January 3 Play: VERSAILLES

3: VERSAILLES - by Ed Valentine
© January 3, 2010 * ed@edvalentine.com

LIGHTS UP: Versailles. Hall of Mirrors. A table piled high with cakes. Two WOMEN sit, wearing absurdly tall candy-colored wigs.


1: Tea?
(Pours.)
You ask about my husband. My husband is off riding today.

2: “Riding.”
(Stifles a snicker.)

1: Meaning?

2: “Riding.” So you think.

1: -

2: So he tells you.

1: So that’s how we’re going to play this, is it, dear?

2: Play? I don’t know what you mean. Play?

1: (Mocking, mean:) “Play? I don’t know what you mean. Play?”

2: No need to –

1: You know exactly what I mean.

2: I’m simply trying -

1: You are trying. You try my patience. Good day.

2: You needed to know, if you didn’t know.

1: Good day, Madame.

(2 rises.)

2: Good day, yourself.

(2 goes to leave. 1 stops her with her voice.)

1: He IS riding. I laugh at your insinuations, your feeble attempt to – to… He IS riding.

2: But whom is he riding? That is the question.

1: GET OUT.
(1 flings a bouquet from the table at 2. Misses. 2 exits. A beat. 1, flustered, rings a bell-pull.)
Marie? Marie?

(MARIE, a maid, enters.)

MARIE: Madame?

1: Where is my husband?
(MARIE looks away.)
Where?

MARIE: Riding, Madame.

1: Where?

MARIE: Riding. Riding.

(1 sits, crushed. Long fade out.)


END OF PLAY.