GRANDMA at the stove, the sink. Because she doesn’t know where else to be. Making tea, washing dishes.

In the living room sits her grandson MARK CASSANDRA, called CASS: around thirty, in a Hawaiian shirt with a bullet hole in it; threadbare jeans; warped cowboy boots. Unshaven, unwashed.

Both look down at a little barking dog we can’t see but we sure can hear—indicated maybe just by one of those fifties-Disney-type elongated shadows on the wall. The dog is a Chihuahua. The bark is a yip.

DOG: Bark! bark! bark! bark! bark! bark! bark!

GRANDMA: Lord, look at her dribble. I don’t like old people or old dogs or anything old like that.

CASS jumps up and herds the tiny decrepit animal away from him with his toe.

CASS: Dang! Ain’t it housebroke yet?

GRANDMA: That dog is twenty years old. It should be killed…I’m going to make you some biscuits!

CASS: Grandma, I don’t wanna stand in dog piss and hear about biscuits.

GRANDMA: Do you know what? Do you know what piss is? Urine.

She turns toward stove.

…With good white gravy! I’ll make your mouth water, boy.

She opens and closes cupboards.

DOG (outside): Bark! bark! bark! bark!

CASS adjusts a laminated Johnny Carson clock on the wall:

CASS (to Johnny Carson): Sure, it’s crazy. Did I say it wasn’t? It’s absurd. You’re absurd.

GRANDMA: And popcorn!

She tosses a bag in the microwave.

Sporadic barking just outside the door.

CASS: Popcorn is absurd. (Shifting to rapid:) Okay, okay, okay, number one: I drank and I used and I’m like a (shouting toward the barking) DOG BEEN KICKED IN THE HEAD. Second I’m broke, number three I’m stuck here at Dad’s house with Grandma, not to mention Dad himself, not to mention SHUT UP OR I WILL GODDAMN I PROMISE STEP ON YOUR HEAD ONE TIME.

Barking ceases.

GRANDMA: Boy, Jesus will forgive you that you talked to your grandmother thataway. But I believe I never will find it in my heart.

CASS: Have you got a cigarette?

GRANDMA: I don’t smoke.

CASS snags a butt from an ashtray.

CASS: Would you have a match?

GRANDMA: Your ass and my face!…I mean my face, I mean, and your ass!

CASS finds a lighter in a kitchen drawer.

GRANDMA: I meant it the other way. Your face.

The popcorn takes off. The dog joins in. CASS drags deep on his abbreviated smoke and steps out the front door.

DOG: Bark! bark! bark! bark! bark! bark! YOWP!

GRANDMA putters around, forgets herself, moves slowly to the recliner and eases herself into it, starts to speak, realizes she’s alone. Her head lolls back, her mouth opens, she sleeps…

BLACKOUT

Act I

SCENE 2

Lights up on GRANDMA asleep in the recliner. CASS talks on the phone while eating popcorn. Dog’s back inside, too.

CASS’s dad enters, carrying a bucket of Original Recipe chicken: a citizen of the Orbison-Presley type, with his white short sleeves rolled up two turns. He’s just shaking loose a cigarette from his pack while setting down the chicken, but when he sees CASS he palms it and puts it back in his breast pocket along with the pack. Meanwhile: