Fallen Petals Read online

  TANIA: Economics. I need to—

  PHIL: You want—

  TANIA: Correct. I want to re-focus and re-frame so that it’s interesting. It’s still muck in my head.

  PHIL: You want to refocus your inhibiting beliefs.

  TANIA: Yes.

  SALLY: [laughing] You can’t do it because you’re a slut.

  TANIA: Did you hear something?

  PHIL: Yeah. I did.

  He stands up. He walks up to SALLY to confront her. She coughs.

  TANIA: Didn’t anyone teach you to cover your mouth, you dirty slag?

  SALLY: Fuck you. [She turns her attention to PHIL.] Phil. Who did you like at school?

  PHIL: Dunno.

  SALLY: They can be dead or alive.

  TANIA: Fuck off, bitch.

  SALLY: I know who I liked. Tania knows. [Beat.] I’ve been sleeping when I walk. Have you seen me down the street with the others? Maybe.

  We don’t talk. I just dream, you know. I am the same age, but it is ten years ago, and when I walk past the closed-down shops, I look in their windows and all that gets reflected is a great big tumour.

  PHIL: That’s sick.

  SALLY: All pus and fat.

  She starts coughing again. She can’t stop. She is doubling over.

  TANIA: She’s diseased.

  PHIL says nothing.

  Fuck off, disease!

  PHIL: We’re meant to be studying.

  SALLY: Hey, Tania. Get a load of this.

  SALLY lifts up her shirt. There’s a rash on her body.

  TANIA: She’s as good as dead. Get away.

  TANIA runs away and exits.

  SALLY: What are you going to do?

  She coughs again. PHIL stands watching. A beat. He makes a fist, raises it, and makes a sudden movement towards her as if he is going to strike. She runs in fear and exits.

  PHIL looks at his fist from a few different angles, then sits back amongst the textbooks. He makes to keep studying. The wind changes. Black ashes fall from the sky. It takes a moment for him to realise. He flicks at the page. Then he realises. He shouts to the sky.

  PHIL: You stupid dead fucks!

  From here on, whenever the adult characters appear they wear a form of protection, whether it be a breathing mask or white plastic paint protective suit or worse. It depends, of course, on the character, but most of the adult characters act quite loosely with the requirements to keep the protection on.

  TENTH

  At the school. MR WORBOYS holds a protective mask in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He is outside, against a wall having a smoke.

  TANIA enters. WORBOYS jumps back.

  WORBOYS: Christ!

  He quickly pops his breathing mask to his face. He takes it away a little when he speaks.

  Tania, what the hell are you doing here?

  TANIA: Exams are soon.

  WORBOYS: There are signs out the front. No unauthorised access.

  TANIA: What’s unauthorised about me? Schools are for students. I’ve got a question about money supply and its definitions, Mr Worboys.

  WORBOYS: I’m too pissed to deal with you, Tania.

  TANIA: I know that there are six levels of money supply, from M-1 to M-6. Which is M-1 again?

  WORBOYS: Ask your mate Phil, if he hasn’t been chucked on a burning heap.

  TANIA: I need to know the definition of M-1 for the exam, to demonstrate my knowledge. Where is the exam going to be?

  WORBOYS: Go away, Tania. I’m going to have to report you if you don’t.

  He throws his smoke to the ground and stomps it out. He backs away and exits hurriedly.

  At the tree. TANIA meets PHIL.

  TANIA: No luck. Worboys wouldn’t give me the date.

  PHIL: Remember what MindPower says. Luck is made, not a random event.

  TANIA: That’s right. We make luck.

  PHIL: Why did you see Worboys?

  TANIA: I found him.

  PHIL: Worboys is a cock. He’s not admin. We have to see admin people.

  TANIA: Your turn then.

  PHIL: I’ll do a better job than you.

  TANIA: Sure.

  PHIL glares at her.

  PHIL: Do you want to swap some notes?

  TANIA: You’ll do a better job than me.

  She kisses him on the cheek.

  At the school. The office of VICE PRINCIPAL LAWRENCE. She wears something like a beekeeper’s headgear.

  PHIL enters.

  PHIL: I can’t get into Mr Graham’s office.

  LAWRENCE: He’s not here.

  PHIL: The school’s still functioning without a Principal?

  LAWRENCE: How did you get in?

  PHIL: The front door was open.

  LAWRENCE: Phil, our Principal was one of the lucky adults outside the zone when it got quarantined. If he comes back in, he won’t get out for months.

  PHIL: Months? Are they talking months? You can take off that stupid mask, Ms Lawrence. I’m not sick. I don’t have a rash. No aches or pains. You must be the Acting Principal if he’s not here.

  LAWRENCE: Correct.

  PHIL: You can tell me where the exams are going to be.

  LAWRENCE: Phil, the school has not been teaching children since this began. We can hardly send you lot into battle at the exam front.

  Besides, the papers would not get back to the Board of Studies.

  PHIL: What about the Internet?

  LAWRENCE: No facilities for that anywhere, Phil. Has to be real paper.

  PHIL: This is fucked. We’re tougher than the rest. We’re alive. We’re the real deal. And you won’t even let us sit the exams.

  LAWRENCE: Phil, you can see the circumstances for yourself.

  PHIL: Why don’t you do something about the circumstances? You’re in the position, now.

  LAWRENCE: Next year. If anything opens, you can do your Year Twelve at the TAFE.

  PHIL: At the TAFE?! A whole year down the drain?!

  LAWRENCE: I doubt this school will be given the facilities to meet your needs next year, given the likely enrolments.

  PHIL: What?! What about meeting my needs this year?

  LAWRENCE: Get real, you drongo. You’ll probably die. Forget your fucking exams.

  PHIL: I am not going to die.

  LAWRENCE: How ironic. None of you little shits wanted to learn when you were alive, and now you lot are kicking the bucket, I get a student who wants to do exams.

  PHIL: Hold the exams. Hold the fucking exams!

  LAWRENCE: Not my call. Nothing I can do.

  PHIL: Bullshit.

  WORBOYS enters, mask on.

  WORBOYS: Anne—I heard shouting.

  PHIL: [to WORBOYS] Drunk arsehole.

  WORBOYS: Get out of here!

  PHIL runs out.

  LAWRENCE: That was weird.

  WORBOYS: You’re telling me. I had another one today, this morning.

  LAWRENCE: Why didn’t you tell me?

  WORBOYS: The paperwork.

  LAWRENCE: Who?

  WORBOYS: A girl in the same Year Twelve class as him.

  LAWRENCE: What did she want?

  WORBOYS: When the exams are happening. I laughed at her.

  LAWRENCE: Why wouldn’t you?

  WORBOYS: That’s what I asked myself.

  LAWRENCE: We’ll have to report it.

  WORBOYS: And he called me a cunt.

  LAWRENCE: Is that what he called you?

  WORBOYS: Think so. Irrational, grasping and desperate behaviour. No respect for boundaries. You’re right. I should have informed you.

  LAWRENCE: I can barely breathe in this thing.

  ELEVENTH

  At the tree. TANIA is studying with PHIL.

  TANIA: I’m not getting any of this.

  PHIL: Economics?

  TANIA: Talk to me.

  PHIL: Why?

  TANIA: You’re good at explaining things.

  PHIL: Don’t want to talk. Want to get good marks.

  TANIA
bows her head.

  What are we going to do if she comes back?

  TANIA: Punch her out.

  She crawls over to him and pushes him down on the ground.

  PHIL: What do you want?

  She unzips his fly.

  TANIA: I just need the right neuro-associative connectors.

  PHIL: What?

  TANIA: MindPower.

  PHIL: I haven’t listened to every tape, yet.

  TANIA: I need ways of aligning economic theory with what I like.

  PHIL: Then do want you like.

  TANIA stands up and takes her underpants down. She sits down on him.

  What’s the problem?

  TANIA: Let’s start with resource allocation.

  PHIL: Are you that far behind?

  She moves her hips. He groans.

  TANIA: Now.

  PHIL: I suppose it is the foundation of our understanding.

  TANIA: Good.

  She starts grinding him.

  PHIL: The basic economic problem is unlimited wants minus limited resources. Those resources consist of four things: land, capital, human and entrepreneurial.

  TANIA: That’s good. Mh.

  PHIL: In the market system we find the most efficient way of allocating those resources to those unlimited wants, filtering out the most extreme of desires, through what Adam Smith defined as the ‘invisible hand’ operating through the price mechanism.

  TANIA: Yes.

  She starts getting more excited and frantic.

  PHIL: The price mechanism is the signal by which operators in the market know how much resources to allocate to which want. Price is determined by the laws of supply and demand. In the market, people ask for their wants to be met by spending their ‘dollar-votes’ on the things they need. If demand outstrips supply, the price rises, thus flagging to producers that resources ought to be allocated to that market.

  She comes.

  TANIA: Oh, God.

  PHIL: Am I still a virgin?

  TANIA: What?

  PHIL: I didn’t come.

  TANIA: Did I get everything I need for the exam?

  PHIL: What else are you having trouble with?

  TANIA: Non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment.

  PHIL: Ah, NAIRU.

  TANIA: What?

  PHIL: It’s the acronym. You put it in brackets in the definition in the introduction.

  TANIA: What?

  PHIL: The capital letters.

  TANIA: How does it work?

  PHIL: I’m sure I’m still a virgin. Technically.

  TANIA: Okay.

  She starts fucking him again.

  PHIL: The non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment is a concept which, based on the Phillips curve, indicates that certain low rates of unemployment may drive inflation up beyond a point of no return. That is, when the inflation rate returns to a safer level, that is, price stability returns, the nature of the trade-off between unemployment and inflation has changed, so that only a higher level of unemployment maintains the chief goal of price stability.

  She comes.

  That was quick.

  TANIA: What about you?

  PHIL: No cigar.

  TANIA: More.

  PHIL: Get off me.

  TANIA: More.

  She finds a rhythm and keeps fucking him.

  PHIL: In the Third Republic, galvanised by the leadership of Gambetta, the liberal republic cemented bourgeois democracy through a series of pragmatic deals and compromises with constitutional monarchists. Gambetta believed that politics was the art of the possible—

  She stops.

  TANIA: What’s this?

  PHIL: Late nineteenth-century French history.

  TANIA: I need economics.

  PHIL: It was all I had left in me—why give out gold when I’m not getting any?

  TANIA: Fucking prick.

  She moves off him violently and then knees him in the balls. He quickly pulls his trousers back up.

  You didn’t even get us a place to do our exams, you fuck knuckle.

  She kicks him.

  PHIL: Don’t kill the golden goose.

  TANIA: What eggs are you laying? Are you shitting golden nuggets? Gambetta? What the fuck has Gambetta got to do with anything?

  He gets up gingerly.

  PHIL: Do you still have a student number?

  TANIA: What’s the point? If we can’t do our exams, we don’t need student numbers, and I don’t fucking need you.

  PHIL: If we get past the guarded perimeter, all we’ll need is a student number.

  TANIA: What?

  PHIL: If we get to Sandcastle.

  TANIA: Dad’s panel van.

  PHIL: You can drive it?

  TANIA: It’s an automatic. I can drive an automatic.

  PHIL: They always have a few spare exam papers at every exam venue. All we will need is our student numbers. That’s all we will need. That and our fake IDs.

  TANIA: I’m so sorry.

  PHIL: Sure you are.

  TANIA: I’m sorry. Forgive me.

  She gets on her knees, crawls up to him, takes his hand and kisses it.

  PHIL: Let me think.

  A petal falls.

  TWELFTH

  JOHN and GAYLE MOSS at home. Distantly, the sound of a window pane breakage can be heard. JOHN looks out.

  JOHN: Crowd’s at number eleven, now. [Laughing] Think I see the Deputy Mayor’s wife. Good for her.

  GAYLE: I don’t understand it. John, are you saying that it’s all right to terrorise people who are dying?

  JOHN: Don’t judge people, Gayle.

  GAYLE: So what am I allowed to do?

  JOHN: They’re sending the bulldozers in on the primary school tomorrow. What do you think I want to do?

  GAYLE: The point is, you’re not doing it.

  JOHN: Are you speaking like this outside the house?

  GAYLE: Since when do I go outside?

  JOHN: We’re going to need favours.

  GAYLE: Have they fixed up what they’re doing with your salary yet?

  JOHN: Who knows what the Ministry is doing up there. Everything’s in a panic.

  Beat.

  GAYLE: We have to escape.

  JOHN: Obviously.

  GAYLE: I’m serious.

  Pause.

  JOHN: As soon as Phil dies we find a way out.

  GAYLE: Phil’s not sick.

  JOHN: He’s different.

  GAYLE: He’s not sick.

  JOHN: It might be dormant in him.

  GAYLE: He’s our boy. He’s a good boy. [Pause.] He was.

  JOHN: Yes.

  GAYLE: Used to be… thoughtful.

  JOHN: Let’s not—

  GAYLE: He used to be.

  JOHN: Yes. [Pause.] I’ll call in favours from outside. I still know people in the city who’ll be able to help.

  Silence. GAYLE cries. JOHN goes down on his knees to her.

  We’ll adopt. Foster first, then adopt. Or sponsor.

  GAYLE: Yes.

  JOHN: I can’t wait, can you?

  GAYLE: No.

  JOHN: Let’s celebrate. Before he comes home. Bottle of the champers?

  GAYLE looks at him.

  Every problem is just an opportunity. A challenge. We’ll win. We’ll get out. You’ll see.

  THIRTEENTH

  Follows straight on from the eleventh scene.

  PHIL pushes TANIA onto the ground on her back and pulls his trousers back down.

  PHIL: Still wet?

  TANIA: Define M-1.

  He starts fucking her. SALLY enters the area, silently, dizzily.

  PHIL: M-1 is all cash, bank notes, bond deposits and—

  SALLY: You sick fucks.

  PHIL freezes.

  TANIA: More, Phil. More.

  SALLY staggers up to them.

  SALLY: I’ve spent the day pushing grannies over for their shopping, so don’t think I won’t bash youse.

  PHIL: Jealous, Sal?


  SALLY: Fucking bastards.

  PHIL: Why be jealous? Your step-daddy fucked you, so what are you afraid of missing out on before you die?

  SALLY lunges at the couple. Both of them jump up and away, getting decent. TANIA runs to the tree trunk.

  SALLY: You’re a sick cunt.

  PHIL opens his arms out to point at SALLY.

  PHIL: You’ve got a rash on yours.

  TANIA: [in an excited whisper] The basic economic problem is unlimited wants versus limited resources.

  SALLY: What’s she on?

  PHIL: That’s it, Tan.

  TANIA: Those resources consist of four things: land, capital, human and…

  PHIL: Come on, Tan!

  TANIA: … entrepreneurial!

  SALLY laughs. She backs away from TANIA. She points beyond the area.

  SALLY: I can see pyres two and three. Burning away. Might meet you there.

  SALLY, who dumped a bag near the tree, goes to the bag.

  PHIL: Sal, now I associate that image with this empowering place.

  SALLY: What do you think I associate it with now?

  She pulls out a tent kit.

  Luxury.

  TANIA: What do you think you’re doing?

  SALLY: Pitching.

  TANIA: Where’d you get that?

  SALLY: Some other kid had to die first, didn’t she?

  PHIL: You’re not going to meet us in any pyre, Sal. We’re immune. We’re getting results.

  SALLY: Don’t mind me then.

  PHIL: We turned this place into an empowering resource for learning.

  PHIL makes a fist and starts to stride over to SALLY to punch her.

  TANIA restrains him.

  TANIA: She’ll get hers. It’s not worth it.

  PHIL: You reckon, do you?

  He breaks free of TANIA, goes to SALLY’s tent and begins to pull it up.

  This is my place! You get out of here! This is mine! I’ve made it!

  SALLY: Fuck!

  PHIL throws bits and pieces all over the place.

  PHIL: You have to understand!

  SALLY cowers away from him. She starts to run.

  SALLY: You’ll get yours!

  A petal falls from the tree.

  TANIA: Phil…

  He turns around. They both notice the petal and watch it fall to the ground. PHIL looks back up at TANIA. He smiles and clicks his tongue.

  PHIL: The drought was life, Tan. Now it’s raining, my friend, it’s raining.

  FOURTEENTH

  A conference room. Five empty, light and uncomfortable seats.