JANE: Well, after all, why not, if you’re interested in it. It hasn’t been just lately I’ve lost weight and energy but for more a year in New York. I went to this fatherly old doctor who gave me routine tests, blood chemistry—but no convincing diagnosis, you know. You know, I think they don’t until you really demand and then sometimes they will if they’re sure you’re not pretending. Evasions. I got fed up with evasions and pick-up injections. I was going abroad to see the new fashion trends in Rome and Paris, you know. So I said to this fatherly old doctor, no more foolishness, please. Take a piece of paper and this ball-point pen and you write it down, spell it out in black and white what’s wrong that I don’t know, in case I take sick abroad and am completely ignorant of—he stared at me a moment or two—or more—and I stared back without blinking and he knew that I meant it, I did, and then he smiled, professionally but—sadly, and—wrote it out on the paper with the pen I’d stuck in his hand.

TYE [whispering to her]: Downstage, in the light. [She shakes her head slightly.]

JANE: Sorry. I don’t remember the name of it, some—blood thing— progressive, rather fast at my age, and no cure. —I think I had a remission when I met you. [This is to Tye.] A definite remission. My God, what a pair, you, me. —Here. —Like the world stopped and turned backward or like it entered another universe: —months! [She moves convulsively, he grips her shoulders.] —Then . . . it . . . I . . .

TYE: Us?

JANE: That unnatural tiredness started in again. I went to Ochsners and it turned out that the blood count was the worse, it was close to—collapse . . . [Pause.] —Those are the clinical details. — Are you satisfied with them? [She stares at him, he averts his face. She moves around him to look at his face. He averts it. She claps it between her hands. Compels him to look at her with his tears.] —Honestly? [He looks down. A scratching sound is heard from the shutter doors.] —That’s Beret, let her in. —Isn’t nice how cats go away and come back and—you don’t have a worry about them. So unlike human beings. [He opens the doors. An invisible cat enters, mewing.] Give her—supper, give her a can of Puss ’n Boots—mackerel flavored’s her choice . . . [He opens a can of cat food and sets it on the floor; strokes the invisible cat a moment, then crosses to his clothes, collecting them from the floor.]

TYE [gently]: Jane, it’s after dark, I got to get dressed, now, Babe.

JANE: I know, I know.

TYE: Only four grades of school and no—respectable background.

JANE: I know.

TYE: No training for—nothing but—