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  Pause.

  CARTER: All right. Calm down. Jesus. We’re just trying to have a conversation.

  VINNIE: I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT MICROCHIPS AND INDUSTRIES!! I AM TALKING ABOUT A WOMAN!!

  CARTER: If you’re going to scream, I’m going to leave.

  VINNIE (calmer): You’re not listening to me, I don’t think.

  CARTER: I am.

  VINNIE: I don’t think so.

  CARTER: I am. It’s just—

  VINNIE: So, tell me what I’m saying then. Tell me back.

  Pause.

  CARTER: You wanna take a walk? Go out and have a drink somewhere? Get some air?

  VINNIE: Tell me what I’m saying. I’d like to hear it. Back.

  CARTER: Let’s have a drink.

  VINNIE: You don’t drink. Remember?

  CARTER (pause): I’ve taken it up again.

  VINNIE: Oh? Things not so hot back home?

  CARTER: What?

  VINNIE: I said: (As though speaking to the deaf.) “THINGS—NOT—SO—HOT—BACK—AT—HOME?”

  CARTER: Everything’s fine. I just have an occasional highball to take the edge off. Just to relax. That’s all.

  VINNIE: Ah, the Occasional Highball!

  CARTER: Whatever, Whiskey sour. Now and then.

  VINNIE: No harm in that.

  CARTER: None whatsoever.

  VINNIE: Kids back in school are they?

  CARTER: They start this week.

  VINNIE: It’s that time of year. PUMPKIN TIME!

  CARTER: Yeah.

  VINNIE: Rosie’s happy?

  CARTER: I’d just as soon not talk about Rosie, if you don’t mind.

  VINNIE: She still got those amazing tits that kinda sit up like little puppy dogs and bark at you?

  CARTER charges VINNIE, grabs him by the throat and throws him backwards onto the bed, then smashes him with the pillow. VINNIE smiles and lays there passively while CARTER stands over him. Long pause. CARTER backs off.

  VINNIE (sitting up on bed, smiling): So—You’re back on the bottle my good man. I happen to have some of that Northern Irish stuff. “Black Bush”. The best.

  VINNIE reaches under bed, pulls out bottle of bourbon and a short glass. Pours himself a drink as they continue.

  CARTER: No thanks.

  VINNIE: Too rough? Black Bush can be pretty rough if all you’ve been used to is the “Occasional Highball”.

  CARTER: Are you going to finish telling me about this woman?

  VINNIE: You’re not listening, Carter. Your mind is elsewhere.

  CARTER: Just don’t talk about my wife, okay?

  VINNIE: Your wife?

  CARTER: That’s right!

  VINNIE: I was just curious is all. We go off in different directions. Lota time goes by. Lota water under the bridge. You can’t help but wonder.

  CARTER: Wonder to yourself.

  VINNIE: Green swimming pool. White Mercedez. Blue car phone. Must have a phone in every car, right Carter? Every bathroom. Keep track a’ things while you’re taking a dump. Cellular business. How is business these days?

  CARTER: Market’s down. The Arabs have dropped out of the game.

  VINNIE: But the Japs—the Japs are coming on strong.

  CARTER: Not strong enough.

  VINNIE: The rich are clamping down!

  Pause.

  CARTER: Look, Vinnie. I gave you all kinds of options. I mean—

  VINNIE: Options!

  CARTER: I did. At one point in time you could have—

  VINNIE: The option to disappear, for instance. The option to perpetually change my name and address. The option to live like a ghost.

  CARTER: Look—You’re here, you’re alive. You’re not in jail. So far anyway.

  VINNIE: Three pluses in your book!

  CARTER: Better than dead, Vinnie. Better than being locked away.

  VINNIE (sudden quiet sincerity): I am dead. I am locked away.

  Pause.

  CARTER: Maybe you’d be better off in Europe. What do you think? Did you ever think of Europe? We could set you up over there. Some little obscure village tucked away in Austria, maybe.

  VINNIE: What am I gonna do tucked away in Austria? Ski? Yodel, maybe?

  CARTER: I don’t know—

  VINNIE: I’ll tell you what the option is. Here’s an option. You turn yourself in, Carter.

  CARTER: Hey!

  VINNIE: You walk right into the FBI and confess the whole fandango. Lay all your cards on the table. Worst they’ll give you is a slap on the wrist and a little fine. Man of your position.

  CARTER: What the hell good is that gonna do? What’re you saying?

  VINNIE: Let me off the hook.

  CARTER: Let yourself off the hook. I’m not your jailer.

  VINNIE: Let me off the hook, Carter!

  Pause.

  CARTER: I’m—perfectly willing to help you out in any way I can. You know that, Vinnie. I always have been. That’s why I’m here, now. But—

  VINNIE: You’re here, now, because you’re scared and guilty. That’s why you’re here, now.

  CARTER (laughing): Scared and guilty?

  VINNIE: One or the other. Or both.

  CARTER: Scared and guilty!

  VINNIE: Neither one is the right motive.

  CARTER: Oh, well, I apologize for that!

  VINNIE: Neither one has to do with kinship or brotherhood or any sense of another man’s suffering at the hands of a woman.

  CARTER: Oh, so now we’re suffering! We’re suffering now!

  VINNIE: One of us might be suffering!

  CARTER: But the other one has no conception of it! Is that the idea!

  VINNIE: That’s the idea but the idea is a long way from the truth!

  CARTER: Aah! The Truth! The Truth! And only one of us is able to have a handle on that I suppose!

  VINNIE: One of us is a helluva lot closer to it than the other one!

  CARTER: And the other one is just blindly staggering! Just bashing into walls, leaving carnage in his wake!

  VINNIE (pause): One of us has forgotten.

  Pause.

  CARTER: What do you want me to do, Vinnie? You want me to talk to this girl? Straighten something out? What exactly do you want me to do?

  VINNIE: It was just a uh—wild impulse.

  CARTER: What was?

  VINNIE: Calling you up. Thinking there was some remote possibility that you might—have an answer.

  CARTER: I’m not any better at figuring out women than you are, Vinnie.

  VINNIE: No, I suppose not. After all, look who you ended up marrying.

  CARTER: Look—

  VINNIE: Does she ever pull that on you, Carter? The cold-shoulder routine? She could make a rock cry.

  CARTER: I am not going to get into a conversation about Rosie!

  VINNIE: She used to pull that on me. All the time. ’Course she never went so far as to have me arrested. You’ve never been arrested have you, Carter?

  CARTER: No. I never have.

  VINNIE: There’s plenty of good reasons why you should be arrested: extortion, kickbacks, third-party transfers, money laundering—

  CARTER: Hey, goddammit!

  VINNIE: But, for some reason, you never were. Call it luck. Let’s call it luck, shall we?

  CARTER: Luck had nothing to do with it. We were both well aware of the risks going into it.

  VINNIE: Even Rosie—

  CARTER: Leave her out of this!

  VINNIE: Even Rosie was well aware.

  CARTER: I’m walking out the door, Vinnie! I’m walking!

  VINNIE: No you’re not. You’re in no position to threaten me. I’m the one holding all the cards, Carter. I’m the one and only one who can call you any time of the day or night and have you book your ass out here to the edge of nowhere. Who else can do that? Does anybody else have that kind of power in your “organization”?

  CARTER: You’re not going to expose me. You want me to believe that? You’re tied into Simms’ dismissa
l every bit as much as me.

  VINNIE: You made sure of that, didn’t you?

  CARTER: It was you who took the photographs, for Christ’s sake!

  VINNIE: And you who set him up!

  CARTER: He didn’t need setting up! There was more corruption in his commission than anything we could’ve ever cooked up ourselves. All we did was document the truth. I’ve got no regrets about that, believe you me. No regrets whatsoever. Simms hung himself.

  VINNIE: Document the truth?

  CARTER: That’s right!

  VINNIE: I took the photographs, Carter. I saw what I was shooting!

  CARTER: Nobody twisted your arm either.

  VINNIE: Would you like to see them again to refresh your memory?

  CARTER: No! I would not like to see them again!

  VINNIE: I didn’t think so.

  CARTER: Nobody coerced you into taking those pictures, Vinnie. You were a free agent.

  Pause.

  VINNIE: What was in it for me? I forgot that part. There must have been something. Something rewarding.

  CARTER: Is that what this is all about? Your reward? If you want me to increase your monthly deposit that can be arranged, Vinnie. That’s easy. Just come out and say it and stop tap-dancing around.

  Pause.

  VINNIE: Are you a member of a country club out there?

  CARTER: What?

  VINNIE: Are you a member of a country club out there?

  CARTER: Out where?

  VINNIE: Out there in the “Blue Grass Country” where you’ve forged a brand new life for yourself and your cute little wife.

  CARTER: A country club?

  VINNIE: Yeah. Are you a member of one? It’s a relatively straightforward question.

  CARTER: What’s that got to do with anything!

  VINNIE: I bet you are, aren’t you?

  CARTER: Yeah! Yeah, I’m a member of a country club! So fuckin’ what!

  VINNIE: Well, that must be something new and different for you, huh? Being a member. Must’ve been difficult at first. Fitting in. Pretending you had something in common. Kissing ass with the gentry.

  CARTER: I don’t have time to screw around here, Vinnie.

  VINNIE: But now it’s become second nature, right? You’ve acquired an affinity. You stride right through the pro-shop on your way to the bar, laughing and slapping all your divorced buddies on the butt. Cracking inane jokes about pussy you’ve never had. Collecting football pools and swapping putters. Like your seedy past is long forgot. Might never have really even taken place. Might have actually belonged to another man. A man so remote and dead to you that you’ve lost all connection. A man completely sacrificed in honor of your bogus membership in the High Life.

  CARTER: Nobody forced you into a hole, Vinnie! Nobody!

  VINNIE: Nobody did! It must’ve been DESTINY!

  CARTER: Nobody demanded you screw yourself up with women and booze and lying and pretending—

  VINNIE: LYING!

  Long pause.

  CARTER: I’ve gotta go.

  VINNIE: You should. The kids’ll be late for school!

  Pause.

  CARTER: I can’t keep this up, Vinnie. It’s a dead end. Every time it’s a dead end.

  VINNIE: Kinda like marriage, isn’t it?

  CARTER: Worse.

  VINNIE: Well—

  CARTER: I get this—sickening feeling that it’ll never end.

  VINNIE: It’s a lot like marriage.

  CARTER: We just go around and around and around—

  VINNIE: It has been going on for a spell, hasn’t it? Old pal, old buddy, old friend of mine.

  Pause.

  CARTER: What do you want from me, Vinnie? I’ve tried to take care of you. I really have.

  VINNIE: Yeah. I guess you have.

  CARTER: I mean, I don’t know what else to do except give you more money. Buy you stuff. Move you to a different place. What else do you want me to do?

  VINNIE: Come clean, Carter. It’s real simple.

  Pause.

  CARTER: Look—I’ve got a proposition to make you.

  VINNIE: A proposition!

  CARTER: I’m prepared to make you an offer. You name me a price. Just name me a price—a realistic price and I’ll pay you cash for all the stuff you’ve got on me. All the negatives, letters, tapes, whatever you’ve got. We’ll clean this whole mess up, once and for all, and be done with it.

  VINNIE: But then we’d never see each other again, Carter.

  CARTER: I’m serious, Vinnie! I want to end this thing!

  Pause.

  VINNIE: You’re the only friend I’ve got, Carter. I mean—this girl—This girl isn’t gonna work out. I can tell she’s not gonna work out.

  CARTER: You don’t know that. All you’ve got to do is go talk to her. I mean if you’ve got that much feeling for her—

  VINNIE: SHE WON’T TALK TO ME! She had me arrested! It wasn’t any fun being arrested. I mean I’m not a criminal!

  CARTER: No, you’re not.

  VINNIE: I’m not a criminal in the common sense!

  CARTER: Of course not.

  VINNIE: Not like you. I mean, I’m basically innocent. I’m an intrinsically innocent person, Carter!

  CARTER: Try to calm down.

  VINNIE: All I was doing was trying to impress her. That’s all. I might have gone a little overboard with the gun and the handcuffs but I wasn’t trying to hurt her. She had no reason to arrest me, Carter!

  CARTER: No, she didn’t.

  Pause.

  VINNIE: It’s a terrible thing—trying to replace someone—You know? Trying to find someone to take the place—I mean—see, after Rosie ran off I just kinda—(Takes a drink.)

  CARTER: She didn’t “run off”

  VINNIE: She didn’t?

  CARTER: No.

  VINNIE: What would you call it?

  CARTER: She—eloped.

  VINNIE: Oh! “Eloped”! That’s what you call it. That’s right. “Eloped”!

  CARTER: Well, she didn’t “run off”. That makes her sound sneaky and deceitful. That just wasn’t the case.

  VINNIE: “Eloped”. (Offers CARTER a drink.) Drink?

  CARTER refuses drink.

  VINNIE: Takes two to elope, I guess. That must be the difference. If it’s only just one person eloping then you might call it “running off”.

  CARTER: You might.

  Pause.

  VINNIE: Where—did you elope to when you both “eloped”?

  CARTER: You’re bound and determined to get it around to Rosie, aren’t you. You can’t help yourself.

  VINNIE: Well, it’s the main thing we share in common these days, isn’t it, Carter?

  CARTER: I didn’t come here to talk about Rosie.

  VINNIE: I’m just curious. Again. In a state of wonder. I used to wonder about it all the time. It was my constant obsession. I’d wake up with it heavy on my mind. The two of you alone in the Buick. Highway 40 East. Driving through the night with her neck on your shoulder. Tucumcari. Amarillo. The smell of cattle in the feedlots. Oil on the wind. The lights of Memphis twinkling across the placid Mississippi.

  CARTER: It wasn’t that poetic. Believe me.

  VINNIE: No?

  CARTER: No! It wasn’t. I mean—it may have started off that way—

  VINNIE: That was my Buick too. You realize that, don’t you? My Buick and my wife.

  CARTER: It was her choice, Vinnie. I never—(Stops himself.)

  Pause.

  VINNIE: What? You never what?

  CARTER: One thing—just led to another. It was her idea to run away together, not mine.

  VINNIE: “Elope”.

  Pause.

  CARTER: Yes.

  VINNIE: You were a victim of circumstance?

  CARTER: Well—

  VINNIE: And it all just happened to coincide with our little scam on Simms, I guess. That was convenient.

  CARTER: It had nothing to do with that!

  VINNIE: My forced exile
!

  CARTER: She had made it up in her mind a long time before that!

  Pause.

  VINNIE: Oh. Is that right?

  CARTER: Yes. That’s right.

  VINNIE: How long before?

  CARTER: Look—

  VINNIE: How long!

  CARTER: I don’t know how long! Months maybe.

  VINNIE: Months? For months you were both sneaking around! Boffing each other in the back seat of my Buick while I was out steadfastly hustling your dirty work! Preparing the ground for your Big Success!

  CARTER: No! It was nothing like that. It came out of nowhere.

  VINNIE: One day she just woke up and realized she was with the wrong man? That must’ve been it, huh? A sudden revelation. That happens sometimes. That happened to me once. A sudden revelation.

  Pause, CARTER goes to VINNIE, takes bottle from him and takes a belt straight from the bottle.

  VINNIE: Would you like a glass?

  CARTER: No.

  CARTER hands bottle back to VINNIE.

  VINNIE: I don’t blame her a bit, actually, Carter. Tell you the truth. You were on a roll. Unstoppable. I thought you might even end up running for Congress. Smooching babies and waving from cabooses. You had that aura about you. A kind of uh—yuppie Protestant aura, that’s become so popular these days.

  CARTER: It caught me by surprise, Vinnie. I was as shocked by it as you were.

  VINNIE: I doubt it.

  CARTER: I didn’t even realize I had any feelings for her until—she just—opened up to me, I guess. She seemed so—

  VINNIE: Desperate?

  CARTER: Yeah. She did. Desperate and vulnerable at the same time.

  VINNIE: A deadly combination.

  CARTER: It just caught me completely off-guard.

  VINNIE: Yeah. She pulled that on me too. In the beginning. All wide-eyed and bushy-tailed.

  CARTER: But it wasn’t like a game with her or anything—not like you pretending to be a detective. She—