Read an Excerpt
Scene 1
Train roars. Lights flash outside the windows.
LULA enters from the rear of the car in bright, skimpy summer clothes and sandals. She carries a net bag full of paper books, fruit, and other anonymous articles. She is wearing sunglasses, which she pushes up on her forehead from time to time. LULA is a tall, slender, beautiful woman with long red hair hanging straight doom her back, wearing only loud lipstick in somebody's good taste. She is eating an apple, very daintily. Coming down the car toward CLAY.
She stops beside CLAY's seat and hangs languidly from the strap, still managing to eat the apple. It is apparent that she is going to sit in the seat next to CLAY, and that she is only waiting for him to notice her before she sits.
CLAY sits as before, looking just beyond his magazine, now and again pulling the magazine slowly back and forth in front of his face in a hopeless effort to fan himself. Then he sees the woman hanging there beside him and he looks up into her face, smiling quizzically.
LULA. Hello.
CLAY. Uh, hi're you?
LULA. I'm going to sit down .... O.K.?
CLAY. Sure.
LULA.
[Savings down onto the seat, pushing her legs straight out asif she is very weary]
Oooof! Too much weight.
CLAY. Ha, doesn't look like much to me.[Leaning back against the window, a little surprised and maybe stiff]
LULA. It's so anyway.[And she moves her toes in the sandals, then pulls her right leg up on the left knee, better to inspect the bottoms of the sandals and the back of her heel. She appears for a second not to notice that CLAY is sitting next to her or that she has spoken to him just a second before.CLAY looks at the magazine, then out the black window. As he does this, she turns very quickly toward him]Weren't you staring at me through the window?
CLAY.[Wheeling around and very much stiffened]What?
LULA. Weren't you staring at me through the window? At the last stop?
CLAY. Staring at you? What do you mean?
LULA. Don't you know what staring means?
CLAY. I saw you through the window . . . if that's what it means. I don't know if I was staring. Seems to me you were staring through the window at me.
LULA I was. But only after I'd turned around and saw you staring through that window down in the vicinity of my ass and legs.
CLAY. Really?
LULA. Really. I guess you were just taking those idle potshots. Nothing else to do. Run your mind over people's flesh.
CLAY. Oh boy. Wow, now I admit I was looking in your direction. But the rest of that weight is yours.
LULA. I suppose.
CLAY. Staring through train windows is weird business. Much weirder than staring very sedately at abstract asses.
LULA. That's why I came looking through the window . . . so you'd have more than that to go on. I even smiled at you.
CLAY. That's right.
LULA. I even got into this train, going some other way than mine. Walked down the aisle . . . searching you out.
CLAY. Really? That's pretty funny.
LULA. That's pretty funny . . . . God, you're dull.
CLAY. Well, I'm sorry, lady, but I really wasn't prepared for party talk.
LULA. No, you're not. What are you prepared for? [Wrapping the apple core in a Kleenex and dropping it on the floor]
CLAY.[Takes her conversation as pure sex talk. He turns to confront her squarely with this idea] I'm prepared for anything. How about you?
LULA.[Laughing loudly and cutting it off abruptly]
What do you think you're doing?
CLAY. What?
LULA. You think I want to pick you up, get you to take me somewhere and screw me, huh?
CLAY. Is that the way I look?
LULA. You look like you been trying to grow a beard. That's exactly what you look likes You look like you live in New Jersey with your parents and are trying to grow a beard. That's what. You look like you've been reading Chinese poetry and drinking lukewarm sugarless tea.
[Laughs, uncrossing and recrossing her legs]
You look like death eating a soda cracker.
CLAY.[Cocking his head from one side to the other, embarrassed and trying to make some comeback, but also intrigued by what the woman is saying . . . even the sharp city coarseness of her voice, which is still a kind of gentle sidewalk throb]
Really? I look like all that?
LULA. Not all of it.
[She feints a seriousness to cover an actual somber tone]
I lie a lot.
[Smiling]
It helps me control the world.
CLAY.[Relieved and laughing louder than the humor]
Yeah, I bet.
LULA. But it's true, most of it, right? Jersey? Your bumpy neck?
CLAY. How'd you know all that? Huh? Really, I mean about Jersey . . . and even the beard. I met you before? You know Warren Enright?
LULA. You tried to make it with your sister when you were ten. [CLAY leanes back hard against the back of the seat, his eyes opening now, still trying to look amused] But I succeeded a few weeks ago. [She starts to laugh again]
CLAY. What're you talking about? Warren tell you that You're a friend of Georgia's?
LULA. I told you I lie. I don't know your sister. I don't know Warren Enright.
CLAY. You mean you're just picking these things out of the air?
LULA. Is Warren Enright a tall skinny black black boy with a phony English accent?
CLAY. I figured you knew him.
LULA. But I don't. I just figured you would know somebody like that. [Laughs]
CLAY. Yeah, yeah.
LULA. You're probably on your way to his house now. clay. That's right.
LULA.
