Read Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition for Free Online Page B

and throw them into the sea. The boat was leaky, see; seventy people; they arrived in Halifax with nine people on board.
    LOUIS : Jesus.
    PRIOR : I think about that story a lot now. People in a boat, waiting, terrified, while implacable, unsmiling men, irresistibly strong, seize . . . maybe the person next to you, maybe you, and with no warning at all, with time only for a quick intake of air you are pitched into freezing, turbulent water and salt and darkness to drown.
          I like your cosmology, baby. While time is running out I find myself drawn to anything that’s suspended,that lacks an ending. But it seems to me that it lets you off scot-free.
    LOUIS : What do you mean?
    PRIOR : No judgment, no guilt or responsibility.
    LOUIS : For me.
    PRIOR : For anyone. It was an editorial “you.”
    LOUIS : Please get better. Please.
          Please don’t get any sicker.
    Scene 9
    A week later. Roy and Henry, his doctor, in Henry’s office .
    HENRY : Nobody knows what causes it. And nobody knows how to cure it. The best theory is that we blame a retrovirus, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Its presence is made known to us by the useless antibodies which appear in reaction to its entrance into the bloodstream through a cut, or an orifice. The antibodies are powerless to protect the body against it. Why, we don’t know. The body’s immune system ceases to function. Sometimes the body even attacks itself. At any rate it’s left open to a whole horror house of infections from microbes which it usually defends against.
          Like Kaposi’s sarcomas. These lesions. Or your throat problem. Or the glands.
          We think it may also be able to slip past the blood-brain barrier into the brain. Which is of course very bad news.
          And it’s fatal in we don’t know what percent of people with suppressed immune responses.
    (Pause. Roy sits, brooding. Henry waits. Then:)
    ROY : This is very interesting, Mr. Wizard, but why the fuck are you telling me this?
    HENRY (Hesitating, confused, then) : Well, I have just removed one of three lesions which biopsy results will probably tell us is a Kaposi’s sarcoma lesion. And you have a pronounced swelling of glands in your neck, groin, and armpits—lymphadenopathy is another sign. And you have oral candidiasis and maybe a little more fungus under the fingernails of two digits on your right hand. So that’s why—
    ROY : This disease.
    HENRY : Syndrome.
    ROY : Whatever . It afflicts mostly homosexuals and drug addicts.
    HENRY : Mostly. Hemophiliacs are also at risk.
    ROY : Homosexuals and drug addicts. So why are you implying that I . . .
    (Roy stares hard at Henry, who begins to feel nervous.)
    ROY : What are you implying, Henry?
    HENRY : I don’t . . .
    ROY : I’m not a drug addict.
    HENRY : Oh come on Roy.
    ROY : What, what, come on Roy what? Do you think I’m a junkie, Henry, do you see tracks?
    HENRY : This is absurd.
    ROY : Say it.
    HENRY : Say what?
    ROY : Say: “Roy Cohn, you are a . . .”
    HENRY : Roy? I don’t—
    ROY : “You are a . . .” Go on. Not “Roy Cohn you are a drug fiend.” “Roy Marcus Cohn, you are a . . .”
          Go on, Henry . It starts with an “H.”
    HENRY : Oh I’m not going to—
    ROY : With an “H,” Henry, and it isn’t “hemophiliac.” Come on . . .
    HENRY : What are you doing, Roy?
    ROY : No, say it. I mean it. Say: “Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual.”
          (With deadly seriousness)
          And I will proceed, systematically, to destroy your reputation and your practice and your career in New York State, Henry. Which you know I can do.
    (Pause. Henry summons his courage.)
    HENRY : Roy, you have been seeing me since 1958. Apart from the facelifts I have treated you for everything from syphilis—
    ROY : From a whore in Dallas.
    HENRY : From syphilis to venereal warts. In your rectum. Which you may have gotten from a whore in Dallas, but it wasn’t a female whore.
    (A standoff. Then:)
    ROY :