Pinter-esque: Silence is the darkness that makes spoken words more colorful, the contrast adding to their gravity or lightheartedness, or in the case of Betrayal, their grave lightness.
Cradle me, my comfort dwells in your abyss. I want you to love me, though I don’t deserve it.
They made the mistake of falling in love. She’s married. He’s married. They have children. Someone else’s children.
I am broken by the thought that you are someone else’s. That your daughter is someone else’s. I held her hand and imagined… take my broken body in your arms, to sleep eternal and forgotten. She has your eyes…
The play moves backwards, bringing to mind Memento, passed under the radar because it contains something like emotion and honesty. Pinter wastes not a moment of silence. We snicker, we twiddle our thumbs. Sometimes a bead of sweat forms, the tension pushing exhaustion’s envelope.
When I look into your eyes, I am frustrated and alone. I am a liar, a thief, a criminal in my own house. Shame drips down the walls and I scrub excessively, hoping to cleanse myself of you. But then I remember when you touched my neck so tenderly and brushed your fingertips over the small of my back, an accident, an accidental caress, resulting in my palsied heart.
Pinter feels guilty, so he makes us laugh. If not for laughter, the sunny love of two liars would depress. No one leaves plays feeling depressed these days. Theater is gay.
You’re sitting across from me, years later, and I still want you to touch me. Please touch me, just this once. I’ll never ask you to touch me again. I just miss those hands. You were always so gentle, enveloping me tightly so I felt like a child. I slept between weeping. I made a mistake. I married your best friend and he touches me every day, even as I think of your skin against mine.
It’s torturous to think of the dichotomy that exists in cheating spouses. How can you live with yourself? You are no longer one person, with an identity, a singular personality pertaining to your individual. You are a person with him, and another person with your husband, and possibly another person with his wife. That’s three, and then who are you with your own children?
You don’t know me. I don’t know you. So how can we fall in love if we are complete strangers, to ourselves and to everyone else? Selfish children at play. Selfish children.

