The Black Hole That Is Me

TANDEM: male, any age

ELOISE: female, any age

This takes place in a coffee shop. ELOISE and TANDEM are both sitting together at a two-top, across from each other.

TANDEM: Imagine you were going to order something on the menu, what do you think you’d order?
ELOISE gets up.
TANDEM: No, wait!
ELOISE: I’m getting a drink.
TANDEM: What drink? I’ll get it for you.
TANDEM starts fumbling for his wallet.
ELOISE gives an awkward chuckle.
ELOISE: You don’t have to do that
TANDEM: No, no. It’s on me. I mean, I made you drive all this way here, didn’t I?
ELOISE: It’s no big deal, I’ll get it myself.
ELOISE gets up. TANDEM stammers but sits back down with his card in his hand, feeling defeated.
ELOISE gets her drink from the bar. TANDEM is sifting through a notebook. ELOISE walks back to the table and there is an awkward exchange as TANDEM looks up and pretends not to see her while ELOISE does the same thing.
TANDEM: So this apartment in New York, do you know if it is rent-controlled?
ELOISE: Sam has that all figured out.
TANDEM: Okay, so what do you need me for?
ELOISE: To answer some unofficial, informal, type of advice on what it’s like to live in New York.
TANDEM: Like what?
ELOISE: I have a list.
ELOISE pulls out a notebook from her pocket. TANDEM reads them out to her.
TANDEM: “Can I trust the one-dollar pizza? What time should I not be walking outside on the street? Do Broadway shows have matinees?”
TANDEM laughs. ELOISE is flustered.
TANDEM: You don’t seem like the type to want to try the one-dollar pizza.
ELOISE: Well, I don’t know. Sam likes pizza, so I thought maybe I’d try to get out of my comfort zone when I’m over there.
TANDEM does a painful laugh.
TANDEM: That reminds me of when we were at Red Lobster. That one time when I was trying to get you to try my octopus legs and you didn’t want to, so you broke up with me-
ELOISE: Well, I really wanted to leave.
TANDEM: And now you’ll try 1 dollar pizza for Sam-
ELOISE: As long as he doesn’t try to shove it in my face in front of the waitress, yeah.
TANDEM: That was funny.

TANDEM scans the list once more.
TANDEM: Will you be bringing your car out there?
ELOISE: No.
TANDEM: The benefit of choosing a city with roads as sidewalks.
ELOISE doesn’t react to this. She is rather regretful of meeting up with him.
ELOISE: It’s getting late, I should go.
TANDEM: No, wait. I got you something.
ELOISE: For what?
TANDEM: Well, it’s almost Christmas.
ELOISE: I didn’t get anything for you-
TANDEM: No, bother. Here.
TANDEM hands a gift bag to ELOISE. ELOISE opens it and finds a pie. She is at first confused, but then is angry.
ELOISE: Is this some sort of sick joke?
TANDEM: What? No.
ELOISE: Don’t play stupid with me, Tandem. You did this on purpose.
ELOISE drops the pie onto the table and starts packing her bag.
TANDEM: Eloise, please. I thought-
ELOISE: You thought what??
TANDEM: That you’d remember the good times. That’s the same pie I would buy every Christmas Eve. I thought, if anything, you would be expecting it.
ELOISE: As if last Christmas Eve is something I’d like to remember..
TANDEM: I didn’t mean anything malicious out of it!
ELOISE: To hell you did. You’re such a fool.
ELOISE is about to head out the door but TANDEM catches her wrist. ELOISE is fighting TANDEM’s grasp.
TANDEM: Stop Eloise. We haven’t talked since that night. It’s been an entire year. Please. Let me talk to you one last time before you leave forever for New York. Don’t shut me out this one last time.
ELOISE relaxes her wrist. She looks towards the door but ultimately sits back down. She is not facing TANDEM, this entire time. There is a long silence between them.
ELOISE: Go on. Talk.
TANDEM: Do you ever feel like you are running out of time?
ELOISE: In what sense?
TANDEM: I just want to know how often people think about time. And where they are. How one day, our bodies will go limp-
ELOISE: Limp.
TANDEM: But before that point, people start to, like, really appreciate what they have here already. The freedom to check the time. The freedom to call your parents. The freedom of sidewalks.
ELOISE looks at the pie.
ELOISE: You should have known not to bring that here. It’s impolite. I know that you want me to stay, but that’s crossing the line.
TANDEM: You can’t just move to New York and leave me here to figure this out on my own. Stay. And we can figure this out together.
ELOISE fully turns around to face TANDEM.
ELOISE: This IS ME FIGURING IT OUT This is what me figuring it out looks like! It may not look like the most mature, most subliminal way, but it’s one of the few only ways that I could come up with. And I haven’t felt this right for a very long time.
TANDEM: You’re just so selfish..
ELOISE: It’s been a year. A year of night terrors, a year of me and sidewalks, a year of me wrapped up in this never-ending black hole of space and time. A year is all I can take.
TANDEM: You didn’t have to take that year alone. But you chose to. You chose for me and you. While I was just left in the dark, wondering where you had left me.
ELOISE: I’m sorry. But I couldn’t even look at you the same ever since what happened.
TANDEM: You act like it was me behind the wheel.
ELOISE: STOP!
TANDEM: NO! This is happening, Eloise! You think you’ll be able to avoid it in New York, with your dear Sam by your side and your cutesy penthouse, but you WON’T! Because for as long as I’m alive, this black hole will continue to consume everything you’ve ever worked for and loved.
ELOISE: SHUT UP!
TANDEM: A year, baby? A year is all you can take, baby? Well, I’m sorry to break it to you Eloise but time won’t stop when you leave New York. Time stops with me. Time stops with us! How else do we make sense of it, if we are apart?
ELOISE: Tandem! Please just.. can it stop? Can everything just stop?
A long silence..
ELOISE: You’re no good for me, Tandem. This is scary. You are scary.
TANDEM: Eloise, you can’t leave me. To go to New York.
ELOISE: I won’t just be leaving you when I go to New York. I’ll be leaving the part of me that wants to stay with you in California, when I go to New York. That person, you can have forever- you already do. That person is who my black hole is. So baby, when I leave tonight, just remember that you’ve still got that Eloise from a year ago.
ELOISE takes a sip of coffee.
ELOISE: I hope that when you get home tonight, you cuddle with that Eloise in bed, make breakfast for that Eloise the next morning, watch your favorite TV shows with that Eloise- treat her right. Or don’t. I don’t care. To that Eloise, I’ll say bye to you tonight as well. So baby, take care of her or don’t. Whatever. Because you’ll have her anyway. ELOISE exits the coffee shop.

Thoughts on this play: This took 5ish days to finish and it clearly shows since the characters are all over the place. I think I was feeling very uninspired by it, and I really didn’t know where it was going to head. I like parts of it very much: the beginning to establish awkward friends meeting for the first time in a while, the ending to show how toxic they really are to each other, and Eloise’s last lines since I feel like they perfectly captured me at some point in time. But putting them all together? MESSY! Not very proud of it as a whole, but it feels like the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.