Stefano, an American in his forties with a New Jersey accent
Shayne, an American in his sixties with a mid-Atlantic accent
Daniel, a short, broad Frenchman of 79
Dan, a big thin American in his thirties with a New England accent
Denis: a very tall, lanky Frenchman of 45
Jean-Claude: A short stocky Swiss of about 60.
Marie: A beautiful French blonde of about 35
Barbara: a beatiful American brunette of about 30.
Diane: a beautiful American blonde of about 30.
Barry, Diane's husband: a fat American of about 35.
Ulysses: an epileptic 120-pound Male Dalmation

During the play the director can send various people up and down the stairs, to help lagging parts of the dialogue. People who can be seen in the stairway during the play, (or not, according to the production) are 3 or 4 groups of 2 or 3 girls or women in jeans, with and without backpacks, one artistic-looking man in a beret, one woman of fifty, very thin, with shocking red hair, one athletic Japanese man, briefly clad, one long-haired man, tiny and decrepit, a single woman of forty, a tall man of about thirty w ho is always smiling and who pulls his cap over his face whenever he passes the office, and a man of sixty, dressed in a ratty suit and old coat.]

Every job I ever got I got by lying.

Really? How interesting.

Well, I mean, everyone does it. Who tells the truth in their resume?

More Charlie's Angels.

Twenty years ago, Stef, this hotel was full of couples made up of one man and one woman. The old days. Remember? And at night you could hear a fair number of orgasms. Some nights this place was a symphony of sighs and shouts, moans and groans. That was a hotel! Lots of people in love --- making love. That was the way God intended the world to be. What's happened to the world?

You're right. Angels have replaced real women.

Look at 'em. Actually, you have to blame Goodbar. Goodbar started it all.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Wasn't that a seventies film? Hey, who was in that?

It's not WHO, it's WHAT. A murder. An awful drawn-out murder. Ten endless sickening minutes in hell. After my girlfriend witnessed that murder, she was never the same. Towards men, I mean. Towards me! That film put American women off men, forever.

But a lot of women didn't see it.

Enough saw it for it to invade the collective psyche of the American female. It terrified them. 'Take a man home and he'll probably murder you.' That was the subconscious message. It ended good relations between the sexes forever. Who wrote that thing? Judith what's her name! She should be crucified.

So women were left with no-one to love. Except other women.

Precisely. Charlie's angels hits the screen the year after Goodbar. The solution. If you can't love men, love girls. It's a thinly-disguised call to Lesbianism.

Oh, for Chrissakes! That show was watched by ten-year-olds.

Precisely. Who now are twenty-five and thirty and crowding the rooms of this hotel. In twos and threes they come. Rude, nomadic, sophmoric, semi-lesbian American booze-mooching Angel imitators. Now, for every woman who comes here with a man, there are ten who come with a woman.

Is that a double-entendre?

Precisely. About the only time you hear a scream of passion in the halls of this ancient establishment is when one Lesbian is doing God knows what to another on one of the floors.

Careful. Now you're sounding homophobic.

Nonsense. Real gays are alright. I just can't deal with these new creatures from the twilight zone, semi-heteros who get the boys to pay for the drinks, and then go giggling off to bed with the girls. Listen to those ones who just went up. They sound just like the sound track of the show.

And there's no way to turn down the sound or switch channels. .

What's the world coming to?

It's not coming to, it's there.

There goes the Degeuellasse again.

Stef, how would you say degeuellasse in English?

That's easy. Mr. Makes-you-want-to-barf.

Stef. That's not a nice thing to call someone. He's from a very good family.

Fuckin' whacko! I mean, he destroyed room 24.

It needed it.

With paint, for God's sake!

He's a painter.

When he's humming in the halls, it's bad enough, with that weird smug self-satisfied stupid smile of his. And on the street, it echos off the buildings. I don't understand why they don't throw him out.

Daniel has a vocation. Housing the madmen of Paris.

I'm not crazy. You're not, well, not exactly. Now Mitsumi, he's mad.

Agreed.

Room twenty-eight. Doctor in mathematics, visiting professor at the University of Lille, giving a lecture to four hundred mathematicians this December, back in Tokyo. Is that mad?

Chanting Buddhist horseshit out on the street in front of the door. On his knees. In his shorts! People crossing the street to avoid him.

You sit on the stairs in your shorts, Stef. Those skimpy black rayon boxer shorts? With some things visible that should not be visible. Who are you to talk?

I remember now why no-one in this hotel can stand you sometimes. You remember things that never happened.

Mitsumi's Buddhist ablutions. Gawd!. At five thirty a.m. it sounds like he's barfing up there in the shower.

I had to move to the first floor.

Tell the Cretin.

That's not a nice thing to call him, Stef.

Any guy of forty-five who watches cartoons half the day is a cretin. You're obviously losin' your sense of humor.

It's this job-hunt. You shouldn't have brought up the subject of resumes. I need a job.

What? You, work? I've never seen you do a lick! In all the years...

Now and then, I have to work like everyone else. But now, there's nothin'.

No programming jobs?

Just SAP jobs.

What's that?

You tell me.

Lie. Be sure to say you're an expert. Shayne, SAP expert.

Funny you should say that. I did that once, with another language I didnt' know,, and suddenly it was Easy Street. I mean Big bucks. Hmmm.

A generalized genius is an expert at everything.

There. Look! There's the Angels.

Right on time, all the ten-year-olds in France just got home from school and have now switched on the tube. Look... grown women and they're holdin' hands! And look, walking with their arms around each other.

Now that you mention it, you never see them touching men, except to handcuff them or pistol-whip them.

Or terminate them. Charlie's Angels shoot a lot of men every month, or hadn't you noticed? And look there, they're drinking martinis while having a meeting with the boss. At 2 pm! That's why these Charlie's Angels are always trying to get you to buy t hem drinks. It's in the script. Two of them took that guy in room 8 for eighty Euros the other night. I tried to warn him.

They never put out.

'Cuz it's not in the script. The guy didn't even get a handshake. All Charlie's Angels ever kiss is each other.

Check out the wardrobe. See, there's always one of the three dressed as a woman, while the other two wear men's clothes. They take turns as the woman. The ones dressed as men walk funny, too. Like rodeo hands ramblin' along.

Hey, look at those two walking like drunken sailors.

Like John Wayne.

That is weird. Hey, you might be on to something big here!

This show is Lesbianism 101.

My vocation is not sheltering madmen, it is befriending geniuses. Mad or brilliant? That is not a question we ask here. Under this humble roof lives and has lived more genius than in all the rest of the quarter combined.

end, scene one