Cost of Living

In the prologue, Eddie explains that he is using his phone as an ineffectual means of connection: He sends texts to his dead wife’s number. While she was alive, Eddie would go on cross-country trips as a truck driver, and Ani would text him. Although the texts were mostly mundane, they made him feel less isolated and alone on the road. Eddie doesn’t describe whether he responded to her texts in kind, or even what lead to the demise of their marriage, although their separation suggests that the connection between them deteriorated. Eddie sees these text messages from Ani, whether he is romanticizing them after the fact or not, as the lifeline that kept his loneliness at bay. In reality, the occasional one-line text is fairly paltry in terms of nurturing an entire marriage from the other side of the country. When Eddie is helping Ani bathe, she curses at him for not taking care of her when it counted, when they were still together.

Eddie’s texts after Ani’s death are even more futile, an expression of affection that is simply too late. The communication devices used in the play are dead ends. Ani tells Eddie multiple times that she has an emergency button that will summon help to remove Eddie from her apartment.