Deadeye Dick Page 0,45

room, imagining, I think, what sort of life and lover I must have to be so impish and gay—so early in the morning. Into the reception room comes a young broadcasting executive, flawlessly groomed, urbane and sexy. What marvelous New York bullshit! He is the lover! He stops and kisses her, and then she whispers in his ear. It was almost as though New York City were true. A couple of spunky kids from the Middle West, making it big in Gotham.

FELIX: YOU shouldn’t have whispered what you did.

GENEVIEVE: I’ll say it again: “Tell your brother to take a bath.”

FELIX: What a time to say a thing like that.

GENEVIEVE: His play is opening tonight, and he stinks to high heaven. He hasn’t taken a bath since he’s been here.

FELIX: You call a remark like that romantic?

GENEVIEVE: I call it family life. I call it intimacy. That’s all over now. (She hauls a suitcase from the closet, opens it, flops it gaping on the couch) Look how hungry that suitcase is.

FELIX: I’m sorry I said what I said.

GENEVIEVE: YOU yelled. You yelled, “Shut the fuck up!” You yelled, “If you don’t like my relatives, get the hell out of my life!”

FELIX: It was over in a minute.

GENEVIEVE: YOU bet your English boots it was. And I walked out of that office, never to return. I’m gone, old friend. What a bore and a boor you were to follow me. What a hick.

(The closet contains mostly sporting goods, ski parkas, wetsuits, warm-up jackets, and so on. GENEVIEVE sorts through these, throwing what she wants on the couch, near the open suitcase. FELIX’S manly bumptiousness decays as he watches. He is a person of weak character, an actor who can’t bear to be ignored. He elects to recapture GENEVIEVE’S attention by becoming pitiful and harrowingly frank.)

FELIX(loudly abject): It’s true, it’s true, it’s true.

GENEVIEVE(uninterested): We never did go scuba diving.

FELIX: I am ashamed of my family! You’re right! You got me!

(RUDY doesn’t do anything through all this. He just sits.)

GENEVIEVE: Scuba was next.

FELIX: Father served a prison term, if you want to know.

GENEVIEVE (unexpectedly fascinated): Really?

FELIX: NOW you know.

GENEVIEVE: What for?

(Pause.)

FELIX: Murder.

GENEVIEVE(moved): Oh, my God. How awful.

FELIX: NOW you know. There’s a nice piece of gossip for the broadcast industry.

GENEVIEVE: Never mind the gossip. What it must have done to your brother—what it must have done to you.

FELIX: I’m all right.

GENEVIEVE: There’s no reason why you should be. And your poor brother—no wonder he is the way he is. I thought he had been born defective, that the umbilical cord had strangled him or something. I thought he was an idiot savant.

FELIX: What’s an idiot savant?

GENEVIEVE: Somebody who’s stupid in every possible way but one—like playing the piano.

FELIX: He can’t play the piano.

GENEVIEVE: But he wrote a play—and it’s going to be produced. He may not take baths. He may not have any friends. He may be so shy he’s afraid to talk to anybody. But he wrote a play, and he has an extraordinary vocabulary. He has a bigger vocabulary than both of us put together, and sometimes he says something that is really very funny or wise.

FELIX: He has a degree in pharmacy.

GENEVIEVE: I thought he was an idiot savant in that way, too—theater and pharmacy. But he’s the son of a murderer. No wonder he’s the way he is. No wonder he wants to be invisible. I saw him walking down Christopher Street last Sunday, and he was as big and handsome as Gary Cooper, but nobody else could see him. He went into a coffee shop, and sat down at the counter, but he couldn’t get waited on—because he wasn’t there. No wonder.

FELIX: Don’t ask for details of the murder.

(Pause.)

GENEVIEVE: That’s a request I’m bound to honor. Is he in prison now?

FELIX: NO—but he might as well be. He might as well be dead.

GENEVIEVE: Everything stops—as I suddenly understand.

FELIX: Please stay, Gen. I don’t want to be one of those jerks who gets married and divorced, married and divorced, married and divorced again. Something’s very wrong with them.

GENEVIEVE: I can’t ever go back to the radio station again—not after that scene. It was so embarrassing.

FELIX: I don’t want you to work anymore anyway.

GENEVIEVE: I enjoy work. I enjoy having money of my own. What would I do—sit around the house all day?

FELIX: Have a baby.

GENEVIEVE: Oh, my goodness.

FELIX: Why not?

GENEVIEVE: DO you really think I would make a good mother?

FELIX: The best.

GENEVIEVE: What would you want—a boy or a girl?

FELIX: