act-I-scene-6-boxes-of-trouble

[RADIO‑THEATER INTERLUDE — NOIR SOUL, LOW BASS, HIGHWAY HUM] [FX: A LONELY HIGHWAY AT DAWN. TIRES ON WET PAVEMENT. A LOW HUM UNDER THE ENGINE, LIKE A HEARTBEAT] [Narrative Noir, no singing, no rapping, just speaking] On the advice of a cryptic message, I took care of my business with my wealth management firm, settled debts, and hit the road. I arose with the sun, Packed the biggest bag I owned Wrote a note for Hope to misdirect her since I could no longer trust her. I had seen her picture and her name in boxes and folders I never should have opened. There was a photo of the woman from the funeral in martial arts gear. She looked like a proud and innocent teenager in the action shot, brandishing nunchucks. She was in a studio standing in front of a mirror that reflected the photographer... Tina. The stranger in the casket, I had spent half my lifetime not knowing... the woman who had just made me a very nervous widower. [Narrative Noir, no singing, no rapping, just speaking] The date of the photo was February 14th, fourteen years ago, when she traveled on short notice, the wedding anniversary party she missed. I remember. I was reminiscing about the moment we had at the door when Tina came home from that trip, ecstatic that she had found the perfect recipient for her scholarship, when a price list on the paper in my hand seemed to light up with Six and seven-figure numbers sat beside the pretty faces of very young students at the boarding school I let the woman who was not my daughter’s mother send my child to. [Narrative Noir, no singing, no rapping, just speaking] My wife’s handwriting was on the tabs, labeling the people like cattle. Profiles. Photos. Dates. Destinations. More than that, there was a file of benefactors Donors of the so-called scholarships for daughters whose fathers, like me, had no idea what fate awaited their children, all alone overseas. In an envelope with smudged red fingerprints, there were official cover stories for disappearances, letters in first person to families reporting how well they were doing, accident reports, obituaries, autopsies, newspaper clips [Narrative Noir, no singing, no rapping, just speaking] There were deposit slips with Tina’s signature signed on days after circuits were turned off. In the middle of it all was my daughter’s front-page news, in a case I never knew about. Some thug got himself unplugged at her school in an apparent kidnapping. The girl who went missing? The one at the funeral, I finally had her name, Felicity Cruz. [Narrative Noir, no singing, no rapping, just speaking clearly] What followed the headline were words no father wants to read. They jumped off the page and slapped me across the face. The last time I saw my child, she had come home for an unplanned visit, just about the same time. She was jumpy. She had clearly been upset by something, but she wouldn't talk about it. Somehow, she found her original birth certificate behind a picture of her real mother, which I kept taped underneath my desk. [dead-pan] She blocked me. A lot of time had gone by. Was she still alive? [Narrative Noir, no singing, no rapping, just speaking clearly] I tossed my bag into the back seat and revved up the engine on my old-time cavalier, it was ancient and undiscoverable by modern devices, so I couldn’t be tracked. I was trying to think clearly. Who is the conspiracy theorist now? I heard Tina taunting me. Drive, just drive, I told myself. I tuned my radio dial until I found the frequency of my destination. The radio host was some kind of narcissist, playing her own song, but man, it was the perfect one for me to hear. Truth is a trap house indeed… the more you know, the more you wish you didn’t. If my daughter is alive, she’s looking for her mother. Maybe she found her in Coffy Town. [FX: Engine accelerates. A low, rising synth like a warning.]