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SETTING: A living room with a sofa, chair, cabinet and coat rack; an
entrance to the outside and an entrance to the kitchen/interior of the
house.
AT RISE: The room is dark.
There is a loud BANG from a door being swung open so
hard it hits the wall.
PHILIP, 60, storms in, throws his coat on the sofa, sits on the chair
and stews. MARION, 58, calmly enters and turns on the light switch.
MARION: Why are you so angry?
(She hangs her coat on the rack. PHILIP holds his
head down in his hands.)
PHILIP: What in God’s name were you thinking?
MARION: I don’t know.
PHILIP: People don’t do that.
(MARION hangs up PHILIP’s coat. PHILIP gets up,
moves to the cabinet and starts searching.)
PHILIP: Where’s the scotch? Didn’t we have scotch in here?
MARION: The one from five Christmases ago?
(PHILIP pulls out a bottle; wipes it off.)
MARION: It will make you sick.
(He ignores her and heads off to the kitchen.)
MARION: What are you doing?
(MARION walks toward the kitchen door. PHILIP returns quickly with a 7-Up bottle.
He walks back to the cabinet, finds a glass and makes a drink.)
MARION: Things don’t last forever.
(PHILIP takes a long swig. He stands, staring at the glass, then pours another.)
MARION: I’ll have some 7-Up.
PHILIP: It wasn’t our business, Marion.
MARION: I was afraid he was going to be killed.
PHILIP: People get killed when they interfere.
MARION: Well, we didn’t.
PHILIP: God, I’m still shaking.
(PHILIP brings the drink to MARION and sits on the chair.)
PHILIP: What were you thinking?
MARION: I don’t know. You can’t just sit in a car watching three men beat up
another without doing something.
PHILIP: You call the police.
MARION: He looked so young.
PHILIP: They don’t recruit old gang members. Or maybe they’re just dead before
they’re twenty-five.
MARION: We’re okay.
PHILIP: You could have killed the both of us. Don’t ever do anything like that again.
MARION: Don’t yell at me.
(PHILIP gets up for a refill.)
PHILIP: You’ve never done anything crazy like that before.
MARION: I told you. I wasn’t thinking.
PHILIP: The police said you were stupid.
MARION: They didn’t say that exactly.
PHILIP: They couldn’t believe what you did.
MARION: They said I saved his life.
PHILIP: And you were lucky you didn’t lose yours.
MARION: Let’s go to bed.
PHILIP: I’m too worked up.
MARION: (matter-of-fact) Why are you so worked up? You didn’t do anything.
PHILIP: I watched my wife get out of a car in a neighborhood we shouldn’t have
been in…
MARION: Thanks to your GPS system.
PHILIP: Thanks to that crazy lecture series you signed us up for.
MARION: You agreed. I thought you were enjoying—
PHILIP: ...get out of a car, run up to three hoodlums who probably
had automatic guns ready to blast her head off…
MARION: They were using fists.
PHILIP: . ..and yell, STOP.
MARION: Well, they did.
PHILIP: They heard the police sirens.
MARION: Yes.
(A long pause.)
But they stopped.
PHILIP: In shock.
MARION: I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
PHILIP: When that big thug turned, my life flashed before my eyes.
I thought he was going to smash the window in and beat me to a pulp.
I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
MARION: I’m sorry. It’s over now.
PHILIP: What were you thinking?
MARION: Would you quit? It was instinct or something.
PHILIP: A normal person doesn’t do these kind of things.
MARION: I ‘m not normal?
PHILIP: You’re a wife, a mother, a new grandmother for heaven’s
sake. You bake cookies.
(beat)
I still can’t believe it.
MARION: I had to take some action.
PHILIP: The action we take is when we write checks out every year to
the social service agencies.
MARION: He was right outside my door. His eyes were so bloody he
could barely see.
PHILIP: You’re supposed to turn around and call the professionals
we pay taxes for.
(MARION takes her glass over to the cabinet and adds scotch.
She takes a long swallow.)
MARION: All right, Philip. I see your point.
PHILIP: Good. Let’s go to bed.
(MARION freshens her drink.)
MARION: I see your point. I just don’t agree with it.
[end of extract]
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