Unwell Season 5/Episode 2 - Call and Answer
by Bilal Dardai
Reaching out
Benefits of being dead
I'm warning you.
Content Advisories for this episode can be found here.
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This episode features: Clarisa Cherie Rios as Lily, Mark Soloff as Silas, Amelia Bethel as Marisol, Anuja Vaidya as Norah, and Michael Turrentine as Wes.
Written by Bilal Dardai, sound design by Alexander Danner, directed by Jeffrey Nils Gardner, theme music composed by Stephen Poon, assistant director Lauren Grace Thompson, recording engineer Mel Ruder, associate producer Ani Enghdahl, Theme performed by Stephen Poon, Lauren Kelly, Gunnar Jebsen, Travis Elfers, Mel Ruder, and Betsey Palmer, produced by haydée r. souffrant, Unwell lead sound designer Eli Hamada McIlveen, Executive Producers Eleanor Hyde and Jeffrey Nils Gardner, by HartLife NFP.
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THE RAIN PERSISTS. FOOTSTEPS
WALKING THROUGH WET GRASS AND MUD
IN THE AREA SURROUNDING AN EMPTY
LOT. AT VARIOUS DISTANCES, BIRDS
CAN BE HEARD CALLING OUT AND
RESPONDING TO ONE ANOTHER. THE
FOOTSTEPS COME TO A HALT.
SILAS: Well, well. Theodore Wesley. I thought that might
be you. Good morning to you, young man.
WES: Good morning, Silas.
SILAS: Tut. “Reverend Lodge” would be more respectful.
WES: It would. But we both know that you’re no more a
reverend than I’m a young man.
SILAS: Ah. The pup’s found his bark since last we met.
Have the fangs come in as well, I wonder? (BEAT)
I don’t believe I know this place. Where are we?
WES: There used to be a house here.
SILAS: A house...? Ah yes. I understand. The house that
once belonged to the child whose body you’re
wearing right now. You can’t help yourself, can
you. You return here time and again to run your
fingers through the ashes, to try and feel the
thorn’s prick of a life you never in fact lived.
WES: If you say so, Silas.
SILAS: I might have imagined I’d find you someplace like
this.
WES: You were looking for me?
SILAS: Indeed, young man. I felt that you and I should
speak.
WES: And what if I have nothing to say to you?
SILAS: Then you’ll listen.
WES: Maybe I don’t want to listen to anything you have
to say either.
SILAS: Then I suppose all that’s left is to kill one
another. If we won’t have each others’ ears,
we’ll have each others’ throats, hm? And why not?
Dawn is traditional. But I myself have never felt
the need for violence at such an hour. You hear
the birds in the distance?
WES: Yes.
SILAS: Are they yours?
WES: I don’t own the birds, Silas.
SILAS: Don’t be impertinent. You know what I’m asking
you.
WES: Yes. And no. Not those birds.
SILAS: Merely nature, then. That’s appropriate.
(BEAT. THEY LISTEN TO THE BIRDCALLS IN THE RAIN
FOR A MOMENT LONGER.) It’s called a dawn chorus.
A moment in the morning for these poor prey
animals to announce to each other that they’ve
survived another cold night among their
predators. Quite sad, if one knows to listen.
Imagine hearing a loved one’s voice day after
day across the wind, and then one morning not to
hear it at all. A tragedy with no translation.
One should be humble in the face of it.
WES: I’m not here to fight you, Silas.
SILAS: Then we’re agreed, and so much the better. Should
we retire to someplace with more shelter?
WES: The rain’s not bothering me.
SILAS: Nor I. I was speaking to decorum, not to comfort.
WES: Anything we have to say to each other the rain
can hear too.
SILAS: Very well, young man. But walk with me at least.
THE RAINDROPS PERSIST AS THEIR
FOOTSTEPS TRUDGE THROUGH THE WET
MUD. THE SOUND OF THE RAIN ON THE
GROUND TRANSITIONS TO THE SOUND OF
RAIN ON AN APARTMENT ROOF AND
AGAINST THE GLASS OF A BEDROOM
WINDOW. LILY SHIFTS IN BED.
LILY: Are you awake?
MARISOL: Yeah. For a little while now.
LILY: Did you sleep all right?
MARISOL: Eventually. Once the raindrops found a rhythm.
You, on the other hand, went down pretty hard.
LILY: Yesterday was...exhausting.
MARISOL: I appreciated the help. You didn’t have to.
LILY: Hey, I care about that record store downstairs
too. I don’t mind dragging a few sandbags around
to keep the water out.
MARISOL: You didn’t have to stay, though. I would have
been fine.
LILY: What, you think I was staying for you? C’mere.
THEY SNUGGLE CLOSER TOGETHER.
MARISOL: Mm. This is nice. This is one of my favorite
things. Lying in bed with someone you love
listening to the rain? Top ten. Maybe top three.
LILY: We’ve never done this before.
MARISOL: I know.
LILY: So you’re talking about someone else.
MARISOL: Nooo, I’m talking about the activity.
LILY: An activity you did with someone else.
MARISOL: Are you really gonna do this?
LILY: I’m just saying.
MARISOL: How about this, Judy Green Eyes? This was good
before you. It’s perfect now. Understand?
LILY: How many times before me?
MARISOL: Understand?
LILY: Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.
MARISOL: You don’t know how to trust a moment like this,
is why. You get suspicious when you’re happy.
Tell me I’m wrong.
LILY: You’re...not.
MARISOL: Of course I’m not. So hear what I’m saying to
you. You and me, this moment, right now. Lying
in bed, in each other’s arms, listening to the
rain. This is perfect. Let it be perfect, Lily.
LILY: Okay.
THEY BREATHE TOGETHER FOR A
MOMENT.
LILY: Except for the part where the rain is being
caused by an angry ghost.
MARISOL: And there it goes.
LILY: A cup of coffee would also be nice.
MARISOL: (THROWING THE BLANKETS OFF AND GETTING OUT OF
BED) You got it! “Order up! One hot cuppa joe for
the lady on the left side of the bed.”
LILY: (LAUGHING) I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
MARISOL: Anything else I can get ya, hon? Scrambled eggs?
English muffin? Veggie skillet?
LILY: Come back, Marisol.
MARISOL: Nah. I could use a cup too. Come on.
LILY GETS OUT OF BED. THERE IS A
SUDDEN SOUND FROM ELSEWHERE IN THE
BUILDING: A LOUD BURST OF MUSIC
FOR A FEW SECONDS, THEN CUT OFF.
LILY: You heard that, right?
MARISOL: Yeah.
A DIFFERENT BURST OF MUSIC, THEN
CUT OFF.
LILY: Is that music?
MARISOL: I think someone’s using my stereo.
LILY: Right now?
ANOTHER SHORT BURST OF MUSIC.
MARISOL: Lily, could you please reach into the top drawer
of my nightstand and hand me the mallet?
LILY: A mallet? You keep a mallet in here? (OPENS THE
DRAWER) This is a meat tenderizer.
MARISOL: I keep all the good tools in the workshop.
LILY: But a potato masher?
MARISOL: Would you rather I keep a gun in there?
LILY: Potato masher it is.
ANOTHER SHORT BURST OF MUSIC. LILY
AND MARISOL STEP GINGERLY DOWN THE
STAIRS.
LILY: Why would someone break into your store at six in
the morning to use your stereo?
MARISOL: I don’t know. Why does anything in Mt. Absalom
happen anymore?
ANOTHER SHORT BURST OF MUSIC,
FOLLOWED BY A VOICE:
NORAH: Why is this so blasted impossible?
MARISOL AND LILY WALK INTO THE
STORE.
MARISOL: Norah?
NORAH: Ah! Hello Marisol, Lily. Good morning. I’m sorry
for waking you; it was unintended.
MARISOL: We were awake. What are you doing with my stereo?
NORAH: Stereo? That’s what this is called? As in a
stereoscope? How curious.
LILY: What’s a stereoscope?
NORAH: A visual device. Two separate lenses positioned
over related photographs to simulate the
perception of depth. Have you truly never seen
one? It’s quite marvelous. I gained much insight
from the technique while designing my telescope.
MARISOL: I don’t understand the conversation we’re having
right now. Norah, what are you even doing here?
NORAH: I needed to speak with you.
MARISOL: With me or with Lily?
NORAH: With you. And might I say, I rather wish the two
of you had told me that you planned to stay here
last night.
LILY: First of all, it wasn’t planned, and second
of all, I don’t believe we have to check in with
you about where we end up sleeping.
NORAH: I apologize, I misspoke. But when it occurred to
me that I needed to speak with Marisol, I was
annoyed not to find you at Fenwood. And I had
been very patient up until that moment.
LILY: What do you mean, “patient”?
NORAH: I mean that the thought I had occurred to me in
the middle of the night. I believed I had shown a
great deal of restraint in not entering Lily’s
room and waking you up. “Be kind to them, Norah,”
I said to myself. “They need their rest. Or
perhaps they are within an intimate moment. It
would be impolite to interrupt.”
LILY: But eventually you gave up, you looked inside...
NORAH: I may have used one of Dot’s lesser epithets.
LILY: And you decided to come over here to find us.
NORAH: It was the next logical choice.
MARISOL: So. You let yourself into the store and decided
to fiddle with my stereo but you didn’t want to
wake us up because that would have been rude. I
dunno, Norah. Partial credit.
NORAH: I can’t surely be expected to adhere to every
living social custom. It defeats the only
benefit of existing in this manner.
MARISOL: (SIGH) Okay. You said you needed to talk with me?
NORAH: Yes. I’m planning to run an experiment. Rather,
I’m planning to re-run an experiment. And I
wanted to discuss it with you.
MARISOL: But why me?
NORAH: ...because I can’t discuss it with Rudy.
A HEAVY PAUSE.
MARISOL: I’m sorry, Norah.
NORAH: I know you aren’t an astronomer the same way he
was, Marisol. But he always spoke so highly of
your enthusiasm. He used to say that in its way
it counted for a great deal more than simple
expertise.
MARISOL: I’m...thank you for telling me that. All right.
However I’m able to help you. Although I really
am going to need that cup of coffee.
LILY: I’ve got it.
NORAH: May I watch? That was another of your devices
that perplexed me.
THE THREE HEAD TO THE BACK ROOM.
THE RAIN PERSISTS ON THE BUILDING
AND THEN TRANSITIONS TO DROPLETS
SPATTERING OFF THE BRANCHES OF
TREES. SILAS AND WES STROLL
THROUGH THE WOODS, TWIGS
OCCASIONALLY SNAPPING BENEATH
THEIR FOOTSTEPS. THE BIRDS CAN
STILL BE HEARD IN THE DISTANCE.
WES: Wait. How did we get here?
SILAS: The woods?
WES: They weren’t anywhere near us. What did you do?
SILAS: It’s not difficult, young man. I wished to be
here. I went. I presume it’s much the same when
you travel.
WES: But I wasn’t thinking about the woods.
SILAS: I invited you, in a way. And you accepted, in a
way.
WES: Can I leave?
SILAS: If you so choose. I’d prefer if you didn’t but
understand why you might.
WES VANISHES.
SILAS: Hm. Disappointing.
WES REAPPEARS.
SILAS: Ah. I thought that you’d left for good.
WES: I needed to believe you.
SILAS: That pains me. In all the time I’ve been here I
have never once deceived any of you. You know
that’s true.
WES: I...do. I was surprised, is all.
SILAS: I might have prepared you better for the
transition, I admit.
WES: Not just that. I’m also surprised you brought
us here to the edges of the town at all.
SILAS: Because I spent so many years unable to move
beyond them.
WES: Yes.
SILAS: Why should I hold animus towards the woods for
that? Trees know nothing of boundaries or
barriers; that role is assigned to them by
fearful men. Today I am free to travel where I
please, and it pleases me today to wander the
woods. (BEAT) They’ve angered him, you know.
WES: The One Who Blooms.
SILAS: Their various transgressions have exhausted his
patience, and now, in place of his patience there
is only me.
WES: What does he want from us?
SILAS: Us? You and I?
WES: No. Us, the...people of Mt. Absalom.
SILAS: Now that’s a curious distinction.
WES: I’m one of them, Silas.
SILAS: You’re much more one of me than you’ve ever been
one of them.
WES: We’re not the same.
SILAS: Tell yourself whatever story you like, young man.
A tree may allow itself to forget its own forest.
WES: What does he want with us? Do you know?
SILAS: Of course I do.
WES: Then he speaks with you?
SILAS: In a manner.
WES: And what do you want, Silas?
SILAS: What?
WES: What do you want from us?
SILAS: Nothing. I’m here but to enact his intent.
WES: When I first appeared all I wanted to do was be
of help to Dot Harper. That’s not all of who I am
anymore. I made music. I made friends. I caught
up with all the episodes of Detective Farrow I
missed. So what would you want, if it was
entirely up to you?
SILAS: (AFTER A MOMENT) Listen, then. There once was a
trout who lived in the river, who had a hook
stuck in his side. Each morning he would swim up
and down the edges of the bank, speaking to the
other fish about the day he’d first suffered his
injury. They would say to him--
WES: --wait.
SILAS: Hm?
WES: I wasn’t asking you to share something from your
library of fables. It was a straightforward
question, Silas. What do you want?
A SUDDEN BURST OF WIND. THE BIRDS
CHIRP AND SQUAWK IN CONCERN.
SILAS: It’s...unwise, young man.
WES: What do you want, Silas?
SILAS: It is unwise to interrupt a teacher while he’s
imparting a lesson.
THE WIND BURSTS AGAIN. RAIN
TRANSITIONS BACK TO HITTING THE
WINDOWS OF THE GOLDEN GROOVE,
COMBINED WITH THE SOUND OF
STEAMING WATER AND A COFFEE DRIP.
NORAH: I see now. I attempted to watch Abbie do this
once but they gave me the most withering of
glares. It is like the process for tea, but
unnecessarily mechanized.
MARISOL: It’s one hundred percent necessary! You can’t do
this without the machinery first thing after you
wake up. You need a cup to function but you can
barely function until you’ve had a cup.
NORAH: What a frustrating way to live.
MARISOL: Caffeine addict’s dilemma. What can I tell you.
NORAH: And you do this every morning?
LILY: Norah, you said you had something you needed to
discuss. Something about re-running an
experiment?
NORAH: I was waiting until Marisol’s coffee was ready.
MARISOL: Go ahead and start. I’ll catch up as it kicks in.
NORAH: Very well. You may recall some months back that
Dr. Peltham suffered a concussion?
LILY: I remember that. Fell off the telescope stairs
and cracked his skull on the floor?
NORAH: Did he ever tell you how that happened?
LILY: He said he took a bad step.
NORAH: That was very kind, but untrue. I nearly killed
him.
MARISOL: You what?
NORAH: I directed Dr. Peltham to re-create the
conditions of the day I died without telling him
that’s what I was doing.
LILY: Which were what, exactly?
NORAH: Nothing extraordinary. I’d been using my
telescope to view the star cluster at Omega
Centauri, and then I died.
MARISOL: Then what happened to Rudy?
LILY: He was struck by some kind of force. It threw him
from the stairs and caused his concussion.
MARISOL: Are you saying the telescope attacked him?
NORAH: It was not the telescope. It was something else.
He described it as a bolt of lightning from the
Earth. Since his death, I have wondered if it
might be something else entirely. (BEAT) It is a
curious thing to mourn someone’s passing when you
yourself are dead. You do not sleep, so you use
the time instead to remember and contemplate the
person you knew. I suppose that residing in his
former room might also be a factor. And the
conversations I’d had with your mother about
him.
LILY: Mom’s been talking about Rudy?
NORAH: Briefly. She misses him. It seems we all do, in
our own manners. Three nights ago I found myself
fixated on how energetic he was, how he would
ricochet from table to table while we’d worked.
The night after that I was remembering the
moments of melancholy when he didn’t think I was
watching him. And then last night...last night I
said aloud to myself: “Dr. Peltham had a poetry
to him.” Do you know what I mean by that?
LILY: He did have a flair for the dramatic.
NORAH: Yes, quite so. And the romantic. And the poetic.
I had forgotten how important poetry can be to
astronomy. I’d forgotten how much I’d felt
similarly in my own lifetime, until he’d reminded
me. (BEAT) He told me once about this store of
yours, Marisol, how you had named it. He said
that a long time ago we sent a golden record of
our sounds to the stars. The Traveler, he said it
was called?
MARISOL: Voyager.
NORAH: Yes, that was it. I asked Rudy why anyone
would bother to do such a thing.
MARISOL: Because maybe somebody out there would hear us.
NORAH: I told him it was preposterous. How could we
expect life on the other side of the universe to
know what a record was, and how to play it?
MARISOL: There were instructions.
NORAH: I was a human being living on this planet a mere
century ago and I had enough trouble figuring out
your stereo and your coffee machine. Which is no
longer dripping, by the way.
MARISOL: That’s normal. Thank you.
MARISOL POURS HERSELF A CUP OF
COFFEE.
MARISOL: You’re not wrong, Norah. You think about the
chance that there’s anyone out there at all, and
the chance that we sent the Voyager in the right
direction to find them, and the chance that they
catch and open the probe instead of just blowing
it to smithereens, and then the chance that
they’ll figure out how to make it work the way we
intended? That’s a billion-to-one shot in the
dark.
LILY: Literally.
MARISOL: You’re cute when you dad-joke. But Norah...for me
it was never about whether or not Voyager would
be successful with that.
NORAH: You were inspired by the attempt alone.
MARISOL: On the money.
NORAH: So was Dr. Peltham. He wasn’t just studying the
sky, he was searching it, from any angle he could
find on the limited surface of our planet. I
didn’t recognize it within him until very late in
our friendship, and by then he was following a
path of his own. But so was I. (BEAT) Still, I
might have done more to bring him back to us.
There were methods I might have employed. Have
either of you ever heard the tale of the
Saptarshi?
MARISOL: No. What’s a Saptarshi?
NORAH: It was a legend my mother once told me, after she
came to accept that I had become enamored of the
stars. She pointed into the sky at Ursa
Major...you know Ursa Major?
LILY: Sure. It’s the one that’s either a bear or a soup
ladle.
NORAH: In the older Hindu texts, the seven stars of Ursa
Major represented seven sages. The Saptarshi. And
these sages each had a beautiful wife by their
side. They were so beautiful that the fire god,
Agni, wished to seduce each of them.
LILY: Typical ancient god. Can’t keep it in his pants.
NORAH: But then there is the complication: Another
goddess who wished to be the consort of Agni had
the clever idea to disguise herself as each one
of the sage’s wives. She seduced Agni by allowing
him to believe he had seduced each of them.
LILY: Woof. This is spicy, Norah. Your mom used to tell
you this? As a bedtime story?
NORAH: The English were Victorians. My mother was not.
MARISOL: She and Dot would have gotten along like
gangbusters.
LILY: Wait, wait, I know how these stories end up.
What happened to the wives?
NORAH: As you’ve surmised. The sages heard that their
wives had slept with Agni. They refused to hear
their denials. They divorced them. And the wives
drifted away to become the Pleiades. (BEAT) I
never told Rudy that story. I wish I had. He
enjoyed the stories within the stars as much as
he enjoyed the science of them. He remembered
that before we ever had the science to know the
stars, all we had to explain them were stories,
how so many of those stories were about the
desire to connect. The torment of disconnections.
That’s the part of him I most wish I could speak
with right now. (BEAT) There’s something I’ve
failed to grasp about the force that killed me. I
need to go back to the observatory to re-run the
experiment. I would like you to come with me,
Marisol.
MARISOL: You want me to go to the observatory with you and
get hit with a bolt of lightning.
NORAH: No, of course not.
MARISOL: Good. My insurance wouldn’t cover that.
NORAH: I’ll stand at the telescope. I’ll perform the
experiment. Whatever happens next, I expect you
will see it as Rudy might have.
LILY: So you’ll get hit with the bolt of lightning
instead. You can understand why we’re not exactly
okay with that.
NORAH: I very much doubt it could kill me again.
MARISOL: No, but it might...do something else.
NORAH: Then we will have new data to work with. And I
trust you will know how to express that data to
others with Dr. Peltham’s same sense of wonder
and poetry. Please, Marisol.
MARISOL: All right. When?
NORAH: Soon, I would say.
MARISOL: I don’t know when these clouds are going to move.
NORAH: That’s right, you’ve never used my telescope. The
clouds will not be a problem.
RAIN TRANSITIONS BACK TO THE
WOODS. SILAS AND WES CONTINUE
WALKING.
SILAS: (GROWING AGITATED) What I want.
WES: Yes. Talk to me.
SILAS: Why should I want anything? I have already been
given the gift of purpose. I am his righteousness
and determination. I am his punishment for the
sins of this town.
WES: And which sins are those, Silas?
SILAS: (SLIGHTLY UNCERTAIN) Those most unforgivable.
WES: Then name them.
SILAS: Unnecessary.
WES: You don’t even know what they are, do you. You’ve
forgotten. Or you were never told. The One Who
Blooms feels the whole of his rage and all you
know how to do is punish. Why even appear as a
man at all?
SILAS: I am the emissary of--
WES: --you’re a memory! You’re a memory of someone who
died a long time ago that refuses to fade away.
It doesn’t have to be like this. The town could
welcome you, Silas. In spite of everything, I
believe Mt. Absalom would embrace you, if you let
it. Like it’s embraced me.
SILAS: Embraced you? Embraced you? Don’t be a fool.
These people may treat you with their false
courtesy but they will never accept you. You are
an oddity, and always will be. They will grow
restless with your presence and that restlessness
will turn to fear, until one day they will banish
you to the edges of the wood as well. And we
shall see, then, how much of your demeanor
remains.
WES: You’re trying to turn me against them.
SILAS: I am warning you that they will turn against you
long before you think to do the same. You would
be wiser not to ask for their embrace at all.
A BURST OF WIND. THE BIRDS TAKE
FLIGHT AT ONCE. THE RAIN HAS
STOPPED HITTING BRANCHES OF TREES;
THERE ARE NO TREES ANYMORE. WES
AND SILAS ARE AGAIN STANDING IN
THE EMPTY LOT OF 1974 OAK STREET.
WES: All right, Silas. I think I finally see who you
are.
SILAS: Hm. This vanished husk of your house again.
WES: I invited you. You accepted.
SILAS: You’re a quick learner, young man.
WES: I had one more question for you.
SILAS: If you must.
WES: You told me that you felt you and I should speak.
SILAS: Yes...
WES: You told me you didn’t know this place.
SILAS: I didn’t. You said you had a question.
WES: Then why did you come here to find me instead of
going to Fenwood House?
SILAS: (WARY) I...don’t know.
WES: It’s because you knew I’d be here. Because it was
me who thought we should talk. So you came.
SILAS: What presumption. I serve The One Who Blooms. I
will not be summoned by some mere wisp of a
child.
THE BIRDS LAND AROUND WES.
WES: I never said I summoned you. I said that I
thought we should talk. And you heard me. (BEAT)
I told you, Silas. I’m not a young man. You
should stop thinking of me that way. I already
have.
SILAS: Very well. A mistake I won’t make again. I’ll
take my leave of you, Theodore Wesley.
WES: Until next time, Silas.
SILAS: Yes. Until then.
SILAS WALKS AWAY IN THE RAIN. WES
VANISHES. THE BIRDS FLY OFF.
END