(THREE BIG CHORDS)
TR (ANNC): Once again, Rainbow Motor Oil and the Rainbow Family of Automotive Products is pleased to present....The Story of Bob, A Young Artist....
GK: This week, I snuck down to the Arts Center to see a rehearsal of my play, "The Flaming Heart," and I stood in back and I watched, and just as I thought, they've got the whole thing wrong. The whole death and rebirth motif, the water imagery, they just don't get it --- My first play, and they're butchering it. I'm sick. I'm physically sick.
(BIG ARPEGGIATA THEME, APPASSIONATO, AND UNDER....)
TR: The Story of Bob, starring Carson (Bud) Wyler as Bob, and written by Sara Bellum.
(VIOLIN THEME, AND UNDER....)
(DISHES BEING CLEARED FROM THE TABLE)
SS: You want root beer with your chow mein, Bob? Or would you prefer a cola? We got both. Take your pick.
GK: Nothing for me, Berniece.
SS: No chow mein today?
GK: I had three waffles for breakfast. I'll just have a couple saltines, and a cream soda.
SS: Pops?
TR: (BELCH) Root beer for me, Berniece. And one for Rex, too. Huh? You care for a root beer, boy? (DOG THUMPING, PANTING, JINGLING) Sure you do.
SS: I'm going downtown, Bob, if you want me to take your suit to the cleaners ---- you're going to want something nice to wear to your premiere.
TR: That suit is going to have to be cleaned after the play, Berniece. Gonna have rotten fruit stains on it.
GK: I'm not going to wear the suit, Berniece. Just my serape and my poet shirt.
SS: The shirt with the poofy sleeves?
GK: And my boots and my leather pants.
TR: I don't think you better count on wearing them leather pants, Bub.
GK: Why not?
TR: They're too dang tight for you, for one thing. People can see your crack.
SS: Pops!
TR: And for another thing, Rex got ahold of those pants and he chewed a hole in em. In a bad place.
GK: Rex chewed my leather pants?
TR: You must've left a smell in them, made him think it was a badger. He tore out a chunk the size of a breadbox.
GK: Those were my only leather pants---
TR: They looked dumb on you anyway. He did you a big favor.
GK: They did not look dumb.
TR: Your butt's too big for pants like that.
GK: I don't know what you're talking about..
TR: You put those pants on, you looked like you were being eaten by a couch.
(PAUSE. GK SIGH)
SS: Why not wear your black outfit, Bob?
TR: You wear black, maybe people won't notice you're there.
GK: I'll just go in my Andy Warhol T-shirt and a pair of chinos. And sneakers.
SS: Why in the world would you go to the opening of your own play dressed like you were going out to mow the grass?
GK: Because I'm an artist.
SS: I don't get it.
GK: I know.
SS: I don't understand why you always have to be so different.
GK: Obviously you don't.
SS: You sure you don't want more chow mein---- I made three whole cans of it---- Pops---- what are you doing?
TR: Giving Rex a taste of chow mein, that's all.
SS: That's not dog food!
TR: Anything a dog cares to eat is dog food, Berniece. Rex and me, we go for the same things, don't we, fella. (DOG THUMPING AND PANTING AND JINGLING) Yep.....Two peas in a pod. That's us.
GK: I'm going to work on my collages. Try to take my mind off the play.
SS: You doing another landscape box?
GK: No, I'm cutting construction paper into abstract shapes and glueing them to old computer screens.
SS: Well, that sounds interesting.
GK: This is one right here. It's almost done. It's called "Triangles On Line" ----
SS: That's very nice, Bob.
TR: How much you asking for it, huh? How much?
GK: Why must you always think in terms of money?
TR: What's the price tag on that? Ten bucks? Fifteen?
GK: I'm not going to stoop to make a response to questions of that sort.
SS: We better get going, Pops. Bob ---- if there's anything you'd like me to pick up for you downtown-----
GK: Where are you going?
SS: I've got to take Pops in to the doctor.
GK: Oh really? Something serious?
SS: Oh no. Nothing at all.
GK: Oh. No, I don't really need anything.
SS: You sure?
GK: No, but thanks, Berniece.
TR: You sure we couldn't pick you up a newspaper maybe? Like one with want ads? Like, Help Wanted, for example? Jobs? Things to do that earn money?
GK: You are impossible to live with.
TR: About time somebody around here started to pony up some green stuff for the heat and the groceries and the rent---- it ain't free, you know!
GK: I'm not even going to dignify that with a response.
TR: One of these days, we might not dignify you with a lunch.
GK: Money is your whole measure of reality, isn't it. That's your whole idea of success. That's the only thing you understand.
TR: That and sex.
GK: This conversation is over as far as I'm concerned.
SS: Come, Pops.
TR: As far as I'm concerned, it's just begun.
GK: Someday I'm going to walk out that door and you're going to feel pretty awful about the way you treated me and you're going to wish you could take back some of the things you said, but it's going to be too late for you. Too late to go back and fix what you broke, and I'm not referring to anything material. I'm referring to the human spirit.
TR: The human spirit, my foot. (WOOF) Come on, Rex. Let's go.
SS: Back in a jiffy, Bob!
(THEME)
TR (ANNC): THE STORY OF BOB, A YOUNG ARTIST....was brought to you by Rainbow Motor Oil and the Rainbow Family of automotive products. Join us next time when we'll hear Berniece say....
SS: The fellow from the city inspector's office stopped by this morning to look at your sculpture garden, Bob.
GK: Yes?
SS: I guess some of the neighbors have complained.
GK: Oh, for pity's sake.
SS: He said they got up a petition.
GK: Oh, people ---- give me a break.....
SS: He said that they have a lawyer too, and that there's a height restriction on decorative structures of fourteen feet. He measured your big one.
GK: The Tower of Tomorrow? You let him touch the Tower of Tomorrow?
SS: He said it was twenty-two feet high, Bob..
GK: People are so bitter, so vindictive, toward anyone who is original, anyone who has ideas -----
SS: He suggested that you take off the revolving red light----
GK: The red light, Berniece, is integral to the whole concept of it-----
SS: Anyway, he'll be back tomorrow. Oh---- and they called from the Arts Center.
GK: What now?
SS: The play has been postponed.
GK: My play? "The Flaming Heart"? Why?
SS: The actor who plays the Dwarf King ---- he said he doesn't want to twirl.
GK: But he has to twirl. Twirling is in the script.
SS: It was making him dizzy.
GK: Twirling is at the heart of the entire death-rebirth motif, Berniece. They might as well ask me to take out the somersaults.
SS: I was about to get to that.
GK: The somersaults too? What are they thinking of?
(THEME)
TR (ANNC): That's next time on....THE STORY OF BOB, A YOUNG ARTIST. (MUSIC UP AND OUT)
© 1997 Garrison Keillor