There was a nightwalk he made under the El and along the empty lots that would become fields of gold for the real estate kings. The dye had been cast, the builders’ flunkeys standing with pens to clipboards, coffee in Styrofoam cups lined up on the roofs of their Chevys. At sundown, they scattered like vermin.
Lawrence stood, looking up at the stoop, where the boys like young Olympians in their blazing white undershirts and ironed jeans, their shoe-polished white sneakers, stood Romeo heart-pumping cool; gesturing at the girls on the landing, whose light seemed inextinguishable, long hair making dark journeys over bright tight tops, and jeans sculpted metallic, perfect, over their curves. Soon to be war widows.
They pressed together on the stoops, but this row of houses would be bulldozed. They would be scattered. War upon them, these still children whose parents came to tend to dying industries after the second world war that Lawrence followed into being. They came on airplanes with no seats, like cargo. They came to work but the trick was that the glowing moneyland was already disintegrating and shipping out its industries that roped in and pushed out the Puerto Ricans.
He used to come to see Ivan. He used to eat pasteles on the stoop with him and his sisters, his little brother. Everyone recognized Lawrence still. They called to him, but he couldn’t stop now. He couldn’t sit. The music made him cry. The music Ivan played.
That nightwalk he took, after he scored or when he walked it off, pushed it away, begged it leave him, aimed to write; took the bottle, cleansed and spat; and walked some more, close to the ground, a searcher; hard shoes among the rocks, the bricks, the broke up glass; music in his head, music in his head instead of the whistle the bomb the drop the raising of the dust the splintered lives nothing could hold together.
That field he walked, he walked every night. Every night dropped them down, men like rain, parachuted into green smoke, green fires. They were burning the jungle so that no Viet Cong could hide there. All else became smoke in the air, charred beast on the ground, tender infant a memory, burnt song in the trees. All else had not existed for him up in the air, him and his buddies; not existed until he was dropped into the mangle of the fields of Cambodia.

Playwright L.M.’s Notes
People got used to me walking and talking, earphones on, wired into the recorder in my knapsack. I’m known around here, the crazy dude always thinking outloud. One guy greets me every day, “Hey, Outloud! How’s it going in that big brain of yours?” He’s fixing up the produce outside the store, arranges the fruits like a painting, waters the greens like a garden. Prettiest front on a bodega I ever saw. He heard I did plays. I got to remember to give him a couple of tickets next time. I mean, I’m talking into a machine now, but I’m really talking to him.
Maybe I got a big brain, who knows. I just got to keep my head, do this work, this work I love. I’m thinking all the time, I’m thinking, except, you know when. That’s why this is so good for me. I like talking it out first, writing it later. Sometimes it’s a river, a mighty Mississippi nothing can mess with, even the IRT rumbling overhead.
Okay, but, now, here’s the guy, the center of the play in the scenes where one man is the center, and a smudge in the corner when history is that tank rolling over all of it.
Sure, the guy is me, but he’s not, you know? Let me talk my way into the story, into my world after I got back from that…little side trip to Southeast Asia.

My mother wrote me a mountain of letters. Jehovah blessed me in every one, and Simmie, she cursed out the army and the U.S. government on every page. I’m surprised her notes got through. She’s one of the Mohammed Alis of mothers, more a warrior than I was. My friends took care of her while I was gone. Made her pasteles, got her that ropa vieja from the Cuban Chinese place, you know, down at the corner. I’m not eating no old clothes, she told them, till she tasted it, and then she was at the corner every week, so regular, they’d call out to her on her way back, This must be old clothes day, mama! She loved them, but she’d lecture. Your pants are too tight, little miss, she’d say to Ivan’s sister. Of course, I’m sure they fit perfect. Just perfect.
But when I came back
when I came back and I saw Marisol at the top of the stoop, I just, I just, I just kept seeing her explode down the steps. I couldn’t touch her and she didn’t get it.
The first time that happened, that I saw it, I ran. I raised my hand up, waving like I was out on a real run. I ran till I could barely breathe.
I ran whenever I saw her. I ran away from Marisol, I mean, I’d try to keep it light, friendly. But in that damn moment I heard an explosion, Marisol’s laugh—it was explosive. That used to be good, she would burst into laughter—that’s what that means, a sudden loud sound come forth, bam. [Hits his palm with his fist.] Bam! [And again] Bam!

[L.M., character noteè:
His fist and his palm reddening, the recorder jumping in his pocket. Clods of dirt rose up with each blow. The corner store blossomed open and everything flew. A tiny piece of him said, Remember this, old L, see if you can make the set explode without exploding the audience. Of course, he could. Andre couldn’t do everything in stills. But he saw it then, the panels moving above on different lines in different directions across the stage, clouds of dust, flames reaching up, worlds in pieces, and the craters. The characters could rush away from the smoke, then edge around the panels with those images of craters. Terror slow and constant. Then they’d disappear behind the panels, as if into the crater with one step, plunge into nothing.
He kept talking it out, he needed a pen. But he kept hearing it, and pounded his palm with his fist, knuckles bleeding. He held both palms to his ears, and ran. No one no one stood in his way. No one stopped him. They stepped aside, as if between his hands he held a bomb.]

(excerpted from History Artist, a novel-in-progress)