Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

VINCENT: It’s really very funny.

MARSHA: Six months’ time heals all wounds. I had a dream once where I went cross-country in a toll booth. It had wheels. You’re in a terrible mood, aren’t you?

VINCENT: State or mood?

MARSHA: State. You just used a certain tone which I know I have only when I’m completely tense, you have to force the words out, there’s a cut-back in the voice, it’s way down in the back of the throat. Did you ever have any physical psychological things? When I was going with Eliot, I had pains in my legs all the time. I couldn’t sleep because I was so conscious of my knock-knees knocking into each other all night.

VINCENT: Nico says I should never wear sunglasses because they hide my eyes. There was an awful lot of garlic in that chicken yesterday.

MARSHA: Just two cloves.

VINCENT: Have you ever cooked anything that really came out well? I’ve never tasted one dish that you made right, never.

MARSHA: Darling, that’s a very rude thing to say. You always give me stringy stringbeans and scrambled eggs with brown edges.

VINCENT: Wouldn’t it be awful if you spent your whole life believing you loved white meat of chicken and vanilla ice cream, then you reached the age of thirty-two and suddenly realized that you loved dark meat all along and chocolate ice cream and you hadn’t ever had them, and you felt that the years had passed you by?

MARSHA: But you must have liked vanilla too if you were eating it all that time.

VINCENT: I’ll bet you anything it’s psychological types, liking only white meat and vanilla ice cream.

MARSHA: No, I like chocolate and white meat. When I was a child I despised anyone who liked chocolate and now it’s the only kind I like. Slow down, I want to see the dwarf in the back of that truck.

VINCENT: It’s not a dwarf, he’s got the size face of a normal man.

MARSHA: Is it a person or a bundle?

VINCENT: A person.

MARSHA: It’s not blinking.

VINCENT: Why should it? The sun’s not in its eyes.

MARSHA: Last autumn, Zeke was making pumpkins in my house for his children.

VINCENT: Did you just fart? You did, didn’t you? Marsha, I’m asking you please not to do it.

MARSHA: How can I stop?

VINCENT: You can hold it in until we get to New York.

MARSHA: That’s ridiculous.

VINCENT: You’re so self-indulgent, and then you look at me with some sort of sweet face. Do you really think the sweetness of your smile can possibly make up for the acridity of that smell?

MARSHA: Yeah. Did I ever tell you the dream I once had about Nathan Fass, that he farted and a great orchestrated rhapsody came out? You can smile even though you hate him.

VINCENT: I don’t hate him , I hate what we’ve been through.

MARSHA: Look, look at the sun!

VINCENT: It’s split by a cloud, it’s beautiful.

MARSHA: You know where Zeke lives now is closer to L.A. than New York.

VINCENT: So?

MARSHA: So that’s where he belongs, that’s more what he is. He has a surfing sensibility. He hated your big painting, you know.

VINCENT: You never told me that. How much did he hate it? Let’s be open about it. I’m very open.

MARSHA: You’re not that open.

VINCENT: Are you kidding? I’m one of the most open people I know.

MARSHA: Besides, I thought we weren’t getting into these things again, picking each other apart.

VINCENT: No, we’re just being honest, it’s as simple as that. When it goes wrong is when one of the parts can’t take it and lately I haven’t been able to take it, so this ride may end up the same way.

MARSHA: Well I don’t want it to, I can’t go through it. I only meant you’re not just some simple, sweet open person.

VINCENT: What’s it got to do with sweetness? Because you’re open doesn’t mean you’re good. I’m not a good person.

MARSHA: Sick Joan thinks she’s one of the most open people in the world.

VINCENT: To her way of thinking, she is.

MARSHA: She’s open to her way of thinking, but she’s closed in terms of a circle. She says she drinks to communicate, but when she drinks she communicates zero.

VINCENT: I’ll tell you — I think I’m open, I think I’m direct, I think I give, but I don’t feel I necessarily give the truth.

MARSHA: Maybe the truth isn’t what has to be given.

VINCENT: Exactly, that’s my whole point in life. But I want to know how much Zeke Sutherland hated my painting.

MARSHA: Very much. He stared at it for hours and hours. Of course he couldn’t avoid it, it filled the room.

VINCENT: He could have looked the other way. Why did he hate it?

MARSHA: He thought you had hopped on the pop bandwagon.

VINCENT: Everyone thought that. Besides, we know about boyfriends criticizing other boyfriends’ work. He was right though; it was closer to the bandwagon than what I was doing before, but that was because it was transitional. Now I’m very singular, there’s no one in New York doing work like mine. I had to go through that to get where I am. That’s why it was such a fantastically painful period. I’ll tell you one thing about this summer, Marshie, and you’re not going to believe me, but I’ll tell you anyway — at the beginning of the summer, I thought of you and me as boy and girl, and now I feel of us as man and woman.

MARSHA: Really?

VINCENT: Yes, definitely, I mean it, and it’s a very important thing.

EMILY: Can I buy this light bulb from you? It’s crucial — my big bulb just broke.

MARSHA: Yeah, how much is it?

EMILY: Two for sixty-two; thirty cents.

MARSHA: Thirty-one in my book.

EMILY: Your book is the book of the crooks.

MARSHA: You know I’ve completely forgotten about Vincent Miano? I haven’t thought about calling him once since I’ve been back. I’m cured, I can go on to real-life mock sex.

EMILY: You didn’t forget about him — you just remembered. Vinnie’s a very pure person, you know, but don’t think for one minute he’s not a cool operator, because he is. I didn’t realize that he had never said word one to Michael Christy.

MARSHA: I’ve never met him either, even though he plays such a leading role in my book.

EMILY: Well finally Vinnie did, talked to him for five minutes last night and said he’s a great guy. You know sex with Michael Christy was very strange, but I better not talk about it.

MARSHA: Why?

EMILY: You shouldn’t talk about those things. Do you have hair on your toes?

MARSHA: Yeah.

EMILY: I do too, and it’s disgusting. I feel like chewing it off. When I was a child, I used to be able to bite my toenails. I must say, it’s not every day you go to your best friend’s house and get served warmed-over scotch.

MARSHA: Darling, have some fresh scotch.

EMILY: I don’t want any, darling, I’m not drinking, believe me.

MARSHA: I’m not believing you.

EMILY: You know I had a boyfriend once who owed me five dollars, so he sent me a check. But I loved the signature so much that I didn’t cash it for a long time. When I finally succumbed, got rid of my romanticism and cashed it, he had closed his account.

MARSHA: Zeke gave me a check once and it broke my heart to cash it. Oh no, I wrote him a check — that’s more like it.

EMILY: And it broke his belly to cash it.

MARSHA: And I treasured the countersignature on the backside.

EMILY: I’ve got a countersignature from Emil Reinhardt dating 1956. How could that be? I didn’t marry Roy until 1959. I guess it’s dated 1959.

MARSHA: All this work is getting me depressed.

EMILY: I’m surprised you’re not depressed about the summer being over.