THE STORIES: The Frosted Glass Coffin. The setting is the street facade of a low-priced Miami hotel of the sort which caters to aged pensioners. It is morning and the old men at the Ponce de Leon Hotel gather to watch the daily line-up of oldsters at the cut-rate restaurant across the street, chuckling at the thought of the consternation that will result when the doors open and the waiting customers discover that prices have been raised. But then a sad note is struck—one of their fellow guests has passed on, leaving a blind and helpless husband. But it is a loss that none will face squarely, for the nearness of death is what all of them must live with and joke about. For are they not all living in frosted glass coffins, through which light, and life, can just barely be perceived? (4 men, 2 women.)
I Can't Imagine Tomorrow. There are only two characters, a man and a woman. She is ill, perhaps mortally so, and living alone in her dark house. The man, her only friend and equally solitary, dreads returning to the airless hotel room that has become his home. He tries to reach out to her, to help her, but it is too difficult, perhaps too late, for her to respond. Their confrontation, sometimes gentle, sometimes tense, becomes a revealing and moving emotional experience as they accept the need to face alone the terrors that might be more easily met together. (1 man, 1 woman.)
