DILLINGER: Maybe this’ll be the night?
SPALDING GRAY: Not so-so sure of it.
DILLINGER: Another botched repaving job. Another notch not
marked.
SPALDING GRAY: We are the basics, the swilled indifference,
the hunger and the desolation.
DILLINGER: Then, well, somebody to tell it, that’s a need
that’s going unmet, still. Still, we’ve got isolation to be ourselves in.
SPALDING GRAY: Ship-shaped, another doddle, a wealthier way
of strolling, and the booing just doesn’t do justice to what it represents.
Another semaphore gone unseen but never hidden.
DILLINGER: We get summed up by it, yes we surely do. The
limit’s set. Looking for a little splash of red in the breaks of all this boring blue.
That happens to me never.
SPALDING GRAY: A surefire ticker that’s taped up, bandaged
with rose stems and caged radicals. Nothing’s bought at less, or what it takes
lying lifeless on the operating table to be somebody’s neighbor or idol or
soap-scum of a husband.
DILLINGER: We give a little more-or-less all the time.
SPALDING GRAY: Wiser, heaved on the pyre just out of time.
DILLINGER: This’ll give a little assistance to the flame.
SPALDING GRAY: Perhaps. But I never treated her right or
wrong enough. I keep throwing all of these genuine things away to make room for
the tousled sort of thoughts I keep getting, having, ignoring, or whatever’s
next left to do.
DILLINGER: “Her” is just some dim idea you had one blustery
concomitant afternoon when the train butchers were luring saps with five-dollar-bill
fingers.
SPALDING GRAY: That’s the slurp without the gulp.
DILLINGER: I’d rather the skies spell out what’s going to
come, harbingers snuck by clouds through sullen folds in the weave of my sentiments,
almost like a pretty girl or an untouched bottle of rye. Peruse my gray-white
specials all you want. The greasy spoon’s downstairs, Dick.
SPALDING GRAY: The past tense is so passé.
DILLINGER: Without’s just another way to stay closer than
faraway.
SPALDING GRAY: Grades, escalators of the more mindfully
mannered sort, steps or just rungs to snap off and fall through, stairs to
tumble around on. We give better names than we get every time.
DILLINGER: Yup. Like, “He’s a lawyer. He ain’t the one for
you.” The things in our past we just can’t give up on or get past.
SPALDING GRAY: We all carry our own damn crosses. We all
bear some ailment of some piss-poor reason to keep going. I want my bus driver
to be a holy man.
DILLINGER: Well, we all have a propensity for sentimentality
some of the time, correct?
SPALDING GRAY: Right on. More to it. Whatever bends.
DILLINGER: Huge hearts. Fucking gigantic fucking hearts.
SPALDING GRAY: The opposite of that?
DILLINGER: Bathing at odd hours. Keeping a scorecard at a
day game. Operating on Mission Accomplished visions. Melting spoons into rings.
A gas, really, isn’t it?
SPALDING GRAY: A damn shame, for most. That’s the shit I
stepped in.
DILLINGER: Leonardo The Cat is where it’s at.
SPALDING GRAY: Sure. But who goes in for all the mushy I-wish-ewer-here
stuff?
DILLINGER: See this? That’s my hand shooting up to be
counted.
SPALDING GRAY: By the way, Francis Ford Coppola can suck a
toe, by the way.
DILLINGER: I see.
SPALDING GRAY: No. No you don’t. You see, we’re rafting
without the white water or the rapids, or even the river. The edge of it’s
here, though. Tough as aluminum.
DILLINGER: Another dope duped by a plunge into necessity’s
kitchen. See this? This is me grimacing hardly at all.
SPALDING GRAY: A thimble of white wine for your cognition.
DILLINGER: Pass the water. I’m over contagious habituation. Hold
on. See this? This is me under the table, all curled up with a bad book and an
awl.
SPALDING GRAY: Let’s get found.
DILLINGER: Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.
SPALDING GRAY: Start it.
DILLINGER: And in the beginning there was an apple and two
idiots with the morals of a couch louse.
SPALDING GRAY: The slithering ways of the world waiting to
be discovered. Misery marks its territory with cocktail napkins. Look. I’m
scrawling my name on one right now. It’s a dissipated pleasure, at best, but
still I ain’t looking for a trade.
DILLINGER: Live it off. Sleep it on. I’m deteriorating right
behind my eyes.
SPALDING GRAY: Later mornings lead to later nights. I haven’t
caught a worm in twenty years. Fuck it. I’m disregarding good judgment for the
rest of supper. My heart’s so swollen with self-absorption that I hunt hunched
and bent over after whatever’s leading me through it all.
DILLINGER: The busses are crammed with hasslers of mailmen
and creeps of unjustified means.
SPALDING GRAY: Yet near’s my only far, still.
DILLINGER: And I still have some answered questions for you,
Huckleberry.
SPALDING GRAY: The things that April brings, sourer and
sorted sorts of things.
DILLINGER: Gravitated towards some ill-fitting grace. Talking
ain’t the thing.
SPALDING GRAY: Some guys can wear hats. I am not nor ever have
been one of them. It’s just the way it doesn’t go.
DILLINGER: Fuck it. I’m buying up all the lottery tickets in
town and calling my lawyer.
SPALDING GRAY: And there goes another petal, afloat just an
inch above the muck.
DILLINGER: I don’t go out for all that. A rheumatic temper
that just leads to more pointless temptation. I think I might be suffering from
an avalanche of delusion.
SPALDING GRAY: I think there might be another voice in your
head to tell you of such occurrences.
DILLINGER: Now that I’d be lief to believe.
SPALDING GRAY: Ah. Just another copout’s disaster in that
cranium of yours.
DILLINGER: Calling no cars. Good morning, doctor.
SPALDING GRAY: Ok. Get it out of reverse, Chief.
DILLINGER: Cloudy tufts, pooled resources of lavender and
hand-washing’s linger. Roosevelt’s exit strategy. A plain man’s planned canal. Forget
the fruit; I just want the core— what remains, what’s left.
SPALDING GRAY: You’re drunk.
DILLINGER: Again. You forgot, “Again.”
SPALDING GRAY: That’s a given.
DILLINGER: Take!
SPALDING GRAY: The most slender of all apologies, Hula
Hooper.
DILLINGER: Shed the happy act. I’m splitting town with a Korean
girl named Bo who knows five languages. Fuck all these melancholic asides and all
of these soppy-saturated bastards. I’m walking the show with a stripper named
Codeine.
SPALDING GRAY: What?
DILLINGER: That’s right. That’s it. Go on. Go ahead. Give me
a tissue of déjàvu. I’m in need of some of reminiscence’s insistence.
SPALDING GRAY: The plight of the meekly insistent. To be
worn like bandanas on the neck. Overstate your case, please. I’m out of touch
with such misgivings.
DILLINGER: A simple balm for a burn. Rest more. Live a
little. I’m ordering the drinks from here on out, Hal.
SPALDING GRAY: Because is its own why.
DILLINGER: Hey. I used to say that all the time.
SPALDING GRAY: And now?
DILLINGER: Now? I just refuse whatever's offered to me. It’s
great fun. Give it a shot sometime.
SPALDING GRAY: Speaking of which, I need something to toast
with.
DILLINGER: With or of? Or in? Or…fuck it. I’m moving to the
Outer Continental Shelf.
SPALDING GRAY: Is that even possible?
DILLINGER: I don’t know, and I don’t give a shit.
SPALDING GRAY: Be kind.
DILLINGER: Fuck George Saunders. That guy’s crap.
SPALDING GRAY: True. But still…
DILLINGER: Blown down by some dirty trade wind. Knocked
around by another palooka biding his time on the vine. I don’t get what I don’t
for a reason. Get it?
SPALDING GRAY: Getting carried away, again and again. That’s
what we’ve got. It is all there is.
DILLINGER: Left. Right. Left. Left. Motherfucking left.
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