Scene 11 — Everybody's a Fool in the Champagne Room (Fool!)

Neon. The red-light strip. The crew's car crawls past a club throbbing with light and bass — the SIRENS out front, dancers of impossible, dangerous beauty. EURY has made everyone shut their eyes to get past it. Everyone's are shut. Everyone's but OZZY's.

EURY (eyes screwed shut, gripping the wheel) — Eyes CLOSED, Oz. We roll past, we don't look, we're gone. That's the whole plan.

OZZY (already turning, already looking, the old itch — the same one that took the long way) — ...I just wanna see what all the fuss is about.

EURY — OZ. NO. That's exactly what you said about the exit—

Too late. He's looking. And they're beautiful — crazy, unreal, ruinous beautiful. The number kicks: the crew, eyes shut, sing the smooth Chris-Rock warning while the Sirens lure and Ozzy drifts toward the door.

♪ Song 11 — “Everybody's a Fool in the Champagne Room (Fool!)”

THE TRAP

CALYPSO (silk, taking his hand out of the light) — Nobody, huh? Well I'm Calypso, sugar. And nobody ever leaves Calypso's. Come home with me. Stay a while. Stay seven years, ten — who's countin'? You don't need Ithaca. You've got me now.

The bouncers close on the CREW — not thrown out, taken in, hauled toward the back, captive, "waiting their turn."

BOUNCER — Next! Party of five — the champagne room'll see you now.

CREW (dragged off, comic-desperate) — ...everybody's a fool in the champagne room... FOOL...!

Button. OZZY vanishes into Calypso's neon, dazed, smiling, Penny gone from him. Split-stage, far away — PENNY at her window. The porch light — gold and burning every scene since he left — flickers, and goes DARK. She doesn't know why. She just feels it. She touches the cold glass.

CALYPSO (in the dark) — ...that's it, Nobody. Forget them all.

OZZY (dreamy, lost, the lowest a man can go) — ...forget who?

Blackout. The low point. He has forgotten home. The one thing the whole show is for — the porch light — is out, and the man it's lit for can't remember it was ever on.