Cliff House: Traces of Love

Wednesday, July 7, 1993

SCENE: The CLIFF HOUSE patio. The first ROGER and HOLLY scene is a variation on the last scene from the day before.

ROGER: Holly, it feels like the end of the world.

HOLLY: Why?

ROGER kisses HOLLY, and then, enraptured with her, pulls back and looks at HOLLY.

ROGER: You could love me again at the end of the world.

HOLLY walks slowly past ROGER, leaving him staring after her.

CUT to Guiding Light opening theme.

ROGER follows HOLLY, as if to kiss her again. She quietly says . . .

HOLLY: Don’t.

ROGER stops.

ROGER: All right.

HOLLY: It can’t happen, Roger.

HOLLY goes back to the railing and looks out. ROGER joins her.

ROGER: Nobody’s watching, Holly. Just you and me.

HOLLY: Not tonight. Not ever.

ROGER: Okay.

HOLLY: Okay what?

ROGER: Okay, that’s what you say.

HOLLY: You think I’m a liar?

ROGER [seriously]: No.

HOLLY: What do you think?

ROGER: I think it must be very hard to hear yourself talking and yet be thinking, “This is what I always say. Why do I say it?”

HOLLY: I say, “Holly is all confused and screwed up. That’s all it is.”

ROGER: Holly, I don’t want to do something to you. I just want to be something for you.

HOLLY: And what would you think of me if I let you “be something”?

ROGER: That it wasn’t for nothing, these last fifteen years. That we know something now that we didn’t know before about kindness and forgiveness, maybe about love. Angels persist, Holly. Clouds persist. They become showers and they become lace and they become clouds again, and they persist, as we persist.

HOLLY: No. Some things are unforgivable. Some doors close and can’t be reopened. Stay or go, Roger, but understand that.

HOLLY walks back into the CLIFF HOUSE, leaving a pensive ROGER outside.

SCENE: The main room of CLIFF HOUSE, in which HOLLY was originally to sleep. HOLLY brings down a blanket. ROGER sits on the front end of the bed.

ROGER: I think about it every day of my life. It seems impossible; it seems impossibly cruel that nothing done badly and stupidly can ever be undone . . . that every selfish act an hour is just another bar in the cage I built myself. How could I have destroyed what I loved best, and made even the loveliness of it so ugly to you?

HOLLY [shaking her head]: Not all of it. Not all of it.

ROGER [he looks at her]: No? . . Good . . It still shines for me. But you know that. [HOLLY smiles a bit.] Because you were the girl of my dreams. Most men never find theirs.

HOLLY sits down beside ROGER.

HOLLY: I’m not sure that had all that much to do with me.

ROGER: Oh, oh yes!

HOLLY: Well, it was a long time ago. And I’m nobody’s girl anymore.

ROGER: Maybe that’s my doing. Maybe the way I hurt you walled you up and keeps you alone. And that’s my tragedy too, because I remember you, Holly ... the girl of my dreams.

When tragedy was just a classroom word, we were all nerve endings and instincts and all over each other.

[HOLLY turns to him and smiles.] I remember the white of your back in that sky-blue sundress you used to wear, and how your eyes would go all soft before we kissed, and everything you ever told me about your childhood.

I knew you. I knew your nature. It came to me as easy as talking in my sleep, and most of all, what I remember, is the unspeakable sweetness of you. . . I don’t know what other people are like; I live too much in my head, but don’t you just . . . remember me? Wasn’t there ever a day ... wasn’t there ever an hour, that you know by heart where you just looked at me and just . . . loved me, and that’s all? I remember thinking that you did. And no one has ever looked at me that same way . . . or ever will again, I guess. Not like that.

ROGER looks away from HOLLY. There’s not much more that he can say—and bends down to take off his shoes. HOLLY interrupts him, though, by putting an arm around his neck.

They look at each other, and HOLLY comes closer and kisses ROGER’S lips very lightly, almost inquisitively. Her face still an inch from ROGER’S, she looks at him, but his eyes are still closed. HOLLY kisses ROGER again, much more passionately.

Next Scene:
Sweet Bitter Love