Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

MARSHA: You’re right.

VINCENT: Emily, considering you’re serving the meal, you really should wash your hands after you go to the bathroom.

MARSHA: But how about the way you walked out of my room last night?

VINCENT: I’ll tell you about that. You were already asleep, lying on your right side with the sheet over you, and your tanned arm was on your hip, overlapping your body. It was absolutely beautiful, and I had so much affection for you and warmth. Do you call that dependency or do you call it warmth and affection?

MARSHA: Warmth and affection.

VINCENT: Yes, and that’s what wanting to be with you this summer has been about, because I know that it’s a rare time for us. I mean it. That’s what infuriates me about you. You never see beyond the surface of things; that’s your major obstacle.

EMILY: Your sensitivity is very sweet and touching, Vinnie, but you sure don’t know how to make a dressing for tomatoes.

VINCENT: Lousy, absolutely lousy, I admit it. I only had apple cider vinegar in my house, that’s why.

EMILY: You never put vinegar on tomatoes.

VINCENT: Do you know why I have to constantly defend myself against the two of you? Why I get so uncalm and panicky and completely frenetic when I’m here? Because I’m with the most like-myself people in the world, so this chemical thing happens, a substantiation of myself, which absolutely drives me crazy. It’s like everything I always hold back because I’m against the world I’m confronted with in two other human beings. So maybe it’s best we don’t see each other anymore if I offend you. You didn’t hear what she said before, Emily, when you were fixing the broccoli. She said it was so nice here without me.

MARSHA: No I didn’t.

VINCENT: You said we were so calm here without you.

MARSHA: That’s right .

VINCENT: It was definitely a comparative thing and a put-down of how alive I was.

MARSHA: We were alive when we were calm.

VINCENT: Listen to her, she is so ready to be angry with me and hate me. When I walked in here I was like a schoolboy coming home from school and finding the mother angry. I spend an hour searching for a picture today to do a painting for you, Marsha, I bring it, I show it to you, and you are so un-aristocratic that you say you’re angry without even acknowledging the picture.

MARSHA: I didn’t want a blonde picture.

VINCENT: It’s not a blonde, there’s sunlight in the sky.

MARSHA: It’s a blonde.

VINCENT: You know you’re having hallucinations — you take too much LBJ.

EMILY: I’d be happy to make some coffee, but I must say I’d really love some chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream.

MARSHA: I’m not going out for anything.

VINCENT: It’s nine o’clock now, I’m leaving. I have to take the car for tomorrow morning, 8:15 mass. You know I’m very sad tonight. I came in completely happy, in such a rare mood.

MARSHA: A healthy person doesn’t let someone else affect him to that extent.

VINCENT: Healthy people don’t have moods, because all moments to them are the same. Anyway, I never said I was healthy.

EMILY: I make fantastic homemade pie.

VINCENT: Oh Em, let’s go over to the other side of the island and get peaches?

EMILY: Okay, but I don’t want to get into a whole homemade pie-making scene.

VINCENT: Emily’s gotten so healthy. From above the waist. You know what I think of when I think of women? The breasts, not the vagina.

EMILY: You really do?

VINCENT: Oh look at her, trying so hard to be elegant, peeling the skin. You think putting that peach juice on the floor is making anyone happy? You think it’s some sort of Johnson’s wax? I’ll just tell you one thing.

MARSHA: One thing.

VINCENT: What I was talking to you about last night was rarity.

MARSHA: How rare can it be when you feel it every two seconds?

VINCENT: I don’t — only when I’m with you. I never use that expression with other people. But I won’t feel it much longer, I’m beginning to feel very alone here. These peaches were not washed, I can feel the dirt on each one. There’s water at the bottom of the bowl, but they were not washed.

EMILY: Vinnie, please don’t start getting paranoid and alone. It’s too sad. Because God knows your life compared to mine at this point is just so much better and so much sweeter. If you’re going to start getting depressed when I’m punching thirty so fucking soon, just shut up.

VINCENT: You know you’re pathetic, you’re really pathetic.

MARSHA: There he goes.

VINCENT: You really are, you’re so self-indulgent.

EMILY: Boy, if I could just count the times this summer you’ve said I’m pathetic. I’m self-indulgent, but you’re talking the whole fucking night about being alone. You are not alone, you’re self-indulgent.

VINCENT: That’s why I recognize it in others.

MARSHA: This is one of the most difficult meals I’ve ever had.

VINCENT: You really consider this a difficult meal? If your stomach is full at the end of it, it wasn’t a difficult meal.

MARSHA: This is a whole act, you know, a complete act.

VINCENT: Let’s have some more wine, Emily, and get drunk.

EMILY: No, darling, I don’t drink anymore. It’s a habit I’ve given up.

VINCENT: Course you have.

EMILY: Thank you, Marshie my love.

MARSHA: Let me touch your hair, Em. We have a very good relationship.

VINCENT: That exchange of looks between you was terrible just now. This is so Jules and Jim, you two are in love with me. I wonder what Nico’s doing, alone with all those people wanting to go to bed with him, alone with Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn at dinner. You know going to bed with someone is a fantastic thing. That’s why promiscuity is such a horrible word. I think going to bed with many, many people is very beautiful, I really do, if it’s done with a certain kind of sensitivity and sensibility.

MARSHA: That’s the point — going to bed with a lot of people tends to dull sensitivity. And don’t forget, you don’t go to bed with a lot of people.

VINCENT: No, I don’t. But I’ll tell you, one of the reasons why the people I go to bed with once fall in love with me — and I always know they do — is because I look them in the eyes. I do it not out of loving or of liking their eyes or anything, but because it’s rare for me and I want to know exactly what I’m doing and who I’m with.

MARSHA: I look at them in the eyes too.

VINCENT: Yeah, but you don’t go to bed with strangers.

MARSHA: I do so, I get to know them afterwards.

VINCENT: Have you ever met someone at a party and gone to bed with them that night?

MARSHA: A lot of people I’ve gone to bed with the night I met them.

VINCENT: I’m talking about people you had no idea you were going to bed with, and you also knew during the bed that you’d never see them again.

MARSHA: No.

VINCENT: And so you look at them to hold on to the experience.

EMILY: I can’t go to bed with someone for once anymore because I see through it, I see through to the end and I see too much, I know too much.

VINCENT: I think with a man it’s different.

EMILY: Unless I’m drunk and insensible, it’s too terrible.

VINCENT: If I were either of you, I wouldn’t go to bed with a man for a long time.

MARSHA: I think that’s the new policy.

EMILY: It’s not such a new policy — I haven’t slept with a man in three months.

MARSHA: You haven’t met anyone you wanted to sleep with.

VINCENT: It’s the same thing, darling. If she were hoping to go to bed on any night, she’d find someone.

EMILY: Right.

VINCENT: And I’m saying maybe it’s a good idea to hold it off.