Noggin Flowers

Characters

Hazel Brown, a drably dressed secret agent posing as a traveling saleswoman

Emily Brown, a drably dressed secret agent posing as a traveling saleswoman

Bus Depot Clerk, a long-haired twenty-something wearing a blue gingham dress

Scene One

A bench faces the audience. A ticket counter is behind the bench stage right. At stage left hangs a sign that reads “Ladies.” On the bench sit Hazel Brown and Emily Brown. Several playing cards are placed on the bench between them; they also hold cards in their hands. At both their feet are large black suitcases. The Bus Depot Clerk begins center stage in front of the bench.

Bus Depot Clerk: Our two protagonists sit across from each other on a pea-green vinyl bench playing gin rummy in a small-town bus depot drenched in harsh-white fluorescent light. They are surrounded by faded posters of picnickers at scenic lakes, etc.

The Bus Depot Clerk walks behind the counter and starts filing her nails.

Hazel Brown:

Did you go to church?

Emily Brown:

That’s the last thing I thought you would ask me . . .

Hazel Brown:

You know how I take pleasure in your minor transgressions.

Emily Brown:

(Gazing out into the distance.) It was the most intelligent smell in the world—lived-in, like a well-worn umpire’s glove or a boy’s choners, exuding its eagerness in tremolo, all engorged expectancy and then a whiff of car exhaust, moist towelette, fecal petals . . .

Hazel Brown:

. . . Yes. Fairly thorough. (Nods, pauses to reflect, plays a card.) And then?

Emily Brown:

(In a dry tone.) Disastrous. The first sip made me a wallflower. It was too well-rounded.

Hazel Brown:

Like a debutante who has traveled abroad and is familiar with the works of Goya?

Emily Brown:

But behind the dark plums there was still the sense that it was all body and no head . . .

Hazel Brown:

Mouth feel?

Emily Brown:

Thin and merely dutiful . . . loose change. Its flavor toppled. But still, there was a bitter sweetness, a hint of violets and further afternoons.

Hazel Brown:

You could force a sense of complex symmetry from a disposable cup. How did you become so compassionate?

Emily Brown:

I swallow in increments. The thing is a pole of the body and vice versa. I go all swirly in the middle, Hazel . . .

Hazel Brown:

(Ignoring Emily’s emotionalism.) Was there incense?

Bus Depot Clerk:

(Speaks slowly in a liturgical tone into a microphone directly over her mouth.) Golden, od’rous, radiant, delicious, fragrant, lustrous, balmy, swift . . . (Continues to read without interruption.)

Hazel rolls her eyes, sets down her cards, covers her ears, and rushes off stage left into the ladies’ room. Emily listens attentively while picking up Hazel’s cards to study them.

Bus Depot Clerk: Cold, silken, sultry, dusty, shrill, verdant, silver, brown, flow’ry, gaunt, big, distant, level, wat’ry, cool, shady, breezy, russet, cloudless, faint, fleecy, spicy, blue, hard, lurid, red, bare, pale, dewy, grey, sable, roseate, bleak, bright, aerial, chill, sallow, wide, white, mellow, brisk, warm.

Hazel reenters dreamily. Emily quickly replaces the cards.

Hazel Brown:

(Sits back down.) Whose turn is it?

Emily Brown:

Yours. Wait, hold on a second. (Sniffs the air repeatedly, looking mystified.) What’s that?

Hazel Brown:

They have a perfume-dispensing machine in the ladies’. Very peculiar. It’s called the Resemblance Distributor.

Emily Brown:

(Very dryly.) I see. And could this be . . . the simulacrum of Poison? (Hazel nods, slightly sheepishly.) Untutored tuberose dumped in a mass spectrometer. Flaring to an aggressively premature base note of decaying fruit and New Coke. I thought we had agreed that Poison should never be deployed in public . . . Hazel, it’s completely unpresentable!

Hazel Brown...