This is an appeal for your assistance. I’m confident that once you’ve heard my story, you’ll be more than willing to help out. Let me begin with some background. I´m Kaiah. It´s a Hopi-Indian name. My father was an undistinguished anthropologist, based in Flagstaff, Arizona. My mother came from the Boston elite, one of the Johnson clan. I want to be honest with you. I’m a person who needs to be shown lots and lots of affection. And, with one single exception, I give none in return. (beat) Aren’t I just awful? My mother said I´d a gift for using people up. I certainly used her up (she died at forty-five), but, to be fair to me, she three-quarters wanted it. I enjoy being around people, but these days I don’t care much who they are. (to audience) Almost anyone of you here would do. As you can tell, I’m very egoistic but with no confidence at my center. But as you can also tell, I do not lie. In my twenties, for five years, I practiced criminal law. Not a long time but long enough to learn that the law is an amoral game, regularly mocked by those who make a living from it. Then, luckily, I inherited money. Enough that I can afford to be careless with it. I toss it around without looking where it lands. So that attracts people to me, both men and women. My first husband was Gilbert, one of my weirder clients. I loathed him and feared him, but I married him because he was wonderful. Oh the tender follies of youth! He wasn’t particularly wonderful in bed, but in the kitchen, the garage, and the garden he was a marvel. I dote on a lawn as smooth as a lake, and Gilbert was an ace with a lawn-mower, calculating the cutting-height to the tenth of an inch. And never a brown patch in sight, though he wasn’t above spraying a spot or two with a well-chosen green paint. But he had violent moods. When I couldn’t find time for him, he’d break things to small pieces and threaten to break me. His hands would encase my throat and begin to squeeze. Then he’d let go and give the kind of laugh that’s a prelude to a nervous breakdown. “Got your attention now, have I?” he’d say. I have too many tantrums of my own to tolerate those of others, especially in my own home. So, eventually I called the police and showed them his drugs. They dragged him out of the house screaming, kicking, and spitting fury. “It’s all for your own good, Gilbert,” I told him, giving him my shiniest and most reassuring smile. He came back, of course. Nine months later. But something inside him had been shattered and couldn’t be mended. My dessert options were now limited. The Rolls Royce sounded like a tractor. And the lawn looked as if it had psoriasis. He was also stealing my best silver and pawning it. I couldn’t stand it. I decided to take matters into my own hands. Banking on his poorly developed pre-frontal cortex, I gave him ten thousand dollars and asked him to go away. In a flash he was out the door. Not even a thank-you. Within three weeks he was dead, as I knew he would be, the result of an inevitable overdose. (to audience) I took the wiser, if not exactly the right road, don’t you think? Very few intelligent people would beg to differ. My second husband’s name is Oswald. He’s a huggy, roly-poly guy, with his gut flopping over his belt, one of nature’s punching bags. Less of a man and more of a stuffed animal, really, or a warm blanket for cold January nights. Or so you might think at first sight. His conversation is uplifting, of the eat-your-spinach kind. He confidently spouts dogmatic truths from the depths of his inexperience and then smiles with his eyes blinking, as if startled by the profundity of his own mind. He can’t think ahead. He knows what to do only when he hears himself say it. In a crisis he keeps talking till something comes out of his mouth that might work. Then he acts on that, right away. He’s the sort of man you can marry and not marry, I thought. He’ll be there when I need him and he’ll go sit in a corner when I don´t. In the second year of our marriage I had Oswald’s baby. Trevor I called him. What a special child! My little boy was complete at birth. He had no need to grow up. Or to learn to speak. Or to walk. From the start he was everything he needed to be. We were drunk on each other from the very first day! The hour my boy Trevor was born, I was reborn. Of course, Oswald got fiercely jealous. Well, let him be, I thought. He can go sit in the library and memorize wise sayings. I wasn´t going to give him the time I could give to my boy Trevor. Then Oswald said he wanted another baby. I saw through his game at once. He wanted another baby to distract me from Trevor. I said no, no way, never. Anyway, after producing Trevor, I refused to face the challenge that every mother faces after she produces a baby that dazzles the world—doing it again! It wasn’t more than six months before my best friend Ruthie whispered to me, with a wicked smirk in her green eyes, that Oswald was fooling around with another woman, my half-witted cousin, Elaine. Ruthie gave me all the details, relishing every minute and wishing she could rattle on forever. I told Oswald I was divorcing him. He had no objections. He moved out right away. But then he said he was going to seek joint custody of my son. I laughed at the idea, but he insisted. I laughed louder. He persisted, so naturally, I resisted. I wasn’t going to fool around. I contacted two of my clients from my criminal law days. They bundled Oswald into a car and drove him to an isolated reservoir. They told him to forget the joint custody idea, unless he wanted to make a second trip to this middle-of-nowhere and never get back to somewhere. They gave him a few bruises as reminders. Three days later Oswald must have heard himself saying, “I know what I’ll do!” While I kept a doctor’s appointment, he kidnapped Trevor. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t think. I came up with the only way I could to save Trevor from his father. When Oswald next called on the phone to jeer at me, I swore to him that Trevor wasn’t his child. It was a mistake, I candidly admit it, because, for whatever counted as a reason in Oswald’s tiny brain, he abandoned Trevor. Three weeks later the police found his car out by the reservoir, and in the trunk lay the body of my eleven-month old son. He had starved to death. Oswald has been on the run ever since. I suffered what my doctor called a nervous collapse. She advised me that the sooner I got back on my feet, the sooner I’d regain control of my life. For once I agreed with her. So I began searching high and low for Oswald and I haven’t stopped since. Late last year I caught a glimpse of him in Orange County, but I was so stunned by the sight that I burst into tears. I made a public spectacle of myself, and in my confusion he vanished from sight. Private detectives informed me he was working in a second-hand bookstore near the University of Georgetown but it wasn’t him, not even remotely. Leave it to the police, you may say. But I have no faith in the law. I’ve seen its inner workings. I don’t want to learn that Oswald has wriggled his way to two or three prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter. No, I want to see his slack body hanging from a tree and rotting in the rain, after he has been starved to death. That’s why I’m here this evening, talking to you good people. I understand that Oswald Garza Snellgrove, aged 45, average height, who has thinning blonde hair and speaks with a strong Georgia accent, was recently seen in and around San Miguel de Allende, especially in the neighborhoods of Guadiana and San Antonio. (or wherever the monologue is performed. Here, the actor may hold up a large photo). I have confidence in the source of that information and so I came to San Miguel at once. I got here late last night. If you have the slightest indication of the whereabouts of Oswald Garza Snellgrove, I ask you, in memory of my boy Trevor, to let me know. I have all the resources necessary to take over from there. If I get lucky, you will find me abundantly grateful, both emotionally and financially.