a melting Texas parking lot—
    What did he have to endure to get like that?
    Remove from me these bonds of self…Release…
    Shit. Am I praying to you? Praying to a demon?
    SIMON : Jenks, I reject your terminology.
    Demon is a term whose definition
    Seems to shift its shape as much as we do.
    Call me a teenymeanymotherfucker.
    BILL JENKS :…So…am I Motorola, or Freddie’s Franks?
    BLACKOUT
    Â 
    Lights up stage left:
    Hospital waiting room. MASHA at the window.
    WILL enters. Comes up close behind her.
    WILL : Look at this guy. Just can’t wait to give
    His life away. He’s chomping at the bit.
    He’s straining at the traces. Giddyap,
    Ol’ hoss. Drag that contraption into
    The third millennium. You get farther and farther
    From Calvary all the time. Farther and farther
    From the place of skulls. Farther from