Grand Cayman

     Three men and one woman comprise the cast of Grand Cayman, a one-act in which the beach is represented by three deck chairs and a hotel room by two doors and, probably, a bed and at least one chair.  We hear the sound of the ocean as lights come up on Murphy and Antonelli on the deck chairs wearing business suits.  They chat about the sun and rain and Ireland and money and lizards and pirates and about the man they have been sent to deal with.  Mary, in a bikini, sits in the middle chair, telling them that they have some very serious, potentially dangerous, business on their minds.  She says she knows they have been watching the man she is with.  Murphy, over Antonelli’s objections, explains his theory that God is Popeye the Sailor.  She asks them if they have been paid to kill somebody.  She wonders if one of them would kill the other if he were offered an obscene amount of money.  Antonelli puts a hand around Mary’s neck and asks what she wants.  Mary says that when she was in the mental hospital she met a girl named Mary who told her everything about her life, including two friends of hers who were tough guys.  Mary in the bathing suit says she knew about a man who had stolen large sums of money and put them in a private account in the Caribbean, and so she sent a check to hire the two tough guys to help her get her hands on the money.  She says the man they have been following wants to see them.  She says they are to make him tell where the money is and how to get it and then kill him and the three of them will split the money.  She takes the room key from her bikini bottom, gives it to Antonelli, and leaves.  The men are sure she is not in her right mind but agree that she looks like a Mary they used to know.

     As light fades on them we hear the sound of waves then a key turning in a lock.  An upstage door opens as dim light streams into the hotel room.  Leo tells the men, thinking they are room service bringing him clams, to come in and close the door.  Another door opens and Mary comes out in a bathrobe with her hair in a towel.  She turns on a lamp and we see Leo, half patrician, half gangster.  He tells Murphy and Antonelli that they are nothing, dog shit under his mucklucks.  Mary says that Leo is a very great writer and producer who writes under thirty-seven different pseudonyms and has suffered a stroke.  Leo asks the men if they came to kill him and says all they want is the seven billion dollars he has in the bank.  The three men drink and Leo offers Mary two million dollars to get naked.  She goes into the bathroom, slamming the door.  Leo offers Murphy and Antonelli seventy-eight thousand dollars to go in the bathroom and kill Mary.  Leo talks of Jack Kennedy and the effect of high-fructose corn syrup on the intelligence of children.  He says he has seven billion dollars in a tax-free account, but when he says he boinked Martha Washington in the rotunda, Antonelli wants to leave.  Leo tells them the story of a movie with two guys who come to a tropical island looking for an obscene amount of money without realizing they are in a trap.  Antonelli says that this is about Mary and Murphy, feeling dizzy, wonders what she put in their drinks.  Antonelli staggers into the door and asks Leo who he is, to which Leo responds, like Popeye, “I YAM WHAT I YAM,”  and orders the lights to be cut.  Blackout.