Leftovers
(One scene from something that, someday, will be longer. Maybe.)
(also: play form and HTML don't mix. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them)

Lights up on the [Cherish her viscosity|bedroom] of a young married couple, late twenties.
DAN is boyish and soft and slightly [twenty-five going on twenty|juvenile]
(though he doesn't see it) and Kim is more...comfortable, I guess.

KIM is sitting up in bed, [tuck me in|tucked in], feet pointing down towards the audience,
reading something. A [laptop] perched on her lap would fit the image, but yeah, budgets and all.
A nice, unidentifiable but [black's law dictionary|severe-looking book] would do fine.
[men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses|Reading glasses], too. The whole bit. If possible, the bed should be built in such a way
that the downstage legs are significantly shorter that the upstage ones and the headboard should be of
a dark, [oak|imposing wood] so that, in some respects, she would look like she was a judge in a
courtroom. She mustn't move much, and my [multiple personality disorder|physicist friends] tell me that gravity might cause her
to slide a bit. [BDSM|Strap her in] (invisibly) if you have to. It should look both dignified and slightly ridiculous.
Only slightly - she should, in all respects, look larger than life but still human.

DAN is at the window, stage right, peering out into the night through a pair of [binoculars].
BIG binoculars. Not cartoonishly large, not quite, but obviously bought for this particular purpose.
Think military issue over [bird-watching].

DAN
They're at it again. That's, like, the third time this week. I can't imagine how her legs don't give out.
They must've called in a [son|carpenter]. A [father|priest], too, to give out some kind of special dispensation from
the diocese for [trois gymnopedies|gymnastically inclined nymphomaniacs] to keep the lines short at the confessionals on a Monday morning.

DAN continues to stare, enraptured.

She's dressed like a [everybody aught to have a maid|maid], too. I thought that cliché had finally kicked its last.

KIM
(not looking up from her work) Maybe it's not a cliché. Maybe she is the maid.
Well. A maid. Probably not their maid.

DAN
Real maids don't have legs like that. Legs like that would be wasted behind a [Hoover].
Hell, legs like that wouldn't know how to turn the damn thing [stop being sexy. I said stop that.|on].
Besides, how many maids do you know who wear four-inch red patent-leather heels to work?

KIM
How many maids do you know who [fuck your boss|fuck their employers]? In real life, I mean?
You could swim in a cliche that deep. For that matter, how many maids do you know?

DAN
(Playfully defensive) A few. From, you know, [around the way|around].

KIM
Oh, have many maids walk into the store of a Tuesday afternoon, do you?

DAN
Maids read.

KIM
When they're not practicing their [diving dog|yoga] on their employer's faces?

DAN
(lowers the binoculars so that they're hanging by a strap from his neck, though he keeps looking out the window)
On the bus. I seem them on the [how to get off a bus|bus] on my way home, sometimes. They practice their English in groups in the back.

(Pause)

But none of them look like that.

KIM
(she knows the answer to this question, but.) [Come to bed].

DAN
In a minute.

(pause)

(all sexy-like; almost obviously kidding. Almost.) You know, Kim, this place is a bit much for us to take care of.

KIM
No.

DAN
But we could really use-

KIM
(interrupting) No.

DAN
But she feels like a part of the [all in the family|family], almost.

DAN
[Papa Smurf] wouldn't make me sit at the [card table|kids' table].
Only your mother would have the balls to arrange the seating chronologically every year.

KIM
It's [our house], Dan. Sit wherever you damn well please.

DAN
She brings [placecards]! First thing she does every year after she sweeps in
and drops a vat of cranberry sauce on the kitchen counter is whip out the fucking placecards.
(beat)
Which reminds me, we need to throw the [leftovers|vat] from last year away, I think it's evolving into something.

KIM
(Dismissively) She's harmless. Next year, do something about it. It's your [carving a turkey|turkey].

DAN
And your mother and her [three mile island|radioactive] cranberry sauce. I swear, it [lite brite|glows in the dark].

KIM
It's a [jesus nitelite|nitelite].
(beat)
Come to bed.

DAN
In a minute.

(pause)

You would've liked my mom, you know.

KIM
Everybody says that about their [dead presidents|dead parents].
Die a young mother and all of a sudden your children lose all sense of [perspective and soda|perspective].

(she's so engrossed in her work she doesn't realize how much that hurt him;
she breezily continues without a hint of...there's a word for how she's speaking, but I can't think of it right now)

One minute you're making your kid clean his room and dragging him home by the ear,
and the next you're handing out [popsicles] or hiding [easter bunny|Easter eggs]. Everyone's kind in the past...

(She trails off, going back to her work, completely oblivious.)

DAN
(looking at her, now; very quietly.) My mother was a [drunking|drunk].
(His tone gets her attention)
She used to fill the [ice cube tray|ice cube trays] with vodka in the summer so she could
drop them into her lemonade and sit under the plum tree in our backyard with a stack
of [harlequin romance|trashy romance novels] and the cordless phone,just in case she needed
my father to pick up more on his way in.

She would give me what she called 'mystery boxes' to keep me entertained. She pulled them down from the [songs in the attic|attic].
They were filled with old photos and knickknacks, usually. Once the sun was too low to read she'd come in and sit with me,
tell me why none of those people called anymore. Usually it was because of me for all sorts of reasons:
because she disappeared one summer in college to dry out, get married and give birth and didn't go back.
Because carrying me to term was a [Cesarian section|brutal affair] and pretty much killed any chance for her to have the large family she always wanted.
According to her, I clawed my way out of her like a parasite.

(KIM tries not to wince.)

Because I was expensive. Because I was draining. Because I never clung to her the way she wanted. All sorts of reasons.
She never laid a finger on me, but I would've taken being belted every once in a while if she'd held my hand crossing the street.

(beat)

She wasn't anything to me. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't've liked her.

(he moves to the door)

KIM
Dan...

DAN
(even quieter) I'm going to clean out the [fridge] before I forget.

(He exits. She watches him go.)

([Blackout])

Leftovers (idea)