Episode 9: THE PASSAGE OF KITTY GENOVESE

Hm, I am the fairy man.

The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion, the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.

I regret to tell you that very many American lives in love.

What heard to shut from the car.

He's dead, whether he rebird to president.

For four hours, people must cut up and go.

If I am here in the in between, to collect their spirits and carry them to what comes next.

This road is not on any map. It spans the thresholds between their most forbidden desires and their greatest fear. All I ask for in payment is a tale and accounting of their lives and the great temporary that is the land living.

These are their stories. This is.

The passage.

A survivor of unspeakable atrocities once said, the opposite of life is not death, its indifference. But survivors are not my business. It's March thirteenth, nineteen sixty four. A storm is coming. Dark clouds enveloped this land, and the air crackles with static smells of ozone and blood. And this time everything America thinks it is suddenly. Its president has been assassinated, Its children are being sent by its leaders

Here a soul hides from me. She's not ready.

Once such a vibrant light, she has been snuffed in this alley right here. Her death by the hands of another greedy and foul young man will become a cautionary tale for the ages. No soul wishes to be a statistic, So she has hidden the way from me in its instant that stretches ever beyond and in between, and hide still among the living. Kitty Genevie's was her name. Dozens will be accused of locking their doors and cowardice, or worse, slinking back from their windows and drowning out her screams

Jeez, you scared me, mister.

You'd think after what happened, nothing could possibly scare me anymore.

But I mean you've been looking for me.

Yeah, well here I am. You got a cigarette cabby, Yeah, that's.

Your brand too.

Well what do you know? Thanks?

Well, here happen. I'll take to where you need to go.

I got no cab, fair man, Oh yeah.

I know.

On me.

I'm here to provide you passage to the next place.

Fine, how long is the drive to.

Wherever you're taking me?

That's to be determined.

I mean, am I going to be like judged because I don't think that's actually fair given my circumstances.

Hey, do you hear me, mister, because.

I want some damn answers?

Yeah?

Sorry, I haven't any figures.

Why should you be any different? I want my mom.

I can't Oh my god, I can't remember what my mom looks like. I can't see her face or anything, and all I should remember is him.

God, damn it, this is bullshit. Jesus. I was just coming home from work.

I pulled a double on a Friday, and I was just looking forward to getting home and running a bath.

You know what a double is, mister. You get to drive your damn cab all day.

I was on my feet, mixing cocktails and making sure Carl was getting his damn Schaeffers.

Just one more for the road, sweetie.

I can remember Carl's stupid drink order, but I can't remember my mother's face.

How do you like that? Well, I don't like it at all. And then I get home.

And it's dark and I'm crossing the street, and then this guy is fucking chasing me. My god, I remember every single footstep.

I could see my door. I came down hard on my right foot and he grabs me.

He'd been drinking cheap wine, and I could smell it all over him, and his hand was gripping on my elbow like he was trying to break it off, and he punched me real hard twice.

In the back, like pop.

But my god, you ever been stabbed, mister?

It's funny. I don't know from funny. Most people wouldn't say that.

It's not funny, but I mean, it don't feel like you think it would. I never thought about it before it happened, but it's pretty funny to mean anyway. I didn't know I got stabbed when it happened. I kept thinking, this guy's punching me real hard. Why does he keep punching me? And then I felt all wet.

I didn't have time. I couldn't tell what was going on.

All I could think was I gotta get the hell away from this crazy son of a bitch.

And then my blouse was all wet.

And I just.

Didn't know.

I didn't know he was trying to kill me. I just didn't know. It's like it wasn't me. I could hear my voice though. I just ran.

And then he stopped hitting me, and I didn't see him after that, and that's when I fell down, And that's when I knew the first breeze that blew through me. That's when I knew, because I remembered that one time I dropped the glass in the sink and I sliced my hand open, real bad. That hurt worse than this, at first it did, but I recognized the.

Feeling of air hitting me.

It was sharp, and I was lying on the grass and I was all wet, and I touched my sides and my hands came up all red, and I started screaming.

I didn't know what I was saying. I couldn't control it. I was just stimming. He was killing me.

He was killing me. I'm sorry, mister, my god. Look, I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I just got to catch my breath. I thought I saw a guy come to his window, but he ducked back in and turned up the radio. So I crawled to the nearest door and it was locked.

I was on the ground, crawling. Jesus Christ. There was so much blood like an oil leaf behind me. And then and then he was back.

Yeah.

I came looking for you then, but I couldn't find you.

Yeah.

Well, I wasn't done yet. I knew I was going to be dead, but I didn't want to let go, not like that. I stood up and I backed away from myself and everything, and I watched over everything, and watched him finish his business with me and run off again, a coward, And I felt you, you know, the way you feel lightning in the sky. So I slipped into the cracks and I waited for you to pass.

And I waited.

I were cops everywhere talking to the neighbors. Poor Missus Ferrara across the hall She was always real good to me. She cried real hard, She never did anything wrong. And those cops, they didn't write nothing down. They're supposed to be taking statements. My damn blood was all over the hallway, all over Missus Farrar's clothes, and she's trying to tell them what happened, and they're not listening.

What's wrong with them? No good bums? What's the matter with all of them?

And then things got confusing, like I was spread out all across time.

I took a walk and found myself.

Back at the bar.

Where else would I go? I spent most of my time there. They were like family, almost. There was Carl and his damn Schaffers and he's reading the paper, and then I saw it me in the paper. Looks like they used a mugshot. Even then, I was upset about my damn picture. And what's it say, thirty seven who saw murder didn't call police? Now that couldn't be right. No, that's Missus Ferrar was with me in the hall. She got my damn blood all over. I know she got

I mean, the.

Nerve of that birdcage liner of a paper to say that about her. Missus Ferrar was a saint God as my witness, and you can't just make stuff up about her.

That ain't true.

She used to sit with me some nights.

She's got a place full of kids and laundry to do, but she'd come sit at my table when my parents couldn't make it into town for my birthday. God, they didn't want me moving out here away from home. And you know why, Oh jeez, it's all because my mom saw some guy get stabbed to death outside our place in Park Slope.

How do you like that?

Mom and dad dragged everyone up to Connecticut except me.

I told him, I'm a grown up now. I can take care of myself, and.

You can go live in a Saturday evening post painting.

But that ain't for me. I wasn't gonna be some housewife or secretary or damn bartender forever.

You know.

I was going to open up my own place. I was going to make a place for myself. It talked about me on the news. It was a strange feeling.

They showed my picture, that same terrible one from the paper.

My god, and he's mispronounced my name, Thank you very much.

Then he said the phrase, the one that just.

He said, no one did nothing, like people didn't care to do nothing. He forgot to mention the guy who stabbed me to dathy in the hallway. The story was all about my goddamn neighbors and how they did nothing. Well, I died right under their noses. And it was just the same bullshit story over and over again. Everywhere I looked, thirty seven neighbors, forty people, almost fifty.

Onlookers, they couldn't even get the number right.

Why are they so obsessed with these scared people at home trying to sleep in the middle of the night. What about the murderer and Jesus Christ in case they forgot, what about me?

What about kitty? Mister? You ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

I mean, I heard of people cheating death, but never heard of death cheating them. Fifty years of news stories using my face, saying my name, telling a story that ain't my story. I mean, the one asshole with the radio, but blaming people for doing nothing in it just ain't true. It's weird knowing this now, Mister mosey your way up on the seventh floor. He yelled at the bastard to scram and that's why he ran away that first time he did something. Missus grunt saw us on the street

Dying is scary. I should know.

And as far as I'm concerned, every single one of my neighbors did the right thing, whether they called the cops or not. Those aren't nice people, good people, and they aren't the ones who stuck me and left me there like a dog.

And they're not the ones who sold.

Papers off some dead girl's story and got people all scared to come to the city for fear they were going to be next. My dad was afraid of me living on my own there. He didn't want me to stay. He told me the city was a big, scary place and I had to watch my back wherever I went. I can't imagine how he must have felt after that, Like how can people be so right and so wrong at the same time. The world didn't kill me, people not caring enough didn't kill me.

One guy killed me. One person.

But nobody wants to fix that problem because it's too hard and it's too scary, and it's easier to look around at everybody else and go, why didn't you people asleep in your beds?

Why didn't you do our job for us?

And you tell this story over and over again until it just becomes the truth, and you scare people away from these nice places, these good places, and instead of fixing our problems, you get to sell papers.

Look, I know I wasn't.

No angel had to leave a husband behind because I prefer for the Company of Women got busted for taking bets on horses.

But all's I wanted was enough scratch to open my own place.

Kiddies with nice tablecloths and classy wine, not that rot gut I've been pouring, and the best goddamn carbon era you've ever had in your life. Believe me, a place where all my neighbors would feel at home. I'd greet them at the door, wearing a fine tail coat like a proper gentleman, and show.

Them to their regular tables.

Missus Farrar would be right by the window because she loved watching all the neighborhood kids playing stickball. Hell, maybe I could sponsor a team, you know, buy them kids all proper uniforms and put the teen pictures up on the wall. I got a pretty killer arm I could toss out the first pitch of the season.

Just really bring the neighborhood.

Together, make everyone feel welcome like they did for me.

I had a path.

I knew where I was going. I knew I'd tell you what if I'd have had my restaurant. I felt you drive past a few times. Actually, you want to know where I was hiding.

That old radio shop.

Closed down three years back, before this happened, I had my eye on that place. I was going to start my business. That's where Kitties was going to be. Just needed the money to start. We really could have fixed things up around here, you know, get enough folks coming out to stickball games, and maybe we could have cleaned up the park, put a proper field out there, got them kids some gloves. No one makes trouble in a place like that. I could have.

Done that me, Kitty Genevie's. I could have built something.

I was.

And now I'm riding in the back of your cab with you, miss sir, on the way to nowhere.

I'm famous.

I never got the chance to prove myself to do something big, something that mattered, to make a name.

I died real big, though.

I got the life stabbed out of me, and people know my name all over this place, but it ain't about me at all.

I got robbed, and the robbery was.

So much worse than the ninth because my death don't belong to me no more. It belongs to all these fantasy writers, folks who don't know me from Adam, and they get to say what it all means, and I get what a lousy.

Cab right and a shirt full of holes? How do you like that?

What do you hear in the best of circles?

Shaefer all around?

Damned Carl, you know they really were the best of circles.

The whole world can be wrong about them.

Missus Ferrar, missus grind, mister Moser, even Carl, let them be wrong. I know the truth, Ain't it just the way the whole world lets you down? And the only folks you can count on and are the folks you chose to be your family, who.

Were there until the end.

Of course, the papers are gonna get us wrong, and they ain't never gonna love you till you're bleeding.

But I know that truth.

What's this?

Is this a joke?

This is the old radio shop, This was my place, This was kitties.

This door will lead you on.

Well, ain't you the trickster?

Let me ramble on and the whole time you know that this is where I'd end up anyway, the place I was hiding being the.

Place i'd end up.

Well, bravo for the theatrics. So what's next?

What now?

Now you walk through the door.

Or.

Maybe this time around I'll get where I'm going.

To those are newer, kind and decent soul, giving funny good to those who didn't nobody statistic such as the American Way. That's an unfortunate truth that in this vast country you do not entirely own your own stories. In a different times, I'm lye Kitty Geneviez could have been that restaurant tour, the Little League sponsor, the woman who fixed the park, the school, the city. She'd have gone far but for the man who's stolen her life, leaving

The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Ferryman. This episode features Ali McDonald as Kitty Genevie's written by Michael Alder June, with additional writing by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakoski. Our executive producers are Nicholas Dakoski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams. First Assistant director, script's supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein. Music by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Casting