Scampi: At arm’s length.
Peter: What are you doing?
Scampi: Thinking.
Peter: Out loud.
Scampi: In part.
PAUSE.
Scampi: I was thinking about fish tanks, you know, aquariums. And about skating.
Peter: I wonder if I should cut my hair.
Scampi: (Funny you should mention that.) And about the passage of time.
Peter: [STARES AT HIS OWN REFLECTION, PENSIVELY.]
Scampi: Your hair grows. The seasons come and go.
Peter: Quite right.
Scampi: You cut your hair. The summer comes.
Peter: I hope you’re not implying a causal relationship between those two events.
Scampi: I’m not.
Peter: Good.
Scampi: But I’m not not either.
Peter: I have no idea what that means.
Scampi: Oh Peter. Humph.
PAUSE.
Scampi: Are you in a competition for Vainest Man of the Year? Or something?
Peter: I am not vain.
Scampi: Then why do you keep staring at yourself?
Peter: I am not.
Scampi: What are you doing then? Polishing the mirror?
Peter: I decline to comment.
Scampi: A damning indictment if I ever heard one.
Peter: One has doubts.
Scampi: You betcha, Thomas.
Peter: My name is not Thomas.
Scampi: Oh, right. Sorry, Narcissus.
STONY SILENCE.
Scampi: When you massage your temple in that ferocious manner, it makes you look like someone with a headache.
Peter: Mm.
Scampi: What a rare and tender coincidence.
Peter: [CLEARS HIS THROAT.]
Scampi: You know, one thing I was thinking was more about a more kind of general thing. Being in the world, the skating rinks. Fires in the oil drums.
Peter: One wonders where you acquire such imagery.
Scampi: It’s true. You don’t think it’s true but it is.
Peter: What is truth?
Scampi: O Peterocrates! Whither go the tiny flapping sparrows of our immortal souls?
Peter: aUrm.
Scampi: I have no idea about that sort of noise.
Peter: Excuse me.
Scampi: I was thinking about tin cans clanging. Terrariums and turtle tanks.
Peter: You sure were a busy little thinker today.
Scampi: Ain’t little.
Peter: Forgive me. Compact.
Scampi: Yes, it’s been pretty hopping at the thinktank today.
Peter: This much is clear.
Scampi: What’s the first thing you remember?
Peter: About what?
Scampi: I’m not sure.
Peter: Okay.
Scampi: Sometimes, I can’t remember the first thing. About anything. Har har. How about today?
Peter: How about it?
Scampi: Do you remember it?
Peter: As though it were yesterday.
Scampi: Oh yeah. High-larious.
PETER IS UNACCOUNTABLY PLEASED WITH HIMSELF.
Scampi: The streetlamps are coming on.
Peter: They are.
Scampi: Can I touch your face?
HARD PAUSE.
Scampi: Or your arm?
Peter: No. Why?
Scampi: I just want to check.
Peter: Check what?
Scampi: To make sure.
Peter: That you’re not experiencing sensory dissonance?
Scampi: If that’s how you want to see it.
Peter: I don’t want to see it.
Scampi: There are seven buttons on your shirt.
Peter: I believe it.
Scampi: You don’t have to believe it. Count ‘em.
Peter: Perhaps at a later juncture.
Scampi: Have it your way. The streetlamps are coming on.
Peter: As you so keenly previously observed.
Scampi: I did. And in the lamplight we are two fluttering bits of gauze. With seven buttons. And the earth’s gravitational pull.
Peter: It does tend to be present.
Scampi: Very dependable. Old gravitas.
Peter: I’m not old.
Scampi: Yet.
