The Ice Wrack

The Ice Wrack: A Story of One Woman's Love For Her Tray

Or

I can hear you callin in the heat of the night


A sultry summer night: Milton is sitting on a big, ratty brown chair directly in front of a large fan. Sirens somewhere in the distance; the sound of cuban music playing outside. Milton slowly leans in toward the fan, getting closer and closer. He starts to mumble. The sound of his voice is refracted by the fan blades, creating a humming, insect sound.

A woman's voice from the kitchen. She closes the ice box door and you can see her.

Letoya Dupree

Milton! Milton, do you have something against reloading the ice rack?

Milton

Huhumumubbzzzzzzzzzz

Letoya Dupree in flower print dress, bare feet, and long, curly hair crosses the stage into the living room.

Letoya Dupree

You know I can't survive this heat without my ice-cubes

Milton

Your ice cubes

Letoya Dupree

It my ice-wrack, aint it?

Milton

Bhuuzzuuuzzzzz

Letoya

It's so fucking hot in here it makes me want to kill someone! It makes me want to be one of those people that goes around pushin people in front of the train.

Milton

Then why don't you do that?

Letoya?

Why don't I do that? Spend the rest of my life in jail? Why don't I want to spend the rest of my life in jail?

Milton (continuing to speak into the fan)

Yes, why don't you?

Letoya pauses. She can't think of anything to say. Then she says:

Letoya

I gotta have ice cubes. I gotta have my ice rack full. Does that not bother you, that you cannot provide the one thing this woman, this WOMAN wants, is a full ice rack and enough cubes to run them all over her body? There ain't nothing like that sensation.

Milton

I like the burritos down at that place down the street. They're big burritos. You go in there and there are all these flies everywhere, and you got those little Mexicans in the back like one big family even if they're not blood related.

Letoya (at the sink)

There goes the water into the little places for the water. And then, you put em in the ice box, and then, you set the tray on the ice, kinda like snow in the north pole. You kinda expect to see a penguin or two when you stick your head into the ice box. And then, a half hour later, you got ice! All it takes is a little half hour! I'm so fucking hot, Milton! You don't know how it feels to be this hot! I just want something you do not have to offer.

Milton

What do you want?

Letoya

I want ice, Milton! I want this hot body to turn into solid ice. I want to be a frozen crystal of a woman. I want to be a crystal, you hear me? That's why I need my ice rack full.

Milton

I got this sense today that life is always going to be like this. I was walking down around Time Square. I got this feeling that I'm only fooling myself.

Milton puts his head in his hands. His body is wracked with silent sobbing.

Letoya

The ice racks they sell at the 99 cent stores stick to the ice. Believe me, I've tried those. If you crack em hard, they break, and all the time you've put into freezin is time wasted. That's why, now I use this ice rack I bought at Ikea.

She opens the refrigerator. The camera zooms in on the ice rack. You can see the name "Letoya Dupree" written next to a little Ikea logo.

Letoya

Do you know why those Ikea ice racks are so good? It's because Ikea is from Iceland, and Iceland is a whole country of solid ice. I would like to live in that state of being, in Iceland. I'd wear all white clothing and the temperatures there would quench me. Can't you tell, I'm a woman that needs to be quenched?

Milton

It's like you start out as a kid having some conversation with yourself, and as you get older, you start to have the conversation with other people, but it's the same conversation you keep having for your entire life, and then once you're dead, you're dead.

Letoya

Once my ice is frozen in my ice rack, I'm going to take out a cube. I'm going to start at my face. I'm going to run it all over my face.

Letoya suggestively begins to mime the act of running the ice cube all over her body.

Letoya

I'm going to run it down my throat, my breasts. I'm going to run it over my nethers. I'm going to run it around my butt crack. Are you listening to me? Did I ever tell you the story about how I found this ice wrack? The old one broke, and so I took the train all the way down to Red Hook and got on the Ikea bus. As I sat on the bus, I watched the other people get on and wondered if they were looking for ice-racks like me, or if they was just joy riding out to Ikea for some other things. Then, once we got out there, I was nearly busting with pent up excitement. I wanted just one thing: one thing that would make me happy. It was like with those Japanese people, you know? The types that only need one thing to make them happy? Like them little japanese men who spend all their time focusing on shrubs and things? All I needed was an ice rack. And so I went winding around and around through the sections until I found where the racks were kept. I must have spent 15 minutes checking all the different racks for defects, and then...Milton? Are you listening to me?

Milton

Every evening, you start talking about your ice-cube tray. I just don't know what to do. It's killing me. Is this a metaphore for something painful?

Letoya

You mean sex, don't you.

Milton

Some sexual inclination, or something like that?

Letoya

Am I here? Am I listening? I do not want to be made hotter than I am, and sex heats the body and the blood! I simply long to cool off, to become like ice, to leave this state of heat and enter an overwhelming coolness.

Action pauses. Letoya sits at the kitchen table, her head in her hands. Milton sits in front of the fan, his head in his hands. The outline of an ice rack gets mapped over the entire set. It blinks on and off with the frequency of a christmas tree light. Then, there is the image off a subway bearing down on the audience. The room flashes red. Letoya Dupree stands, walks over to the refrigerator, takes out her ice-cube tray, brings it over to the table.

Letoya

After I bought this fine ice rack, I realized something. A person only needs one thing to be happy, and it's preferable that that one thing does something.

She cracks out an ice cube and starts rubbing it on her face, puts it in her mouth and swollows it whole

You know what your problem is, Milton? You don't really have anything. All you got is that fan which just circulates the air around. It doesn't really change anything at a fundamental level. It's like that fan is talking to itself and you are the main attraction.

Milton

I was walking around the city today, looking at the people, Letoya. At the families sitting in the park. The big, Mexican families. And then I thought about how quickly time passes, and about how we spend our entire lives having the same conversation with ourselves.

Letoya

I need my rack. That's what I need.

Milton

Like when I was a little kid wondering what other people thought. Over time, that wondering turned into wondering why I was always wondering these things all alone and then that conversation turned into raging at my loneliness like a caged animal, rattling the bars of my isolation. And then now, sitting here, listen to you talk about your ice rack, it's like some kind of cruel parody of my own inner emptyness.

A long pause. Cue music: 2 delicate strummings of the harp. Letoya stands solumly, approaches Milton carrying the ice wrack like some sort of ceremonial object. She walks, her back rigid like a priestess of ice cubes. She stands in front of Milton. Milton looks like a wreck. Tears are streaming down his eyes.

Letoya

It's too damned hot in here.

She cracks the ice wrack over her knee. Milton looks up at her. The outline of the ice rack flashes over the stage.

Letoya

Your body's all heated up. You got to cool down. But not with my ice cubes and my ice rack. You can get your own damned rack.

Milton crumples onto the floor. Letoya returns to the kitchen where she sits at the table muttering to herself. Milton stands. He is breathing heavily. He sprints at the audience, leaps. Glass shatters. You can here a woman's voice say, "Dios mio." You can here other voices talking. Letoya Dupree stands, leaving the ice-cube tray on the table, walks over the the refrigerator. She opens the ice box. She grabs a stool on hand, stands on the stool, climbs into the ice box and closes the door behind her. The ice-cube tray again flashes over the stage.


The end