ACT ONE
SCENE ONE
(Early October in Manhattan. A bespoke men’s tailor shop on the Upper East Side. It is late afternoon and we are on the second floor of a brownstone in the Sixties. Some street sounds waft up. Large casement windows give out onto the city. An elevator to the ground floor. A drinks cart.)
(There are two men in conference. ANSELM KASSAR, a tailor, a suit maker, with a shock of flowing white hair and an accent out of some part of Europe we cannot pinpoint precisely, is in a suit and very good shirt, tie, and suspenders, but not wearing the jacket, as he is working. His client is KURT SEAMAN, a man in his early sixties, exuding power.)
ANSELM: You need it when?
SEAMAN: For the final debate, November second.
ANSELM: Kurt, are you insane? That’s three weeks away!
SEAMAN (cuts him off): Anselm, please. I only have twenty minutes. Can we not debate this? I have people downstairs—my daughter, her fiancé, Secret Service—all waiting!
ANSELM: Are you stark raving mad? I don’t do twenty-minute fittings.
SEAMAN: Anselm, just measure me!
ANSELM: A suit normally, the normal number of fittings, the process, it’s at least three fittings, and then many, many adjustments, small ones, corrections and more corrections. And you are asking that this be done in three weeks!
SEAMAN: Jesus, Anselm, I know you made a suit for President Reagan in less time than that.
ANSELM: Mr. Reagan, he was president. You are not. For a president, you push others aside, and people understand. My clients understood that for Ronald Reagan, they must wait.
SEAMAN: Anselm. It’s for the final debate watched by millions! Come on! Picture it: I walk across the stage, I sit on a stool, every network around the world on me. As I cut her to shreds and then win! A great giant cataclysmic operatic huge fucking triumphant win. And in your—in your attire!
ANSELM: The last time I made a suit for you, black tie, gorgeous, to wear to the Met Gala, but on TV you were wearing a white jacket—white—and then you never came back.
SEAMAN: My second wife, Cornucopia, she made me wear that white coat. And I divorced her for that—and I have not come to you sooner because, for one, I’m busy running for president, and for two, I’m not sure you’re on my side. Are you on the Seaman team, Anselm de Paris?
ANSELM: I am a bespoke tailor; I have no sides. I am to men’s clothes as a doctor is to maladies: I cure the badly attired of the cancer of stylelessness. I see you on TV, and think, “Why does Kurt Seaman allow for a collar to hunch, a hip to bulge,” when all of these … idiosyncrasies of nature and genetics and appetite can be rectified by a master tailor.
Look at you! You’ve lost your silhouette! What I see standing here is a man who dresses like Boris Yeltsin at the opening of a herring factory in Vladivostok.
SEAMAN (laughing): I’m trying to do something. Please. For all of us, for the American people. Plus. Come on. You made her a suit, didn’t you?
ANSELM: Kurt. I don’t discuss who I—
SEAMAN (over him): Yeah, yeah, you did. And she suddenly looked the part. My opponent. That royal blue—it made her hips less … hip-ish. It made her lies less … lie-ish. I want that too!
ANSELM: This is what clothing does. Lend credibility. Authority. But it’s too late to do the perfect job for you.
SEAMAN: This is the election where we finally address the betrayal, the great betrayal of millions of hardworking, unemployed American folks. Where on every corner it’s tacos and weird Ethiopian soups you eat with your hands, as real citizens watch their jobs move to Asia and Mexico—
ANSELM: Notwithstanding you have a line of clothes made in Bangladesh? Really, Kurt. Please.
SEAMAN: Don’t be naïve. So I had a licensing agreement with some manufacturer in Dhaka, after all I’m a businessman and America is about business. Is it not, yes, it is. Period. End of story, now what!
(deadly serious)
And moreover, I can win. I see what your look says, the “polls,” the “polling,” they show me trailing—well, let me tell you something about me and the polls: They lie. They stink! I had a poll taken about people who were afraid to admit to their own family and friends that secretly they are on my—on my side, with me, under me—with me—and the numbers are huuuuuuuge—it’s much closer than people think. I need you. You haven’t had a presidential suit since Reagan!
ANSELM (outraged): I MADE BUSH’S JUMPSUIT FOR THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER!
SEAMAN: You will solidify your legacy as the greatest tailor to the greatest president in American history! And you could be really, really rich.
(And silence.)
ANSELM: Let me look at the schedule.
SEAMAN: All right! Great!
(ANSELM peers at a calendar as AMIR, his assistant, comes in with tea for two on a tray.)
ANSELM: Put it down and leave us.
AMIR: I have tea. I have tea and fancy cookies from Poll. Marzipan and ginger.
(AMIR sets down tea. Looks at SEAMAN.)
ANSELM (sharply): Amir. Please, go down and mind the shop, if you will.
AMIR: But. I just wanted to meet Mr. Seaman.
(AMIR stares at SEAMAN openly.)
ANSELM: This is my apprentice, Amir. Amir Masoud. Meet Kurt Seaman.
SEAMAN: “Apprentice.” Apprenticeship is good, nice to meet you!
(SEAMAN picks up a cookie.)
AMIR: So, is Mr. Kassar going to build you a suit?
SEAMAN: Yeah, I have the final debate in three weeks, where you’re on a stool and you get up and you walk down to an audience of millions and tell them you know exactly what they’re going through.
AMIR: In three weeks? How?
SEAMAN: Fast. Best suit of all the suits.
AMIR: But we do this, Anselm, and we get people very angry. It means everything gets pushed aside. Suits for other important and very powerful people.
SEAMAN: Is there anyone more important than the president?
AMIR (laughs): Right now, I think almost anyone is more important than the president.
SEAMAN (laughs with AMIR): Ah. But I’ll be different, son. I knocked out seventeen losers to become the candidate and one by one they went down, the Holy Roller, the dullard heir apparent, the Texan reptile, and the weak-kneed Puerto Rican immigrant who got into a pissing contest with me over our manhood! Who was left standing? Me.
AMIR: But a Puerto Rican isn’t an immigrant, because it’s … what do they call it? A protectorate.
SEAMAN: Thank you. Exactly. But the real question is protection at what cost? You know what they say about trying to save a drowning man, son?
AMIR: No … What?
SEAMAN: We can’t let our country drown because of the weakness and irresponsibility of our illegal dependents. See. The weak can kill the strong if the strong are too weak to know when the weak are getting too strong. One way for the strong to stay strong is to not give in to the weak, who can be very, very strong when cornered.
AMIR: But look at Mr. Kassar here, he’s an immigrant, right, who became a citizen—do you want to close the door on men like him? He came here with nothing. America was good to him, and he has been good to America.
SEAMAN: Yes. And—the same must be true for your parents. They clearly brought up a fine, questioning young fellow, didn’t they? Where y’all from, you and your parents?
AMIR: Iran.
SEAMAN: So many wonderful people there, so many less wonderful people there.
AMIR: Just like here. Right?
SEAMAN: I knew the Shah, he was terrific, I built him a terrific lodge on the Caspian Sea with a terrific terrazzo—were your folks Jewish folk who fled the Islamic revolution like Anselm here?
AMIR: No, they’re actually Muslim.
SEAMAN: I bet your parents are wonderful. I’d be happy to meet them.
AMIR: They would be very intimidated by you, but I’m sure you would assuage their fears. With your charm. And good humor.
SEAMAN: Oh. I like you, son.
AMIR: I like you, too, sir.
(to ANSELM)
But I’ve got to say, I don’t think we can make an extraordinary suit for Mr. Seaman in so little time.
SEAMAN: Anselm, you made my father’s first suit after he closed his biggest deal, 1974, Adolf Z. Seaman. You were his man.
He pulled you out of apprenticeship and elevated you to “Bespoke Tailor.” Back when you were in Brooklyn. Both of you. Authentic people. And that’s what I believe in—authentic American people: John Wayne, John Ford, Winston Churchill. That is why I have come to you. I never, ever forget my friends—you know this!
ANSELM (finally, a decision): Amir. Please. Bring me up the vicuña we just got from London.
(to SEAMAN)
English vicuña. And pashmina. And qiviut. It’s very special.
AMIR: Isn’t that spoken for? The Sultan of—
ANSELM (warning AMIR): Go. Now. Please.
(AMIR nods and leaves.)
SEAMAN: Huh. Great kid, lot of personality. Smart, too.
ANSELM: He lacks silence. A certain kind of work requires silence.
SEAMAN (a blustery guffaw): Yeah! Monks, accountants, hookers, and librarians!
ANSELM: This is very serious. You understand, a vicuña suit, if you go to Loro Piana or Kiton, or one of the guys on Savile Row—a made-to-measure suit of this kind is unspeakably expensive.
SEAMAN: Look, money is not—
ANSELM (cuts him off): Please let me finish! You’ve never spent this kind of money on clothing, if you go to Zegna, it’s—and I promise you, one call, you will see—it’s fifty thousand dollars for the most affordable one. Mine will be much more because I must drop other people’s work, and explain to them for the first time in my entire working life, forty years, I shall be not on time. The chairman of Nestlé at a conference speaking on the future of water and why it is too precious to be free.
(beat)
One does not do what you are asking, because you see, Kurt, in my suits, people succeed. Like your father did before you. Is it a magic trick, is it some atavistic force? I don’t know. I only know that if you want a suit for the great debate, it is going to cost you one hundred and fifty thousand dollars—including of course two shirts and two ties. And I promise you this: The day of the debate, November second, those on the fence will be swayed, those who have judged will reconsider, those who love you will love you more. So. The next word out of your mouth is either “yes” or “no”!
SEAMAN: Yes. You have a deal.
(The elevator door opens with a PING and AMIR returns.)
AMIR: Here. Vicuña. Come. Look at it.
(He lays it out)
Up in the Andes, pretty much the only place you find them. Peru, part of Argentina, and a bit of Bolivia. The vicuña, little cousin to the llama. It had been poached for centuries. Right? Dying out. A great animal that we decimated to virtual extinction.
ANSELM: Worn only at first by Incan royalty, then in the 1500s King Philip of Spain slept under a vicuña blanket, this gorgeous fiber, the very finest hair on the planet, the diameter of which is thirteen point five microns, as opposed to, say, cashmere, which is fourteen to seventeen point five. Yeah.
Lighter than air, warmer than a dozen layers of wool but breathes like nothing else.
AMIR: You can never be thoughtless with this, treat it as if you were a brain surgeon. Never worked with it before, myself, but you, boss? A Rockefeller.
ANSELM: Nelson. And I used it for one other suit, worn by Sir Roger Moore, the best Bond, Octopussy.
SEAMAN: Octopussy! I am awed. I am thrilled. The least I can expect from a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar suit.
ANSELM (suddenly serious): What is a suit? A suit is more than cloth and stitching, it is a glimpse into the soul of a man. The interior life of a man is glimpsed only in two moments—when he makes love—
SEAMAN (testing): To a woman?
ANSELM: Perhaps. And when he dresses.
(The elevator PINGs, a woman in her thirties enters, so styled that it’s breathtaking. SEAMAN’s daughter.)
SRI-LANKA: Dad! We have to get moving. Fox News is anxious to discuss your views on climate change and the recent nuclear megastorms.
SEAMAN: Hysteria conjured up by Marxist meteorologists and studio execs!
SRI-LANKA: And I have to prep you for the speech tonight. It’s very, very important. Remember?
SEAMAN: Um. Yes, it’s … BRA. The Barnard Republican Association!
SRI-LANKA: Yes! Good work, Dad!
SEAMAN: Everyone, this is Sri-Lanka, my formidable daughter. Never has anyone had a better campaign manager.
(beat)
Why do you keep pushing this BRA speech?
SRI-LANKA (focused and loving): You’re still weakest with white suburban women, educated, professional singles and moms, and you can’t win without them! They have to see the man who broke the glass ceiling for women a long time ago, the man who respects women and gives them opportunities. And you will give this speech at my alma mater, a bastion of East Coast liberal thought, where you will be considerate, sober, and gracious. The best version of yourself, the man I know. And. Our message is diluted when you aren’t disciplined.
SEAMAN: Yes. But, darling, you gotta let me be me, or else the people who elect me won’t be electing the man who they thought they selected to elect.
AMIR: Excuse me, sir, who is the man they are actually electing? As opposed to the man they think they are electing.
SEAMAN (smiling, to AMIR): Oh, come on, what? Amir? As a man from Iran, does my friendship with—my deep loyalty to—my blue-collar, all-American base, does that bother you?
AMIR: Of course not. But I am just a little concerned with those in your base who lump all of us Muslim Americans into one troubling stew of hummus and hate.
(SEAMAN laughs. ANSELM jumps in.)
ANSELM: Let’s think about what sort of cut we’re going to do, I think more American than English—
SEAMAN (cuts him off; to AMIR): You have a sense of humor. As much as I value skills and hard work, social ease is just as important.
(to SRI-LANKA)
I love this kid!
SRI-LANKA: Dad. Listen. Schuyler is downstairs and needs to go over the Fox talking points. And Mom texted and said her book club in Santa Barbara are asking why you hate women. They heard your new campaign slogan!
SEAMAN: Oh, come on! It’s great! “Seaman loves women and women love Seaman!”
AMIR: You should say that at the debate to resolve your position on women, once and for all.
(SRI-LANKA laughs. Her phone rings; she takes it and moves upstage.)
SEAMAN (laughing but dangerous): Not many people poke fun at me, Amir. It’s nice. I like it. It’s novel. Anselm, let’s go look at ties, shall we?
ANSELM (hits the elevator button): By all means. Please. We’ll measure you downstairs. Amir, rearrange the schedule and clean up here, please.
SEAMAN: Sri-Lanka?
SRI-LANKA (holds phone to chest): I’ll be right there, just finishing up this call.
(Doors open with a PING. ANSELM and SEAMAN get in the elevator. AMIR tidies up. SRI-LANKA gets off the phone.)
AMIR: So, it must be hard being the campaign manager for your own father. He’s so unpredictable.
SRI-LANKA: It takes some work, but he trusts me more than anyone else.
AMIR: Do you think he’ll take your counsel when he goes to Barnard to prove … he’s a new man?
SRI-LANKA: He hates disappointing me, so, yes. I think he will.
AMIR: We shall see.
SRI-LANKA (taking in suits): How do you do it? These suits? It feels like sort of a magic act.
AMIR: Magic act? Nope. It’s craft, it’s like anything made entirely by hand, Ms. Seaman.
SRI-LANKA: You, really, you can call me Sri-Lanka. I’m sorry. I guess saying it’s a magic act is a little bit … blithe.
AMIR: Only slightly. Sri-Lanka? Is that an actual name?
SRI-LANKA: An actual name from an actual place. I was, it seems, conceived there. You know, Dad built a resort there. We want to put bespoke tailoring in the property. What do you think?
AMIR (smart and fun): Yes, you’d go on a seven-day vacation, get measured up, and bang: come home with your handmade suit, made by cheapo labor in a sweatshop where children work day and night to accommodate bloated tourists who’ve spent the week baking in the sun and eating exotic dishes.
SRI-LANKA: And drinking exotic cocktails with little pink umbrellas! No, it wouldn’t be like this, here, like this level of the work you do here—
AMIR (delightfully provocative): No, it wouldn’t, because nothing is like this; this is art, this is sculpture. The pattern on paper, brown paper. You do these calculations, and use rulers and tools, the french curve—
(He grabs a curved ruler)
You join all the lines, the positions, measuring, more measuring. Tiny corrections.
(He smiles, with holiness)
One uses canvas, good canvas, it is the foundation of the jacket, canvas with a bit of weight. It gives the jacket shape, for the chest, say. Then the lining, chosen for mood. I like silk. All of it, you know, hand sewn, of course. You do the basting, the infinite measurements for thousands of stitches. All before the first fitting. Ta-da. “Magic.”
SRI-LANKA: You think we don’t know what real, hands-on work is?
AMIR: I’m sorry. I don’t know you. You, I don’t know.
SRI-LANKA: But him, of course, you do.
AMIR: Your father is on every possible media outlet from the moment one awakens to the moment one fitfully falls asleep, so I think I do know him. In person he is very charming, magnetic, but I have the slight impression that he’s maybe … slightly delusional?
SRI-LANKA (smiling, amiable): Hey. You can’t go around saying things like that. This is a confidential relationship between a man and his tailor.
AMIR: Until he becomes president, actually, I can say whatever I want. After that, well, Guantánamo is gonna get pretty crowded.
SRI-LANKA: Look. Amir. My father has helped thousands of people, he’s built businesses, he’s got to play ball with people you find disgusting but you’ll find that—once elected—he’s going to be far more humane than the man he’s been painted as.
AMIR: Uh-huh, no, yeah, no, sure, yeah, that’s what one would say …
SRI-LANKA (quick beat): You seem smart enough to understand a daughter’s loyalty. Do you love your father?
AMIR: And respect and admire and even worship him, yes.
SRI-LANKA: Well, then you must know that your derision about mine is more than a little offensive, and I am struggling to be civil with you.
AMIR: You needn’t be civil, Sri-Lanka. Your honesty makes you interesting. Civil people are often the most awful ones.
SRI-LANKA: You know a lot about awful people?
AMIR: This is New York, we’re all awful.
(A PING. The elevator opens. ANSELM steps out.)
ANSELM: Sri-Lanka, my dear, your father is downstairs. Waiting.
SRI-LANKA: Thank you. I’m sure you’ll create something very special.
(to AMIR)
It was nice meeting you.
AMIR: Oh. Yes. Very.
(She exits into the elevator.)
ANSELM: I need a drink. Yes. I can see you do not approve.
(ANSELM pours them both vodka.)
AMIR: He’s sort of a wonder to behold, like a kraken or a four-headed goat glowing green outside a nuclear reactor. Anselm, he’s a monster!
ANSELM: So, even monsters need clothing. If you wish to be a suit maker, you cannot concern yourself with the niceties and gradations of their philosophies.
AMIR: So, wait: You would dress a man responsible for actual evil, a Hitler maybe, a Pol Pot, a Saddam?
ANSELM: What makes you think that I did not spend three days in the Hotel Negresco in Nice fitting Idi Amin for new Nehru jackets?
AMIR: You’re kidding. Idi Amin!
ANSELM: I was civilizing him so that when he looked in the mirror he had the opportunity to see the better angels of his nature.
AMIR: And how did that work out?
ANSELM: It is free enterprise that maketh a society great! You were not alive during the terrible years of Jimmy Carter. He did not come to me—he who dressed in the vestments of sorrow, of the mendicant. So he had lust in his heart—big deal, this is a news flash? Who doesn’t? It is lust that makes a man—that is why we pay extra attention when we sew the crotch! There should be just the slightest suggestion of something—a small tiny pregnancy in the loin area—to convey that a man is a man! Seaman is filled with lust—and lust makes for good men and good leaders.
AMIR: But Anselm, the man is calling for deportations, he is calling for people—my people, my family—to be stripped systematically of their rights. “All Muslims should be deported.”
ANSELM: It’s talk; it’s hucksterism.
AMIR: My father, he’s struggled to cobble together three food carts sprinkled around midtown. How is he a threat to anyone? Seaman said on CNN one in four Muslims is a violent jihadist! He is like a giant machine that makes evil disgusting bloated nasty doughnuts and spits them out!
ANSELM: I cannot, will not, be drawn into one of your screeds, this is a screed-free zone, absent of lectures and geschrei-ing!—
(beat)
You goaded him today.
AMIR: I didn’t bow and scrape to him, no!
ANSELM: You have such contempt for caution. What an American luxury.
AMIR: In America, it’s safe to call bullshit!
ANSELM: Before you judge us who have walked away from politics, you might consider how that right was earned. When your father and I were at university together and I spoke out against the Shah, SAVAK came after my entire family. They accused me of being a Communist, a terrorist. Your father gave me the money to get to Paris. He saved my life. And I made a promise to never put anyone at risk again through word or deed. And you made a promise to your parents. What was that promise?
AMIR: To find discipline and order and a path to a future.
ANSELM: You no longer have the collegiate luxury of running naked through Harvard Yard covered in goat blood, waving a burning American flag, every time there is an American drone strike in the Middle East. Recklessness is not for immigrants! Recklessness is the privilege of spoiled American children.
(beat)
And don’t flirt with his daughter. I know it’s your natural state, I know this, but please, I saw it.
AMIR: Sorry.
ANSELM: Yeah. “Sorry.” Don’t try to look innocent.
(AMIR smiles. He loves this man.)
AMIR: You think flirting is a crime, too? Okay. It’s just a way to make the day better, dude.
ANSELM: Listen, darling. I don’t mind if you pick up one of the bored housewives of Manhattan who float in here on a cloud of Chanel and Klonopin, but please, leave Sri-Lanka Seaman alone. Really.
AMIR: Stop. Please. God. I get it.
ANSELM: Drink up, my boy. You’re learning great things here. Great things … L’chaim. To life.
(ANSELM and AMIR down their shots.)
END OF ACT ONE, SCENE ONE
Copyright © 2018 by Jon Robin Baitz
