A middle-aged WOMAN emerges from the darkness. She might be wearing a nice scarf.

WOMAN The theater is in a basement in a rough part of town. You enter through an unmarked metal door and descend two flights of cement steps. There is no box office, no coat check, no tickets taken. A man dressed like an undertaker greets you and you give him your name, which he already knows. He isn’t referring to a list on a clipboard. He simply knows your name. He then leads you into the space, which is a spare, surprising black box theater. There are maybe 50 seats, arranged in the round. The second and third rows are on risers so everyone can see the action clearly. The center playing area is a mound of sand. Two American soldiers dressed in desert fatigues from another era are already onstage. They are armed with archaic, bolt-action rifles. They wear tin hats and unpolished black boots. An orange flag has been driven into the sand, marking some obvious, inevitable point of interest. The soldiers, a tall man and a short man, look as if they have been there for days. They are sweating profusely, caked in dust. Their lips are cracked and dehydrated. A desert sun hammers down on them. The sand is so white it looks as if it would be hot to the touch.

There are only 12 of us in the audience. The stage lights spill beyond the stage just enough that we can see each other. I count two couples, one straight, one lesbian. The rest of us are on our own, scattered about the mostly empty seats. We are all going to watch each other watch this play. I assume this is the point. To bear witness to each other bearing witness. We all look hesitant and slightly terrified. We aren’t supposed to be here, after all. This play is not on the approved list. If caught we could get into serious trouble. Our status could be reduced.

As soon as the last person sits, a stage manager enters. She wears all black and she’s outfitted with a state-of-the-art headset. There is a semiautomatic pistol holstered to her side. She introduces herself as Maude, the production stage manager, and asks that we all surrender our cellphones. She is holding a black gym bag. She assures us that they will be returned to us at the end of the play.

We can’t force you to do it, she says, but it will greatly improve your experience.

One by one, the 12 of us surrender our cellphones. Maude thanks us and tells us there is only one bathroom, which we will all be welcome to use during the 10-minute intermission.

And then she exits. There are no programs. We don’t even know the title of the piece.

ACT 1

The soldiers refer to the desert where they are stationed as being located in the Arabian Peninsula. It’s 1938. They have no idea what their actual mission is, only that they must guard this orange flag and that anyone who lays claim to it should be shot dead. The taller one’s angry because he’s missing the World Series. He’s from Chicago and his Cubs are playing the mighty Yankees and his beloved North Siders need all the support they can get. The shorter one’s from Pittsburgh and he prefers ice hockey. His hometown doesn’t have a team, but he roots for the Detroit Red Wings.

They debate who sings the better version of “Love Walked In.” The taller one prefers Sammy Kaye’s interpretation. The shorter one is adamant about Kenny Baker’s rendition from “The Goldwyn Follies.”

And then the taller soldier begins to sing it.

(Singing.) Love walked right in and drove the shadows away
Love walked right in and brought my sunniest day
One magic moment and my heart seemed to know
That love said hello
Though not a word was spoken …

The 1938 orchestral arrangements of the song can be faintly heard over the following:

WOMAN There is a man sitting directly across from me, in the second row. During the song, we can’t take our eyes off of each other. He has dark, salt-and-pepper hair, receding at the temples, a wide, powerful nose and large eyes — gray, I think — that seem to ache with feeling. He wears a white button-down shirt under a navy blue sweater. I would guess him to be in his mid-40s.

Before the taller soldier completes the song, a steer enters the space. It appears where we were led into the theater and makes its way slowly onto the circle of sand and across the stage. It’s enormous, paler than the desert, with long, pointed horns. The soldiers draw their rifles, but they are mesmerized and unable to fire. The smell of dung fills the space, something ancient and earthen and molecular.

That was a longhorn, the taller soldier says, clearly shaken. That was a goddamn longhorn.

Are we in Texas? the shorter soldier adds.

Not even a minute later a Bedouin woman enters. Her face is covered and her entire body is wrapped in light blue muslin. She’s holding a child that is swaddled in desert rags. She speaks a language that the soldiers don’t understand. She gestures emphatically, pleading with them to take her child. She falls to her knees in supplication. She flails about, lifting her hands to the sky. The shorter soldier gives her a drink from his canteen and she spits it out into the sand, cursing him, and then thrusts the infant into his arms and runs off.

The child is so lifelike it’s hard to fathom that it’s a prop. Its arms and legs articulate with uncanny realism. It even mewls and coos. At one point, I swear I can see it grasp the taller soldier’s finger.

They unswaddle it and determine its sex.

It’s a girl, the shorter soldier says.

They decide to name her Amy, after the taller soldier’s sister back in Chicago.

Look at you, little Amy, they say. Look at you.

But in what seems like a matter of minutes, the two soldiers start to go mad.

Why have they been assigned to this bizarre mission? What are they guarding? All they know is that, according to their commanding officer, some American geologist said the region was rich with petroleum and that the orange flag has something to do with it. They’re both married with their own children — the shorter soldier has twin boys — and they miss their wives and families. Their mission will not be completed until two new soldiers arrive to relieve them.

They quickly grow to hate the infant and begin screaming at it and throwing it very high in the air, over and over and over.

At one point, the taller soldier fails to catch little Amy and she lands on the sand and goes silent. The shorter one bends down and places his ear to her face.

She’s not dead, he says. She’s still breathing.

But they bury her alive in the sand anyway. They use a small shovel.

The shorter soldier works with a kind of rabid intensity while the taller one, who has stripped his gear off from the waist up, holds the infant up to the sun, oddly studying it as if it is no longer human, as if it’s some freakish creature that’s been sent to this place to curse them.

The act ends with the infant being interred into the desert.

Lights fade as the shorter soldier begins refilling the hole with sand.

During the blackout, I am devastated.

I have no idea what it all means, but it feels as if an unresolvable ache has been unleashed in me.

Simen Johan’s “Untitled #159” (2010). © Simen Johan, courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

INTERMISSION

In the gender-neutral bathroom, I happen upon the man who was sitting across from me. He also appears to be deeply unsettled by the play. He tells me his name: David. I tell him mine: Charlotte. He asks me how I came to hear about the play. I tell him a former colleague recommended it.

Same here, he says. I’m so glad I came.

Me too, I say.

Those soldiers, he adds.

That poor child, I say.

We are standing very close to each other. I can smell the musk of his skin. His breath is sweet and gamy. He has a beautiful mouth. There are three stalls. I take his hand and lead him into the center one. As he moves his hands over the front of my blouse I ask him what he does. He tells me that he’s a former food critic who is writing a novel about a former food critic writing a novel.

That doesn’t sound self-indulgent at all, I say, and he laughs and his laugh makes me wet.

He asks me what I do and I tell him that I used to run an art gallery.

With my hand I trace his penis, which is pressing through the front of his corduroy trousers. I pull my underwear down and lift my skirt. He frees himself and seconds later he is working himself inside of me and I love it. His gray eyes are enormous and kind, and within moments of him entering me we climax simultaneously, after perhaps seven or eight thrusts. He goes briefly limp in my arms. I can feel myself holding onto him for dear life. We catch our breath and share a long kiss and then I exit the stall and wash my hands. He gives me a minute and then joins me at the other sink.

That was incredible, he says. You’re so beautiful.

One half of the lesbian couple enters the bathroom and heads directly for the center stall, which makes us laugh.

See you after the show, David says, and exits the bathroom.

Back in the theater, another person has joined the audience: a well-dressed man in a gray suit, which he wears under an impressive wool overcoat. He has the smile of a millionaire and unimpeachable silver hair.

ACT 2

The sand has been replaced with snow. Again, the two soldiers have taken their positions in the center playing space. They are now dressed in military snowsuits. They are stationed somewhere in the Arctic Circle. It’s now modern day, some 80 years later. You can tell by their gear and their weapons. It turns out the shorter soldier from Act 1 is actually a woman. She’s changed her voice. The male soldier calls her Corporal Nance and she calls him Sergeant O’Brien. We quickly learn that he’s from Overland Park, Kansas, and she’s from Taos, New Mexico. It is snowing in the playing space. The source of the snow is perfectly masked. And during the intermission they obviously blasted the air-conditioning because it’s freezing. Everyone in the audience is now wearing their winter coats. My new friend, David, who is once again sitting across from me, is wearing a knit cap. He smiles at me, and I smile back.

As in the first act, there is an orange flag driven into the snowy crust, marking some inevitable point. Like the earlier soldiers, Corporal Nance and Sergeant O’Brien have no idea what their actual mission is, only that they must guard this orange flag and that anyone who lays claim to it should be shot dead. They suspect that their mission has something to do with a petroleum site.

It always comes down to oil, Corporal Nance says.

Nance and O’Brien talk about their children’s Instagram accounts and the upcoming election. As in the first act, they debate a song. This time it’s the Cowboy Junkies’ versus Elvis’s version of “Blue Moon.”

Just when Corporal Nance begins singing the song, another animal enters the space. This time it’s a white wolf with pinned, yellow eyes.

It stares at the soldiers for a moment and then proceeds to jog across the snow, completely unaware of the audience or the soldiers, as if it’s tracking something.

What the hell was that? Sergeant O’Brien asks, his automatic weapon still drawn.

It was the ghost of Elvis, Corporal Nance says.

David, my new friend, is clutching the sides of his knit cap and looks as if he might lift out of his seat.

After the soldiers laugh off the visit from the white wolf, an Inuit woman wearing animal skins enters holding a bundled infant. In her indigenous language, she pleads with the soldiers to take her baby. They have no idea what she is saying. She offers them dried meat and a bloody hare, which has been tied with rope around her waist.

And then Maude, the stage manager who’d collected our cellphones before the play began, enters the space and stops the action.

She takes center stage, removes her handgun, points it directly at the newest member of the audience — the well-dressed man with silver hair — and orders him to stand.

He does so.

Simen Johan’s “Untitled #140” (2007). © Simen Johan, courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Maude announces to the rest of the audience that the man is Cotter Munch, who works under the recently appointed Minister of Culture, which is a cabinet-level position in the current administration. Mr. Munch’s job is to attend various cultural events and evaluate whether or not they are fit for public consumption. But since he missed the first act, she says, how could he possibly make a fair judgment?

Show them your laminate, she tells him, still training her gun on him.

With shaky hands, Mr. Munch loosens his silk tie, undoes the top button of his white business shirt, reaches underneath his T-shirt and produces a laminated badge, which he is wearing around his neck.

Come with me, she tells him.

Where are we going? he asks.

To the greenroom, she says, still training her gun on him, where we can discuss this further.

Please, he says to Maude. I have a family. Don’t do this.

The soldiers onstage tromp through the snow and into the audience and at rifle point they force Cotter Munch toward the back of the theater, to some unseen space, presumably the greenroom.

Maude quickly follows after them, her pistol still drawn.

There is something, well, capital about her gait.

Onstage, it continues to snow. It looks so real I have to resist an impulse to leave my seat and enter the playing space and catch it in my hands.

The 12 remaining audience members look around at each other awkwardly. The lesbian couple is sharing a bag of yogurt-covered raisins. My new friend, David, has removed his knit cap and looks like he might be sick. Suddenly we can hear Cotter Munch pleading for his life. He apologizes for missing the first act of the play and reprises the bit about his family — he has two daughters — and then three gunshots can be heard. Three blunt reports. Many of us in the audience visibly flinch.

One of the lesbians is now covering her ears.

Moments later, the soldiers drag Cotter Munch’s body back out into the playing space. They have stripped him of his overcoat and he is bleeding profusely from the back of the head. A grisly streak of blood marks their path to the stage. They leave him in a heap beside the orange flag and exit.

The snow continues to fall, slowly covering him. We in the audience are in shock. At least I know I certainly am. We simply sit there and watch the man’s body take on snow. The volume of blood streaming from his head is unfathomable.

Across the way, David’s mouth is wide open. His face is wet with tears.

The lights begin to fade on the dead man. It’s an interminable, relentless light cue.

There was a young artist my gallery used to represent. He painted scenes that took place during snowstorms. A hunter standing over a felled black bear during a whiteout. A snowplow barely discernible on the highway, the figure of a dead deer oddly twisted on the shoulder. The volume of a blizzard lit by a neon motel sign, its pink letters faint, almost ghostly, a single compact car parked beneath it, a woman at the steering wheel, her hands clutching it, her forehead pressed to the backs of her hands as if she’s in anguish. These were huge canvases that would stop a room. People would stand before them, in complete awe, for several minutes at a time. It was as if the white gallery walls had imagined these paintings. The artist was from the Midwest and had obviously lived through his share of bad winters. He’d come east to follow his dream. Before the gallery was forced to close, we still had a handful of his works. I have no idea what became of them. Or him. Last I heard, he’d moved back to Racine, Wisconsin. The shame of having to close the gallery has kept me from reaching out.

During the final, slowly fading light cue, Maude re-enters with the black gym bag and returns our cellphones and thanks us for coming. She asks us to please tell others about the play, but only those who we think would truly appreciate the work they are doing. There is not even the slightest sense that she has committed a crime.

A woman behind me asks if the actors are going to take a bow.

There is no curtain call, Maude explains to her. The end of the play is happening now. You don’t want to miss it.

So we turn our attention back to the stage, to that excruciating, lingering fade-out.

When the theater goes completely dark, I experience a momentary ghostly figure, perhaps some remnant image flaring on my retina.

Is it the steer from Act 1? The white wolf? Were those animals actually real?

And then the houselights come on and the dead man is gone. There is no sign of him. No tracks through the snow. Not a scrap of his costume. Not a single bloodstain.

On the street, David walks me to a cab. Outside the theater, he looks older than I’d originally thought. Less substantial. He walks with a slight limp, as if the arches of his feet hurt. We don’t exchange numbers and we don’t talk about the play.

He produces his cellphone.

Mind if I take a selfie with you? he asks.

Sure, I say. Why not?

He snaps a few. He likes the second one more than the first.

Good luck with your book, I tell him.

And good luck to you, he says back.

As a farewell, we shake hands.

Somehow he gets away with boarding the back of the cab that he had hailed for me, and when it pulls away I feel as if I have a loose tooth that will fall out if I don’t start walking.

So I head for home, more than 20 blocks. It’s February 23rd and unusually warm, almost 50 degrees. I have to remove my scarf because five blocks in I find that I’m sweating.

As I climb the four flights of stairs to the apartment that I have lived in for 28 years, I can feel David’s semen leaking out of me.

I make a pot of tea and try to read a book, but I find that my focus is poor and I keep reading the same sentence over and over.

Within a few hours the temperature drops some 20 degrees and it snows nearly a foot.

Around midnight, I call the artist I used to represent. He doesn’t answer, but I leave him a message telling him how deeply sorry I am that we had to shutter the gallery. I tell him how I had just watched this play in a basement that reminded me of his paintings and how they still haunt me. I wish him well and leave my number.

I can’t sleep, and for hours I watch the snow pass across my bedroom window.

Just before dawn, it’s formed a thick hide on the roof of the building across the courtyard.

The naked trees look silver.

I think, Somewhere out there someone has fallen.

Somewhere out there someone has been struck in the back of the head and she’s bleeding out into the freshly fallen snow.

Lights fade.

END OF PLAY