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

cook it and we’ll eat it.

BISHOP: What?

PHYLLIS: Go cut off the nun’s arm and I’ll cook it. All right?

BISHOP: I c-c-can’t!

PHYLLIS: Pardon me?

BISHOP: I c-c-can’t do that.

PHYLLIS: I thought you were hungry. I’m sorry.

BISHOP: I am.

PHYLLIS: Do you think it’s going to start raining cheeseburgers?

BISHOP: N-n-no.

PHYLLIS: Can you eat the air? Can you eat the water?

BISHOP: N-n-no.

PHYLLIS: So what are you going to eat?

BISHOP: I don’t know!

PHYLLIS: Do you want to starve to death?

BISHOP: I can’t d-d-do it!!

PHYLLIS: Look! I’m frightened too! Don’t you think I’m scared? I am. I’m scared. So what? What do we do? Do we sit here and watch each other decay? Quizzing each other on Katharine Hepburn trivia while we wither to skeletons? Is that it? Or do we take matters into our own hands? She’s already dead. You’re not doing anything wrong.

BISHOP (Out): She was a nun!

PHYLLIS: That’s why I picked her!

BISHOP: Don’t m-m-make me.

PHYLLIS: It’s time to grow up.

BISHOP: Why don’t you love me?

PHYLLIS: Who said I don’t?

BISHOP: If you loved me you w-wouldn’t make me d-d-do this.

PHYLLIS: No. I’d let you starve to death. In front of me. I’d let you die. That, I take it, would be proof of my maternal instincts.

BISHOP: You do it.

PHYLLIS: Let’s be realistic. You are wearing Dalton blues. I have on my Michael Kors.

BISHOP: What’s that?

PHYLLIS: My dress, which I’d just as soon not splatter with blood.

BISHOP: I c-c-can’t.

PHYLLIS: It’s easy.

BISHOP: I’m not hungry anymore.

PHYLLIS: Just do it!

BISHOP: Lipstick filled me up. That was one big lipstick.

PHYLLIS: Make me proud? Please, Bishop.

BISHOP: But—

PHYLLIS (Gentle): When you get back, we’ll build a fire.

BISHOP: Yes, M-m-mother.

PHYLLIS: That’s a good boy.

(Bishop exits over a dune. Phyllis addresses the audience.) I had a child whom I loved and whom I taught to sever the arms of nuns.

(There is a light change, indicating a flashback. Howard enters, perhaps wearing tails. Phyllis may drop some piece of her costume. She joins him. It is their wedding night. She is giddy and young.)

HOWARD: Are you happy?

PHYLLIS: It was a beautiful wedding.

HOWARD: It was.

PHYLLIS: Canary and avocado.

HOWARD: You were a beautiful bride.

PHYLLIS: Do you love me, Howard?

HOWARD: I do, dumpling.

PHYLLIS: My name is Phyllis.

HOWARD: I know that.

PHYLLIS: Why did you call me dumpling?

HOWARD: It was a euphemism.

PHYLLIS (As if he’d sneezed): God bless you. (Out) I was young and used to coasting on my looks.

HOWARD: You look very beautiful, there by the window.

PHYLLIS: Me? You mean me?

HOWARD (Out): She was silly. She was a breath of fresh air. (To Phyllis) Let’s go to bed.

PHYLLIS: Are you sleepy?

HOWARD: That’s not what I meant, sweetpea.

PHYLLIS: Sweetpea? Who’s sweetpea?

HOWARD: That’s not what I meant.

PHYLLIS: What did you mean? By what? When? Where were we?

HOWARD: Let’s make love.

PHYLLIS: Couldn’t we get to know each other first?

HOWARD: It’s our wedding night.

PHYLLIS: It’s never too late.

HOWARD: Come to bed.

PHYLLIS: My sister Marie, who was always the smart one, says that sex is a beautiful, special event, and a woman’s only real power over a man.

HOWARD: You have a beautiful neck.

PHYLLIS: My mother says, “What will you have and how would you like that cooked?” She’s a waitress.

HOWARD: Beautiful ears.

PHYLLIS: My father just grunts if you block the TV.

HOWARD: Beautiful lips.

PHYLLIS (Out): He has remote control. He likes wrestling.

HOWARD: Beautiful shoulders.

PHYLLIS: I want a baby.

HOWARD: Why?

PHYLLIS: You would like me better if I had a baby.

HOWARD: I don’t know if that’s true, cookiepuss.

PHYLLIS (Frustrated): I keep telling you—

HOWARD: I know, I know. Your name is Phyllis.

PHYLLIS: I think if we had a child we would be bonded. And you would feel, even if only unconsciously, a debt of gratitude towards me for supplying you with a miniature version of yourself, who would in turn reproduce and continue the cycle, ensuring, in an abstract way, your immortality, thus easing your fear of death.

HOWARD: Phyllis?

PHYLLIS: I read it.

HOWARD: Let’s go to bed.

PHYLLIS: I want to make a baby!

HOWARD: I want to hold you. I want to protect you. I want to keep you with me forever and shield you from the world. I want to take care of you.

PHYLLIS: I think I’d like that.

HOWARD: You would, cupcake.

PHYLLIS: My name is—

HOWARD: Stop talking.

(Howard embraces her and kisses her. Bishop appears, standing atop the dune. He holds high the nun’s arm, dripping with blood, still clutching a rosary.)

BISHOP: I DID IT!!!

(Phyllis and Howard break their embrace and look up at Bishop. There is a blackout. Phyllis walks into a pool of light and addresses the audience.)

PHYLLIS: Lately, I have been having a recurring dream. When I was a little girl, we lived in a part of Philadelphia called Society Hill. In an apartment. Down the hall from us lived a Mr. Antonelli. Mr. Antonelli worked at the Museum of Natural History. And he was big. He was a big man. Must’ve weighed three hundred pounds. He was the fattest human being I’d ever seen, close up. But he was well- groomed. And on certain nights of the week, Saturdays, I think, Saturdays mostly and Thursdays, Mr. Antonelli would dress as a woman and go wherever three-hundred-pound men who dress as women go, to seek whatever they can mistake for love. He’d put on a skirt and a blouse, sometimes a mumu-Bloody-Mary-type thing. And a lot of makeup. He wore a wig, a reddish kind of Ethel Merman affair. And always lovely matching jewelry sets: green rhinestone earrings, green rhinestone bracelets, brooches. He got all dolled up and went off to seek others like himself (although I can’t imagine there were many others like Mr. Antonelli; three-hundred-pound transvestites are pretty much on their own in the world, I should think). When I was six, I was going to a friend’s birthday party one Saturday, and I was wearing the sweetest little powder-blue jumper, and Mr. Antonelli got into the elevator with my mother and me. He looked down at me—this great mountain of gelatinous white flesh, and said, “My goodness, what a sweet little blue dress you have on.” And I said, “You could borrow it