KATE: Tanya Cruz. She’s an actress now. A sitcom. I don’t think…She plays the daughter. It’s not on the air yet. I don’t think she sings.

Pause.

TOAST: And what was the worst?

Pause.

KATE: That everything looked so sanitary. (Pause.) You could not expect a germ to live anywhere near that lovely purity and innocence.

Pause.

TOAST: After that mess, the hearings resume, the testimony of what went on, and on, and on, and on, at Kernwood Farms: in the offices, the cannery, the transport division, in the rows of grapes, in the dirt. Agents repeating themselves like the Inquisition, different agents using the same words, the same phrases—

KATE: The same names—

TOAST: Taggart comes! Taggart goes! Then Taggart arrives followed later on that day by—Taggart! Three Taggarts? Taggart is not a common name.

KATE: Two Joneses.

TOAST: Jones is common.

KATE: Michaels—

TOAST: Chop off their heads!

KATE: I did! I tried! I’m trying—

TOAST: You were in charge of one head.

KATE: I put Miss Marigold’s head on the block.

TOAST: And up steps Mrs. May for the kooty-grah. (Pause.) Boom! The phone rings…Oh yes. She got the news in the middle of Interrogation Number One.

KATE: Wow. An interrogation.

TOAST: Oh yeah…That’s the procedure. A series of interrogations followed by a series of termination interviews. The Platform Interview. The Notification Interview. Transition Interview. And the whole time, the worker’s head is rolling and rolling and rolling. All this is completely aside from any appeal process, of course.

KATE: Are you kidding me?

TOAST: Absurd, isn’t it. All this time the head is rolling. Since the first written notification, which arrives by Federal Express. Which is not in the least bit Federal…We oughta be ashamed of that…But I guess we aren’t…I know I’m not. (Pause.) Well, that’s all that ever brings it to a stop, the Out-ductee just can’t endlessly endure that horrible sensation of his head rolling and rolling. A series of pointless interviews…

KATE: The Out-ductee?

Pause.

TOAST: Once you understand we’re all about absurdity…about pushing the limits of the absurd…you just have to try and outdo yourself.

Pause. They stare at each other electrically.

But when I said “back up,” I didn’t mean quite all the way into the last century. I meant…just to where you came in here and sat down with me.

KATE: At your invitation.

TOAST: Perhaps. Fine. You come in, you’re looking a bit lost…There you are. So I—

KATE: So why?

TOAST: I didn’t think we were connected. (Shrugs.) And I wanted to be.

KATE: So you’re harassing me. Sexually.

TOAST: I thought you were a babe.

KATE: Jesus! You—

TOAST: Thought! Thought! I now appreciate that you are not in that category. You’re a co-worker, your gender is invisible to me. But you asked why I—(Gestures between them.) And you received an answer.

KATE: Did you read his letter?

Pause.

TOAST: The one from the brother, this is.

KATE: Yes.

TOAST: Nope.

KATE: You didn’t read it? Then how—