SCENE 1 – IN FAMILY COURT
Upstage center: Courtroom, New York City Family Court, April, 2012. An elevated judge’s bench with a semi-elevated witness chair on one side, a U.S. flag on the other, a table with a chair facing the bench, and a row of chairs behind. JEFF is seated in the witness chair, facing the audience. Otherwise the courtroom is empty.
JEFF
You just don’t tell a story like this in a courtroom.
Not under oath you don’t.
Not if you want to help your best friend in a custody battle….
Trouble is … it’s the truth.
Hi! My name’s Jeff. Seeger.
I’m from New Orleans. A musician. A guitar player there, and Kevin’s best friend.
Best in the world, if you don’t count Kate … or Bonnie.
But if I’m asked to tell about Kevin,
how can I start without saying a few things about them, too?
It wouldn’t make sense.
You see, before Kevin came to New Orleans he’d been with Kate, out in Denver. An item maybe’s the expression. About five years.
When Kate was first cutting her lawyer’s teeth.
Career differences, I guess you’d say. And Kevin split.
Spur of the moment. On a Monday morning. And that didn’t sit well with Kate.
They didn’t talk for six years, or so,
when suddenly, on the night of Kev’s big gig at Blind Thomas’s,
they reentered each other’s lives. Sort of.
Same night he met Bonnie.
Aunt Bunny, Cloë calls her. Kevin and Kate’s little girl. Cloë.
She’s nearly five.
Jesus Christ! Oh, sorry. Pardon my Cajun.
Five years old. And me, still single.
Cloë’s the reason Kevin asked me, paid for me, actually, to fly up here.
It breaks your heart to see things like this happen to the people you love.
Family Court has got to be one of the saddest places on Earth….
But let’s start at the beginning. Saturday morning of Kev’s big break.
SCENE 2 –KATE’S BEDROOM
Stage right (lit by itself, at first): Dawn on a Saturday morning in 2005. KATE (Kevin’s mind) is waking up in the master bedroom of her Denver home. The makings of a fantastic sunrise are just appearing through her uncurtained window. A mirror stands a few feet from the foot of her bed. A pop-up laundry hamper is in the corner. A standing desk is by the wall. Two doors – one, out, the other, into a bathroom (neither area visible to the audience). The phone rings once, and she pulls a pillow over her head, as it rings twice more, then stops. JEFF walks down to the side of the stage (far stage left), standing alongside a café table, chairs, and a large copy of a picture of the Hindu goddess Kali, on an easel – her bare foot resting on the chest of god Shiva.
KATE (Kevin’s mind) comes fully awake and looks at herself, perplexed.
KATE (Kevin’s mind)
What in Hell?!
What’s going on?… [beat] Who said that?
KATE scrambles out of bed, takes a brief glimpse through the window, and then catches a view of herself in the standing mirror.
KATE (Kevin’s mind)
O my God. O my God. I must have died last night.
KATE looks around the room, and in the mirror, and touches herself several times, not believing what she feels and sees.
KATE (Kevin’s mind)
I’m dead. Okay. I must be. To look like this.
But I don’t feel dead. However that is.
And how? In a woman’s body? With a woman’s voice? And this voice?…
I’ve lost my mind.
[gazing pause] What in God’s name happened last night, Jeff?
I was with you, right?
JEFF
Yes, you were.
KATE (Kevin’s mind)
Where? My place?…
Ohhhh, I get it. I’m dead, all right.
Dead drunk in Jackson Square, and you’re laughing your ass off.
Well, Buddy, take this.
KATE slips down her pajama bottoms and moons JEFF. Then she pulls her pajamas back up and walks around and around the room, looking, and for a time, staring out of the curtainless window.