THEM!_A Story in Five Parts by Gwen Cooper

Author:Gwen Cooper [Cooper, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948836036
Amazon: B07FRD5C1S
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 2018-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

3. Scene from a Lost Harold Pinter Play

ACT ONE – SCENE ONE

INT. GWEN AND LAURENCE’S THREE-STORY BROWNSTONE IN JERSEY CITY – A SUNNY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

LIGHTS UP ON DOWNSTAGE LEFT: GWEN sitting at a sleek black desk in front of her laptop computer. With one hand on the keyboard, another tapping on the desk, and her eyebrows scrunched as she gazes at the laptop’s screen, she’s obviously deep in thought. CLAYTON, a three-legged black cat, is splayed out on her lap.

LIGHTS UP ON ELEVATED PLATFORM, DOWNSTAGE RIGHT: LAURENCE has just sat down at an old wooden desk in front of a large desktop computer. As he arranges himself on the chair, FANNY, another black cat, eagerly leaps onto his lap and daintily makes herself comfortable. LAURENCE shifts to accommodate her as he turns his head toward the offstage door and shouts to GWEN, who is one floor beneath him.

LAURENCE: Hey! One of the cats threw up in the kitchen!

GWEN: Okay.

LAURENCE: Okay.

GWEN: And . . . ?

LAURENCE: You should clean it before it sinks into the tile and makes a permanent stain.

GWEN: Can’t you clean it? With all the moth mishegas I’m behind on my deadline.

LAURENCE: I thought you’d want to look at it first.

GWEN: Why would I want to look at it first?

LAURENCE: I don’t know . . . I thought you might want to check viscosity and breakdown.

GWEN: What does “viscosity and breakdown” even mean?

LAURENCE: It’s from that old motor oil commercial—remember those commercials?

GWEN [muttering]: You and your old commercials.

LAURENCE: What’d you say?

GWEN: I have to turn in this story to my editor tomorrow. Are you going to clean it or not?

LAURENCE: I really think you should examine it first.

GWEN: They probably just ate too many moths or threw up a hairball or something.

LAURENCE: It doesn’t look like moths or a hairball.

GWEN: How would you know what a hairball looks like? You never clean up their hairballs.

LAURENCE: Because I always think you’ll want to look at it first.

GWEN: Why do you keep saying that? What do you think is so compelling about a puddle of cat vomit that I have to drop everything and race over like it was a flash sale at Barneys?

LAURENCE: What if one of them is sick?

GWEN: Cats throw up sometimes. It’s what they do. I’m sure it’s fine.

LAURENCE: But you don’t know that it’s fine—you don’t even know who threw up.

GWEN: What am I, a cat CSI unit? How am I supposed to know which cat threw up? Was one of them standing near it?

LAURENCE: They were both gone by the time I found it.

GWEN: Found it and left it for me, you mean.

LAURENCE: I can never clean it as well as you can.

GWEN: Oh, come on!

LAURENCE: It’s true! I’m not as good as getting it all up as you are.

GWEN: Well, as my mother used to say, practice makes perfect.

LAURENCE: Did she?

GWEN: She also used to say, God gave you two arms and two legs. Didn’t your mother ever say anything like that?

LAURENCE: Don’t bring my mother into this.

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