A spacious dungeon room (lit in red) with a pool of water between two tall, Doric pillars. At the rise JOHN is bathing a MAN, kneeling beside JOHN in the pool. Throughout the scene MEN continue to enter and leave, each being bathed, on his knees. A cot is off to the side.
SALOME enters and looks around.
Sound from above like a violent rushing wind.
SALOME
You bathed that man yesterday, John.
JOHN
Yes, I know.
SALOME
Why bother bathing him again today?
Why bathe any of them, for that matter? They just keep coming back.
JOHN
Because it’s what I do.
I bathe them…. The moment I arrived, I saw all the people here were filthy.
And the ones who were not, were still filthy.
SALOME
Then bathe me. Why not me?
JOHN
Your mother’s the whore of Gomorrah.
SALOME
Your father’s a Sodomite cockroach.
Pause.
SALOME
You disgust me.
JOHN
You’re so obvious about it.
SALOME
Be what you want to be, John. What else?
By all means be the thing you want to be, and bathe away.
Float like a butterfly, get swallowed by a whale.