by James Reston
NORMAN: I don’t know.
COOTIE: We may be in here for hours and hours, Norman. Maybe even all night. The whole operation from initial labor to the biting off of the umbilical cord could very easily take an entire night. (Pause) Norman?
NORMAN: All night, huh?
COOTIE: You never know.
RUTH: Brother, you try to get a few guys to shut up for a little while . . .
MIKE (Loud): C’mon, c’mon, hey, everybody, let’s have a little quiet around here. I don’t want to see anyone panic and lose their heads and start running in all different directions knocking down passersby and trampling on innocent women and children.
RUTH: I swear to Christ, Mike, if you don’t shut up I’ll kill you.
MIKE: O.K.
At this point, the hall door opens and the kitchen is lit up a little. DICK is standing in the doorway trying to see into the dark, where NORMAN is sitting at a round kitchen table with a book by him, and RUTH, MIKE and COOTIE are crouched around a cardboard carton with a hole in it. NORMAN grabs up his book to take advantage of the crack of light. DICK just stands there. RUTH and COOTIE speak on top of each other.
RUTH: Hey, c’mon, shut the door, Dick.
COOTIE: Shut the fucking door.
MIKE (After a pause): We’d really like you to shut the door, Richard.
DICK shuts the door and everything goes black. A moment later it all lights up again because DICK has just opened the icebox and it’s the kind that has an automatic light inside. So now we see DICK squatting in front of the icebox while the OTHERS watch him, except for NORMAN, who’s really trying like mad to read. You can see the kitchen pretty clearly now. The icebox is very old, dating from the time when electricity was replacing the iceman. It’s just a box on legs with one of those barrel-shaped coolers with vents on top. You maybe can’t see it yet, but on the door of the icebox there’s a large inscription that reads “GOD IS COOL.” Stacked neatly against one wall are 816 empty two-quart milk bottles, layer upon layer with planks between each level It’s a deliberate construction. There’s a huge copper stack heater in one comer by the sink, and it has a safety valve at the top with a copper tube coming out of it and snaking into the sink. The floor is vinyl, in imitation cork, alternating light and dark, but the conspicuous thing about this floor is that it’s only half-finished. Where the cork tiles end there is a border of black tar, by now hard, and then wooden floor in broad plank. Around the kitchen table are six chairs, all from different sets. Various posters on the wall, but none as conspicuous as a map of Europe near where the telephone hangs. The sink is full of dirty dishes. There is a pad hanging by the icebox, and a pencil. Everyone uses the kitchen in a special way. So DICK is squatting in front of the open icebox.
RUTH: That’s very cute, Richard.
MIKE: C’mon, shut the fucking icebox. We were in here first.
NORMAN: I was reading when you guys came in.
DICK turns to them, looks, then turns back to the icebox.
COOTIE: Dick, in my humble opinion you’re a miserable cunt and a party pooper.
DICK (Standing): All right, now listen. This afternoon I went down to the Star Supermarket and got myself four dozen frozen hamburgers. Now that’s forty-eight hamburgers, and I only had two of them for dinner tonight.
RUTH: And you never washed up.
MIKE: Hey, Dick, are those Star hamburgers any good?
DICK: Listen, I should have forty-six hamburgers, and when I counted just now there was only forty-three. Three hamburgers in one night. And for your information I’ve been keeping track of my hamburgers since the beginning of the semester. There’s almost fifty hamburgers I can’t account for.
COOTIE: Jesus, Dick, you should have said something before this.
MIKE: Yeah, Dick, you had all them hamburger thefts on your mind, you should have let it out. It’s no good keeping quiet about something like that.
DICK: Look, I’m not about to make a stink about a couple of hamburgers here and there, but, Jesus Christ, almost sixty of them. I’m putting it down on common stock and we’re gonna all pay for it. (HE turns on the light)
RUTH: Dick, willya turn out the light, please?
DICK: I’m sorry, but I’ve lost too many hamburgers. I’m putting down for four dozen. (HE goes to the pad on the wall and makes an entry)
RUTH: Now willya turn the light out?
DICK (Examining list): Shit, who put peanut butter down on common stock?
MIKE: I did. I got a jar of chunky last Thursday and when I opened it on Saturday somebody’d already been in there. I didn’t eat all that chunky myself.
DICK: Well, I never had your peanut butter. I’m not paying for it.
MIKE: Well, I never had any of your goddamn sixty hamburgers either.
COOTIE: I think I may have had some of that chunky peanut butter. Could you describe your jar of chunky in detail?
MIKE: Elegant little glass jar, beige interior . . .
KATHY enters through the front door, as opposed to the hall door. The hall door leads to everyone’s rooms.
KATHY: Oh, boy, look out for Bob. (SHE starts across the kitchen to the hall door. SHE carries lots of books in a green canvas waterproof book bag slung over her shoulder)
RUTH: What’s wrong with Bob?
KATHY: He’s in a really shitty mood. I’ve seen the guy act weird before. This is, I don’t know, pretty bad, I guess.
MIKE: Where is he?
COOTIE: Yeah, where’s Bob?
MIKE: Good old Bob.
COOTIE: Where’s good old Bob?
KATHY: And fuck you too. I’m serious.
NORMAN (Looking up from his book): Boy, I really can’t absorb very much with everyone talking.
KATHY: We were just sitting there, you know, in Hum 105, and that prick Johnson started in about the old cosmic equation again.
NORMAN: What’s the cosmic equation?
RUTH: So why’d that upset Bob?
KATHY: I don’t know. That’s the thing . . .
DICK: I bet Bob’s responsible for some of my hamburgers. I notice you and him never go shopping for dinner.
KATHY: It’s really weird the way he sort of . . . well, like today, you know . . . I’m not kidding, he might be cracking up or something.
BOB enters through the front door, carrying his books. HE looks all right. EVERYONE stares at him.
RUTH: Hi, Bob.
MIKE: Hi, Bob.
COOTIE: Hi, Bob.
NORMAN: Hello, Bob.
BOB (Pause): Hi, Mike, hi, Ruth, hi, Cootie; hello, Norman. (Pause) Hi, Dick.
DICK: Listen, do you know anything about . . .?
BOB: No, I haven’t touched your fucking hamburgers.
DICK: Well, someone has.
MIKE: How you been, good old Bob?
COOTIE: How’s the old liver and the old pancreas and the old pituitary and the . . .
BOB: Is there any mail?
COOTIE: There’s this really big package from Beirut. It took four guys to get it up the stairs.
MIKE: We think it’s a harp.
RUTH: There’s a letter in your room.
BOB looks at them quizzically; then goes down the hall. KATHY follows him.
RUTH: I think Kathy’s right. There’s definitely something wrong with Bob.
DICK: Yeah, he’s out of his fucking mind, that’s what’s wrong with him.
RUTH: You can talk.
MIKE: Hey, c’mon, c’mon, let’s have a little order around here . . .
RUTH: Stop fucking around. You heard what Kathy said. Something’s troubling Bob.
MIKE: So what?
COOTIE: Yeah, fuck Bob.
MIKE: Fuck good old Bob.
NORMAN: Maybe he’s worried about the future. (ALL look at him) I mean, you know, maybe he’s worried about it. I mean, I don’t know him all that well. Just, you know, maybe he’s worried about what he’s gonna do when, you know, after he graduates and everything.
DICK: He ought to be worrie
d.
MIKE: You bet your ass he oughta be. Same goes for all of you guys. You oughta be worried, Dick. Cootie, you oughta be worried. I oughta be worried. I am. I’m fucking petrified. You watch what happens at the graduation ceremony. There’s gonna be this line of green military buses two miles long parked on the road outside and they’re gonna pick us up and take us to Vietnam and we’ll be walking around one day in the depths of the rain forest looking out for wily enemy snipers and carnivorous insects and tropical snakes that can eat a whole moose in one gulp and earthworms sixteen feet long and then one day when we least expect it this wily sniper’ll leap out from behind a blade of grass and powie. Right in the head. I’m worried.
DICK: Anyone that can spell can get out of Vietnam.
NORMAN: I’m in graduate school. They can’t get me.
DICK: Norman, you couldn’t buy your way into the army.
NORMAN: I wouldn’t go.
MIKE: Why wouldn’t you go, Norman?
NORMAN: Huh?
COOTIE: Yeah, think of the army. What about them? They need good mathematics graduate students out there in the marshes of Quae Thop Chew Hoy Ben Van Pho Quay Gup Trin.
NORMAN: I don’t agree with the war.
MIKE: Well, for God sakes, then, let’s stop it.
NORMAN: I had my medical and everything. I passed. I could’ve pretended I was insane or something.
DICK: Pretended?
RUTH: Hey, doesn’t anyone here give a shit about Bob?
MIKE: Hey, c’mon, everyone that gives a shit raise your hand, (COOTIE, MIKE, DICK and NORMAN raise their hands) See, we all give a shit. So what should we do?
RUTH: Well, I don’t know. Maybe we ought to try and find out what’s troubling him.
DICK: Maybe he doesn’t want us to know. Just maybe.
COOTIE: Yeah, what if he’s teetering on the brink of a complete schizophrenic withdrawal and the only thing keeping him sane is knowing we don’t know what’s troubling him.
MIKE: It’s our duty as classmates and favorite turds to leave him alone.
RUTH: Maybe something’s wrong between him and Kathy.
DICK: Like what?
RUTH: I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking.
DICK: He doesn’t give a shit about her. Not really. She’s just a good lay, that’s all.
RUTH: How would you know, Dick?
NORMAN: I thought they were in love.
DICK: Jesus, Norman, where the hell is your head at?
NORMAN: Huh?
MIKE: Define the problem, then solve it.
COOTIE: Yeah, what’s troubling good old Bob?
MIKE: I think we oughta all go to bed tonight with notebooks under our pillows, and when we get a well-focused and comprehensive idea about the central dilemma of Bob’s existence we oughta write it down in clear, concise sentences, with particular attention to grammar and punctuation.
COOTIE: Yeah, then we can meet in here tomorrow and pool our insights.
MIKE: That’s a really great plan.
RUTH: I’d really like to know what’s troubling him.
DICK: I’d really like to know who the fuck is eating my hamburgers.
NORMAN: Why don’t you talk to him?
RUTH: what?
NORMAN: I mean, you know—Bob. If you want to find out what’s troubling him, probably the best thing to do is talk to him and say, What’s troubling you, or something like that, and then if he wants to tell you he can and if he doesn’t feel like talking about it . . . then . . . well, you know. . . .
RUTH: Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.
NORMAN (Pause): Yeah, that’s what I’d do if I wanted to know. I mean, I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to know what’s troubling him. I’d really like to know if you find out, but I . . .
MIKE has been kneeling by the cat box and peering into it.
MIKE: Jesus Christ. Jesus H. fucking Christ.
NORMAN: What’s wrong?
MIKE: She wasn’t even in there.
COOTIE: What! All that time we were looking at an empty box and she wasn’t even in there?
MIKE: She must’ve slipped out while we had our backs turned.
COOTIE: Sneaky little beastie.
MIKE: Cootie, you don’t understand. She might be out there in the road right now.
COOTIE: Right now.
MIKE: With all the traffic.
COOTIE: Oh, Christ, and all those architects driving home drunk from seeing their mistresses . . .
MIKE: And trying to figure out what to tell the little woman. I mean, she’s been waiting up all night in a chartreuse quilted sleeping gown with curlers in her hair . . .
COOTIE: Worrying about the kiddies. Three boys, twenty-seven girls. They all got appendicitis . . .
MIKE: Simultaneously. And when she called the kindly family doctor he was away in Cuba . . .
COOTIE: Doing research for his forthcoming book . . .
MIKE: “Chapter Eight: Peritonitis and Social Democracy.”
COOTIE: Jesus, I hope we’re not too late. (HE and MIKE rush off down the hall)
DICK: Hey, Norman, are these your bananas?
NORMAN: You can have one. I don’t mind.
DICK takes one and puts the others back in the icebox. COOTIE sticks his head in around the hall door.
COOTIE: You coming, Ruth?
RUTH: No.
COOTIE: Your heart is full of bitterness and hate, Ruth. (His head disappears again)
DICK: You done the essay for Phil 720?
RUTH: No.
DICK: It’s due tomorrow.
RUTH: Yeah?
DICK: Yeah.
NORMAN: Is that a good course, Philosophy 720?
RUTH: Nope. Professor Quinn is an albino dwarf queer with halitosis and he smokes too much.
DICK: He does not.
RUTH: Three packs of Pall Mall a day is too much. He’s gonna die of cancer.
DICK: He’s a genius.
RUTH: You have a thing about queers.
DICK: Fuck off, Ruth.
RUTH: You started it.
RUTH goes into hall. DICK stands and eats his banana, chewing slowly. NORMAN tries to read but DICK’s presence distracts him.
DICK: How come you’re reading that book?
NORMAN: I don’t know. It’s supposed to be pretty good.
DICK: What are you gonna do when you finish it?
NORMAN (Thinks): I’ll start another one.
DICK: Yeah, but what happens when you forget this one. I mean, it’ll be as if you hadn’t even read it, so what’s the point?
NORMAN: Oh, I don’t know. I happen to believe you learn things even when you don’t know it. Like, if you’re reading something right now . . . I mean,- I am reading something right now and maybe I’ll forget it in a while . . . I mean, I’m forgetting a lot of it already, but I happen to believe I’m being altered in lots of ways I may not be aware of because of . . . well, you know, books and experiences. (Pause) Life.
DICK: That’s what you believe, huh?
NORMAN: Um, yes, I believe that.
MIKE and COOTIE enter, wearing heavy winter parkas and boots. THEY look like trappers.
COOTIE: Boy, if we’re too late I hate to think of all the dead cats we’ll have on our conscience.
MIKE: You gonna help, Dick?
DICK: Fuck off.
MIKE: How about you, Norman, aren’t you gonna do your bit for the world of cats?
NORMAN: I’m just in the middle of this chapter. (MIKE and COOTIE shake their heads in disapproval and rush out. NORMAN tries to read again as DICK eats the banana, watching him) Hey, it’s really hard to read, you know, when someone’s watching you and everything.
DICK: Don’t you ever get the feeling you’re really irrelevant?
NORMAN: I don’t think so.
DICK (In one breath): I mean, you go into the mathematics department every day and sit there looking out the window and thinking about cars and women and every now and then a couple of numbers come into your
head and there’s all these Chinese guys running around solving all the problems worth solving while you sit there wondering what the hell you’re doing.
NORMAN: No, it’s not like that. Well, you know, it’s not that simple. I mean . . . (Pause) I guess it’s a lot like that. Are you doing anything relevant?
DICK: You can’t get more relevant than Far Eastern studies. Ask me anything about the Far East and I’ll tell you the answer That’s where everything’s happening. China, Vietnam, Japan, Korea. You name it.
NORMAN: I guess I ought to know more about those things. I don’t know, I keep thinking there’s a lot of things I should know about.
DICK: The thing is, Norman, the way I see it, you’re already deeply committed to the system. You take away black ghettos, stop the war in Vietnam, distribute the wealth equally throughout the country, and you wouldn’t be in graduate school.
NORMAN: How come?
DICK: You see, you don’t know anything about what makes it all work, do you? (HE throws the banana peel into the cat box)
NORMAN: Hey, you shouldn’t throw that in there.
DICK: Why not?
NORMAN: Well, I mean, that’s the box for the cat. Maybe she won’t want to have kittens on a banana peel.
DICK: Norman, how long have you been living here?
NORMAN: Well, you know, about three months. A little longer maybe. About three months and two weeks altogether.
DICK: Have you ever seen a cat around here?
NORMAN: Well, I don’t know. I’m out a lot of the time.
DICK: Norman, there is no fucking cat. We haven’t got a cat. Boy, for a graduate student you got a lot to learn, (HE starts out but turns to look NORMAN over a last time) Jesus.
Then DICK’s gone down the hall. NORMAN kneels by the cat box and examines it as some muffled piano chords fill the silence. It’s BOB playing a lazy, rich, drifting progression, moody-Bill-Evans-style. KATHY walks through the kitchen in a man’s robe carrying a towel SHE lights the stack heater. From inside the hall we hear DICK’s voice yelling.
DICK (Offstage): STOP PLAYING THAT FUCKING NOISE. I’M TRYING TO READ, HEY, BOB.
KATHY (Goes to the hall door and yells down): Mind your own goddamn business, Richard. (A door slams, and the music, which had stopped momentarily, starts again, but louder. SHE turns) Hey, listen, Norman. If you’re gonna be in here for a while could you do me a favor and make sure no one turns off the water heater, ’cause I’m just taking a shower. And if you get a chance, could you put on some coffee, ’cause I’ll be coming out in about ten minutes and I’d like a cup when I come out. O.K.?
