Dinner, Sex and a Movie(10)
Temporary silence.
Emma:
Oh, dear God! Oh…oh…OK…we can do that…wow…where was I? I can’t remember.…
Pause.
Emma:
This is not a view of the room I can say I’ve had before. I’ve been in this house for 4 years now. I like the crown molding. I like Federalist architecture. This town is full of it. That, and a bunch of other stuff. Serpentine stone. Greek revival. Do you like architecture? Why did I just ask you that?
Emma purrs in response to whatever Jake is doing.
Emma:
That’s partly why I moved out here. Philly was killing me. I needed to get as far away as I could but still be able to get into Center City anytime I needed to. So I found this place. Walking town. Awesome architecture. Good restaurants and bars. You can come back to it after travelling and still be like, this is pretty cool. Looks beautiful late April to early May when the blossoms are out…way better than Bryn Mawr, unless you’re north of Montgomery…but you do have a couple of really good pizza joints – Oh!
The floorboards begin squeaking at a routine interval.
Emma (settling in):
I could get used to this on a Monday night. A lot of the lawyers I know don’t get sex on Mondays, unless it’s with clients. That’s one of those things bar associations don’t actually approve of. It’s mostly the men doing it…although I have noticed several female attorneys who seem to be in a constant state of heat. Who is doing who at the D.A’s office and how can I meet him? What is he doing with her? That bitch. I’m at least as good as her. Hook me up, girl. Then they hook up. And in a few months it all goes to hell in public, hopefully just at a local lunch place where the A.D.A’s and defense attorneys hang out together talking about boats and cars and their kids, and preferably not in the courtroom. The quality of client advocacy really tends to drop off during post-coital adversarial proceedings.… Oh my God, keep that angle!…
More purring from Emma.
Emma (after a minute):
So you see, it’s all rather sordid and unnecessarily convoluted – that means fucked up – say, as compared to taking drugs and screwing groupies backstage in Amsterdam, which you could speak to, if you weren’t currently occupied reciting baseball statistics under your breath. I don’t follow baseball that much. The Sox and Phils have let me down since oh-seven, oh-eight.… If you don’t know who won it in a given year, it’s always best to just guess Yankees…. That’s right, 1949 - Yankees, 1950 - Yankees, 1951 - Yankees, 1952 - Yankees, 1953 – Yankees.…
Curtain pulls to sounds of floorboards squeaking.
Scene II:
After a minute of silence, curtain reopens. Sounds of floorboards squeaking resume.
Exact same scene as Scene I, they are still at it, behind the bed, sex and chatter, an unspecified period of time later.
Emma:
Got Live If You Want It doesn’t count, it’s got overdubbed studio tracks… Get Yer Ya- Yas Out is their first real live album. You aren’t gonna win a Stones argument with me. Especially not Brian Jones era. You are in my wheelhouse now….(laughing) Oh my God! I was not referring to my…never mind!.., Point is, this girl knows her Stones. I know James Bond and the Stones. And Malbec.
Pause.
Emma:
So let’s see, you’ve named all the champions in order for the World Series, Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, BCS, NCAA Basketball, Five and/or Six Nations, Tri-Nations, and World Cup…I’m impressed. By the distance, anyway. How a rock musician can’t get the Stones discography right is beyond me, so maybe you are a fraud.
Emma yelps.
Emma:
If that was punishment, I’m gonna need to insult you again before this ends! Which will be soon, as you have run out of stats, Jake. Just let yourself think about what you are doing, and it will all be over. Don’t feel bad, this is still a good performance. It’s just that I’m waiting you out on principle. I’ve given up way too much control since I picked up that damn phone. I’m taking the upper hand back here and now. Otherwise you would have finished me off back at “1994 - Brazil.” Do you even have much strength left?
Jake throws them both off the floor and back onto the bed, sheet on top of them. Emma screams.
Emma:
That’s what I get for playing with fire. This bed is a precious antique. And if we break it…well, I suppose that is the best way it could go out after 400 years. With this gorgeous boy-toy on top of me. The whole “drifter-guitarist-bad boy” thing you have going on is hot. Shouldn’t be. But is. You are so the project I could take on, if I was the kind of girl who makes colossal mistakes. Only thing is, what really did happen in Andover –