TYE: That sounds like the steps of a responsible man. —Hey isn’t that bit cast and we preview Monday?

DIRECTOR: Mr. Marshall feels it can be handled by the stage-manager.

TYE: —Funeral baked meats!

PLAYWRIGHT [rousing]: I have a more interesting suggestion. —Stay in character and describe the action.

[Hilary appears from the wings.]

HILARY: Have I been admitted? For my bit?

PLAYWRIGHT: No. —Omitted. Off, please.

TYE: This is—amateur night in Dixie!

JANE: Let’s give it a try. Will there be script or do we improvise?

PLAYWRIGHT: Just tell it like it happens.

DIRECTOR [leaving]: Bye!

JANE: Do I say that he knocks at the door?

PLAYWRIGHT [rising]: He knocks at the door and knocks and pounds at the door.

JANE [getting into it]: I try to stop Tye but Tye lets him in and—Tye?

TYE [shrugging]: Yeah, I let him in and he does a slow take and then he—

JANE: Calls me—

TYE: “Puta!” —I know it’s Spanish for whore and I punch him in his belly. He says “Hah,” expelling breath. I punch him again and he says “Hah” again and goes backwards, he descends the stairs backwards on his fat ass. She tries to run after the greaseball to see if he’s injured in the backward descent but I hold her in and I shut the door and lock it and there’s a big commotion on the street.

JANE: He shouts “Policia!”

PLAYWRIGHT: And you sit calmly down on the table and roll a joint as if nothing at all had occurred.

TYE: Why would I do that?

PLAYWRIGHT: You wouldn’t but he would. Occurrences like this are practically nothing in the Vieux Carré. Why, after midnight the police sirens and ambulance sirens are a continual serenade.

JANE: And I?

PLAYWRIGHT: Take it less calmly.

JANE: I don’t want to cry again.

PLAYWRIGHT: Don’t. You keep Metaxas—have a hit of Metaxas while he’s rolling a joint.

JANE: Oh. [Pours from the bottle.]

TYE: —Dig. —Still no props for this bit. [He makes the gestures of rolling a joint.] All very Pirandello.

PLAYWRIGHT: Stay in character. You forgot to shout.

TYE [back in character]: I holler out the window: “Viva Che!”

JANE: Why, Tye!

TYE: Viva Che Guevara! And this banana man, sorry, this coffee man from Brazil shouts back from the street, “Muerto, muerto, chinga su madre!” And I holler down, “Naw, vive, viva, muerto your ass, greaseball” —Then act again like nothing has occurred?

PLAYWRIGHT: Yes, you would: he would—smoking the joint . . .

JANE: And I’m sort of—thunderstruck because—I never would have suspected that Tye knew the name of Che Guevara or that Che had ever existed. You see, in New York, I was into the Movement a little, on the fringes of it till the Cathedral thing that opened my eyes to it.

TYE: Babe, there’s lots about me that you never knew.