LUCY: Likewise.

(LUCY exits stage left, with tray. Long pause. SALLY slurps her coffee. ROSCOE looks out over Los Angeles.)

ROSCOE: Thanks.

SALLY: You told me you were a junkie.

ROSCOE: I snorted a little! I never actually developed a “jones.” It was a figure of speech.

SALLY: A what?

ROSCOE: A figure of speech!

SALLY: No—the other. “Jones”?

ROSCOE: A habit.

SALLY: Oh—you left that part out.

ROSCOE: I was just—talking through my hat.

SALLY: Bragging? About being a junkie?

ROSCOE: To give you a kind of—impression.

SALLY: But we’ve already—

ROSCOE: Not for that reason.

SALLY: What, then?

ROSCOE: Just—to make you think I was someone with experience.

SALLY: Experience? Like Jimi Hendrix?

ROSCOE: No! Not just another—“academic.”

SALLY: Oh. (Pause.) So it turns out you’re a liar, then. A pretender.

ROSCOE: No, no—I really did live through all that.

SALLY: All what?

ROSCOE: All that—Sixties stuff: mattress on the floor—cockroach across your feet—nickel bags half filled with oregano—

SALLY: You lie about everything, don’t you?

ROSCOE: No! But you don’t have to tell your sister I’m a—

SALLY: You’re lying right now.

ROSCOE: I’m not lying!!

SALLY: I can tell. I can see it in your eyes. No wonder your wife left you.

(SALLY gets up, goes to her bed, and flops down on it—lies on her back, staring at ceiling.)

ROSCOE: She didn’t leave me. I left her!

(Long pause. SALLY just stares at ceiling. ROSCOE stares at floor—silent.)

SALLY: Doesn’t matter.

ROSCOE: It does! If you think everything I say is a lie.

SALLY: It’s not what you “say.”

ROSCOE: What is it, then?

SALLY: What you don’t say.

ROSCOE: I’m not following you.

(Long pause.)

SALLY: You should go back to her. It’s such a waste.

ROSCOE: What is?

SALLY: Time. You—running up and down the highway like some headless chicken. What do you think you’re supposed to be doing?

ROSCOE: I don’t know.

SALLY: “Being free” or something? Being your own person? What’re you trying to prove, Professor?

ROSCOE: Nothing—I guess.

SALLY: You should go back.

ROSCOE: It’s too late.

SALLY: How long were you together?

ROSCOE: Long.

SALLY: Then it can’t be too late.

ROSCOE: What is this sudden empathy with my wife, for God’s sake? Some feminine manifesto, out of the blue? You don’t know my wife! You don’t know what she’s feeling. You’ve never even met her!