A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur by Tennessee Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

her foreign-made car, an Hispano-Suiza , noless, practically brand-new , with a Pierce Arrow limousine and has offered to sell us the Hispano for just a song! Immediately, as soon as she made me this offer, I applied for a driver’s license.
    [
A moment of shocked silence is interrupted by a short squawk from Bodey’s hearing aid
.]
    BODEY [
advancing quickly from the kitchenette
]: Limazine? What limazine? With a show-fer ?
    HELENA: Miss Bodenheifer, how does this concern you?
    BODEY: Who’s gonna foot the bill for it, that’s how!
    HELENA: My cousin Dee-Dee in La Due will accept payment on time.
    BODEY: Whose time and how much?
    HELENA: Negligible! A rich cousin!
—Oh , my Lord, I’ve always heard that Germans—
    BODEY: Lay off Germans!
    HELENA: Have this excessive concern with money matters.
    BODEY:
Whose
money?
    HELENA: Practicality can be a stupefying—
    MISS GLUCK: Bodey?
    HELENA: —virtue , if it
is
one.
    MISS GLUCK: Ich kann nicht
—go up.
    HELENA: Go up just one step to the kitchen! Please, Dorothea, can’t we—have a private discussion, briefly?
    MISS GLUCK:
Das Schlafzimmer
is
gespukt!
    HELENA: Because you see, Dorothea, as I told you, I do have to make a payment on the Westmoreland Place apartment early tomorrow, and so must collect your half of it today.
    DOROTHEA: —My half would amount to—?
    HELENA: Seventy.
    DOROTHEA: Ohhh! —Would the real estate people accept a—postdated check?
    HELENA: Reluctantly—very .
    DOROTHEA: You see, I had unusually heavy expenses this week—clothes , lingerie, a suitcase . . .
    HELENA: Sounds as if you’d been purchasing a trousseau. —Miss Bodenhafer says that her brother, “Buddy,” is seriously interested in you. How selfish of you to keep it such a secret!—even from me!
    DOROTHEA: Oh, my heavens, has Miss Bodenhafer—how fantastic!
    HELENA: Yes, she is a bit, to put it politely.
    DOROTHEA: I meant has she given you the preposterous impression that I am interested in her brother? Oh, my Lord, what a fantastic visit you’ve had! Believe me, the circumstances aren’t always so—chaotic . Well!
Il n’y a rien à faire
. When I tell you that she calls her brother Buddy and that he is her
twin!
[
She throws up her arms
.]
    HELENA: Identical?
    DOROTHEA: Except for gender, alike as two peas in a pod. You’re not so gullible, Helena, that you could really imagine for a moment that I’d—you know me better than that!
    HELENA: Sometimes when a girl is on the rebound from a disappointing infatuation, she will leap without looking into the most improbable sort of—liaison—
    DOROTHEA: Maybe some girls, but certainly not I. And what makes you think that I’m the victim of a “disappointing infatuation,” Helena?
    HELENA: Sometimes a thing will seem like the end of the world, and yet the world continues.
    DOROTHEA: I personally feel that my world is just beginning. . . . Excuse me for a moment. I’ll get my checkbook. . . .
    [
Dorothea goes into the bedroom. Miss Gluck wanders back into the living room from the kitchenette, wringing her hands and sobbing
.]
    HELENA: MISS BODENHEIFER!
    BODEY: Don’t bother to tell me good-bye.
    HELENA: I am not yet leaving.
    BODEY: And it ain’t necessary to shake the walls when you call me, I got my hearing aid on.
    HELENA: Would you be so kind as to confine Miss Gluck to that charming little kitchen while I’m completing my business with Dorothea?
    [
Bodey crosses toward Miss Gluck
.]
    BODEY: Sophie, come in here with me. You like a deviled egg don’t you? And a nice fried drumstick when your—digestion is better? Just stay in here with me.
    [
Bodey leads Miss Gluck back to the kitchenette, then turns to Helena
.]
    I can catch every word that you say to Dotty in there, and you better be careful the conversation don’t take the wrong turn!
    MISS GLUCK [
half in German
]:
Ich kann nicht
liven opstairs no more, nimmer, nimmer
—
kann nicht
—can’t go!
    BODEY : You know what, Sophie? You better change