The Break of Noon by Neil LaBute

Author:Neil LaBute
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2018-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

She finishes and looks at JOHN. He tries to hold her look but it’s not easy.

JOHN So is that a yes? I’m kidding… I didn’t expect you to belive me! Not at first.

GINGER turns and leaves. JOHN stands all alone.

JOHN (To himself.) . . . shit.

A burst of intense light carries us on to:

A television studio. Two chairs on a small stage with a shiny set behind them. A coffee table. JOHN seated next to a chipper female, jenny. JOHN, dressed in a suit, looks relatively uncomfortable.

A set of lights come up and jenny smiles out toward an unseen audience and cameras.

JENNY . . . and hello again! Thank you for coming back to what is shaping up to be, well, a fascinating hour, to say the least… (Turns.) Welcome back, John Smith.

JOHN Thanks, Jenny. Thank you.

JENNY I’m sure all of this must be pretty strange to you. It must be… (Smiles.) Have you ever been on television before? / That’s ok, most of us haven’t—

JOHN Ummmm, no. / Wait. Yes. This one time. My Little League team went to Nationals and I was the, you know… our spokesperson.

JENNY Really? / That’s terrific.

JOHN It’s true. I was the pitcher, so… / Yep. They had me do most of the talking. Actually, Tom Seaver from the Mets…

JENNY (Smiles.) But never like this, never the subject of an interview, or the topic of an investigative piece… ?

JOHN Oh, no. Of course not. / Never.

JENNY I see. / And yet here you are…

JOHN Yeah, well—you know what happened. So…

JENNY Of course. And are you at all comfortable yet, speaking about it? I mean, the… whole…

JOHN Not really. / I dunno. It’s… so… I have my days, you know? Sometimes I feel sure and able to be… but I’m not over it yet.

JENNY Of course. How could you be? / Of course not! (Beat.) And yet people have such a fascination—some might say a “morbid” fascination—with this kind of thing. Death and gunfire and heartbreak. They just love catastrophe, don’t they?

JOHN I suppose so.

JENNY Oh, John, I know so. I know it! (Smiles.) I’ve been doing this for a few years now and I can promise you one thing: for some reason, people eat this up. It’s a sickness, but it’s a national sickness so we all feel pretty ok about it… but let’s not dip into the negative today because we’re here to highlight the positive. To celebrate the amazing. Miracles. (Beat.) John, we’ve talked about that day, that shocking Thursday, we’ve even talked to you about the amazing photograph that you took just as you were being held in the very jaws of evil—but… something else happened to you during those events, did it not? Something otherworldly.

JOHN Well, it’s… yeah, it’s hard to describe.

JENNY I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but… (Shuffles cards.) It says here… by the hand of God…

JOHN No, that’s close to what it was…

JENNY . . . you described it as… this happened to you

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.