SHADE OF GREY

(PENELOPE reenters, sans toilet paper. She looks consideringly at her chair. She sits on the ground in the lotus position, resuming her usual ritual.)

(Before she can give up and roll to her knees, CLIFFORD interrupts.)

CLIFFORD

What kind of voodoo is that?

PENELOPE

Voudon is a combination of Catholicism and West African spiritual practice.

CLIFFORD

So what type of voodoo are you doing?

PENELOPE

Buddhism.

CLIFFORD

Some sort of pagan meditation then.

PENELOPE

I suppose it is.

CLIFFORD

Your father spoiled you. Such nonsense.

PENELOPE

It isn’t nonsense. Half a billion people follow some variation of this.

CLIFFORD

You know what Christ said. “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.”

PENELOPE

There are over two billion Christians.

CLIFFORD

Catholics don’t count.

PENELOPE

Still a billion.

CLIFFORD

Buddhism still leads to destruction.

PENELOPE

Sure it does.

(Silence.)

(CLIFFORD returns to reading his newspaper.)

I’m a double-belonger, anyway.

(Pause. CLIFFORD lowers his newspaper.)

CLIFFORD

Double-belonger?

PENELOPE

Somebody who benefits from more than one faith tradition.

CLIFFORD

“Ye cannot serve two masters.”

PENELOPE

There’s no master in Buddhism to serve.

CLIFFORD

“He who is not with me is against me.”

PENELOPE

“For he that is not against us is on our part.”

(CLIFFORD returns to reading his paper. PENELOPE begins reading on her phone but cannot concentrate.)

Maybe I’m more of a double-not-belonger.

CLIFFORD

…………..

PENELOPE

I’m not really a Buddhist. And I’m not really a Christian.

CLIFFORD

What are you then, a Muslim?

PENELOPE

A not-belonger in general…maybe. And that’s pretty reductive. I could be a Hindu, or Bahá’i, or Shinto, or Confucian, or anything else.

CLIFFORD

It’s all voodoo to me.

(PENELOPE stares in disbelief. She has nothing more to say.)