Photo by MART PRODUCTION from Pexels
Summer. Under an expressway overpass three homeless men – JAKE (wearing a straw hat), JOE YA-KNOW (with a singer’s deep voice), and RATTLER (with a limp) – are busy laying out their plans and design for constructing a shed. Two-by-fours, sheets of plywood, corrugated roofing panels, and other materials are resting on the concrete near them. A couple of tents are pitched further back under the overpass, upstage. A young, homeless female (maybe a redhead), MOLLY DEE, enters, pulling her belongings (on wheels) behind her, wearing pink bunny slippers that are almost black. She stops.
MOLLY DEE
Cheers.
JOE
Same, to ya.
MOLLY DEE
This used to be me place, you know.
JAKE
No place is your place, Sweetheart, if it ain’t staked out.
MOLLY DEE
No worries.
I’m sleeping in a parking garage.
The manager doesn’t make me get out till 6:30.
And only ten blocks, up Center, to a free shower every morning.
And clothes, every other week.
RATTLER
Rattler’s the name.
[beat] But I’m no rat; and I’m no snake.
I’m a freight train. On my way.
JOE
Been sayin’ that a year or two.
MOLLY DEE
Molly Dee.
JOE
Joe Ya-Know.
JAKE
Jake.
Touches the brim of his hat.
MOLLY DEE
What are you doing?
JAKE
Buildin’.
MOLLY DEE
A fort?
JOE
A shed.
MOLLY DEE
I’ve lost my best friend.
In all the world.
My deepest breath.
My sense of circulation.
My sunny clouds, drifting.
My thumbs.
My understanding eyes.
My meridian of time.
My best piece of hope.
With a string attached to it.
Flying down city streets.
A perfect wind blowing.
With no friend to come help mend a broken heart with me.
[beat] And do you know what that makes me?
JOE
[beat] No. What?
MOLLY DEE
It makes me love all the more what little is left.
Nothing under the sun lasts forever. Not even the corona virus.