The stage splits. STAGE LEFT — ITHACA: a warm, lived-in front room, a porch light burning through the window. PENNY sits on the couch with TELLY — Ozzy's little brother, thirteen and vibrating with worry, a football in his lap he won't put down. STAGE RIGHT — BEVERLY HILLS: cool and glamorous and up in the hills, a wall of glowing screens. ATHENA — gray-eyed, unbothered, immortal money — reclines watching one feed: a single red taillight winding into a storm. She is Ozzy's patron, and she is exasperated with him.
ITHACA
TELLY — He said Monday. He said "see you Monday, save me some cake." (grips the ball) Penny, it's been — it's been so long.
PENNY (steady, not fake-cheerful — certain) — I know how long it's been, Telly. I've counted every night of it.
TELLY — Then how are you not scared?
PENNY — Oh, I'm scared. (beat) I'm just not worried. Your brother is the single hardest man in the world to catch. You really think one wrong road keeps Nobody from coming home?
TELLY (small) — ...you really think he's coming back?
PENNY — I don't think it. (she reaches over, turns his chin toward the window, toward the porch light) I keep that light on every night. And I've got my eye on nobody — nobody — but him.
BEVERLY HILLS
ATHENA (to the screen, dry, fond, furious) — You had the exit. It was right there. One mile. I painted the sign myself. (sips something expensive) "We'll be right back." Ten years, you beautiful idiot.
She pulls up more feeds — Ozzy at every turn, oblivious, grinning, driving deeper into the dark.
ATHENA — Somebody has to watch him. Gods know he won't watch himself. (a breath — the fondness winning) Might as well be the one who never blinks.
Both women turn out — Penny to her porch light, Athena to her wall of eyes — and, across the split they'll never cross, they begin to sing the same line to the same absent man.