Cost of Living

Eddie is a man in his late forties and a focal character in the play. Eddie is deeply lonely. He fights the urge to indulge in self-pity; he has no loved ones and doesn’t feel entitled to dump his emotional pain on others. In the prologue, Eddie is trying to hide his devastation after losing everything. His wife has died, leaving him alone. At some point between his final scene with Ani and the prologue, Eddie has also lost the woman who was living with him. Additionally, he has lost his job as a trucker, a job he loved, due to a DUI, which occurred near his home and off the clock. This also means he had lost his sobriety.

He keeps all his lights on all the time. He is afraid that the universe will forget that he exists. Eddie wants connection, which he tries to earn from his wife by taking care of her, from the unseen stranger by buying them drinks in the prologue, and from Jess by offering her the food and shelter she desperately needs. He texts his dead wife and is so desperate to recover that connection that he travels from New Jersey to Brooklyn to a hipster bar where he doesn’t fit in, even though he is newly sober again, because the new owner of the number texts back.