Etiquette and Vitriol by Nicky Silver (classic fiction .txt) 📗

like death! You know that Jacques Brel song? “My death waits in a double bed—” The contortions, the experiments, the complete savage abandon!! If this bed could talk, the stories it could tell!—Is this the same bed? It smells different. Did you get a new bed?

SERGE: I’m asking you nicely. I’ve tried to be direct. I’ve tried to be blunt. Now, I’m asking you as a friend—

OTTO: We are friends, aren’t we?

SERGE: I suppose.

OTTO: Then tell me, as a friend, what’s wrong with me?

SERGE: You’re insane.

OTTO: I’m forty years old and I have no one in my life!!

SERGE: You are THIRTY-THREE!!

OTTO: You have a terrible temper. You know that? I’m forty-one and you’re twenty-eight, but with your temper and too much exercise, we’ll be the same age in six months.

(The phone rings. Serge answers it.)

SERGE: Hello?. . . . Yes. . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes. (He extends the phone to Otto) It’s for you.

OTTO (Singing): I’m Mr. Popular! (He takes the phone) Hello? . . . Obviously, I’m still here. . . . No, we’re NOT back together yet! . . . No, no, I’m not making a fool of myself. . . . Yes, I saw her today. . . . She laughed. . . . Fifty dollars. . . . I have to go. . . . I’m hanging up! (He hangs up) It was my mother.

SERGE: Please leave.

OTTO: She’s lonely. She threw out her back. She’s in traction.

SERGE: We all have our problems.

OTTO (Sarcastic): Oh you are so sympathetic. You’re a saint! When you look up sympathy in the dictionary, it says, “see Serge Stubin.” You’re too good, that’s your problem.

SERGE: I’m sorry.

OTTO: Oh, no. What do you care? The poor woman is stuck in a hospital bed somewhere, out in the night, her limbs hanging like a Calder mobile. Her son’s out of work, wandering the streets, a forty-four year old nebbish with no future, and not much of past to speak of.

SERGE: How did it happen?

OTTO: Who cares! Who cares how it happened. I HATE HER! SHE RUINED MY LIFE. THAT BITCH CONDEMNED ME TO AN ETERNITY OF SELF-LOATHING. Did you know I have a neurotic fear of being upside down? My analyst says I need to experience my rage. She doodles while I talk to her. She pretends to take notes, but I caught her one day. She was drawing the Lincoln Memorial on a cocktail napkin! It was very good, but I told her it stunk—I’m not giving her any satisfaction—

(He pulls a box of Snowcaps from his bag) I LOVE SNOWCAPS!! Most people only eat them at the movies, but you know they’re good anytime.

SERGE: Don’t eat any more.

OTTO (Eating Snowcaps): I’M STARVING! Did I mention that I lie in bed at night and pretend you’re there next to me? I do. Did I mention that I hung your picture in my bathroom? I taped it on the medicine chest, over the mirror. Now when I wake up and I look at myself—I’m you!! I thought it would make me like myself more. It didn’t. It made me like you more—and I cut myself shaving continually.

SERGE: You have got to move on with your life.

OTTO: I put two candles in the bathroom. One on either side of your picture. It’s like a shrine. Well it’s not like a shrine, it IS a shrine! I sacrifice small animals to you. I use the sink. It’s not as messy as you might imagine. I do mice, and squirrels. Last week I did a baby goat.

SERGE: Oh my God.

OTTO: I’m lying. Or kidding. I don’t know which—about the goat.

SERGE: Still.

OTTO: And the mice. I killed a mosquito once. But it had nothing to do with you. Do you remember how terrified you were of bugs?

SERGE: You’re afraid of bugs.

OTTO: You project, that’s your problem. You always had a neurotic fear of insects. I love them! I adore bugs. I keep roaches as pets.

SERGE (Pointing to a spot on the floor): Good. Then you can have that one, there.

OTTO (In terror): WHERE!? WHERE!? KILL IT! KILL IT NOW!!

SERGE: I’m lying. Or kidding. I don’t know which.

OTTO: I knew that. You are a complete sadist. You get pleasure from my abject misery. Maybe that’s why I love you so much. You could love me again if I were blond. I could be blond. All those boys you work with are blond, aren’t they? Except for the brunets and the redheads. I could be blond! I could bleach my hair. I’d look repulsive. I’d look hideous. You’d like that. You’d like it if I were freakishly ugly.—Is it unbelievably hot in here again? (He goes to the thermostat)

SERGE: You’re going to break that!

OTTO: OH WHAT DO YOU CARE? YOU CAN ALWAYS BUY ANOTHER. You can buy anything you want. You have all the money in the world and I am not speaking hyperbolically. I think you do. I think you’ve used it all up. That’s why I can’t ever seem to get any: YOU HAVE IT ALL!!!

(Otto throws open Serge’s closet, which is lined with mirrors. Upon seeing himself, he shrieks in horror and slams the doors shut)

I love your apartment! It’s so put together. Do you remember my apartment? It’s pathetic. Everything is old, and broken and chipped, from the Salvation Army. I’m forty-five years old and I still have bookcases made from cinder blocks like a college dormitory.

SERGE: You have money.

OTTO: BLOOD MONEY! Money my father left me. I hated him. He was a loathsome human being. Did I ever tell you that I went to his funeral dressed as Bloody Mary?—The character from South Pacific, not the cocktail.—I wore a giant mumu, a lei around my neck and a frozen daiquiri paper umbrella in my hair. I just did it to embarrass him. But then no one came anyway. His was the most ill-attended funeral I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen quite a few. Lately I go to