Customer Service: A One-Act Play

While awaiting news about his ailing wife, Sol Green gets a visit from a most unexpected visitor.

From Customer Service:

Sol: Yes. I learned how to reason and to think logically . . . to have faith in myself. If others want to believe in . . . in their mythologies, well that’s their prerogative, but I’m not buying into them. And why should I? If G-d ever existed, he’s certainly dead now. He’s been dead for a long time.

Sol: (Angry, Iam touched a nerve.) I most certainly am not. To suggest I could believe in some fairy tale about, about an old man with a long gray beard who looks down on us, who gives a damn about us, who cares if we live or die, if we feel joy or pain is . . . I’d sooner believe in the tooth fairy.

Iam: Even when you were a child he sensed your cynicism. When you got older, you made no attempt to hide it. He knew you didn’t like him, didn’t respect him, and that he embarrassed you. Right Sol? You couldn’t understand how, why, a hunchback--a physically broken man--could, should receive the respect he was given, let alone your mother’s love. He was, how did you put it, Sol, ＂nothing more than a snake oil salesman whose only stock and trade was lies and superstition.＂