Scampi: Did I tell you about the other time I fell in love?
Peter: Excuse me?
Scampi: What a thing to say.
Peter:
Scampi: Well, can you imagine?
Peter: Ho hum.
Scampi: So it’s like this.
Peter: Are you upset about something?
Scampi: No.
Peter: Ah.
Scampi: That’s right.
SCAMPI YAWNS. PETER YAWNS.
Scampi: I would like to talk about humanism.
Peter: Oh?
Scampi: Desiderius Erasmus. Eh? This means something to you?
Peter: I am familiar with the name.
Scampi: Ho ho.
Peter: I know who Erasmus is.
Scampi: Oh, I don’t doubt it. Not for a second!
Peter: Hm.
Scampi: I don’t know anything about him. It’s all very tragical.
Peter: I see.
Scampi: These Reformation types and their crazy ways. I want no part of it!
Peter: Has someone been inviting you to take part in the Reformation?
Scampi: Ridiculous. Peter, you are simply nuts.
Peter: [offended]
Scampi: Well, there’s no need to take offence.
Peter: You have just accused me of being nuts.
Scampi: Impossible! I simply want some tea.
Peter: I see.
Scampi: Do you want some tea?
Peter: Well.
Scampi: Oh, please, do take your time. I am a tea-making factory, here for your convenience.
PETER TURNS THE PAGE OF HIS MAGAZINE WITH PRECISION.
Scampi: You little Gatling gun, you.
Peter: Are you speaking to me?
Scampi: No.
PAUSE.
Scampi: You wouldn’t have guessed this about me.
Peter: Guessed what?
Scampi: Precisely! No one would have guessed.
Peter: I am not fond of guessing.
Scampi: No, you aren’t.
PAUSE.
Scampi: It’s not impossible to imagine, however, that I would have spent four days of my life sleeping through the night, for example.
Peter: A contradiction in terms?
Scampi: Please do not be such an asshole, Peter.
PAUSE, IN WHICH PETER’S SEETHING CAN BE PRESUMED, IF NOT PROVEN.
Peter: Would you not say ‘proved’, rather?
Scampi: Mind your own business! God.
Peter: Deus.
Scampi: Out of the machine!
Peter: Indeed.
Scampi: It could have been four days. It could have been six nights.
Peter: Of sleeping?
Scampi: Of perfection.
Peter: Ah, perfection.
Scampi: I don’t appreciate your sneering.
Peter: I? Sneering?
Scampi: Your mouth is full of melted butter.
Peter: [with difficulty] It is not.
Scampi: If I had known, I would’ve made popcorn. Anyway, we can make room in our lives for our humanist friends, of course.
Peter: Ah yes, our humanist friends.
Scampi: Not to mention our four-legged brethren.
Peter: Yes, such as cats. Do cats like to eat catnip?
Scampi: No. It causes them to vomit.
Peter: Really?
Scampi: Of course.
Peter: I am suspicious of this information.
Scampi: Well, that says plenty about you. But nothing about catnip.
Peter: I –
Scampi: Your mastery of the first-person pronoun has been recorded. Now, what was I saying?
Peter: It is impossible to determine.
Scampi: One day you might wake up in the morning to an appropriately-coloured sky. There is a human creature sleeping next to you.
Peter: This is hardly controversial.
Scampi: Exactly.
Peter: You have a problem with the colour of the sky?
Scampi: I do not.
Peter: Ah.
Scampi: Another morning, you do not wake up at all. You sleep until dusk.
Peter: [nervously] Oh, the lifestyle of the common layabed.
Scampi: Are you nervous about something?
Peter: [nervously] No.
Scampi: Because you seem nervous.
Peter: Stop interfering with my delivery. I am entirely lacking in nerves.
Scampi: Have I hit a nerve?
Peter: SIGHS.
Scampi: In either case, you are both of them, the happy early riser, and the lonely evening layabed. Both of them at once.
Peter: Where is this going?
Scampi: Nowhere. You get out of bed, you don’t get out of bed. Doesn’t matter.
Peter: I see.
PAUSE.
Scampi: You know what happened to me yesterday?
Peter: You got out of bed and fell in love?
Scampi: No. In the afternoon I heard the sound of birds and went outside.
Peter: A daring tangent.
Scampi: I looked up into the tree, it was all green leaves. I could hear the birds everywhere, you know, like a chipmunk farm.
Peter: Ahem. Our winged neighbours are sometimes rather loud.
Scampi: Yes. But I couldn’t see them.
Peter: Because of the leaves?
Scampi: I don’t know. I couldn’t see a single one.
Peter: Hm.
Scampi: That’s what happened to me yesterday.
Peter: Did anything else happen?
Scampi: Not really, no.