SAM: No.

JANE: Oh.

SAM: I’m not a vegetarian. I only ordered it because you suggested it.

JANE: Sam, you didn’t need to do that.

SAM: It doesn’t taste good enough.

JANE: (pause) I don’t eat meat because one time my cat died and I was the one who found it.

SAM: Things are different when you see them dead.

JANE: That’s true. (pause) Um, can I ask you something?

SAM: I’ve been waiting all night.

JANE: What made you ask me out, because I don’t seem the type of person who would appeal to you.

SAM: You’re perfect. I just want to have a little piece of perfection sitting at the table for a few minutes, taking snapshots with my mind, remember it for the rest of my life. You read Plato?

JANE: No. You talk about the snapshots like a metaphor but you’re blinking so fast. You like photography?

SAM: I have a few cameras at home, take pictures of myself, people that come over.

JANE: That strikes me… makes me a little uncomfortable.

SAM: Why’d you say you’d go out with me?

JANE: I just got out of a relationship

SAM: Is he dead?

JANE: No, he found someone else, someone prettier.

SAM: Are you in love with him?

JANE: I just needed someone to make me feel better. You’re making me feel better. Even though you take snapshots with your mind.

SAM: You want to switch seats?

JANE: No, I’m okay.

SAM: (pause) I wonder what you look like when you cry.

JANE: What an uncomfortable thing to say…

SAM: Sorry.

JANE: Well, if you had seen me last week…

SAM: Does your face get all puffy? I bet you look perfect.

JANE: I look like someone pooped on my face with a snowblower… Tell me a story.

SAM: (pause) Do you want to switch seats?

JANE: No.

SAM: Can I try your coffee?

JANE: … Okay.

SAM: (sips) I just want to see what it’s like to be you.

JANE: Not as exciting as you might think.

SAM: I bet it’s perfect. (pause, blinks)

JANE: I should go.

SAM: I thought I make you feel better.

JANE: It was really nice meeting you…

SAM: No!!! I’m having fun.

JANE: This is getting too intense.

SAM: Goddammit, Jane!

JANE: Okay, here, I’ll pay for it, tell her to keep the change.

SAM: Jane.

JANE: See you around.

SAM: Once upon a time there was an old man and an old woman and they both wore glasses and had blue eyes but one day the old man took the eyes out of the woman while she slept and took out his own eyes and he mashed them in a guacamole bowl and took the goo and shaped it and froze it and had two perfect eyes because two bad eyes make a good one and he put them both in her and she woke up and he couldn’t see but she could see perfectly and saw that he was completely blind and so she thanked him and gave him one of the good eyes and so instead of wearing glasses, they each had one perfect eye they could look at one another with.

JANE: (sits down, awkward silence)

SAM: (sips her coffee)

JANE: Would you like to see me cry?

SAM: Would you?

JANE: I’m a Method actress.

SAM: You don’t have to cry if you don’t want to. Are you Method acting right now?

JANE: A little.

SAM: Show me your face. (blinks)

JANE: (wipes her eyes)

SAM: (eats)

JANE: You like that all the sudden?

SAM: I get hungry when I see women crying. It started with mom. Dad hit her and her breast milk mingled with tears and I liked it.

JANE: My father was an alcoholic too.

SAM: I don’t drink, I black out when I do. You ever broken any bones?

JANE: I broke elbow once in a play but I didn’t cry because it wasn’t in character.

SAM: What else?

JANE: My heart’s been broken.

SAM: The heart’s not a bone, you’re an idiot.

JANE: You’re a jerk.

SAM: I find you very attractive.

JANE: Sam, I just don’t think so.

SAM: You want to switch seats?

JANE: No. (stands)

SAM: I’ll tell a story! Give me a topic! Sugar packet! Cane! Cane and Abel, you know that?

JANE: Yes.

SAM: They were brothers.

JANE: I know, they lived in a well.

SAM: No, they didn’t! Fuck you!

JANE: Sam.

SAM: Fuck you! Let’s switch seats!

JANE: I’m going home.

SAM: No! (degenerates into a raving lunatic, chewing at everything on the table. when out of objects, he gnaws at his forearm) No! NO! You will not leave! I'll tell YOU a story! Once upon a goddamn time there was a motherfucking lonely boy who just wanted to try to be normal and do things other people did, like to parties and stuff and meet women and make friends, but all he could do is look at people and watch them be happy and normal and so he looked at this one normal girl for a year and finally asked her to get normal coffee but she was too normal and boring but he talked to her anyway and tried to get her to like him.

JANE: (with attitude) I see. So what happened then?

SAM: He took her! (He grabs her, throws her down in her chair and holds her there, threatening to stab her with a spoon) He took her and he threw her on the table, and he ripped off her panties with his teeth and he rammed his entire goddamn forehead up her and while he was up there he said he loved her and she screamed but liked it and it was normal and loved she him hopelessly and she sang a wonderful song and a lonely normal millionaire across the street heard them and loved the music and bought them an amusement park and the boy turned it into a theme park called Diseased Bear Land where the only attraction was diseased bears who would just lie all over and puke blood and sweat pus and shit diarrhea and the kids weren't allowed to leave and if they cried they were zapped with cattle prods and all the guards wore gasmasks and had automatic weapons and riot gear and there was a bumper car ride where bears were the bumpers so every time a car would hit another one the bears were beaten until they died and then they went squish all the time and there was a sea-world full of floating bloated bear corpses and they played 'it's a small world after all' and there was a little train with a diseased bear bolted to the conductor's seat and he had on a little engineer cap and his paw was wired through the wrist bone to a toot-toot whistle that went toot-toot! toot-toot! toot-toot! and you could get cherry snow-cones and funnel cakes and all the bears were sick and vomited over the parents and they loved it and wanted to come back next year but the kids cried and so the parents locked them in the basement and the kids were lonely and put into boxes and they could talk to each other through little air-holes and they fell in love too but .... but..... but.... THEY JUST THOUGHT THAT THEY DID BUT IT WAS REALLY BORING AND IT WAS LIKE BEING A BABY WHO JUST WANTS TO SLEEP ALL THE TIME AND THEY WERE TOO NORMAL AND THEY HAD RULES FOR SHARING SECRETS, SO THAT THEY NEVER REALLY GOT THE CHANCE TO CUT THROUGH ALL THE BULLSHIT THEY GOT FROM THE TV TO GET AT SOMETHING REAL! (pause, he relaxes grip) You know? Do you?? Please! I love you but that doesn’t really mean enough when I say it, so will you switch seats with me?