JANE: You could find something less—publicly embarrassing, like a—filling station attendant, a—male fashion model.

TYE: Model? Ha!

JANE: Don’t put it down, it’s a very lucrative occupation for a personable young man—but of course your choice of employment is no concern of mine now.

TYE: Why, Babe?

JANE: I’m not babe and not chick!

TYE: You say you’re not my chick?

JANE: I say I’m nobody’s chick.

TYE: Any chick I have in my pad is my chick, Babe.

JANE: This is my place, not your crash-pad. You just—moved in and stayed.

TYE: I been in seven months.

JANE: I still have priority here and receipts for the rent.

TYE: I paid the rent this month.

JANE: Half of it, for the first time: my savings being close to exhaustion as me.

[Sound: a funky piano and voice on the Bourbon Street corner. “I’ve Stayed Around and Played Around This Old Town Too Long.” Jane’s mood softens under its influence.]

What a hassle putting you to bed.

TYE: You put me to bed last night?

JANE: It wasn’t last night, it was late morning, near noon, and much too much exertion for someone in my—condition.

TYE [focusing on her more closely]: —Honey, are you pregnant?

JANE: No, Lord, no, who’d be fool enough to get pregnant by a Bourbon Street strip-show barker?

TYE: When a chick talks about her condition don’t it mean she’s pregnant?

JANE: All female conditions are not pregnancy, Tye. And no more Babe or chick to me, please, ‘cause I’m not. What I am is—a desperate young woman living with a young bum employed by gangsters and using my place as a depository for stolen goods. Well, they’re all packed. You’re packed, too. Get up and get rid of that—tumescent condition in the bathroom.

TYE [to the director]: Here’s another I hate.

DIRECTOR: This promises to be a very sticky run-through.

JANE: I understand Tye’s feeling. We’re supposed to bring some pathos to a play that’s—how’d you put it? Gratuitously prurient? And at the first reading you said it would be cleaned up.

PLAYWRIGHT [sitting up a few inches]: Have you ever been on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Jane?

JANE: I was at Mardi Gras once, but—

PLAYWRIGHT: But never heard or noticed anything—what’s the word? Prurient? Going on there in the Quarter?

DIRECTOR: This is our last run-through before previews, the fat is on the fire, and I have a luncheon engagement on Long Island.

PLAYWRIGHT: That’s—vital?

DIRECTOR: I know that you don’t care for the carriage trade but they do include backers. Now let’s go through what is written and possibly after the notices, if we survive them, the Maestro will discover a blue pencil. Tye, your cue is “Get rid of that tumescent condition in the bathroom.”