Lamp Post

A short play for a man and a woman, Lamp Post is set in an upstairs apartment in a Midwestern college town in the late 1970s.  Ben is awakened by Brittany pounding on his door asking for the Crisis Center.  Ben tells her the Center is in the building next door but Brittany says she is scared because somebody is after her and Ben opens the door.  Ben asks her if he should call the police and Brittany tells him that when she was walking home from the library a street lamp went out as she got close to it and then came back on after she passed.  She says it only happens with her and thinks it means that psychic energy is streaming out of her head and turning the light off.  Ben says she is finding a pattern in random meaningless data.  She asks if he’s a writer because she hates writers and thinks the writer’s workshop is like a black hole that swallows up talent and shits mediocrity.  Ben insists that she is imagining a relationship between two completely unrelated things.  Brittany says she has so much stuff inside her brain that her head is going to explode.  Ben opens the door but she slams it shut.  When he puts his hands on her shoulders she pulls away and says she has a gun—in Pennsylvania.  She sits on the bed, saying that nothing means anything, that it’s all just random.  “This isn’t the Crisis Center, is it?” she says.  “I don’t know,”  Ben says.  “Maybe.”  Light fades on them and goes out.