spill open and Jackie Kennedy’s wigs blow down Forty-second Street and Cardinal

Spellman hits me and Johnson screams and I hit him. I hit them all. And then the Green
Latrine blows four flat tires and sinks and I run to protect the car and four cabs appear
and all my friends run into four different cabs. And cars are honking at me to move. I
push the car over the bridge back to Queens. You’re asleep. I turn on Johnny Carson to
get my mind off and there’s Cardinal Spellman and Bob Hope whose nose is still
bleeding and they tell the story of what happened to them and everybody laughs. Thirty
million people watch Johnny Carson and they all laugh. At me. At me. I’m nobody. I
knew all those people better than me. You. Ronnie. I know everything about them. Why
can’t they love me?

RECKLESS, by Craig Lucas. Rachel.

I think I’m more excited than they are. I really do. I think we just have kids so we can
tell them all about Santa Claus and have an excuse to believe it ourselves again. I really
do. They are so excited. I remember that feeling so clearly. I didn’t think I could ever
sleep. And I remember pinching myself and pinching myself to stay awake so I could
hear the reindeers’ footsteps, you know? I wanted to believe it so badly. I think that was
the last year I did . . . . Oh god . . . is it still snowing? Why don’t you turn the sound up?
Oh, it’s coming down like crazy. You can hear it, can’t you? When it gets deep like this?
It just swallows up all the sound and you feel like you’ve been wrapped up in the hands
of a big, sweet, giant, white . . . monster. He’s going to carry us away into a dream. My
family always had champagne first thing before we opened our presents – I mean in the
morning, you know: I always loved that. I felt like such an adult having champagne and I
remember saying to my mother the bubbles in the champagne looked like snow if you
turned your head upside down. I remember thinking that I wanted to live in Alaska
because it always snowed and Santa was up there, so it must always be Christmas if it
always snowed . . . You’re my Santa Claus. And our two elves. I’m having one of my
euphoria attacks. I think I’m going to be terminally happy, you’d better watch out, it’s
catching. Highly contagious . . . . What’s the matter? Just sleepy?

RECKLESS, by Craig Lucas. Pooty.

If you’ve ever worked with needy people, it doesn’t matter what their particular
handicap, they can be blind, they can be mentally ill, they can be disabled . . .
I used to work with the hearing impaired, teaching sign language. Almost immediately
you realize how easy it is to take their infirmity for granted in the sea of so much need.
Abnormality becomes normality. When I lost the use of my legs, a friend drove me up
here to Springfield to take a look at this place where you work with the handicapped. I
watched the various physical therapists work with the patients and there was one: I
remember her was working with a quadraplegic. I thought he was the most beautiful man
I’d ever seen. A light shining out through his skin. And I thought if I couldn’t be with
him I’d die. But I knew I would be just one more crippled dame as far as he was

18