Charles    Cutting logs?

Bert    Figure o’ speech: American. Just open the window, just do me a favour and open the window if you can reach it.

Charles enters the bathroom, Bert laughs to himself.

Bert    . . . fucken jerk!

Charles returns from the bathroom, shoves the chair to where the phone is and climbs up. He picks it up.

Charles    Um, yes, ah, this is Mr Charles Merryweather in room – yes, yes, of course I’ll hold . . . (Turning to Bert.) There’s no paper in there.

Bert    You really gonna let that fucken harlot on the desk know you need to take a shit? Don’t shatter the whore’s illusion o’ midgets. I got some paper in my case you can borrow, and when I say borrow I ain’t meaning I want it back, you get my drift?

Charles puts the phone down and gets off the chair. Bert climbs down from the bed, opens his case and hands Charles a toilet roll (three times the regular size).

Bert    . . . stayed in these roach hotels before. Last thing they think of in these fucken roach hotels is ass-wipes.

Charles (heading back to bathroom)     That’s very generous. Thank you.

Bert    Hey, think nothing of it. Us midgets gotta stick together. We’re a dying breed, I heard somewhere we’re gonna be extinct by the fifties, I don’t listen to gossip
though.

Charles    That’s – where did you hear that?

Bert    I told you, kid: I don’t listen to gossip, and you know something, you know something and you want my advice, you don’t listen to it either, OK?

Charles    . . . Right. Thank you. I won’t.

Charles pauses and closes the door behind him.

Bert goes to Charles’s drawer and rummages through it. He finds a wad of dollar bills. He smiles to himself, peels a couple off and looks as though he is about to pocket them. He stops, thinks better of it, puts them back in the wad and closes the drawer. He goes to his case and pulls out a pipe (three times the regular size) and a small package wrapped in brown paper. He fetches the chair and climbs up on the bed. He goes through the ritual of packing the pipe and lighting it up.

Charles returns from the bathroom, holding the toilet roll. He looks on as Bert smokes the pipe. Bert notices Charles’s shock.

Bert    Whatsamatter? You never seen a bronchiatric dwarf before? I gotta smoke this shit; opens up the lungs.

Charles    Oh, dear, excuse me, I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t mean to stare.

Bert    Kind o’ fucken upbringing you ain’t ever seen no bronchiatric dwarf, huh?