TWO MEN, a couple office drones, process their grief

 the morning after the Bills-Chiefs playoff game.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

MIKE…………Any ethnicity/race, age from mid 20s to mid 40s

SAM………… Any ethnicity/race, age from mid 20s to mid 40s

TIME

January 24, 2022.

SETTING

An office break room and parking lot.

LIGHTS UP: MIKE and SAM are possibly hungover, hanging around the water cooler of an average American office.

MIKE

When it comes to love, I’ve gotten everything wrong.

SAM

Is this about the Bills?

MIKE

Of course it’s about the Bills. But it’s also… not about them. If that makes any sense. 

SAM

I think so. You know you’re not alone in feeling this way. Confusion everywhere. It’s like a construction zone. All of Buffalo man. Cranes and half-finished buildings. We had high hopes of touching the sky. All those untouched stars and clouds. It’s sad. Everybody out there crying. 13 seconds between us and more fulfilling lives. Look out the window. You can see it in air, how it plasters the atmosphere. So we can’t experience anything else. Disappointment, right? It’s about the Bills, sure, but it’s also about our lives. It’s, it’s—

(Crushes the coffee cup they’re holding and the hot coffee spills everywhere)

It burns!

(Beat)

That’s like two bucks down the drain. Now I have to use the Keurig in the breakroom. 

MIKE

That is rock bottom man. But going down the drain is the natural state of things, right?

SAM

Yeah, but eventually, we all can crawl out of drains.

MIKE

What makes you so sure about that? 

SAM

Bugs do it all the time. Centipedes, millipedes—

MIKE

But they have more than two legs.

SAM

I just don’t want to feel this way anymore. 

`(Awkward silence as they make eye contact)

MIKE

You’re aware of, um, what’s been going on in my personal life, right?

SAM

Yeah, I think the whole office is aware.

MIKE

What gave it away?

SAM

I mean maybe it’s the way you play with your wedding ring all day. Sliding it on, off, on, off… staring at it intently. The eyes of a broken heart. On some days, I think it would be good for emotional science if we were to carve them out of your head and put them on display in a museum somewhere. Or, at the very least, I’d put them on my desk like pathetic little Tchotskies.

(Beat)

MIKE

Not sure how I should respond to that.

SAM

Too much?

MIKE

It’s okay. It’s a weird day. I mean, why should any of us be working non-essential jobs today? I bet if India Walton was mayor, we’d all have the day off. Like how Queen Victoria was in mourning for like half her life after Albert died. 

(Beat)

And look, I’m not arguing for us to wear black until we die, although I’d be alright with that, I’m just saying we should be allowed a citywide day of grieving. 

SAM

Hm Albert—

(Beat)

When I was little, I had a cat named Albert. He passed away and that sucked. He was a badass cat though. Like he had pooping problems. Couldn’t ever do it in the litterbox. So he would run around the house and wherever he got tired, that’s where he would poop. And this one time Albert peed on my brother’s filled-out college applications. Like the night before they had to be sent out. I guess this was back when email wasn’t a thing. Although I remember there being a computer in the house. I don’t know… I was like 7 though. My mom spent the whole rest of the night blowing the applications dry with a hairdryer.

MIKE

Your mom’s a saint.

SAM

But even if she dried everything up, and she must’ve, because he went to college—

MIKE

Canisius… like all of us.

SAM

Golden Griffs!

MIKE

Sigma Phi Epsilon!

SAM

And that dumb fraternity motto.

MIKE

Building balanced men.

(Awkward silence as they make eye contact)

SAM

What a joke. 

(Beat)

MIKE

So, yeah, you were saying? 

SAM

About what?

MIKE

But even if your mom dried everything up?

SAM

Oh.

(Beat)

That the applications would’ve still smelled like pee. Because you can’t easily exorcize that smell no matter how many air fresheners you crumble into coke-dust and rub into the wound. It follows you. Even if others don’t smell it, you do. And that’s all that matters. It looms in the air like something about to attack you and it never does… and you’re left with the rot, but none of the cathartic decomposition. 

MIKE

Your brother was smart. Maybe admissions or whoever used to read “I Believe” essays back in the 90s didn’t care about the smell. And I guarantee your mom vanquished the smell… she was like an alchemist, always able to conjure something out of nothing. 

SAM

I’m not talking about the pee-stained college essays.

MIKE

Oh.

(Awkward silence as they make eye contact)

SAM

And look, I’m sorry about your marriage. I really am, but—

MIKE

But what?

SAM

I mean, are you really that surprised?

MIKE

What do you mean?

SAM

I remember a few nights—

MIKE

Okay, okay! Everything feels off this morning. That’s all it is. We’re just hungover, probably still a little drunk, upset about the loss. What a national travesty, right? To not even give Josh Allen one last opportunity to tie it. All ‘cause of some coin flip. Like No Country for Old Men. Either you live or get blown to bits with a bolt gun. And we’re all blown to bits right now trying to put ourselves back together again. 

SAM

So it’s like a game of Frankenstein football out there. 

MIKE

Appreciate the alliteration, but what?

SAM

Well, if we’re all blown to bits right now, as you say, everybody’s got some wrong parts. So we’re assembling and dissembling and when something doesn’t feel right… you know, like not mine or yours, we just toss them to the next person. Like hey, maybe this fits you instead of me. 

SAM (CONT’D)

An existentially desperate attempt at a Music City Miracle. Will we be whole by the afternoon?! Wait and find out!

(Beat)

But yes, they need to change the overtime rules. 

MIKE

Will they by the afternoon? Will anything happen by the afternoon? 

SAM

Does anything ever happen throughout the course of the day?

MIKE

Just hot takes and cold takes, both equally hurtful. 

SAM

But why do we really hurt all the time?

(Awkward silence as they make eye contact)

MIKE

Should we, um, go back to our desks?

SAM

Bossman’s not even here yet.

MIKE

True, and it’s not like they ever really notice if we work or not, although they tell us otherwise.

SAM

We simply float, don’t we? In and out of naïve hopes and overdramatic defeats. 

MIKE

What you just said is a little overdramatic. 

SAM

I’m beginning to think every one of our reactions is overdramatic.

MIKE

Maybe how we were raised?

SAM

Nurture, nature… I’m sick of that seesaw.

MIKE

But 13 seconds dude.

SAM

I know man, I know. Oh!

(Beat)

You were talking earlier about love. What did you get wrong about it?

MIKE

You remembered…

SAM

It was only like a few minutes ago. I’m not the guy from Memento.

MIKE

Yeah, but we’ve been talking like chickens with their heads cut off who also did a crapload of coke. 

SAM

Sure, I think I follow. 

MIKE

So about the kind of love that is wrong, which is apparently the only love I’ve ever known, so it dawned on me after the game… like I’m sitting there comatose, like an out of body experience or something and I can’t get back to my sleeping beauty self, like no fairytale ending for this guy – so I’m just scrolling through Twitter mainlining all the hot takes and it all feels like there are a billion church candles turning my insides into uncanonized saints looking to be the patrons of anything – when I see that viral video of Patrick Mahomes who stopped celebrating his win and sprinted across the field to hug Josh Allen. Like he immediately ran to the middle of the field ignoring all the interviewers, the cameras, all the flashing lights, he even dropped his helmet, and then hugged Josh Allen. Like this big bearhug. Like, I respect you. We really fought like men out there. We spilled our emotions everywhere on the turf and now we’re here. I respect you. I respect you so, so much. And it’s like, that’s how love should be, right? You should always have to sprint 50 yards past disingenuous lights ignoring all the side characters who really don’t get your story. Into the arms of someone who gets you, you know? And it sucks when you realize that no one has ever turned their back on a party to sprint toward you to make you feel better in your time of need. Like when you’re depressed or confused or sick with modernity or whatever, right? Just tell me I’m not wrong.

(Awkward silence as they make eye contact)

SAM

You wanna do it?

MIKE

Do what?

SAM

Recreate that Patrick-Josh hug.

MIKE

How?

SAM

… I have a Patrick Mahomes jersey in my trunk…

MIKE (aggressive)

Why do you have his jersey? He has ripped out the Christmas trees out of our holiday hearts time and time again. 

SAM

Woah! It’s not like that. I was hoping after we’d won, I’d set it on fire or something. Or hang it from the dartboard like a poster of my biggest obstacles. Then would’ve came the darts. For everything that has gone wrong in my life. It would be catharsis. 

MIKE

You could’ve still done those things.

SAM

It wouldn’t have been the same kind of catharsis. 

MIKE

Ok, so…

SAM

Do you want to do the hug or not? I can run across the parking lot. I know you have your Josh Allen jersey. I saw it resting on your shotgun seat like a passed-out friend who just needs to sleep it off. 

MIKE

Fine. Nothing’s getting done at any office today anyway.

SAM

We can hug for 13 seconds, how about that? I think it’d be good for us.

MIKE

I… would like that. 

(Lights go out momentarily and when they come back on, SAM and MIKE are in their respective jerseys. SAM as Mahomes runs across the parking lot and bearhugs MIKE as Allen. They intimately hug for 13 seconds then slowly back away from each other.)

SAM

Can you smell that?

MIKE

I can’t smell anything.

SAM

The smell of pee… it’s gone. Now there’s the gentle smell… of flowers.

(They both start crying and hug again as LIGHTS OUT.)

END.