Yeah Shlomo. You’re right: your girlfriends aren’t inferior. You are.

Beat.

LIAM

I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stay here tonight.

DAPHNA

Ah, yes, don’t respond to my truth. Dismiss me.

LIAM

You need to find somewhere else to sleep. I actually can’t be around you.

DAPHNA

You don’t have a choice.

LIAM

I do have a choice. This isn’t your apartment. So get. Out.

DAPHNA

And go where?

LIAM

I don’t care where you go. Go to the JCC. 76th and Amsterdam. See if they’ll take you in for the night.

DAPHNA

You are such an anti-semite.

LIAM

I don’t care where you go, but if you stay here someone is not going to survive the night and I will not subject Melody to anymore of your hideous … to you, because you have an incessant need to lash out at anyone who makes you feel insecure—

DAPHNA

Ummm, you think Melody makes me feel insecure?

LIAM

I don’t think that; I know it.

DAPHNA

What does that girl possibly have that I don’t—

LIAM

A good heart. A pretty face. An engaging personality. A sense of compassion, not only for those less fortunate, but for everyone. She’s a good person. You’re not. Your righteousness is all self-righteousness; hers is pure. There’s a purity to her. She got a tattoo of a treble clef because she loves music. It’s that simple. She’s uncomplicated. She is what she is, no more, no less. No deception, no ulterior motives. She’s a song I can’t stop singing.

MELODY has been standing in the doorframe of the bathroom, listening to LIAM talk about her. She goes to him and kisses him. DAPHNA raises her eyebrows as high as they can possibly go, as if to say, “A song he can’t stop singing?”

LIAM

Are you ok?

MELODY nods.

MELODY

You know you can hear everything in the bathroom?

DAPHNA

No shit. You don’t think I heard everything he said about—

MELODY

Please don’t talk to me like that—

LIAM

You have to stop talking to people like—

MELODY

Everyone stop. Just stop it! You can’t talk to each other in this …

Searches hard for a big word.

Horrible way. Do you know what it was like before, to hear your boyfriend, talk the way you were talking? That’s not you!

DAPHNA

Uhm …

MELODY

(To LIAM.)

I don’t talk that way. I just heard every single …

Searches hard for a big word; no luck this time.

and I’m not about to lash back at— because everyone in here, no matter whatever you think of them, is a human being, and you don’t talk to human beings that way. If I ever did, I honestly couldn’t live with myself.

Promise me all that horribleness is over.

LIAM

I—

MELODY

Otherwise, I’ll go.

LIAM

No— Mel— I—

MELODY

I will. I’ll fly back to Chicago.

LIAM

No— You have my word.

MELODY

I’m not saying you have to be best friends or even, but civil. Everyone.