COURTNEY from The Redwood Cage (by Aoise Stratford)

A friendship has been blossoming between COURTNEY, a young artist who works at a cafe and HUGH, a famour sculptor she is apprenticed to Last time they saw each other things were a little tense. This scene occurs near the end of the play when HUGH, having problems at home, finds COURTNEY at the studio, very late at night. Running time 2 minutes.

note - "your boy in the trees" refers to the recurring subject of Hugh's work

COURTNEY

I saw you wife again today. (a beat) She was having lunch at one of my tables with some guy in a suit. Smoked salmon salad and iced tea. We actually talked to each other. Of course she didn't know who I was. To her I was just the waitress. I said would you like some ice water, she said yes. Ground pepper? Thank you. What I wanted to say was excuse me M'am, but did you know that when I'm not waiting tables I'm at an Artists' Collective on the other side of town trying to resist the urge to paint your husband nude and glorious, risen like Venus on the clam shell, right out of the depths of my steamy imagination. The whole thing was totally absurd. And do you know what I thought when I saw them? Your wife and her luncheon partner? I thought, thank God. Fate manifest as a miracle; Gussie has found someone else. Maybe, just maybe, this means Hugh and I can make something out of this. Maybe this means he'll be able to move on, no regrets. Relationships end, new ones begin. The cycle of life. And I'm all for life, let me tell you. You say the world is shitty and screwed up and that's why we retreat into art, and I say yes, yes it is. But it's also beautiful. Life is all we have so let's live it, every man for himself. Embrace the cycle. (a beat)

I've never contemplated an affair with a married man before. I hate myself for feeling this way. I don't know what happened. One minute it was just a little crush; nice and manageable; day dreams, silly smiles, no harm done. And then, suddenly I'm dropping like a bird over the sea with no sense of up or down just blue and gray all around me. It feels like I'm trapped inside one of my own crappy paintings. I can't keep my nice respectable distance any more because my perspective is gone. I don't know where the horizon is. And the crazy thing is, part of me is saying why fight it? Why not just leap, give in to the tumble. I love your art. I mean, truly love it. I might only be able to produce mediocre water-colors but you...I can watch you for hours while you're working on a piece. I love the way the muscles in your forearms move as you work with clay. I love the way you tilt your head and lean back when you're looking at angles. How many times have I imagined your clay covered hands on my hips? Exploring my angles, shaping me. Making something more of me, something more beautiful. Perhaps that's it, I tell myself. You don't love the man; you love his work. I've tried to separate those two things. But I'm not sure it's possible to draw those lines. Everything spills over into beautiful, sensual gray. And so I'm here at night painting because I can't stop. It seems my muse is not on extended leave in Europe after all, but right here under my very nose. I've found my subject, just as you said I would. It's an art of desire not an art of life, but it's mine and whatever else, I can hang on to it. You have your boy in the trees (a beat) And I have you.

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