Act One

Outside the Bar: February 5, 1981

On a cold winter night Cass, estranged from her lover, is waiting outside for the Fly By Night to open. She remembers when she and Suzie fell in love three years ago on a school trip to the ruins of Pompeii. Jules, the bartender, interrupts the reverie, and invites Cass into the Fly By Night. “Forget Suzie, Come on in, have a drink.” But as Cass lingers on the street, the light flickers, something begins to shift, and once more she is gazing with Suzie at the Ash-Embrace bodies of two lovers ‘frozen in time.’ The girls are transported to Pompeii 79 AD, to the Villa of Mysteries where they fall in love during initiation into the Dionysian Mysteries. The Priestess names them Cassia and Suli, and vows to protect them against Roman Centurion Marcus Quintus, who is enchanted with Suli, and determined to destroy the Mystery Cult and take her to Rome. The Priestess predicts “a coming devastation” as Vesuvius rumbles ever louder, and Marcus and his legion invade the inner sanctum of the Temple of Isis.

Act Two

Saturday night at the Fly by Night: February 6, 1981.

Jules the Bartender encourages the women to join a protest march against police brutality during last night’s Bathhouse Raids. Cass mourns her breakup with Suzie. Jules and the women tell Cass to forget her. When Suzie enters the bar, the estranged lovers reminisce about meeting in high school, and becoming lovers after their school trip to Pompeii. Suzie reveals that she’s just come out to her mother. Cass has been thrown out by her own parents and lives in a lonely basement apartment. She wants Suzie to move in with her, but Suzie won’t leave her widowed mom. The couple argue and Cass worries about Suzie’s future; about her uncle’s plans to marry her off. When Suzie’s uncle bursts into the bar, all hell breaks loose. He and Suzie’s mother have followed Suzie and plan to take her home, but Suzie wants freedom to reunite with Cass. She is given an impossible choice—to take the protection of family, or go with her lover and be banished forever from her Italian immigrant community. Everyone exits to join the protest march, leaving Cass to bid farewell to her fantasy in a final duet. Suli appears holding a pomegranate in her hands. They vow to “remember where we have been.”