A Short Play
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SCENE: A living room.
TIME: The present.
SETTING: An end table with a phone sitting on it.
AT RISE: COLE sneaks in. He quietly picks up the receiver, gives a furtive glance towards the door, then licks the phone from mouth piece to ear piece. PENNY, bedraggled, in pajamas and a robe, enters. She clearly suffers from a bad cold.
d
PENNY
Cole, what are you-
COLE
Darling, how are you feeling?
PENNY
Still sick. Just like I was fifteen minutes ago when I called you and told you not to come over. Why were you just lick-
COLE
I couldn’t stand it. The separation. You quarantining yourself for my protection.
PENNY
I didn’t want you to see me like this.
COLE
You look glorious, my goddess.
PENNY
And I didn’t want you to catch this nasty thing.
COLE
Too late. The thought of spending a day, an hour, a minute away from my precious gem was more than I could bear. So I decided that I had to find a way to catch your cold and then we would never have to be apart.
PENNY
That’s sweet…in a disturbed, co-dependant kind of way.
COLE
(Pulling her close.)
Not as sweet as you, my love bug.
(PENNY sneezes in his face.)
PENNY
Sorry. That was gross.
COLE
Oh my red-nosed angel, no need to apologize. There is nothing that you could do that I wouldn’t find lovely. Kiss me, my pretty princess.
PENNY
No way. You just frenched my phone. That’s sick.
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Stacey Lane’s plays are published with Dramatic Publishing, Playscripts Inc., Smith and Kraus, Eldridge, Pioneer, Heuer, Brooklyn Publishers, Next Stage Press, Manhattan Theatre Source, JAC Publishing, Thunderbolt Theatre & Film Productions, Seraphemera Books, San Luis Obispo Little Theatre, Sterling, Freshwater, Poydras Review, The Quotable, Euphony Journal, Mock Turtle Zine, Indian Ink, The Other Otter, Canyon Voices, Steel Bananas and Scene4. Her scripts have been performed at over three hundred-fifty theatres from coast to coast in the U.S., as well as in Canada, England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia, and Venezuela. She is the recipient of the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Residency Grant, the Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District’s Literary Artist Fellowship, winner of the Unpublished Play Reading Project Award at the American Alliance for Theatre and Education and producer of SWAN (Support Women Artists Now) Day Dayton. Visit her online here.