At Last - Scene Fourteen

SCENE FOURTEEN

(Lights go down on the BAR, up on the mainstage, which is set for BACKSTAGE. JESSIE hasn’t moved. DAKOTA walks on from stage left. Pause.)

JESSIE: (Flatly.) What?

DAKOTA: Hi.

JESSIE: Are you going to try and force me to go onstage?

DAKOTA: Not if you don’t want me to.

JESSIE: I don’t.

DAKOTA: Okay.

JESSIE: (Pause.) This is weird.

DAKOTA: Yeah. 

JESSIE: (Longer pause.) If you spoke, it wouldn’t be so weird.

DAKOTA: Yeah. (Longest pause. Jessie lets out a high pitched scream. Shocked:) ...What?

JESSIE: Made you talk first.

DAKOTA: Yeah. You did.

JESSIE: (Very short pause.) Alright. Alright. Fine. I’ll talk about the damn show.

DAKOTA: Might want to watch your language tonight.

JESSIE: I DON’T CARE ABOUT MY -

DAKOTA: HEY! There’s some kids in the audience.

JESSIE: Oh, there are? Oh, no. That’s so much worse. What if I make them hate me? What if they hate me forever? What if I go on and I’m so terrible that I make them hate music altogether, even though Sean, two seats over in the third row - who is half deaf - was already showing such an interest in composing music, but now that’s not going to be in his future all because of me, and then because he’s not composing no one listens to music anymore within twenty years, and then we can’t deal with malaria anymore because relief concerts don’t work anymore, because we keep holding them and people show up and realize they hate music! I will have killed new age Beethoven! And it’s going to be all my fault, and it’s -

DAKOTA: Jessie. Sean in the third row is still listening to the Wiggles. There is literally nothing that you can do to sound worse than the Wiggles.

JESSIE: But what if I do?

DAKOTA: Do me a favor. Name three bands you absolutely hated from two years ago.

JESSIE: (Tries for a beat.) I… I can’t.

DAKOTA: Exactly. If you go out there and bomb, well, guess what. No one will remember you. Sucks. But if you go out there and rock them, you might just be remembered forever. (Pause.) Think about it. You’ve still got some time until the curtain goes up.