Tom Dunn - Café Aphorism

Tom Dunn

Café Aphorism

“…sharp proverb with a twist, the aphorism…”

a three-minute play by Tom Dunn

music by Meshell Ndegeocello

(The lights come up on a café -- vaguely European but in a college town in Montana. A waitress leans against the counter writing -- she speaks her lines. Three customers sit at the counter, sipping coffee.)

Waitress

Is a three-minute play not an aphorism, itself? (Customer #1 looks up)

Why do plays when there is no audience to watch?

(Waitress hands a bagel to Customer #2, and a check -- he looks at check)

Customer #2

If coffee is paid for by satire, then who pays for satire?

Waitress

Hey, nice…thanks. To drink can be to be part of…or not. (writes this down)

Customer #1

Why shouldn’t we be proud of our past, when each new day is worse than the previous one? (puts dollars on check and slides it all across the counter, where it sits)

Customer #2

Serbia is not a twilight zone. Here you can see nothing at all.

Waitress

The working class is the skeleton of our system.

Customer #3

We have got our war assignments. We are to be the killed civilians.

(all stop what they are doing and look at Customer #3 -- he snarls)

Page two

Customer #3

Kosovo will belong to Albanians, only over our dead bodies. That means all the conditions have been met.

(all go back to what they were doing)

We will do our best not to have any more fratricide. We will stop being brothers.

Customer #2

Can these bones live? Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and ye shall live.

Customer #1

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let’s do something, while we have the chance! It’s not every day that we are needed. Let us make the most of it before it is too late!

Waitress

(making the rounds of the three customers, pouring more coffee -- Customer #1 motions no, the other two accept more coffee -- Waitress takes a flyer out of her pocket and reads a few words)

“Play must be set in a café. Play must not be longer than three minutes. Winning script gets $25 and a reading in the sub-basement of the costume shop laundry room. Scripts longer than three pages will not be read.”

Customer #1

(gets up and makes ready to leave) “If one views the growing work as a blazing pyre, its commentator can be likened to the chemist, its critic to an alchemist,” Walter Benjamin once wrote. “While the former is left with wood and ashes as the sole objects of his analysis, the latter is concerned only with the enigma of the flame itself.”

(other customers nod and wave as Customer #1 moves toward exit)

Page three

Waitress

Walter Benjamin? (puts flyer back into pocket and picks up money and check)

(Customer #1 laughs sardonically as he exits…the other two customers smile to themselves and go back to drinking their coffee -- looking down)

Waitress

(thinking, as she slowly writes) The New Immigrants. Montana mid-morning.

A Café. Music by Meshell Ndegeocello plays underneath -- it is, like her voice, haunting and sweet at the same time. No one listens to the music.

Customer #3

If the people eat dogs then the dogs will eat --

Waitress

(raises hand, stops him) That’s enough. Too long. Three minutes…

(points to script…the customers look up and smile, sardonically, as the lights fade, followed by the music)

The End

Tom Dunn is a playwright who also writes fiction. His plays include Dark, Darwin, and Lucy, Lucy. Tom was a Holt Rinehart Fellowship recipient and has had fiction published by New England Review, Stasis, Meetinghouse and Sticks and Stones.