Introduction by F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Soft spotlight. A chair, a glass untouched. Fitzgerald speaks with a wistful gravitas, his voice tinged with irony and melancholy.)
FITZGERALD:
I once wrote of parties that glittered like constellations, and men who built mansions for dreams they could never hold. But the world I knew was not just chandeliers and champagne. It was also the dust—the choking, relentless dust where most lived and died unseen.
In the shadows of my tale of Gatsby, there was a woman, Myrtle Wilson, whose hunger was no less fierce, whose dream was no less consuming. She did not dine with dukes or sail yachts along the Sound. Yet she dared to believe she could rise, that the gray veil of the Valley of Ashes might tear open to reveal a sky her own.
Tonight, you will hear her voice. Not as a footnote in another man’s tragedy, but as the beating heart of her own. Listen closely, for in her struggle, you may find the truth of America more naked than in Gatsby’s silk shirts.
(Note: This is an imaginary conversation, a creative exploration of an idea, and not a real speech or event)
Scene 1: The Window at the Valley of Ashes
Setting: A shabby garage in the Valley of Ashes. Dust hangs in the air like fog. A smeared window looks toward the railroad. A faded sign: “REPAIRS.” The muted roar of trains. A distant billboard with giant, unblinking eyes.
(Lights up. MYRTLE sits on a crate, rubbing gray ash from a cheap shoe. She looks through the window as a train thunders by.)
MYRTLE (aside, to audience):
You can stand here so long you start to think the dust loves you. It kisses your face, crawls into your lungs, sets up house in your dreams. You breathe in enough smoke and it begins to sound like promises—tomorrow, Myrtle, tomorrow.
(Beat.)
What I want isn’t complicated. I want to walk into a room and feel air gather itself around me. I want heads to turn and keep turning. I want the smell of money to stop being a rumor.
(GEORGE enters, wiping his hands on a rag.)
GEORGE:
That coupe’s backfire ain’t the spark, Myrtle. Carburetor, maybe. I’ll get it done after lunch.
MYRTLE (still at window):
You say that every day about something. Lunch, then later. Later, then Sunday. You’re always chasing parts that never arrive.
GEORGE (soft):
Parts cost money.
MYRTLE (turning):
And money needs a life to fetch it. (She gestures around.) You keep feeding your life to this place and it eats clean through.
(Car horn. The dust stirs. TOM BUCHANAN fills the doorway like a golden verdict.)
TOM (smiling):
Wilson. You run that gas? I’m dry.
GEORGE (hastening):
Yes, sir. Right away.
(TOM’s eyes slide to MYRTLE and linger. She doesn’t look away.)
TOM:
Afternoon.
MYRTLE:
Depends where you’re standing. From here, it’s mostly gray.
TOM (laughs):
Get in the car. There’s a cure for gray in the city.
GEORGE (still at the pump, not looking up):
Myrtle—if you’re going to the store—get flour?
MYRTLE (to TOM, ignoring George):
Do you ever go where the air is soft?
TOM:
I live there.
MYRTLE (smiles, to audience):
And that was the first time I heard a door open that didn’t squeal. (To TOM.)
Give me ten minutes to put on a face that belongs in the city.
(She slips past George. As she exits, she touches the window once, a farewell.)
MYRTLE (aside, at threshold):
Not just to cheat. To breathe.
(Lights snap to black.)
Scene 2: The Apartment in Manhattan
Setting: A small but stylish apartment—plush couch, drinks cart, a loud lamp. Afternoon sun slashes gold across the floor. A phonograph murmurs jazz. Clothes and boxes half-unpacked: the theater of a secret life.
(CATHERINE lounges with a cigarette. MRS. McKEE sips a cocktail; MR. McKEE fiddles with a camera. TOM at the drinks cart; MYRTLE, transformed—new dress, new laugh, new gravity.)
CATHERINE:
Well, look at you. The Valley of Ashes sent an ambassador.
MYRTLE (twirling):
Ambassadors don’t twirl. Queens do.
TOM (hands her a drink):
To the queen.
MRS. McKEE:
What a lovely dress! Where do you shop?
MYRTLE:
Where they keep the mirrors that like you.
MR. McKEE (peering):
If I could just get a shot with the light—
MYRTLE:
Get the light to ask permission.
(Laughter. The phonograph grows a little louder.)
MYRTLE (aside, to audience):
In that room I could forget the way dust stings. I could forget flour and the cost of parts. A woman can look like a door opening if she is framed right.
TOM (to the room):
We’ll go out later—dance a little, spend a little. Why not?
CATHERINE:
Because life sticks notes under the door.
MYRTLE:
Let it stick notes. We’ll use them as coasters.
MRS. McKEE (tipsy):
Tell us again about that polo player—
TOM (with a warning grin):
I’m no polo player.
MYRTLE (teasing, basking):
Oh, but you play, Tommy.
(The laughter is a touch too loud. TOM watches her with a flash of annoyance.)
CATHERINE (to Myrtle, low):
Careful. He likes the joke until it’s about him.
MYRTLE (louder, drunk on attention):
Why shouldn’t it be about me? I’m the one becoming.
TOM (cool):
Don’t start, Myrtle.
MYRTLE:
Start what? A life? Saying my name like it belongs in silk?
TOM (steps closer):
You forget yourself.
MYRTLE (chin high):
I’m remembering myself. For the first time.
(A brittle pause. The party pretends not to notice. TOM backs off, pours another drink. The phonograph needle scratches, then steadies.)
MYRTLE (aside, softer):
Even when the room laughs with you, you can feel it laugh at you. Like the dress is the joke, and you’re just the hanger.
(Beat. To the room, bright again.)
Let’s go dancing. I want the floor to learn my name.
(They whirl out in fragments of chatter and light. Lights dim to the apartment emptying, a single lamp left on, like a promise that can’t sleep.)
Scene 3: A Glimpse of Gatsby’s Mansion
Setting: A road outside a palatial estate. Night. The sky is sequins. Searchlights rake the air. Music spills from an unseen orchestra. Cars pull up; laughter like a waterfall. MYRTLE stands just off the road, half in shadow. TOM waits by the car, bored.
MYRTLE (spellbound):
What do they call it?
TOM:
Gatsby’s. Some bootlegger with a taste for fireworks.
MYRTLE:
Bootlegger, saint—who cares? Look at it.
(The estate glows: windows like open jewelry boxes. We sense silhouettes, glitter, the pulse of a thousand small dramas.)
MYRTLE (to audience):
I thought if I could step into that light, dust would jump off my skin. I imagined rooms where a girl might be reborn every hour on the hour.
TOM:
It’s a circus. He throws diamonds in the air to see which girls jump.
MYRTLE:
I’d jump. I’d catch two.
TOM (a little cruel):
You’d bruise in that crowd.
MYRTLE:
You think I bruise easy, Tom? I was born with bruises. They come off in champagne.
TOM (snorts):
You’ve got ideas above your station.
MYRTLE:
Stations are for trains. I’m a woman. I move how I want.
(A limousine disgorges elegant strangers. A woman’s laugh rises, silver and careless.)
MYRTLE (quietly, to herself):
I’ll be seen. I’ll be seen so bright no one will ever mistake me for dust again.
TOM (tosses keys):
Get in. We’re not invited.
MYRTLE:
Then invite me somewhere better. Or make this mine.
(She takes one last look—imprinting the gold, the music, the promise—then gets in the car. As they drive, the lights of the mansion recede like a constellation she tries to hold in her hands. Darkness swallows the road.)
Scene 4: The Confrontation
Setting: Back at the garage. Late afternoon. The light is the color of old brass. The same window. The same ash. But MYRTLE is too bright for the room, as if still reflecting Gatsby’s lights.
(GEORGE adjusts a spark plug at a workbench. He looks older than in Scene 1.)
GEORGE (hopeful):
I been thinking, Myrtle. If we could get West—out where the air’s different—we could start fresh. There’s a man in Oregon needs a mechanic. Wrote me back.
MYRTLE (explodes into laughter that sounds like breaking):
Oregon! You want to put more miles between me and a life? I can’t be a ghost in another zip code, George.
GEORGE (hurt):
I’m trying. I’m trying to save us.
MYRTLE:
From what? From breathing? From wanting more than bolts and rags? You want to save me, give me something gold to want.
GEORGE:
Gold costs. Everything costs.
MYRTLE (pointing to the door):
Not for him. Not for the ones who float.
GEORGE (sharp):
Who, Myrtle? Say his name and make it true?
(A silence. Outside, a horn—distant, familiar. A flash of yellow moves past the window.)
MYRTLE (to the window, electric):
There. You see? That’s a sign. Yellow like a ripe peach. It’s calling me.
GEORGE:
Don’t. Please don’t, Myrtle.
MYRTLE (wild, radiant):
You think I’m some rag to keep under the counter, to wipe the oil of your days? I am a woman, George. And I am not going to die under this dust.
GEORGE:
I love you.
MYRTLE (softening, then steeling):
Love that keeps me small isn’t love. It’s a rope.
(She heads toward the door. GEORGE grabs her wrist, not rough, just pleading. She gently frees herself.)
MYRTLE (aside to audience, hand on the doorframe):
If I stay, I drown in ash slow. If I go, I might drown in light fast. But either way, a woman deserves to choose her water.
(Outside now: the road, the roar. The yellow car appears again, closer, bright as the fruit of the forbidden tree. MYRTLE steps forward, waving, calling out—a name we can’t hear. Time slows. Then—)
(A violent blackout. The sound of impact is a thunder with its heart removed.)
Scene 5: Aftermath — Dust and Silence
Setting: The garage at night. Empty, hollow. The billboard eyes above the road glow eerily. A single hanging bulb swings. The world has been erased down to outlines.
(MYRTLE steps into a ghost light. She is whole and luminous, separate from the set, as if the dust can no longer touch her.)
MYRTLE (to audience):
They’ll say I was careless. That’s the word rich people keep in their pockets for when they break you. Careless. Like I tripped over my own wanting.
(Beat.)
I ran toward a life. That’s all. The same way that man across the bay reached for his green light, and they call him tragic, romantic, brave. They write about his shirts. They make his name a parade. Me—
(She smiles without bitterness.)
I was not invited to the parade.
(A faint voice—NICK—drifts in like a distant radio.)
NICK (voice):
…and after she died, the car went on. No one knew. The dust settled quickly.
MYRTLE (listening, then replying to the air):
No, darling, it didn’t. Not for the ones breathing it. Not for the women who learn to laugh at the right volume, the right pitch, so nobody hears them choking.
CATHERINE (entering the memory, holding a shawl):
I told her to be careful. Truth is, there’s no careful road for a girl who wants what the world keeps in vaults.
MYRTLE:
You saw me. That’s more than most.
CATHERINE (grief hardening into clarity):
I saw you were more than they let you be.
(CATHERINE fades back into shadow. TOM appears briefly in a corner of the stage, a silhouette; he adjusts his cuff, says nothing, and disappears.)
MYRTLE (watching him go):
He’ll keep moving. Men like that are ferries between islands they don’t live on. They call it strength. It’s only the right to float.
(GEORGE enters the memory space, broken, looking upward as if answers are nailed to the rafters.)
GEORGE (hoarse prayer):
Why did you run, Myrtle?
MYRTLE (to him, tender now):
Because I was running toward, George. You never learned the difference.
GEORGE (sinks to a stool):
I wanted the air to be different for you. I thought West.
MYRTLE:
I wanted the air to be different in me. (Beat.)
Forgive me for wanting to be seen. Forgive yourself for building me a room when I needed a door.
(GEORGE presses his face into his hands; the image freezes, then dissolves like smoke.)
MYRTLE (to audience, last monologue):
A story is a room with a spotlight. It decides who gets warmed and who stays in the dark, clapping for someone else’s glow. If you tell my story, don’t make me a warning. Make me a woman who reached, the way all of us are asked to reach—toward a light we can’t quite name but recognize when it spills across our faces.
(Beat; she steps forward.)
Tell them the dust did not own me. Tell them I chose the shine.
(She lifts her chin. The billboard eyes dim at last. The bulb stops swinging.)
Blackout.
End.
Final Thoughts by F. Scott Fitzgerald
(The light returns to Fitzgerald. He speaks as if to both the audience and to himself, a confession dressed in poetry.)
FITZGERALD:
They will call her careless. They will say she wanted too much. But is that not the very marrow of our century—this desperate wanting? Gatsby reached for his green light across the bay, and they built an anthem around his ruin. Myrtle reached, too. She leapt toward yellow light on a dusty road, and they left her name to the ash.
I wrote once that we are boats beating against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Yet I wonder—if you listen long enough to voices like hers—whether the current itself begins to change.
Remember Myrtle Wilson. Not as a caution, not as a joke. Remember her as proof that even the forgotten dreamers dared. And that, perhaps, is the truest American story of them all.
(He raises the glass, finally takes a sip. Lights fade.)
Short Bios:
- MYRTLE WILSON — sharp, hungry, tender under bravado
- GEORGE WILSON — her husband; gentle, exhausted, scrupulous
- TOM BUCHANAN — rich, careless, magnetic like a storm
- CATHERINE — Myrtle’s sister; practical, observant
- MRS. McKEE / MR. McKEE / PARTY VOICES — the glittering crowd
- NICK (voice only) — occasional, faint echo of a distant observer
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